Expectations High and Low

*A caveat to my readers: this post delves into personal

reflection on my own weaknesses, heavily relying on the

language of TFA that has surrounded me for weeks. As

such, it may not be for everyone, but I hope that a brief look

at it will communicate to you the struggles and necessities of

my journey in teaching.

The true heart of Teach for America's slew of acronyms, mantras, buzzwords, and rubrics is "High Expectations." This core principle is about expecting the very best from every one of your students, regardless of background, race, gender, personal situation, past successes, or apparent aptitude. As Institute has progressed, I and my fellow Corps Members have struggled with the complexity of this seemingly straightforward concept. Not only must we expect excellence in behavior AND academics, our failure to do so directly hurts our kids chances for success.

I could sit and explain/vent on this topic for a very long time, but what I think is more productive for me as a reflection and accessible to you as readers is more limited in scope. Consider that you work in a school that has been low performing. You walk into a classroom with particular expectations of what the school will look like, how effective the administration and teachers are, how invested and capable the students are, how the students will likely behave, etc. Confronting these surface challenges has been at least partially overcome now for me and my colleagues, yet things get more complicated as they get personal. Several students (this happened all summer) tend to sleep or lay on their desks in your class. You work on modeling and rewarding positive behavior, correcting inappropriate actions and inactions, and hope to see results. As the problem continues, you talk to a student or two and hear difficult things about their home life--for some a close relative has just died, for some a parent has been murdered in front of them (I heard this story today), for others they do not sleep at night and must be a caretaker for their families.

>>In this moment, what happens to your expectations for that child? This has been one of the hardest moments to grapple with so far. When this translates into accepting their lack of involvement out of pity, sympathy, or desire to cushion them, even weeks and months after an incident, I as a teacher have failed that child. Many folks wiser than I may have learned the lesson that you simply must get back on your horse and ride you must keep moving. As Langston Hughes in his poem, "Mother to Son" that we read in class,

"Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

It's had tacks in it,

And splinters.

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I'se been a-climbin' on, ..."

By holding them to the same high expectations as we would any other student, and in fact an even higher one, we can push them to succeed and transcend the struggles they face. Like the kid without legs we read about who strives not just to walk with his friends, but to run and be a Triathlete, those higher goals can inspire greatness in our students. This is the first hurdle.

The second challenge is recognizing when our expectations slip. This struck me in a powerful way today as I thought for a moment about the two to three kids actively sleeping or disengaging from the lesson and others who may be openly disobeying direct instructions. If I was sitting in a private, mostly white, affluent school, such as MUS, would this behavior be tolerated for an hour, let alone a day? I don't think so. If I were working at a private, affluent academy, would I look on 70% of the class mastering the day's objective with satisfaction? I know I wouldn't. It is this conflict of holding my students to the same high expectations that I would expect in a well-funded, well-supplied, well-staffed institution that at times strikes me in the face .

In these few days of teaching (less than 16, and split between two people), I have failed to navigate that conflict successfully and infuse my lessons and my teaching with the sense of urgency that is required to make the huge growth many of my students will desperately need. Tonight at closing ceremonies, I heard success stories of stellar corps members who had taken phenomenal steps to push their students. This is no longer my days in school where getting through at my own level was good enough for me and beating everyone else was not a priority. Now the stakes are so much higher and so much more real. When I don't work to put in the blood, sweat, and tears, as our Institute Director put it tonight, that I see from some of my outstanding colleagues, then I am giving my students less than my all and less than they deserve. For the students I teach who are 3 or 4 grade levels behind in reading or math, a decent education will no longer suffice. They need a GREAT education, and I want to strive to be that great teacher who pushes them towards lifelong learning and success.

Now, as I said before, I must take this passion and determination of my still, reflective moments and infuse it into the moments in front of the classroom, and in front of my students. This is the high expectation I must set for myself. For me, right now, this is the greatest challenge of all.

Quote of the Day:

So, boy, don't you turn back.

Don't you set down on the steps.

'Cause you finds its kinder hard.

Don't you fall now—

For I'se still goin', honey,

I'se still climbin'

Langston Hughes

Struggling with Urgency

It's been an incredible 5 weeks at Institute. It's surreal in a way to think about how much myself and my fellow teachers have grown as teachers in the classroom, as planners, and as motivators in our students' lives. Yet I still have to capture the passion and outrage that I feel when I sit and reflect on the faces of the achievement gap that walk into my classroom every morning. I have to capture it and transform it into a sense of urgency and into my best work for the kids.

It's not enough, as my advisor was telling my group of TFA Corps Members, to come to school with lesson plans and deliver a lesson to kids like it's any other job. 'If this doesn't make you outraged, if the gap that you see doesn't make you mad as hell and make you work your butt off to give your absolute best for your students, then frankly you're doing something wrong.' The culture at institute and in my group urges us to OWN the results in the classroom and take the responsibility on our shoulders for transforming our passions into student achievement. To quote the Academic Impact Model we are so fond of at TFA, Teacher Action-->Student Action-->Student Achievement. It is on me to walk into the classroom feeling how utterly critical each moment of teaching is to these students futures. When statistics say my young men are more likely to walk in prison than through the Sallyport (to borrow a Rice University metaphor), I must not forget the weight of my work and the value of our collective efforts in the classroom.

Although this sort of speaking does not yet feel quite natural to me, especially considering the number of buzzwords that flow through it, I need to latch onto the emotion behind it as a drive for my efforts inside and out of the classroom. I'll see my students for the first time in little more than 1 month, which is as far as I am now from my first day in the classroom. The task is daunting, but I believe in my own vision to make a difference in students' lives.

Late Night?

It's odd to think of 12:30 as really late, especially considering what I was doing a few months ago, but when breakfast is at 6:15, your perceptions change. "Welcome to the real world," I guess. Right now I'm writing up my final draft of tomorrow's lesson plan on Point of View for my 7th grade summer school students. We've been through two weeks together and now I have 5 more days to prepare them for the final test. It's exciting, stressful, and tiresome, all wrapped together. The other part of the equation is that this is only a preview of the full school year to come, when we are not constantly supervised and have to teach all day, instead of just one class. It's both daunting and exhilarating, I suppose.

Challenge question: For the 7th grade graduates out there, Identify the central argument in the text above, list at least 2 supporting details, and summarize the author's opinion using full sentences. [Responses welcome as comments :) ]

p.s. This is not a very good example and a good reason why we use "authentic texts" for class.

The Outside World / TFA Day

First: thanks to my small collection of readers who are interested in life and learning at Atlanta Institute. It may take some days to come back and write each post, but they will come, and I'm grateful to share my thoughts.
At institute, it can be a little difficult to find the time and energy to communicate with the outside world. I usually do this through reading up on news and national events. It is unfortunate that my time spent talking to family and friends from back home has diminished so much. But, as evidenced here, it's hard: It's 230, my bus leaves for school in 4 hours, and I'm about to go to bed. I had a 2 hour pre-sleep/nap a few hours ago and woke up to finish a lesson plan for tomorrow. It turns out, that took a bit longer than I expected, and here I am. The weekend provides a great chance to relax my white-knuckled grip on getting things done and writing one lesson plan after another. I even went to see another Toy Story (3), which I have to admit, still made me cry. Oh, Pixar...

For those soon to be at other institutes, SPOILER alert. Today was TFA day, (Totally Free Afternoon). They sat us down at school for a strong hard talk and made us feel like slackers before taking off their masks, so to speak, and showering us with surprise gifts in the form of 3 hours off. A bit dramatic of a "jk," but I didn't really mind. Classic management trick...
Some of us commented on the hilarity/irony of seeing 3 hours as a huge gift. Considering that many of us cheer when we get more than 4 hours of sleep, 3 extra daylight hours begins to feel awesome. Really, it was the Sno Cones, mini-pools, and popcorn waiting for us back at the dorms that made the afternoon.

/SPOILER

Thinking of how we are halfway done is quite frightening in the sense that I don't feel we've done that much yet. But on the flipside, The fact that I have thought this much and grown this much in terms of Lesson Planning, coming from complete Novice experience, after having taught 3 times! is incredible. It's been a lot of learning, thinking, running back and forth, bold attempts and stressful failures, unexpected breakthroughs, and revelations. If I got to here from zero in 16 days, I can't quite fathom where I'll be after the second half.

That's it for the pep talk. It's game time. Let's get out there and show 'em what you're made of...

First Friday!

I want to give a shout-out to the 4000+ other Corps Members across the country who will soon survive their first week of Institute or already have. I've heard about a few old friends who are also TFA and reconnected recently. Thanks for reaching out and good luck to you at Institute. It's an intense experience, and they definitely ask for your "A game" everyday. It's almost strange to think that the work from this week isn't over, that we only finished planning for next week, and rough drafts at that! We still have to walk in on Monday or Tuesday and deliver our carefully plans to rooms full of students (7th graders, in my case). I'm really inspired by the rest of the folks here in Atlanta and the awesome spirit that some of us are showing. We've got a long way to go...

The Real Teaching Begins Soon

Tomorrow, we'll continue assessing our students' reading levels as we prepare to begin teaching next week. In the day, we'll have sessions on the nitty-gritty of lesson planning and creating a vision for the classroom every day. Then, we have to construct our first mostly-independent lesson plan and submit it for thorough criticism by advisors. Its time to get down to work.

Opening Ceremonies of the Atlanta Institute

I just sat through the opening ceremonies with three very inspiring educators and Wendy Kopp's message to the 21st corps of Teach for America. As one alumnus, Ed Chang, reminded us: Frederick Douglass wrote, "without struggle, there is no progress."

Well, the struggle's begun.

Coming Back Down to Earth

A note to my readers, present and future: apologies for my soap box speaking as I reflect on my early, overwhelming experiences in the early days of institute--it's truly an immersive experience. Especially after tonight's opening ceremonies and the passion and sense of both urgency and possibility that they bring with them and share with us. It definitely has the tendency to get all of us at Institute choked up and hopeful. I hope it doesn't come off too strong.

Thanks for reading!

Relentless Pursuit of Never-ending Schedules

As I sit awake at 11:30 tonight, composing my thoughts, I realize that breakfast opens in 6 hours. It frightens me to think that getting out of class at 9pm is already cutting into eight hours of sleep. In this vein, I'll paint a brief picture of my rather rigid schedule at Institute, specifically today (I'll leave out the gritty details of the 9 1/2 hour day at school).

5AM. Wakeup

5.15AM. Wakeup, take 2

5.40AM. Leave for breakfast

6.40AM. Leave GA Tech for school

7AM. Begin lessons and instruction at MLK, Jr. Middle School in Atlanta, GA

4.30PM. Leave school for GA Tech

5.30PM. Eat dinner

7PM. Begin evening session

9PM. Leave for dorms; realize fewer than 8 hours till Wakeup, Day 2

10PM. Carve out time to relax

12PM. Remember the assignment due tomorrow; it's also time to changeover meds

12.30PM. Prospective sleep time

---

5.10AM. Wakeup, Day 2

This translates to 15 hours sleep over 3 days! Things will have to change soon around here. And by that I mean we'll actually have to start filling our evenings with work.

Quote of the day:

Oh, that clock! Old killjoy. I hear you. "Come on, get up," you say.

"Time to start another day." Even he orders me around. Well there's one thing.

They can't order me to stop dreaming.

Cinderella

The Journey Begins...

I've officially begun TFA's boot camp in Atlanta, GA this week. We'll be here for 5 weeks teaching summer school and learning intensively about lesson planning, classroom management, and setting big goals (to name some of their favorite catchphrases). During this first week of 9+ hour school days, we'll write lesson plans for next week and learn about the Atlanta standards assessments. Then, next Monday the real work begins with our classes full of students, all of whom either failed their class or the standards test. We apparently have 16 instructional days to bring them up to grade level literacy and/or math proficiency (I thought we had 4 weeks! =-O Upon arrival, we received an 850p. reader to add to the other 750p. of pre-institute work we already had, which seems like a lot now, though we somehow managed to get to page 60 just today. And it's kind of mind-blowing to think of 7AM as sleeping in, but I guess the 5AM mornings will get me ready for school in the fall. All that said, things are going pretty well right now, and we had hardly any take-home work today, which is a relief, considering the 2 hour additional session tonight on the literacy assessment. But hey, we went to Wal-Mart yesterday and I scored fantastic amounts of questionably healthy foods, such as $5 24 packs of soda and $3 tubs of goldfish, and an actual pillow to replace the one left on my floor in Memphis. Aside from that, the other people are awesome (we have 800+ at the Atlanta Institute incl. some from Hawaii, from some reason) and the weather is warm. I don't really mind the "dungeon" of a basement we work in at MLK, Jr. Middle School. The work all feels very purposeful.

Hopefully this first step will lead to big success for my students and I'll be pumped to make it happen in Memphis.

Quotes of the day:

Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better (ha!)

Émile Coué

French Psychotherapist

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

Lao Tzu

Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Taoism

A New Hope

"One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to have an excellent education," Teach for America tells me, as they work tirelessly to bring me around to their point-of-view on the achievement gap in America. By now, they have tens of thousands of corps members and alumni throughout the United States working on solutions for this civil rights issue of my generation, or so they tell me.

For a week at Induction, our first immersive intro to the nationwide organization, teachers past and present brought their stories to us as the new Memphis Corps '10, inspiring emotional replies and misty eyes in the audience. Gut-wrenching stories of failure and truly uplifting moments of hope and triumph. I do not yet have these stories of my own, but these individuals--these teams of educators and advocates unfailingly bring me to subtly wipe my tears as I attempt to hide what is still mildly embarrassing to me.

I soon realized that 13 hour days were only the first glance, a preview into the weeks to come at Atlanta Institute where I now am, sitting on a small blue couch, half-comfy and seemingly more concrete than padding. As I contemplate tomorrow's uninterrupted schedule of learning to teach, I see the clutter of communal snack items on the coffee table where my feet lay resting. There is a massive tub of "colors" goldfish--purple, red, and green... salty--that provides a pleasant counter to the saturated sweetness of mini donuts. The opposed pair silently surround the primary tool of survival, a new coffee pot for the sleep-deprived army of hopeful educators (educator-hopefuls) who now populate the dormitory built for Olympic athletes. My Jones water bottle stands steadfastly by, a lingering reminder of another life hardly past but undeniably over. It waits faithfully to preserve my memories and my caffeinated water that will get me through tomorrow's lessons. I must stay awake so that I can remember...

The stakes are so high, they remind us each day, because the kids in summer school these weeks need us to make it to the next grade. They desperately need intervention to advance most of a grade level in literacy in a single month. For the older ones, it's the opportunity to stride proudly into high school in August, or fail again. For all of them, it's a moment that could "change their stars," could invest them in uncommon passion for the future, could instill in them visions of possibilities, and not of dreams deferred. These are the openings in the dark curtain of illiteracy, the foil to the gap in achievement that plagues this nation's children. They are pieces of my vision for change that I will carry back to Memphis, the city of my education (and soon my educating) as the hope begins to materialize into a significant, measurable impact on the prospects for my hometown.

It is an old vision, an eternally human dream of every parent, for their child to attain an excellent education and find a life better than their own. And it is a new hope, that even one generation of driven, inspired, and excellent leaders and educators who reach out to the most under-served among us can make a dramatic difference for the trajectory of hundreds of thousands of students and this country as a whole. The goal is ambitious, but the need is fundamental and critical, and the relentless pursuit of highly effective strategies will show the attainability of these students' achievement and our collective success. The need is imperative, and the time is now.

Quote of the day:

This is the Time. Memphis is the Place

Athena Turner

Executive Director, Teach for America Memphis