Roller Coaster

Today was full of ups and downs, but mostly ups. I'll start at the very beginning, because that's a very good place to start. ;)

It has been a wild couple of days since my teacher moved out of my classroom and into her new classroom. The substitute is really great, and definitely on top of his game, but obviously the lessons suffer when there's not a teacher in the room. One of the school administrators asked me to lead the lesson for today, which included four new vocabulary words. I said I would rather not, because City Year is actually supposed to avoid that very situation, and because my teacher had allowed me to pull my focus list students out during vocab days and we had been playing a game the students really liked (trashketball). But the admin put some pressure on me, saying that I knew how the lesson went and it was important for the class to stay on track yada, yada, yada, I ended up agreeing.

So I had the words made up in a PowerPoint complete with funny pictures to add some pizazz. 

My first lesson went less than wonderfully. The students weren't being respectful whatsoever, and I actually stopped instruction to remind them that this wasn't part of my job and that I was leading class to help them learn the words and that the least they could do is respect me by not talking. That kept them quiet for awhile and they actually got kind of into the lesson! We discussed words like 'humiliating' and 'gloated' and the students really enjoyed giving their examples and ideas about the words. However, I knew I had gotten a little hard on them when one of the students' "powerful" sentence for the word 'rage' was, "Ms. C felt rage when the class wouldn't stop talking while she was teaching." Whoops; but I guess it's good that they could see me get frustrated with their disrespect. 

The substitute led the lesson in all the Pre-AP classes that I don't assist in, an he also led the class that has the worst behavior. I was trying to take a step back from leading and I figured he could handle it. It went okay, but the students were really out of hand.

Fast forward to last period. The sub insisted that I lead class again, and I begrudgingly acquiesced. It went great! In the middle of the words, a student raised his hand (instead of yelling out!!!!) and asked if I was their teacher now. I said no, that I was just leading class to help them stay on track. He and several others said, "Aw man, you should be our teacher now." Cue heartwarming happiness. Almost every student got all the words written down and shared at least one of their sentences with the whole class. 

Also, one of the other subs that I've worked with was eating lunch in the teacher's lounge while I was in there and he told my current sub that he was lucky to have me in the classroom. He said I had a "real way" with the students. We were talking about what City Year is and my plans for after this year, and he said that he thinks I'll be an excellent teacher. It meant a lot coming from a 20-year retired teacher who had been working with special ed students for the last 40 years. He had some serious street cred. 

I did miss working with just my students. I checked in with them and told them that we could play trashketball with the next set of words, and some were disappointed, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. At least they enjoy working with me!

Two students got moved off of my focus list because they're doing really well in their ELA work, which is exciting, but I'll miss them! One of them completed an entire, standardized-test style expository essay after going through all the steps with me (prewriting, revising/editing, the whole nine yards) and I was so proud of her! 

AND one of my reluctant students (let's call him Harold), who loves to read graphic novels, took my book recommendation! I suggested Maus, a historic graphic novel that tells the story of the Holocaust with cats and mice as the an/protagonists. He loved it! My other focus list student even asked if he could please read it after Harold is done. Cha-Ching! 

Oh, and I accepted my offer from Teach for America to teach Government and Economics in the Greater Nashville area. So excited!!! Pat already got offered a job and a very successful charter school in the downtown area, so we will officially be moving to Tennessee this summer!

Sorry for the long post-- I guess I should post more often! :)

Trashketball

Today was a really positive day as far as tutoring went, however, there is a hitch in my giddilong, as my grandma would say. My teacher is getting moved out of my classroom on Monday. 

She will be reassigned to a reading intervention class, and I will get a new teacher, likely one who comes temporarily out of retirement, in my classroom. I'm not extremely worried because behaviorily, the classes can honestly only get better than they are now. However, I don't know how this teacher will react to City Year or my requests to take students out of class to tutor them, especially because my teacher now is extremely supportive about me getting time with my students. 

Today, my students and I played a game as we were learning new vocabulary. It's called trashketball. The students would write a Powerful Sentence (7 words or more) on a post-it using the new word, read the sentence aloud, crumple their paper and toss it into the goal. They loved it! One of my students said, "Miss, this game isn't fair."

"Why? We're all gonna stand behind this line!"

"Because, Miss, I'm too good."

:) 

Needless to say, we got through all of our words.

Also I had a great experience during our flex period (home room) when I went to work with a student on writing. I walked into the class and was assaulted with hugs by two students. Many of the others shouted, "Ms. C!! You're in this class? Awesome!" One student even asked me to sit by her an made a label for my seat that read: "Ms. C's Seat" It made me feel really loved. 

I started telling some students that I planned to teach next year. A lot of ten don't knew that I'm really a social studies teacher, so they're surprised when I say that social studies is my favorite subject! I tell them that I'm going to teach social studies next year and they say, "Oh, here?!" 

"No, at another school in a different city."

"Whaaaat?! No!"

:)

Josue's reaction: "Imma move to that city and be in your class." I think he meant that half in a nice way and half in a threatening way. Haha. 

I already know I'm going to miss then so much!!

Our afterschool program is going through some trials, but my co-coordinator, some teammates, and I are working really hard to figure out how to handle behavior issues without having to kick students out of the program. Because they all can be good-natured kids, and we don't want to be the ones who discouraged them from being involved. But something's gotta give, because it is stressing my team out a lot to redirect students constantly for an hour after working hard all day.

The end! Sorry my posts aren't very organized, but I'm not teaching prewriting strategies until tomorrow! ;)

Tope-y

Sorry for the long lapse between posts, but things have been getting pretty hectic down here! I am much more at peace than I was during my last post.

Last weekend, City Year joined the Rotary San Antonio club (which is second largest in the WORLD!) to build a playground for a local school. It was extremely fun, and I had fantastic jobs. I split my time between drawing and painting a world map with continents on a cement slab (12' by 24') and seeing how many countries of the world we could name (would you expect anything else from me?) and playing with a ball that was taller than I was. I made some friends with some 8-year-old boys who thought that ball was the best thing they'd ever seen. All in all, the event was spectacularly well-organized, and I'm so proud of my roommate and my friends for pulling it off so flawlessly. I know they worked extremely hard planning all the activities. 

School has become a lot more positive too. Don't get me wrong, class is still the very definition if chaos, but my perspective had changed. I am focused on my students' success and measure my daily impact by their improvement rather than the whole class' on-taskness (it's a word). 

I am quickly becoming attached to my students for sure. Every time I take them out of class to work on something, they are excited and ready to leave that chaotic environment. I've even had to set up a rotation of other students who hassle me every day to please take them too because they want to work out there with me! 

There are a million little things that fulfill me every day, like a student telling me twice that he gets to make a video in technology class because he is that excited. 

Or a student saying he really likes the class common read book because the character seem really cool. And then catching that student reading the book in after school. 

Or a student apologizing for being mad during class because the other students were being so rude he couldn't concentrate. 

Or a student who hasn't done one iota of class work this year completing a discussion response because I told him I didn't mind if his answer had a curse word in it. He thought he was getting away with sooooo much. 

Or a student saying "nice one, Miss!" when I got a question right during a literacy board game we were playing. 

Or one of my students being vocally upset when I said we wouldn't be going outside today because he needed to catch up on his reading but then being comforted by the fact that we would work outside tomorrow. 

Or a student who has been at loggerheads with me about being respectful all year borrowing my pencil minutes after saying, "I don't like you at all. We're not friends anymore" and then being the only one to return my pencil at the end of class! 

Or today in afterschool when the corps members served as a panel for our students to ask questions about college and we actually had to cut the discussion short because they had so many questions! Excellent questions like, "do people still get bullied in college?" and, "do people sometimes drink and smoke but still do okay with their grades?" and "can you flunk?"

I love my job, even if it's hard all the time and sometimes harder than it is fulfilling in the moment. It always ends up being worth it for the students who show me that I'm not wasting my time. It's certainly going to be an interesting career!

And this morning I saw a beautiful rainbow. San Antonio is a beautiful city and I'm lucky to live here for a year.

One more funny story:

On Halloween, one of my teammates dressed as a nerd with "broken" glasses. In afterschool, a student said, "Sir, are those fake?!" And I said, jestingly, "You mean his eyes? I think those are his real eyes. Maybe his hair, that looks kind of fake..." And the student said, "You're right! It looks like a tope-y" 

"A tope-y?"

"Yeah, you know, a fake hair, a tope-y"

"Ohhhhh, you mean a toupee?!"

"I guess so!"