MissTeach

The teacher observation can be one of the biggest drawbacks to my job, without a doubt.

At the very least it can intimidate me to have an administrator sit in my classroom watching me teach a lesson. I know he or she is taking notes and looking at my methods under the microscope. His or her laser-like focus is directed to finding someone, or something to scrutinize. I know the domains of scrutiny and the rankings: from one to five that label a teacher as  ”proficient” or “exemplary.” 

After more than 20 years teaching, I still feel nervous before a scheduled observation. I know how the administrative grading process works. I’m familiar with the terminology and the criteria. I know I’m a good teacher.

It makes no matter that I’ve taught the same subjects and that I’ve attended professional workshops and seminars every summer for the past two decades to stay abreast of my curriculum and technology.

I take no solace in knowing that I am organized and always plan for each week ahead by writing my lesson plans in my planning book each Friday before I leave school for the weekend.

I still spent all of Sunday night preparing a shiny new and dynamic lesson plan for Monday morning. I researched my topic and charted a variety of activities to fill the block of 90 minutes with a warm up, a gathering, a team work activity, a Powerpoint presentation, a 5-minute multimedia movie,  and a fun closing ritual.

Then when Monday morning arrived, I awoke a bit earlier than usual and performed some relaxing stretches and yoga exercises while focusing on my breathing. I ate a light, but nutritious breakfast, as I usually do. I read the newspaper and sipped my coffee. I packed a lunch.

After I showered, I dressed in my best suit and shoes and spent extra time on my hair and makeup. I dress professionally every day of the year, but when I left the house that day I looked like I was headed for Wall Street instead of a school house.

When I arrived on campus Monday, I made sure that I updated my daily goals and objectives on the classroom white board. I updated the wall calendar to include my amended lesson plans. I tidied up the bookshelves, the tops of the file cabinets, and my teacher station.

I made sure the computer worked and I installed my Powerpoint. I bookmarked the links on the Internet browser that I planned to use as part of my class discussion.  I ran off copies of my handout for students, taking extra care that I had one for everyone of them.

I greeted my students with a smile at the door as they entered, as I always do. When the class period began, the administrator was no where in sight.

“Class, we might have a visitor today. He’s an administrator and he’s coming to see what we do in this class and how we do it,” I told my students. “Be sure to be on your best behavior and pretend that you don’t see him, unless he asks you a question. Ok?”

The students nodded in agreement and a few sat up a bit straighter.

I felt a bit queasy in my stomach. From past experience, I knew that behavior-wise, this class could challenge even my best classroom management skills.

We finished the warm up and headed into our gathering activity when the administrator showed up. He walked inside my room with his clipboard. He made a quick reconnaissance and sat down near the door. He started writing almost immediately.

I smiled at my students and pulled them back into my teacher spell. The Powerpoint was a big hit. I made sure to call on every single student by name — that is my style and it’s also one of the criteria of an observation critique. Afterwards, I went to my Internet links to show my multi-media movie. The first link did not work. The movie I had watched the night before had been replaced. I stumbled a bit verbally, but kept smiling as I tried the second link.

The second link worked, but the movie stopped to “buffer” several times. Our bandwith was maxed out. Our  server does not allow every teacher on the campus to use the Internet at once without difficulty. I quickly shut it down and made some attempt to promise to watch the movie clip “later.”

The administrator stood up and abruptly left the room.

I started the teamwork activity using some game cards I had made. The students loved it. They laughed and appropriately participated. I secretly wished that the administrator had stayed to see them.

I ended the class period with my closing ritual — tossing a bean bag toy around the room from student to student while asking them each to offer a key idea or word they had learned in today’s lesson.

We finished the closing just seconds before the release bell sounded.

It had been a nearly perfect class period, with only a few “bumps.” My students were wonderful and I told them so. Hopefully, my administrator will think so too.

Last night, while listening to President Obama’s State of the Union Address, one of his topics particularly caught my attention. “Let’s stop bashing teachers,” he said. I heard him, but I wondered if his non-teaching audience did too.

Here’s a link to the Texas Education Agency’s guidelines for teacher assessment:

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter150/ch150aa.html

In honor of Martin Luther King Day every year I show the film, “Remember the Titans.” The film stars Denzel Washington and tells the real life  story of an African American coach hired at an integrated high school in Virginia during the early 1970s.

The film fosters feelings of understanding with my teenage students about the  similarities between people of different races but it also engages them in a life lesson more familiar to them — about how to become part of a successful team.

Even my students who claim to not be real fans of football enjoy watching this film. The music of the 70s playing in the soundtrack truly gets them feeling good.

I activated the captions for the hard of hearing in the movie. This provided a text of the dialogue and lyrics at the bottom of the screen while my students watched it. It further embedded the words and messages of the film in their psyche. Afterwards, they were eager to talk about their impressions. It led to wonderful class discussions.

If you are searching for a way to teach a lesson about the Civil Rights period in our nation’s history, I highly recommend it.

Here’s a link to learn more:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210945/

I used to think that being a high school teacher made me somewhat of an expert when it came to raising teenagers.

I always thought that once my child reached puberty I would know what to do. I was confident of my research. I had practiced and honed my skills. But what I failed to recognize was the fact that being  someone’s teacher doesn’t make one an expert at raising children. If anything it offers a diluted view of real parenting.

Real parenting is harder, much harder. I know that now.

When I speak to my students either in front of the class or one-on-one, they see me as an authority figure because we don’t share the emotional baggage that hinders their eyesight. They listen to me because we don’t share any unresolved anger or resentment. I don’t set their curfew, enforce their chores, or ration their allowance. They never need to ask me for the keys to the car, or explain their risky behaviors. I do not discipline them other than to talk to them privately, or engage in a three-way conference with one other adult such as a parent, or an administrator or a counselor.

As their teacher, I only require all 35 of them to be present and engaged as students in my classroom. That’s remarkably easier at times than teaching my own man-child who sees me as somewhat mentally handicapped at modern math, a boring conversationalist, and “an old fart” when it comes to using up-to-date technology.

Supporting the independence of my teenager requires me to step back and remove myself from roles as a parent that I have enjoyed for so long: fixing breakfast, packing lunches, helping with homework, playing board games, taking field trips to parks and museums, attending concerts and plays together, and going on long bike rides.

The boundaries of our conversations are more rigid now: without complaint I may ask about his day at school, how he slept, if he has homework, and what his plans are for the evening or weekend. Anything beyond these questions may bring his unwarranted agitation and arguments. Meanwhile, my students in my classroom feel free to volunteer the intimate details of their lives to me, their teacher, that I often wish they would not. Seriously.

When it comes to teaching my own child, the school rules do not apply. The only bells that go off in our midst are those in my head when my blood pressure gets unreasonably high. I can just accept that my child will be tardy no matter what. If he misbehaves there is no principal’s office to send him to and no room of detention where he can serve his punishments. Instead, he gleefully may spend every waking moment at home in his bedroom behind a closed door playing video games, listening to music, or exchanging text on Facebook.

There are no ends to the parent/teaching day, no holidays, no weekends off, no spring breaks. School is in session 24/7 until a child reaches the age of a legal adult, 18. And I feel that I’m running out of time.

Yesterday, surprisingly, after school when I invited him to the driving range to hit a couple bucket of balls he went along without begrudging me. He carried my old golf bag from the car and I paid for the medium tills. We hit those balls with our clubs into the horizon, brightened by a winter’s Indian summer setting sun. It felt just like there was no tomorrow. Though we did not speak a word, I shared with my son another definition of love.

It’s a new year and a new semester. New year’s resolutions aside, this week marks an opportunity for me to do things differently in my classroom and to find a new ways to motivate students for success.

It was Mark Twain who said: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. . . . Explore. Dream.”

So the first thing I decided to do differently is to show students what success FEELS like. I did it in a safe way — as part of a team, while playing a game.

Yesterday, I started each of my “B” day classes with a warm up exercise — we played the game, Catch Phrase.

Up until yesterday, at school I had only played the game with my advisory class. I am so glad now that I decided to take a risk with my regular classes.

I divided my students into two groups as they came in the door. I numbered them “one” or “two.” The “ones” went to one side of the classroom and the “twos” went to the other.

Afterwards, I handed one team a round, flat electronic disc device labeled “Team One” and “Team Two.” Each team took turns and had to choose a category such as: food, entertainment, the world, sports, technology, or “everything.” After the team selected a category, one person — “the clue giver,” held the round flat electronic disc device and provided verbal clues to his or her team about the words displayed. The clue giver sometimes provided gestures. This was hilarious! Even the shy students quickly engaged in the activity.

The goal of the game is to get members on your team to guess the word displayed on the electronic device. Meanwhile, a beeper sounds at an increasing rate until time runs out. This causes some good adrenalin and excitement to the game play. There is also a button on the electronic device that allows the clue giver to skip to the next word in the category if the team members cannot guess the correct word. If the timer runs out before the team with the device correctly guesses the word, the opposite team may try to guess the word displayed on the device.

The rules of the game state that the first team to score 7 points wins. However, I stretched the rules to allow for every person on each team to have one chance to hold the device and to become “the clue giver.” I kept track of correct answers, or points. Afterwards, we tallied up the points for each team and — it was tied!

One of my students shouted “everyone is a winner!”

That’s when it hit me like an epiphany.

Afterwards, my regular lesson felt just like a hallelujah!

This week has been so hard — even with “bribing” my students to behave by serving them treats, they’ve behaved like Winter Break begins tomorrow. We still have a week and a half to go.

Every day I have the same one-sided conversation it seems. I ask students: “Where is your homework?” or “Why didn’t you study for the test?” or “When can you come in to make up this work?” The only things that change are the students’ faces.

Soon I’ll be wearing two different earrings — at the same time, like I did at this time last year. I wore them all day until the last class period.

Last year I taught twice the number of classes every day than I do this year. (Some days I just thank God for block scheduling.)

I remember last year’s fashion blunder like it was yesterday. One of my most outspoken students came up to me with a sheepish smile. He stood there examining my left ear and my right ear, all the while smiling at me.

“What?” I asked him, perhaps a bit too crisply.

“Did you know that you have on two different earrings?” he asked me.

He must have realized the answer immediately by my expression.

You could have heard crickets in the space of time that passed between us.

I grabbed my right earring and my left earring and pulled them both out of the holes in my ears.

In my hands I found evidence that I had suddenly become the epitome of an eccentric old lady teacher.

I looked at the boy again.

In my naked ears I heard that age-old mantra: “Never let them see you sweat.”

Given my menopausal age, it was too late,

“Of course,” I answered him, laughing so hard that I shed tears.

I put the earrings right back in my ears and reached for a tissue.

I wiped away the sweat, tears and makeup from under my eyes.

“You did NOT!” the boy said accusingly. He laughed in spite of himself.

“NO I did not,” I laughed back.

“I love this class,” he said.

I stopped laughing. I listened.

“Yeah?” I asked him.

“Yeah.”

He looked me straight in the eyes and said: “If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have anything funny to talk about at lunch with my friends…”

The hardest thing about teaching is maintaining a sense of control when it’s obvious there is none.

If I teach 30 to 35 students in a class period, every day at least one of them will act out — that’s on a  good day.  Most days, at least three or more of them act out, within a space of seconds — like dominoes it sometimes happens within my sight and beyond my ability to stop it. I only have a choice when it comes to how I handle the clean up.

With more and more students identified as having learning or behavioral disorders, more and more of students act out every day in every class.

Add to the mix: the toll I was feeling from a busy weekend, yesterday’s bad weather school day with my extended early morning spent stalled in snarled traffic, and  my usual discovery that the heater wasn’t working in our building on the first freezing day of the season.

When I’m in the midst of whatever situation warrants my control, I know that as a teacher, I should step outside my own emotions and find a way to bring order back into my classroom. Notice I said “should.” Sometimes I forget to remind myself to keep my emotions in check.

Yesterday was one of those days.

While most students worked on their mid six weeks projects in one class, I found one student reading a magazine and listening to his iPod. “Rocker Dude,” as I will refer to him appeared clueless to the sense of urgency and productivity around him.

“You’re freaking me out here,” I said to Rocker Dude.

“While everyone else is working to finish their projects, you sit here reading a magazine and listening to your iPod. Why?” I said in an extremely agitated and elevated voice to Rocker Dude, just inches away from where he sat.

He appeared startled when I spoke to him, as if I had just manifested in the room as a cloud of vapor.

“Oh, I was just looking for something,” Rocker Dude said.

“So was I,” I told him, as I opened the software application on his computer.

I helped him unplug, put away his magazine and get to work, when behind us more havoc began.

Two girls in the classroom were using their iPhone to take photos of each other in a variety of cheesy poses. I approached them with what I imagine was the face of fury as their smiles quickly dissolved into straight lines. Their eyes widened as if caught in my negative power beams, bracing themselves for collision.

“Let’s cancel the photo shoot for today, shall we?” I asked the girls. One girl put the phone in her purse like it was too hot to handle and the other girl swiveled so fast in her chair to face the computer monitor that it seemed as if I had bewitched her.

On most days, the entire room would have come to a dead silence as I provided a short speech on student expectations. Nothing of the sort happened yesterday. The dominoes kept falling, as I kept on chasing them down with abandon.

Meanwhile, to the girls’ right, a boy played an online video game. Exploding asteroids filled the silent screen.

“And what do we have here?” I said with the voice of disdain.

“Gamer boy” looked up at me with a face that unmistakably became a question mark. His open mouth uttered not a word.

“Off,” I barked at him. He complied by pushing the exit button on the game program without looking once at the keyboard.

“Mondays,” said the brightest voice in the room, a natural blonde and freckle-faced girl who always says  aloud whatever is on everyone’s mind. I’ll refer to her as “Wisdom Words.”

By noon, my knight in shining armor, my husband, had arrived with a space heater from Lowes.

As a result, my last two periods of the day were safe from me and the attack of the Mondays.

Yesterday one of my students reminded me to look for the evidence of poverty in my own classroom.

A beautiful Hispanic girl who I will refer to as “Bonita,” asked to go to the nurse shortly before class began.

“My stomach hurts. Can I go to the nurse?” Bonita asked as she rubbed her stomach.

I wrote her a pass and sent her on her way. I didn’t pry. In the space of 15 or 20 minutes after Bonita left classroom and my sight, she never crossed my mind.

Instead I focused my attention on my new mini lessons. I felt excited to get started. I couldn’t wait to teach the students to look for evidence of poverty in their community, to discuss it, to write about it, and to make a difference in someone else’s life. I had brought food to share with the class as part of an introduction to the topic. I set out a spread of tasty morsels on a table and invited students to eat.

As students took their seats, I started them in a mini lesson about poverty. We talked about what poverty looks like.  In small groups the group leaders presented clear definitions to the class: poverty is evident on street corners where homeless people beg for spare change, in the hovels of shanty town, inside the shelters provided by The Salvation Army and local churches, in soup kitchens, and in food pantrys.The presentations were meaningful and inspiring. Everyone’s eyesight — and how we see poverty, seemed to have improved after the discussions. We moved on and began applying the mini lesson to the day’s structured activity.

Bonita returned from the nurse. I took her signed note and noticed that in her hand she held a legal-sized blue form. I recognized the form immediately as she took her seat. She seemed to fold and unfold it in her hands. She kept her eyes downcast. She did not seem in any hurry to put the form away in her backpack.

“Bonita, what is it you have there?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s a reduced lunch form,” she said with her voice just barely above a whisper. Then she looked up at me and I knew.

We shared a moment of awkward silence.

“Bonita,” I said touching her shoulder. “I brought some treats for the class. There’s plenty left on the table. Come with me and I’ll show you.”

Her face brightened and she actually smiled a Mona Lisa type smile.

“Thank you,” she said.

We walked over to where I had laid out a spread of treats on a table. Bonita did not rush towards the table. She delicately and with a tremendous show of restraint, chose a few items and daintily placed them on a plate before taking her seat. Her manners were impeccable.

But instead of absent-mindedly gobbling up the food while socializing with the other students next to her, Bonita focused on each bite she took. Each bite she seemed to savor as if it were the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. She appeared lost in the moment of eating as if alone in a classroom, even though this one was filled with more than 30 other people.

As she nibbled at her food, I began to notice her clothes. They were clean and pressed. The ridge crease made by the iron had left a permanent scar of pale blue up the front of her jeans. She wore a long-sleeved T-shirt that was faded and worn threadbare. Unlike her peers, she wore no coat or sweater even though the day was cold, perhaps the coldest of the year. On her feet she wore a pair of generic tennis shoes, the kind sold on sale at Walmart for less than $12.

Her long black shiny and satin-like hair was clean and groomed. Her nails were manicured. Her face was washed and her teeth were white and looked recently brushed. She wore silver metal hoop earrings. She could have passed for any middle class high school student anywhere. Until  yesterday, I never saw her poverty.

Want to read more about the national reduced lunch program? Here’s the link: http://febp.newamerica.net/background-analysis/federal-school-nutrition-programs

It really is the ethereal things in life — things we cannot see — that mean the most. Take time for example.

Coming back to school after Thanksgiving holiday always is difficult for both teachers and students. This stretch between Thanksgiving and winter break marks a span of little more than three weeks. The block schedule makes it even more dicey. Add high school students to the equation and life just becomes — well, interesting.

For block schedule, the time remaining in the fall semester includes 13 curriculum-filled days, or only SEVEN  ”A” days and only FIVE “B” days. The remaining four days left in the month are reserved for final exams — students will take two each day. On those days, students only attend school half days and leave campus by 1 p.m. Teachers work full days grading papers and organizing the fallout.

So the pressure is on to make each minute count.

In the past, before block schedule, I’d try to squeeze as much productivity out of my students as possible. Often my method of teaching took on some NEW level of discipline that I often compared secretly to police state observations. I walked the isles looking over the shoulders of my students, coaxing them, nudging them, and sometimes warning them with negative consequenceS in order to get them to work. This was a tedious task five days a week, six times a day. At the end of December, I often felt like I needed a wheelchair just to make it to the parking lot and to my car. I’d arrive home feeling so exhausted the first two days of the holiday, that it took effort just to smile.

First rule this December: I’m going to have more fun in my classroom.

Thanks to block schedule, I’ll have to do things more efficiently than I have in the past. I only see students every other day. This year, to slow time down to a crawl in my classroom, I plan to truly break up my 90 minutes into mini lessons:

1.) I call this first mini lesson the “GET OUT OF YOUR SEAT AND MOVE” warm up. I’ll find a way each day to get students up and moving for a couple of minutes. Using quiet background music, students will share experiences, questions, and observations about some  topic that I choose with a partner.

2.) I’ll refer to my second mini lesson as the “WHERE IN THE WORLD IS…” small group activity. The topic of this activity will change daily, just to make life as sweet as a gumdrop. For example, today I’ll ask them to discuss “poverty.”

3.) In our gathering activity, which I call “COME TOGETHER RIGHT NOW,” each group will nominate a leader who  will present their small group findings to the whole class one at a time.

4.) And our mini unit of my teacher-led instruction, which I’ll call “HEAR, SEE, DO.” I’ll ask the students to show how their gathering applies to what we’re learning in class. Students will apply the daily topic they discussed in the gathering activity to each day’s lesson.

5.) Finally, in closing, which I’ll call “SHOW ME SOMETHING GOOD,” students will demonstrate their understanding of whatever I wanted them to learn for the day.

REWARDS: I plan to provide prizes — small favors of food such as cheesy Goldfish, old-fashioned hard candy in brightly wrapped packaging, or decorated cookies. I can also give prizes of holiday stickers or colorful holiday erasers that I buy on the the cheap at the local teacher store. I may even ask for donations of fast food coupons from some of my favorite merchandizers.

I remember when I was growing up, small memorable acts of kindness and unexpected fun slowed time down to a crawl. This is something I forgot as I grew older and became a professional time manager.

This Christmas I’ll recall how my siblings and I baked Christmas cookies, or we decorated the house, or strung paper chains made of construction paper, or danced to music in our bare feet on the tile floors. There was always work to do in a small space of time, but we did it with a glad heart because we snuck in a little bit of fun too.

Alexander Kjerrulf, who calls himself “the chief officer of happiness,” wrote the book on how fun improves productivity: Happy Hour is 9 to 5. Read about it by following this link: http://positivesharing.com/2007/03/top-10-reasons-why-happiness-at-work-is-the-ultimate-productivity-booster/

Just when life becomes so fast-paced and nearly unbearably hectic, I’ll show time who’s boss this December. What will you do?

On the first day of the third six weeks my students said to me:
“how many days until winter break?”

On the second day of the third six weeks my students said to me:

“I don’t want to do anything.”

On the third day of the third six weeks my students said to me:

“which grades will you drop for me?”

On the fourth day of the third six weeks my students said to me:

“please can we watch a movie?”

On the fifth day of the third six weeks my students will say to me:

“how will we finish EVERY thing?”

How many days until winter break, I don’t want to do anything, which grades will you drop for me, please can we watch a movie, and how will we finish EVERY thing?

I’m going to practice being thankful, starting today. What better day to begin than today, Monday, the hardest day of the week by far. Beginning today I’m going to start showing my gratitude for the abundance in my life.

Starting today I’m going to feel thankful, happy, grateful, lucky, appreciated, privileged, valued, and loved. I’m going to do it without any help at all.

Being a teacher takes a lot of energy and shear will. If I want to have anything left for myself at the end of the day I’m going to have to find a way to instill happiness and grace in my classroom at the beginning of each day.

So I will fill my emotional cup abundantly, until it overflows.

I am thankful for my family. I have a wonderful, caring husband who always “has my back.” He cleans, he does laundry, he will cook dinner if he needs to, and he’s here nearly every day when I leave for school and when I come home. He always kisses me goodnight. I have a fabulous son who gets good grades at school, is a marvel at math and writing, and plays several instruments well.

I am happy because I have good books to read and lots of quiet time to write. I am not overweight, I eat well, and I exercise. I enjoy crochet and home improvement tasks whenever there is time.

I am grateful for my friends. I have some very good friends with whom I have entrusted a lifetime of secrets, dreams, hopes, and struggles. We have laughed and cried together. I know that no matter what comes in life, I can depend upon them.

I am lucky because I am healthy and strong. I can attend Zumba classes and though I find it difficult to keep up at times, for the most part I leave feeling I have accomplished the control of my feet, hands and body through dance. For the most part I have rhythm. I have endurance.

I am appreciated by more than 170 students. Though they may not always like what I have to say, at the end of the hour and a half I spend with them in class I have taught them something they need to know. No one escapes my classroom without learning something they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

I am privileged because I have a home, “things,” food, and nice clothes to wear and a nice car to drive. I do not have to worry about where my next meal will come from or how I will manage to pay my bills. I do not do without the things I need in life. I am able to tithe and to share what I do not need with those less fortunate.

I am valued for what I do at school. My administrators and fellow teachers value my skills, my efforts, and my time spent teaching. My students’ parents value my mentorship with their children and my lessons, field trips, and personal touch to teaching.

I am loved. I feel the love of my husband, my son, and my extended family. I feel the love of friends and former students. I feel an abundance of love every day. I embrace the love given to me.

Want to read more ways to feel thankful? Read some exercises created by Jim Smith, the Executive Happiness Coach at http://www.theexecutivehappinesscoach.com/resources/articles/Practice-Gratitude.cfm