Maria's blog

My MTC Experience (in about 1700 words)

To write about this experience as a whole is somewhat daunting, because it’s totally untruthful to approach it from just one angle.  I’ve read past “1200 Word Entries” and am inspired by Hayley Hill and Karl Mill, who both took several different approaches and viewpoints to describe their experiences.  This is my attempt at something similar, along a timeline.  I'll probably contradict myself along the way, but that's just the nature of my experience. 

 

Early June 2009:

 

I just graduated college, and I came down here knowing that I wanted to be a teacher for my whole career.  I didn’t have an education degree and my undergrad education was expensive enough that I couldn’t justify going to grad school to learn how to be a teacher.  “This MTC thing is a sweet deal!” I thought to myself.  While all my friends were in the midst of crises surrounding unemployment and hazy futures, I knew that I had a definite plan for the next two years.  James and I packed everything up in my Jetta and hit the road.  I honestly hadn’t thought much about how what I was going to be doing was tough or unique.  I knew I was a teacher (or destined to be one) and that was all that mattered.  The only thing that scared me was that I was placed in Math, and I always wanted to teach English.  Math was NOT my thing.  

 

Summer School:  

 

I began to get panicky right off the bat.  The lesson plans, differentiating instruction, re-learning math concepts, classroom management- my head was spinning.  It became clear that a strong personality wasn’t enough to keep you afloat here, and even if it did, mine was hiding somewhere inside my trembling newbie teacher self.  I lacked confidence, was too quiet, and made super-boring lesson plans.  Classroom management was nonexistent since we had a maximum of five kids.  I cringed when I saw a video of myself teaching.  It was one of the more painful things I have ever seen.  Besides feeling totally incompetent, I was also busy from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed.  Lesson planning took up all my time, and I didn’t get out much to socialize.  My teaching improved after a while, but I still felt like I had just signed up for a two-year lesson in humility.  (I wasn’t wrong about this.)

 

First year, first semester:

 

I started out the way I was told- strict rules, no wavering.  I put up a tough front (um, I was a scrawny, frilly-skirted 21-year-old, and it seemed necessary!) but they could see right through me and pushed back every single day.  Come October, I was completely exhausted and drained from handing out consequences every minute of every class period.  James and I settled into a steadfast pattern:  come home, make pasta for dinner, watch a movie, go to bed at 9:30.  My morning commute was 40 minutes long, sometimes more with traffic, and I had to leave the house by 5:45 just to be safe.  In the afternoon, it took me at least an hour to get home, stuck behind people going 10mph under the speed limit on Goodman.  After-school activities and tutoring were not an option unless I was going to get home well after dark.  Eventually, I gave up on the 100% enforcement of rules.  Things didn’t really get better.  I did devote more class time to teaching, but eventually we slipped into a pattern where the students were good, then got gradually louder until I got upset with them and it repeated.  Not exactly a managed classroom.  When I went home for winter break, I felt totally drained and like I never wanted to go back.  I had very few good relationships with students, and imagined that none of them cared for me.  I would get frustrated to the point of tears about how much I tried to help them and how much they trampled over that care.  On the last day of school before winter break, a student brought in his Playstation to play during our REQUIRED Christmas party during 3rd period.  I refused to let them play since I didn’t have an administrator’s approval, and instead played the movie Elf which I had gone out to buy the night before, along with snacks and drinks.  My homeroom class vacuumed up the food and drinks, then complained the entire movie because they had seen it before.  Not a single one thanked me.  I unleashed a hotly emotional speech about gratitude and selfishness.  They laughed.  

 

All this semester, I found my MTC classes frustrating, mostly unhelpful, and work that was unnecessary given my mental state.  Sometimes, though, it proved a nice distraction from working toward school 24/7.  The real value in Saturday classes was in seeing my friends and classmates.  It was always nice to share and see how we were all, for the most part, in the same boat. 

 

First year, second semester:

 

I honestly have no idea how or why it happened, but something changed between me and my students.  Yes, they were still intentionally disrespectful and rude sometimes, but somehow we formed a civil relationship.  Many of my students told me how much they liked my class, but had always hated Math.  On the Spring MAP tests, my kids scored highest for math in the whole school.  I came home proud and put the scores on my refrigerator.  I called my parents and told them that I had accomplished something.  Kids started hugging me in the hallway, which I accepted since it was a nice change of pace from the attitudes I was used to.  This semester, I decided to start getting more creative with my lessons, which was fun for the kids and myself.  I even made up a silly song for them on the guitar and sang for them.  The kids liked me, I liked them, and the year finished smoothly, which was a miracle.  My administration was falling to pieces, we had no substitute teachers, and classes would become overrun with surplus students from absent teachers’ rooms.  I had maybe a dozen planning periods total in the last nine weeks, and my patience was spread thin.  It was these babysitting periods, where I was seeing the same class for the third time that day and decided to show a movie version of the book from their reading class, that really killed my momentum for the day.  Luckily, I had become great friends with Hayley, one of two other MTC teachers at my school (both were second-years) by this time, and she and I kept each other sane.  At the 8th grade completion ceremony, I cried a few tears at the student slideshow.  I knew I would miss my first batch of students, and at this point only held fond memories.  

 

Second Summer:

 

In all honesty, I felt little to no connection with my Summer School class.  I was excited about helping the first-years become better teachers, but my own teaching was put on the back burner.  We were up at school so infrequently that I never learned all the students’ names.  I know I should have done better modeling, but I was utterly exhausted.  What I needed was rest and time to process my first year.  My biggest pleasure was going to yoga with Golda every night.  We spent so much time in downward dog that summer, and it was an excellent antidote for the past year.  

 

Summer “Vacation”:

 

I knew what was best for me, so James and I only took a 2-week vacation before going in to school to prepare our classrooms and curriculum for most of July.  While we were enjoying the sun and food in Austin, Texas, I got a call from my new principal.  Did I want to know how my kids did on the state test?  Why, yes I did.  It turns out that the kids I spent so much time battling had outperformed every other grade and every other subject.  I was as surprised as I was proud- I had the highest QDI in the whole school?!  It was another moment where I could see the benefit of what I was doing, call my parents, email my friends, and feel good about myself.  It turned into lots of momentum for my 2nd year, and I had tons of great lessons lined up for the beginning of the school year. 

 

My Second Year:

 

Right from the beginning, I knew this year was different and better.  The kids didn’t fight back about my rules and we quickly settled into a casual classroom with lots of fun activities.  My kids were far from angelic, but they came in knowing who I was and with at least some respect for me.  What took almost the whole year to accomplish in my first year took a couple of weeks with my new batch:  we liked each other.  The whole year has honestly been immeasurably easier than my first.  There is so little to share, which is a good sign.  The kids and I have fun, but always work bell to bell.  James and I moved to Olive Branch, so we have a 15-minute commute instead of a 40-minute one.  I stay after school to tutor, I coached an amazing season of track with DK, and I spend lots of time with my Byhalia Middle School colleagues.  Hayley and I joined a gym, and spend lots of time getting rid of anxiety through cardio.  I feel like I have my life back, and school is just a (very important) part of it now.  

 

The future:

 

I know I could stay in Byhalia and continue to teach 8th grade.  I feel like a sell-out giving up my job and asking someone else to do it for me, since I know how much work needs to go in to do a good job.  However, I’ve come to realize how important my happiness is, and I feel like the time is right for me to leave.  I had one rocky year and one great year, and I can leave with good feelings about my job and my students. 

 

Dear incoming first-year MTC teachers,

You are about to begin what will, most likely, become the most important chapter of your lives.  For most of you, life has centered around finishing college, going to parties, and being happy you got a job months ago while others expressed their anxiety about employment.  You’re excited about earning another degree in such a short time span.  If you are like I was, you are also thinking about all the kids you’ll meet, and how you’ll influence them.  You might be a bit intimidated by this last one.  

You’ll learn that several more important changes will occur.  Without trying, you’ll become a full-fledged adult.  You will, as my teacher mother did, embarrass those around you by telling children at the mall to “Walk please!”.  That is, if you teach in Jackson or Marshall County and have a mall near you.  You’ll learn to pay all your bills on time, take care of finances, and make a budget.  Though you may be intimidated by it at first, you will learn to be an assertive person.  You will, by sheer necessity, learn to hold yourself above people a mere three years younger than you, and think, “I am an adult, and this person is not, this person is a student and what they say will roll right off my back.”  I teach fourteen-year-olds and this is still hard for me.  

You might not realize how much of your life you’ve signed away.  Weekends, two summers, countless long nights lesson planning and doing work for your grad school classes.  If I didn’t live with my fiance I probably never would have seen him.  I remember, especially in my first year, feeling miserable.  

Some of you may think that you’re going to be signing up for two years, and getting out as soon as it’s over to start an easier chapter of your life that you earned by doing hard work in a poor part of this country.  What you cannot know yet is how much you will love your students and how important you will realize your job is.  It’s not easy to leave after those two years.  You’ll be wracked with guilt, and feel irresponsible for leaving your job, even though you and those who hired you knew it was only a two-year commitment.  

If you finish the whole program, you will have a sense of accomplishment for not quitting, but nobody ever plays up the even larger sense of humility.  Even if you did do the best job you possibly could, with impeccably-crafted lessons and constantly stayed on top of your grading, you will still realize that you are a drop in the bucket.  You will come out more level-headed (or more unhinged, but let’s ignore exceptions for a moment), more adult-like, and with a newfound love for a state you never thought of before.  

 

Reading my blog from the beginning

What sticks out to me the most while reading this is that I still (but to a lesser degree) make the same mistakes that I originally made when I first started teaching.  I talk a lot, I can be sarcastic, and my discipline could always be stricter.  

 

What I notice right away is how I thought I understood the students, but definitely didn’t.  I assumed too much naivete on their parts.  This year, I have learned so much about how and how often they cheat on assignments, and I can only imagine that it was happening so much more in my classroom last year.  However, there is something that I miss about last year, when I had such a huge distance between myself and my students.  Now, I feel like I can predict everything they will do (as I’m sure they can with me) but last year I was often surprised.  Certain behaviors and attitudes (good and bad) would shock me.  It’s better to have more stable days, like I do this year, but I begin to wonder if I’ve become desensitized.  

 

There is definitely a progression in the tone of my blogs.  I started out much more cheerful and optimistic, but they became dark, brooding, and cynical.  I talk a lot toward the end about why I would leave, which is becoming more and more likely.  

 

Another more depressing aspect of reading through these blogs is seeing how extremely similar this year is to last year.  We got a new administration team, new teachers, and pretty much the same group of problems and the same failed solutions.  As I look through the records of the “big” changes that the last principal made, and think about the “big” changes we have made this year, all I can think is that they haven’t changed anything, especially in a big way.  

 

Lastly, I’d like to note how surprised I was when reading a blog post from last October.  Apparently, two + months into the school year, I was still issuing tons of writing assignments.  I had blocked that out of my memory, but now I remember how awful those first two months were.  All day, every day, students tried to talk out and get out of their seats, I gave them warnings, they talked back, and I gave them a writing assignment, they talked back again, and they got doubled.  All.  Day.  Long.  It was torturous.  I know I should probably have stricter classroom rules, but that was absolutely miserable.  Introducing portions of my class in which students could call out answers was the best choice I ever made, classroom-wise.  

 

Would You Rather...

As I mentioned in the previous blog post, I cut the tip off my thumb this morning while slicing some bread.  First of all, I would never like to be awake at 6:30 in the morning, slicing bread, unless it's to be followed by a leisurely morning cup of tea, yoga, and reading outdoors.  Instead, it was in a rush, trying to quickly slice of 4 pieces of banana bread to become my breakfast and lunch as I ran out the door since I didn't have my worksheets copied for the day and wanted to get in early before the copier was occupied.  Not my ideal morning.  Anyway, after the initial anger and pain associated with accidental knife injury, and after soaking blood through a second paper towel, I began to smile.  I didn't have to rush in to work!  I didn't have to wait in line for the copier!  I could, instead, go to the emergency room and pay out of pocket to be seen by a doctor because of my $1,000 insurance deductible.  It was like heaven.  I even had time to make a cup of tea while making arrangements.  

This reminded me of what Pete Nelson famously said in his speech two years ago.  He would rather be punched, HARD, in the gut several times upon first waking than get ready and go to school.  Maybe it's the winter, the lack of breaks, or the length between now and the end of the year, but this time last year I was totally miserable.  I knew what to expect this time around, but I'm still more anxious and short-fused than I have been all year.  My dearest friend at school yelled at a student yesterday.  She was provoked because she told him to, "Sit down and do your work," but he replied, "I don't think you should get to talk to me that way.  I think you should tell me to please sit down and do my work."  She snapped.  To an outsider, this might make no sense, but to the hypothetical documentary filmmaker who has recorded her whole school year, this is the 314th time this year she asked that particular student, ever-so-politely to please sit down and do his work, which he ignored, so she followed up with a sterner, "Sit down and do your work."  I understand it completely.  It's about how much repetition you can handle.  It's like life is a blend of Groundhog Day and Office Space, where the days repeat ceaselessly but you never get savvy enough to learn the game and change it to please you.  Every day, I am asked if I have a pencil sharpener.  In the second week of school, a student stole the blade out of mine and I announced to every class that it would not be replaced.  At the beginning of the new semester, I made a Keynote presentation, in which a whole slide was dedicated to the fact that, no, I do not and will not ever have a pencil sharpener.  In November, it didn't annoy me.  In March, it makes me seethe.  The students seem convinced that all the teachers are snapping and it's our problem, but seriously- can they not remember the simple fact that I spitefully do not have a pencil sharpener?  This is not how spite works.  They have to remember for it to work.

 

In conclusion, I would rather go to an emergency care clinic than school in the morning. 

Join/ Don't Join

What a funny time of year to be writing a Join / Don't Join post for MTC.  I say this because February and March are quite a hellish stretch.  Teachers have stored up days off all year like little squirrels, waiting for the cold wintry death that is this time.  The end is not yet in sight, but the kids are somehow acting more terrible than ever.  There were four fights today.  Chaos is in the air.  This morning, I cut off the tip of my thumb by accident while cutting a loaf of bread, and while screaming, thought, "Oh, thank goodness, I don't have to go in to work!"  As any seasoned MTC participant could attest, I am not exaggerating.  There are so many burnt out teachers at my school that the principal sent out a formal plea for people to come in to work.  Plea is his word, not mine.  However, I am sure I can still muster up some feelings on why a person should join MTC, and flesh out why a person should not.

 

Join MTC if...

- You are good at not taking yourself seriously.  Things will blow up in your face, no matter how hard you've worked at them, and people will think you're doing a bad job even when you feel you're trying your hardest.  Laugh it off, and you'll be fine.

- You are good at not taking things personally.  You will love your students (another perk!) and they will treat you like crap in the most ironic and pathetically movie-moment situations.  You have to remember: you are their teacher, students sometimes treat teachers like crap.  They have nothing personal against you (most of the time), so don't make it personal and it won't be.

- You are realistic.  If at any point while reading MTC blogs, you think, "Well, I'll be different!  I Hillary Swank my way right into their little Freedom Writing hearts and they will love me!  We'll make up math raps and get down in the classroom!" this is NOT for you.  

- You're interested in working very hard.  Simply put, this requires long hours and total dedication. Your social and personal life will suffer if you're doing it right.  

- You thrive in stressful situations, never give up, and focus on the positive.  It's all about momentum, and once you have it, stay with it until the end! 

- You can look past all the bad and focus on the good.  When you do, this is the most rewarding, most important, and most adult thing you'll ever have done.  You'll see the good changes you made and keep lasting memories of those beautiful moments when you connect with a student and make a difference.

Don't join MTC if you can't handle any of the above!  It's a double-edged sword, and some people compare working in the school systems to being in an abusive relationship.  If you lack a sense of humor, tenacity, or drive, this program will crush your soul and spit you out half-alive.  

How do you meet people outside of school?

How do you meet people outside of school/MTC/TFA?

It sounds either pathetic or creepy to say this, but here it is: I meet people via the internet. No, I didn’t sign up for OK Cupid or some sort of online friend-dating site. (Do they have those? They should!) Instead, I started a blog about my least school-related interests and found many like-minded people online who I didn’t initially consider as “friends.” However, as the year wore on, I noticed that I was communicating with these women via email more than I was talking to most of the people I worked with or even other MTC participants. I met about five of them over the course of the year as I went on trips to various cities. I have a friend from the internet in almost every major city in the country, so every time I travel, I usually end up meeting one of them in person. One friend in particular lives in Chicago and is an administrative assistant in an office. She’s also nearly eight years older than I am, but it hasn’t made a difference in how well we pair as friends. Every time I write a post for my blog or read one from one of my “blog friends,” as I call them, I feel connected to people in a way that’s outside of this (sometimes very difficult) experience. In MTC, I’ve cultivated the parts of myself that want to be a teacher for my whole career. I’ve also made wonderful friends who make it so much easier to do a very difficult job. However, there are other parts of myself that would be neglected or buried for these two years if I didn’t find a proper outlet for them. Yes, other teachers at my school sometimes think or say, “Who does she think she is dressing like she’s somebody?”, and sometimes I get funny looks at the grocery store and at the Target. These are some of the reasons why, without my blog and my “blog friends,” I wouldn’t pursue my sartorial interests. I still do, though, knowing that somewhere in Chicago, Atlanta, Denver, New York, L.A., San Francisco, and DC, there’s another woman with a similar style who also has to go to the grocery store. I’ve talked to MTC friends here, and we all agree: dressing like you’re somebody can be really beneficial to your mental health because it cultivates a side of you that MTC, and teaching in general, tends to squash. I just take it one step further: meeting other people who also pursue these interests (which many see as trivial or entirely superficial- I don’t believe they are.) has made me feel like a whole person in the midst of many difficult times that could turn me into a shell of my former self.

A Day In The Life: 2nd Year

6:00: Wake Up
6:05: Get dressed, get ready, pack lunch, make breakfast
6:45: Out the door
7:00: Arrive At School
7:02: Print daily copies
7:05: Make copies, fight with printer
7:30: Put up bellringer, change agenda, clean up room
7:40: Homeroom begins
8:05 - 2:00: Class straight through and lunch with the kids
2:05: Planning period, turn off the lights, listen to music, attempt to create materials for the coming days
3:00: Duty in the hallway. Tell the same dozen kids to get out of the halls every single day.
3:15: The last of the students leave, but the students for clubs stay
3:25: Clubs begin. Drama on Mondays, Staff Meetings and Zumba on Tuesdays, Tutoring on Wednesdays, Newspaper on Thursdays, Advanced Club on Fridays
4:00: Clubs supposedly end
5:00: Our last student gets picked up from clubs
5:15: Home at last
5:16- 5:30: Sit on the couch, staring blankly, decompressing
5:31: Begin making dinner
5:35: While dinner cooks, read emails, catch up on blogs, browse eBay
5:40: Consume dinner
6:00: Watch a movie or TV show with James, blog, plan our wedding. Or Hayley comes over and we do the same. When it’s not freezing, go for a run with Funt.
8:00: Make anything that needs to be made for the coming school day
8:30: Wind down, Shower, read, more internet
10:00: At the latest, go to sleep.

One big way in which this differs from last year is that I wake up much later. I only live 15 minutes from school now, which makes a huge difference. Last year, I was up at 5:00 daily and out the door by 5:45. It also took 40 minutes to an hour to commute to work, so I never stayed after school for clubs. I spent a lot more time planning at home last year, and since we lived so far out, I never had a chance to hang out with my friends. All the after-school activities are helpful, I find, because they put a nice end-cap on the day. The students who come to clubs are happy, self-motivated, and generally pleasant to be around. However, I know that I wasn’t mentally prepared to stay after school last year, so I’m glad I waited until this year to do it. Everything after school is very similar to last year. We like good food and quiet movie time, so we don’t try to do much else at home. Planning the wedding was something that I expected to be overwhelming and stressful, but it turns out that it’s really fun and something we love to spend time on.

Proximity

This year has been surprising in a way that is quite unexpected.  Last year, it took months and months before I saw my students as relatable, pleasant, well-meaning individuals.  For a long time, they fought me, I fought them, and we were never in a state of understanding.  Ever-so-slowly, throughout the course of the year, I found myself singing songs to them about math, sharing stories with them, becoming the resident french-braider for the spring softball team, and fending off hugs left and right.  Since this took the course of a whole year to achieve, I expected that this year would be the same.  At the very beginning of the year I missed last year's students terribly and wanted to have them back.  Then, something interesting happened.  Within a couple weeks, my relationship with my new students had the same feel as the end of last year with my old students.  They wanted to... hug me.  More significantly, they wanted to talk to me about their lives.  Every day at "break," I have students telling me stories about their moms, dads, friends, and cousins.  Girls will bring in style magazines to have me describe how I feel about certain pairs of shoes.  ("Ms. Lunsford!  You describe shoes the same way you describe math!  You break it all down." *peals of laugher*)  One student in particular stays after school every single day... just to talk to me.   There's a huge and very important difference between being approachable and being a pushover.  I'm definitely not a pushover.  However, it's interesting (and probably frowned upon by MTC) that my greatest classroom management tool is my personality.  They don't want to make me mad because they like me.  This is, obviously, less rigid and more subject to change than the traditional "consistent robot" method of classroom management with which I began last year.  It is MUCH more comfortable for me, though, to just be myself, laugh in my classroom, and say things like, "If you get on my nerves, it's a writing assignment."  Of course, there are still some things I have to be robotic about, like talking back, disruptiveness, or disrespect.  Everything else just seems so much better since I chilled out a bit.  When I stopped fighting them, they stopped fighting me.  My .... sassy?... attitude and big personality make sure that they still see me as someone they can't just take for a ride, but the more relaxed approach that I bring to the classroom is what makes them open to me.  I'm really glad that I found the right balance for me and my students, and I think I'm really going to miss this bunch.

The Future

It may be early in the year to be having this conversation with myself, but I’ve really been wondering what I’ll do after this year.  A combination of factors make me want to stay as much as I want to leave, which I never expected.  I have always been a list-maker, so I figured I could break this down into a neat pro-stay, pro-leave list to organize my thoughts.

I want to stay:

• My school’s administration is getting better. I feel like I have a voice in what goes on, and less terrible “surprises” are occurring.
• Things are improving academically and socially for the students at this school.  I want to stick around to see the progress in which I’ve played a part.
• I love my students.  In the way that you love family members- some days you are angry, disappointed, hurt, or frustrated, but it all boils down to the fact that you really do love them and want to do what’s right for them.  Plus, despite all the bad they can make you feel, they also can make you feel so much happier and more joyful than most people can.
• Even the “bad stuff” that comes along with this job (mostly from the students) is full of integrity and honesty that another job simply wouldn’t have. I like that most things come at face value while I’m in my classroom.  The kids aren’t passive-aggressive- just aggressive.
• Once I move next week, I’m really close to school and even closer to Costco, Target, Anthropologie, Whole Foods, Memphis concerts, and great restaurants.  It’s not like I live in the middle of nowhere.  I mean, I could use a decent farmer’s market and a Trader Joe’s, but it’s not bad here at all, which brings me to my next point...
• I love Memphis.  LOVE it!  I wish I didn’t have to drive so far to get to certain parts, but I feel like everything I want or need is there, including long sunset walks along the Mississippi, creole food, The Beauty Shop’s heavenly Strawberry Cake, Joe’s Liquor Store (Yes, I can get excited about a liquor store. It’s so cute!), The Hi-Tone, Minglewood Hall, Overton Park, the view from the roof of the Peabody, Beale Street in its uncrowded afternoon state, etc.
• My rent is super cheap and, while I have a car to pay off, it’s pretty wonderful.
• Moving tons of stuff sucks.
• I HAVE a job right now, and finding one somewhere else might not be easy.
• Even if I went to teach somewhere else, could it possibly be much better than teaching here?  I have no idea what the answer to this question is.

I want to leave:

• This job is still really hard, even though people tell me I’m good at it.  Like, REALLY REALLY HARD.
• I absolutely despise my waking/sleeping hours.  If I want to be rested, I have to start heading toward bed at 9PM.  It turns out I simply cannot wake up before 5:30 AM, which gives me 30 minutes or less to get ready in the morning.  How incredibly luxurious would it be to wake up when it’s LIGHT outside?  I would go for a run, take a shower, dry my hair, and spontaneously choose my clothing. I could cook a breakfast, then drive to work.  (Or, depending on the city, walk, bike, take a bus or subway.  Wow.)  Currently, all exercise, showering, hair-drying (if any), and wardrobe selection happens at night.
• I threw a lot in that last point, but seriously- I want a better city.  I waxed on about Memphis, which I do love, but I want better parks, better food, public transportation that I can actually use from my home, and something besides a Sonic in walking distance.  
• When I was in school, I despised homework.  I still have it every night.  Grading and planning take up so much of my after-school time that I really feel like I have no life.  Some day, I want a family, and if I wanted to do that well, I am pretty sure I couldn’t also teach well, unless I stopped grading and planning.
• Pay divided by Hours = AWFUL.
• Maybe if I taught somewhere else I could be like the teachers I had when I was in school.  They spent their time on teaching instead of classroom management, had tons of resources, and stayed in their classrooms all day while students came in and out and were solely held responsible for getting to class, behaving in the lunch room, etc.  I wouldn’t have morning duty, I could eat lunch alone, and my planning period would never be taken from me.  Bliss.
• For a combination of reasons which I have no room or interest to explain here, I’m not planning on raising my children here.  I’m not having children soon, but when I do, I’ll need to be in a different region that aligns more closely to my values and priorities. I’d like to live there for a while first so that I know about its resources and what it has to offer so I can share them with my kiddies!
• I still feel like a foreigner here, sticking out in the way I look and speak.  There may not be much real value in it, but I would like to feel like I, without having to change the way I look, blended in more.  
• I feel like I need a decade-long vacation.  When my friends who don’t teach tell me about their jobs, I become quite jealous.  Work that ENDS when you leave for the day?  Hours that are rigid, meetings that happen during your work hours, the ability to use the restroom whenever you want?  Sign me up.  

The New Year

1.  Reflect on your first days of school as a second-year teacher.  How did they differ from your first-year?  What have you learned?  What have you improved?  What didn't go well this year?

I spent the first full week of school riddled with anxiety, and not because my kids were being uncooperative.  The first eight or so days of school were full of anxiety because my kids were good.  Maybe even great!  I am not a stingy consequence-giver, but it wasn’t until the fourth day that I even had to give a warning.  It was like playing a teacher video game.  When I pressed the buttons, they did what I said.  Weird- almost creepy.  I told Funt that I felt more anxious than usual and wondered why, and he said that it was because I was dangling over the edge of a cliff.  I’ve seen the bottom before, I know what falling feels like, and I so desperately want to stay on solid ground that it’s making me sick.  (Seriously.  No hyperbole here.  Ulcer-inducing sickness was what I had.)  I began to question why the students were so much better than the beginning of last year, which was a constant stream of consequences from the first day.  They had seen me nearly every day last year since my room is on the 7th grade hall.  I guess that made me less threatening.  My room was much “cuter” this year, really well-organized and clearly not the work of a newbie.  Spaces do effect the way people perceive what happens in them.  Hayley says her kids try to take care of her room because it looked nice when they got there and they do appreciate a nice room in the middle of a not-always-so-clean school.  Was it my organization?  Did I just know the right thing to say and the right way to say it?  Maybe I finally started looking like, acting like, and exuding the chemical smells of a pack leader.  This is MY CLASSROOM KINGDOM, children.  Respect it.  Okay, maybe not.  That doesn’t sound like me. 

Either way, we’re on day 12 now, and they’re not so angelic anymore. They complain, try to talk back sometimes, and I’ve issued plenty of consequences.  However, it’s STILL much better than last year.  I still have trouble fixing the “we all start talking while we’re receiving our materials for our project” problem, but in general, they’re silent.  Especially during Independent Practice, which was my toughest time to keep them quiet last year.  The secret to that is playing music.  When I play music, it’s like a sedative to them.  They discretely bob their heads and ceaselessly work.  If I hear so much as a whisper, the music goes off.  Hopefully they’ll never find out how much I’m happy to have it on, too, and how unhappy it makes me to shut it off.