Back in the Title 1 Classroom

I’m going to miss my kids.

Almost summer.

We’re giving just one award for each class, and we could choose any category. Some teachers went with highest grades, highest state test scores... I am agonizing over not being able to give 20 awards for different things, but hey. My bestie teacher was even worse than me—she’s going to claim ‘ties’ so she can add a couple if kids. But, I made myself assimilate.

My high fliers and Honors kids are probably going to have their parents assailing me about it, but I’ve decided to award my kids who’ve turned it around this year. The kids who slept through my class in Q1, and now are honed in on everything we’re doing. They somehow just DECIDED to be good students.

It was hard to word the award, but I finally put together language that proudly states what they’ve done.

I’m so proud.

I’ll miss them.

Nobody is ever as cool as that first group in a new school.

❤️

New principal, a mass exodus and a resulting influx. I feel like the Toccoa boys watching a trickle of replacements, but I welcome them.

I had a great year, but it was so debilitating. I can’t stay away from planning, tweaking, improving. I’m so damn excited about this year.

Q1 planning with my new team in a week. ✌🏽👩‍🏫

As you know, it's the pleasure and horror of an educator's life. Constant changes. Students. Parents/Guardians of the students. Principals. Teachers. Other staff.

You'll be fine.

I feel like I’ve been beaten. My feet are loosely bound bags of bones that I walk on. Not advised.

The first week of school is relationship building, bluff-calling, and learning environment creating.

I went deep and one day was devoted to how to manipulate your 🧠 brain. We talked about stressors and de-stressors. I actually had four classes of middle schoolers doing tai chi, Qi gong, and deep breathing.

Later, an asshole bitched out one of my girls in Spanish, and my co-teacher saw her take three deep breaths before bitching him back. 😃. Baby steps.

Today, my class was silent, reading books they’d picked out. I don’t know why that’s such a big deal, but I’m crazy about all of them already. They wrote devastatingly authentic autobiographical poetry today. How many times did I rub chill bumps from my arms...

It’s the most horrible, incredible ‘job’ in the world.

I really don't know. It does however indicate that there is too much air conditioning in the classroom.

I wish. It’s a sauna. Smells like teen spirit...

Some weird things have happened since this day. One made me cry, and I think in 15 years, one thing most people here probably know is I am NOT a cryer.

I asked my instructional coach what my kids’ specific growth scores were for the year. She said she wasn’t allowed to tell me. She’d always been free to tell me before. I worked my ass off teaching, modeling, helping, and I spent some of my money and a hell of a lot of my time planning, decorating, blah blah to facilitate the benchmark party and the graduation party.

I hated being shut out of my own damn information.

Long story short, today, in a meeting about something totally unrelated, my IC whispered, “I have to tell you...”. She said a few lines... “I have to tell you...the biggest growth...”. I asked, “in [my grade] ELA?” And she said, “in the whole school, by far. You brought the school score up.”

It felt pretty good, but I knew it was my gimmicks— the parties, but now we know they know a LOT more than they show on tests.

This is a full-on brag. Any teachers wandering by—feel free to crap all over me. Sturgis! You have no such invitation!! 😀

I feel like I know what I’m doing—and I have receipts.❤️🎉

I’m a little worried, but almost equally resigned to do an in depth comparison of Springsteen’s Born in the USA and Glover’s This is America.

I think this is important, but the shooter imagery gives me pause.

Comments welcome.

My planning team loves the idea. Hacking out an awesome unit designed around protest. ✌🏽

So, young G hasn’t liked me from the start, and I expect that. I made it worse by writing him up for a routine infraction, but he was disengaged and doing little to no class work because he was staring at his phone.

He stopped even acknowledging me when I spoke to him because he was furious with me.

After two such write ups and calling his mom both times, he began to ask if he could get the phone out after he finished his work. That seemed directly from his mom, and I wanted to honor her attempt to help her son stay within the rules, so I informed everyone that if they’d produce good quality work, they could get on phones the last 5-7 minutes of class.

Suddenly, this kid is producing higher quality work, attentive with everything we’re doing during class, and always coming to confirm he can use his phone
before taking it out.

I’m so knocked out by this big week-long change that I try to call his mom and thank her for helping me. Her phone is inoperable now, so I write a pretty specific, longish complimentary note to her and ask young g to deliver.

So, now he’s got a gang of about four guys, collaborating like scholars in the back of the room, and every day, one of them comes to my desk to ask permission to get phones out,. Their level of attention and work production has increased, and every three or four days, youngblood asks for a letter for his mom, and after school, a troop of about four young men walks into my room accompanying their fearless leader to pick up his note to his mom.

I’m still fighting for dominance in one class—I, by no means, have this issue wrapped—but this is one of the coolest things to happen to me so far this year.

He doesn’t say anything. He walks to my desk with his buds, I hand it to him wordlessly, he looks at how I’ve addressed it. It is sealed with a sticker. He walks away and carefully slides it into his pants pocket. Sometimes, sealing this little moment in my heart gets me through a multitude of administrative bullshit. It gets me out of bed or calms me through bogus school bullshit.

I don’t think young g wants me to know how much that means to him, and I sure as hell don’t want him to know how much it means to me.

Some days, teaching is ok.

I want to quit my job more days than I don’t. October is the lowest time for most teachers. I’m locked in a battle with administration officials—not with my students or my love of teaching.

Today, I got an email from a student from last year.

She and her best friend began the year sleeping in class, talking and girl-drama-ing... I caught them being pretty damn smart and I took them individually outside and told them about their potential...

They began to meet my expectations during the year and both of them exceeded expectations on big tests mid-year. That catapulted them into giving a **** —suddenly—on every test.

When another teacher and I dug into our own pockets and threw a huge
graduation party for our grade, I told door keepers that if these girls could get there and they couldn’t afford the entrance ticket, call me to the door and I’d pay for them.

These girls were in regular Ed. classes and I asked them to let me recommend them for Honors. It was unadvised, but I did it. I believed in these young women.

Here is why I teach in a Title 1 school:

One of those girls emailed me today. She thanked me for believing in her and she told me that she was currently holding an A in high school Honors.

Her life changed.

What better way to spend the waning years of a life?

🔥 I’m grateful.

Screw admin.

This lesson and the resulting class discussions about race in America has made my class the primary hang out location of my Hispanic and Black American students before school, and I have to run them out every morning, but I do it kindly, and those who didn’t talk to me before greet me respectfully and (heh) do weird hand bumps and call me ‘blood.’

And, yes, it means everything to me.

I just talked about lives changed in a previous post. Riding pretty high.

The underlying truth is the past three weeks have been the most difficult and exhausting work in my working career, but I just kept telling myself to make it to today. Just don’t quit til after my four day weekend. October is a notoriously hard time for teachers—there are graphs and stats...

So this morning rolled around and I was smiling. I’d made it. Just breathe through the day and presto! You’ve lived to fight til Thanksgiving break!

And, I was teaching informative text like a machine, and the kids in the most difficult class of the day were on top of it. We’d just finished up and with seven or so minutes left; I let the kids relax, pack up. ...And then, one of my students was removed by law enforcement.


...because one of his friends reported he told her not to come to school one day next week because he was bringing a gun.

I’d just talked to him minutes before. I’d just told him how I’d noticed the past two weeks, he’d been turning things around. Other things are involved that I won’t mention in the infinitesimally minute case anyone connects any dots, but tonight, I’m so sad for him. I think it was just talk, but.

His life has changed, too.

There is no predicting people in these times.

Glad to see you are keeping an open mind on what his 'friend' said.

You never know motivations...

Roger, no. I think you're way off base here. If you ever get a chance to participate in violence threat risk assessment (VTRA) training, I would encourage you to attend. I'll be back with a link.

https://www.nactatr.com/team/kevincameron.html

The magic that keeps me waking up in the dark hours, collecting academic knowledge about..., and creating relationships with 80 kids of varying performance levels... (smiles) is beginning to happen.

My teaching philosophy is based on heavy scaffolding, creating an opportunity for success, meeting with each kid to note that individual success, and mentioning achievements in class in front of other students. This combination—many times—takes a kid who’s stopped trying because teachers overlooked them and turns them into a kid who’s now intrinsically motivated to try harder.

I have about ten kids now across four classes stepping up and achieving so.much.more. than they did at the beginning of the year.

I’ve had two of these kids walk in my Honors class and put them on notice.

Yay! I’m thrilled. Lives change. What is better??

My job security.