The Children's Crusade

I've been spending a little too much time reading blogs of the incoming first-years. As an alum of the MTC class of 2006, I wanted to take a second to share some advice for those who are looking back at my blog. You've probably heard this stuff already but as you find with teaching, you have to repeat everything that is important.

1) Write amazing lesson plans now.

You will not have time in the fall. Your creative energies will be drained. Trust me. I wrote lots of medicore lessons during the semester (half of the teacher textbook) that got me through but my great lessons were written during summer vacation or Christmas Break when I had some time to actually think about what I was doing.

Also, if you plan out a really great 10-day unit lesson plan, I'm pretty sure you can recycle it for Ann Monroe's class in the fall. You do not want to spend any more time doing homework in the fall than you have to do. I turned in so many assignments warm off the printer that I cannot count.

2) Get your crazy out now

This is the time where you should party it up with your free time because you will probably not get that chance during the school year. Drink (note: I taught summer school with a hangover more than once and more than one person has been drunk in Ann Monroe's class--you won't be first and won't be the last), play ultimate frisbee, have barbecues at Sardis Lake, and get to know your fellow teachers. Have lots and lots of fun. Make sure that you are building a support system of your peers because these are the only people that are really going to understand what you are going though.

3) Stay cool

I don't mean this in a literal sense (even though it does get quite hot).

Summer is a good time to practice not letting things visibly bother you. In the fall, kids will feed of any emotion you put out. Try to keep yours a cool, calm, collected, and happy one no matter how much rage you have building up on the inside. There are several kids who want nothing more than to get you to break. Don't let that happen. If you stay cool, they stay cool, and the year will go a lot better. Trust me. I learned the hard way. 

4) Don't stress about grad school

Seriously, if you do your work, you will do well in your classes. Although often time consuming, the actual work is not hard so don't go the extra mile if it comes at the expense of your teaching. I have done so many assignments at the last-minute, warm off the printer moments before the due time, it is ridiculous. But I assure you that if you turn stuff in that reveals you are a competent person, you will get a Master's degree.

5) Enjoy Mississippi

This place has plenty of charm. The Delta has some amazing people, restaurants, stores (particularly a junk yard I have a soft spot for where I you can get a ton of cool things), and music. Jackson has plenty of awesomeness as well. If you need recomendations about Jackson, let me know.

THANK YOU

I'm sure there are other important things and I'm sure other people will address them so I just want to say thank you for coming to Mississippi and doing this work. Teaching is not glamorous, often not fun, and will not make you rich. It's not for everyone (including me) but I hope you can at least put in these two years. If you give this is a chance, it will make you better, make Mississippi better, and make the future better.

Good luck, have fun, and I hope to get the chance to meet you all when I come up to Oxford.

This week, my school gave all the teachers these massive tote bags filled with Zoloft-branded notebands, pens, soap, clock, tape dispensers, and other random crap. The only thing missing from the bag was Zoloft. What a shame.

It is disturbing that anti-depressants are being marketed to high school teachers. It's not surprising, but disturbing. I'm wonder why they didn't do it earlier.

I have something to share on a not so depressing note. For those of you that didn't hear, I got into Duke Law last week. Right now I am torn between Duke, UVA, and Chicago. I'm looking forward to visits in March to settle this thing.

I'm not sure how many people utilize the amazing website that is DonorsChoose.org. You can put up grant proposals (really easy to write, they help you) and people from around the world can contribute to that proposal. Ms. Walton got me interested in the site (and mostly wrote my first proposal) after she got a book project funded. My proposal, a request for 74 copies of "Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl" got funded about a week and a half ago. That's $400 of books that my students do not have to pay for.

Anyways, I got an email from DonorsChoose.org this morning telling me that the Barksdale Institute put $100,000 in to support Mississippi teachers. They are half-funding proposals until the money runs out. Combine that with the money random donors give and any support you can get from friends/family/random other people, getting a project funded should be a fairly stress-free event.

That means that you can get easy money if you post something up there soon. I put up a proposal this afternoon to buy the materials to start an after-school ACT preparation program at Byhalia. Even if I'm not there to run it next year, I'm sure I can give the books to someone and help them make a difference.

I just thought I would share the news to those who didn't know.

One year ago today was the first time I cried in my classroom.

Today was not so bad. I intercepted a hilarious note and shut down some talkers. Other than that, things rolled fairly well.

There is the increasing possibility that I can get through this teaching thing unscathed.

I like this question. It is sufficiently broad enough where I could say anything I wanted and it would still fall within the bounds of having answered it.

In one sense, the experience was the equivalent to an earthquake hitting my life. In a short period of time I found myself in a new city that I didn't understand. My only friends were teachers placed in the same area. I was teaching school before I figured out where my bank was and where to get some good Chinese food.

The were a few aspects of the year that were difficult to handle. One was the perpetual feeling of being alone. I never really saw my roommate since she had a life outside of teaching. My friends were all teachers so they were spending their free time doing teaching-related things. THere were a few reprieves, occasional weekends and Wednesday night margaritas at the Mexican restaurant, but they seemed few and far between.

The other aspect that got to me was the lack of of control I felt over my own life. I would be treated like a child by my administrators. I was held hostage my the demands of my job. I would come home each day exhausted and still have 50 things to do for the week. The needs of the parents, students, and administrators (who had to look out for the district) took precedence over my own. At stretches it felt like I didn't matter.

The toughest part of this experience was watching my friends leave the program. Over the course of the year, three of my best friends left. After each one left I had to question why I was still here. Most of them were having the same problems I was but I was still teaching. What was wrong with them? What was wrong with me?

I find that this program has changed how I few poverty. Working in close proximity with students with so little makes one realize how preventable their situation is. It also made me a little hardened. I became more aware of the stakes that each child faced and had to become unemotional or risk feeling sorry for my students instead of pushing them.

The good experiences were surprising in many ways. I honestly didn't expect them to happen at all. When I got my classroom under control, I felt better. When students who I thought had no hope started getting it together, I felt better. When I actually started to like my job despite its awful aspects, I felt better.

The impact teaching has had on my life is more appreciable in the summer. I found that I had changed as a person. I am calmer in public, more accepting of my own numerous flaws, and more willing to be honest to the point of being a little confrontational. I like myself more. I believe I can make it through anything because I survived the fire.

After a year of teaching, I have many lessons to offer. I summed up what I know into five points. These are very broad lessons that are more useful to expectation setting than anything else. At a later point this summer I will be offering more useful day-to-day advice for the new teacher.

That having been said, this is what I know and what I found out.

1) You can lead a horse to water...

I was going to put this last since it is the most important but I don't want anyone to miss out on this piece of wisdom that becomes your life as a teacher.

You can razzle and dazzle them all-day with your lessons but little Johnny still has to be woken up five times during class. It is sometimes hard to concede that some kids don't care about your class. Most of them have particularly daunting issues at home and could not care less about the rules of subject-verb agreement.

There are just going to be kids you can't reach. There are going to be parents who can't grasp that their child is anything other than perfect. There are going to be administrators that won't listen. There are going to be situations that make you want to beat your head into the wall.

I might get attacked for this one, but I honestly believe that sometimes the best thing a teacher can do is teach the students that want to be taught and hope that you can spark interest in others as the year goes on. I won't let students who don't care disrupt my lesson, but at the same time I have to prioritize my time and resources.

You need to decide very early in the year how much of a coach/motivator teacher you can be without burning out. If operating at that level doesn't reach all your students by the time May rolls around, know that you did all you could and move on.

2) Communication is key to everything that happens in that classroom

Make sure students know what they should be doing at every moment of your class. That means you should know what classroom environment you want, make rules and procedures to create that classroom, and then TELL THE KIDS. If a kid is talking because he had no idea that he needed to be doing a "do now", that is partially your fault as a teacher. Saying it once is not enough, make sure that it is clear. I suggest giving students a test on rules and procedures during the first two weeks of school.

My failure this year was not communicating well enough about procedures. It led to needless confusion and many problems. I eventually had to stop teaching and go over them again in the middle of the year. Magically, many management problems disappeared. You should avoid my mistake and do it right the first time.

3) Protect Yourself

This one is short because it is so straightforward.

Document everything that comes your way. Build a system for keeping track of behavioral problems and consequences. Keep track of who needs rewards. have a system for making sure all parents get called during the first two weeks of school and then having their numbers in one place in case future contact is needed.

You don't actually need to completely organized as long you appear to be. You just need to know where everything is and be able to find it in about 30 seconds. I functioned using six clipboards and about five massive stacks of papers. I knew what I was doing and where everything was and nobody knew how chaotic things actually were.

4) Never allow your integrity to be questioned

You are the moral leader of the classroom. Always use that power for good. If you are consistently implementing fair rules and procedures, you are over halfway there.

As an extension of that idea, ALWAYS DO THE RIGHT THING!!!

I would like to add the following observations about passing classes. Most of the schools with MTC teaches are those where students get used to be passed on to the next grade regardless of their performance. I beg you not to be one of those teachers that moves on warm bodies to the next course. Teachers with integrity make it clear that passing is based on academic performance only.

Don't pass students for the following reasons:
- You like them
- You feel bad for them
- You don't want to see them next year

Students learn that hard work doesn't matter and that they can do whatever they want and get away with it. Make a stand against this. If you expect more, you will get some more. If you stand up, maybe other teachers will take notice.

It isn't easy to do the right thing. I have been forced into meetings with my administrators because too many students were failing my class. Stand up to up to them. It won't be hard if you are right. As long as you are respectful and conscious of your situation, you will know how to pick your battles. In m heart, grades are the battle I will fight. They were the ditch I picked to die. Anyway, fight for what is right.If you don't, you will be seen as weak. I'll go more into that with lesson five.

If you do the wrong thing, it will usually catch up to you. It will almost always catch up to your students. If nothing else you will feel guilty about it for a long time.

5) It is your classroom. You are always right.

If you are properly implementing lesson four, stand by it. Be adamant about everything you are doing, will do, and have done. Parents might complain but tell them your decisions are final.

Let's get this straight. You won't actually be right 100 percent of the time. For the first few weeks you might be wrong more than your are right. It doesn't actually matter. Stand by your wrongness while simultaneously learning from it.

For example, if you thought you heard profanity in the back of the room and give a student a consequence accordingly, stand by it. If the kid protests that he said something else, ignore it. Even if other student(s) claim credit, leave the initial consequence alone. If you desire, give consequences to the other student(s). If parents makes it an issue, tell them what you heard and the consequence. End it there. If the administration brings it into questions, do the same thing. Don't start doubting yourself. Don't change your mind. If you do, it will lead to bigger and more dramatic failures.

If you concede mistakes others, they will sense weakness. It's like blood in the water. The sharks will close in. If you work at a bad school, administrators will prey on you. If there are problem students, they will become emboldened. Depending on the circumstances, parents will jump in and attack, often with administrative backing. I can't say this enough. DON'T LOOK WEAK!!! DON'T EVER PUT YOURSELF IN A SITUATION WHERE YOU ALLOW YOURSELF TO SCRUTINIZED!!!

I thought the last day of school would be happier. I have been looking forward to it for a really long time. It represented the end of planning, grading, managing "challenging" students, and having to deal with the rampant idiocy surrounding me. Instead it came as a bit of a letdown and was for more introspective than celebratory.

During our "staff celebration" today, my principal publicly handed out pens to the teachers who were leaving my school this year. This group of teachers includes the vast majority of the bright and innovative ones under age 30. When she got to me, she announced that I had made it through a difficult year.

I don't like that description as the be all and end all.

My year had many difficulties (the majority being the fault of my administration) but it was not difficult in its entirely. There are many good things that happened this past year. I made meaningful personal connections with most of my students. I continually learned how to be a better teacher. I made the transition from bad teacher to decent teacher. I learned things about myself that I could never get anywhere else. I learned from my students. I learned from my failures. I sometimes even learned from grad school.

This year was difficult. But it was not only difficult. That's all I am saying.

The thing that got me was how my students responded to my announcement that I was leaving and moving to another district. I expected them to be happy. I expected a few students to think they drove me out of the school, which is so not the case. That did happen to some extent but it was rare.

The reactions were far different than expected.

Many of my students were saddened and/or angered by my decision to leave. That was surprising. I didn't they cared what happened to me.

The reaction that got me most was the resigned acceptance shown by the majority. They were saddened but not enough to get themselves worked up over it. These were the kids who on the last day wrote down all the names of the teachers who were leaving and didn't seem fazed when the number was solidly in the double-digits. They knew the massive teacher turnover in their school was normal. They know their school is a crappy place to work, especially for those with other, often more lucrative or academically stimulating, options in front of them. They know that their teachers are fleeing to other districts. They see the stream of their most talented teachers walking out the door, alienated and angry, and just suck it up.

I know that I made the right decision. I had to leave to save my mind. I can't handle another year here if things continue as they are and under the constant, condescending pressure I was under. I wish my school could be run better. I wish I could stay. It's not my choice.

It breaks my heart.

I need to relax. Summer school starts in a little over two weeks and I need to be rested up. I need some more kids to get attached to.

Teaching has changed me.

I don't just mean in this socially conscious way. Going in front of a room full of students from some of the worst backgrounds in America makes you think and act differently.

Teaching has such a huge impact on you as person because the job is seemingly never-ending. It is in many ways a social position. I am a teacher at school. I am a teacher at home grading. I am a teacher at the grocery store where students work. I am a teacher when running and I get stopped by students. I am a teacher when parents call me when I am trying to cook dinner. I am a teacher every moment. I am thinking about teaching, planning to teach, reflecting on what I taught, or being reminded that I teach all the time. It sometimes gets to the point where I have to restrain myself from disciplining random teenagers I see at the store or the mall for having cell phones or talking too loudly.

Because of this intermingling of the job and your personhood, the issues of students become those of your own. Poverty goes from being this distant thing to close event as you witness it through the lives of students. After a while I got a little hardened to the little tragedies of everyday life. If I didn't get the slightest bit callous to their condition, I would have allowed them to use poverty as an excuse to fail. Everything they do, from the food they eat to the clothes on their back to the decisions that they make, is informed by that cycle of poverty.

One of the most striking aspects of teaching is the impact it has had on my personality. The big change is the decline of the "nice guy" persona. I am not afraid to say "no to anyone if I am confident in my decision. That has led to a more productively (for the most part) confrontational attitude.

I don't take nearly as much crap from people as I did in August. The aspect that fueled this change is the fact that students and administrators perceive niceness as weakness. Don't even get me started on how foreign and idiotic that is to me. Niceness was the key difficulty I had in dealing with people. I had to kill that perception by being consistently vigilant in my views (and smiling while doing it). Late work is late work. Bad work is bad work. Dumb policy is dumb policy. If it served a productive purpose to say the truth (often not the case with my administration), I started saying it.

I find myself becoming far more confident of myself as a person. I don't care if my belt is out of a loop or if I speak oddly. I have been tested as a person for so long by so many people that I no longer cared what they thought about me. I know who I am.

Teaching is the hardest job I could imagine having. It has cost me time, energy, and mental stability. It probably has taken a little time off my life. It also offers a few moments of immense rewards. If it doesn't change you, there is a problem. Hopefully you change for the better.

A big, big bunch of you future MTC teachers out there should get used to the following four words: Subject Area Testing Program. If you are doomed to have those words associated with your preps, they will make you a life a little more challenging. It seems that for some reason that new teachers, especially the MTC variety of new teachers, have a high likelihood of being placed in one of the state tested subjects: Algebra I, Biology I, English II, and US History from 1877 to Present. It is likely some combination of the following factors:

1) Nobody wants to teach them
2) It is easier to blame an outsider if things don't work out
3) You will be one of the most competent teachers at your school

The results of the test are used to rank the school. Most of the schools that you will be at suck on some level (or else they wouldn't need you). For that reason you will be under immense pressure to raise scores quickly.

Let me repeat.

THERE IS A LOT OF PRESSURE.

The pressure won't kill you. You just need to be prepared for it.

You will find your administration doing things that might seem to be unethical to people with a shred of integrity. For example, my school purged the rosters of SATP classes. Any students they thought would fail were moved to other classes until the next year. That is one of the many things that may or may not happen next year. In my view, it is best not to fight it.

I teach English II. I get leaned on all the time to achieve the "bold targets" (that would require us to triple our proficiency levels in one year) and to meet the "adequate yearly progress" goals of No Child Left Behind. For some reason I have to make up for over a decade of inadequate education in one year.

The biggest problem for me was the spotlight my administration put on me. I had a lot of developing to do as a teacher and it sucked to have people leaning on me all the time to generate results. The spotlight continually grows as the testing date draws near (only one week away). I increasingly lose my autonomy to teach as I desire as random people tell me what I should be doing at any given moment. My principal pulled me into a meeting two weeks ago and told my class to stop reading a novel because it wouldn't be on the test.

There is also some upside. I found that the SATP teachers get almost anything they need if it helps them raise scores. I have also found that with all the constant assessments and data mining that it is easier to see measurable improvement in your students (at least the ones who will do the work).

You can improve test scores if you do nothing other than getting the kids to answer all the questions and to actually try. If you teach them some grammar and what good writing looks like, you might be looking at some measurable gains. Just don't expect miracles to happen left and right. Progress is all that matters

As much as the testing regime bothers me, I guess I really haven't learned my lesson (or I might just like the challenge). I am changing from one SATP subject (English II) to another (US History from 1877 to Present) next year. I am excited.

If any of you all need some English II materials/strategies/prayers, I should have a ton.

What should I know about MTC before I arrive in June?

That's a good question for the future first-years who read this thing.

Mississippi is a pretty interesting place.

I have to start off with the food. It is pretty amazing, especially for people like me who tend to ignore nutrition. You can have all the fried foods you want. Macaroni & cheese is a vegatable here. There is also the terribly disgusting foods. For some reason Kool-Aid pickles are prominent in my head. You will also have to get used to the presence of perhaps the most disgusting food in the world, "Flamin' Hot Cheetos". I swear that my students are in love with them despite my lectures and obvious dismay.

Mississippi is actually quite a beautiful place. There is a strange charm to the Delta that makes you want to stay for a while (since I don't live there). I have found that Jackson is surprisingly cosmopolitan if you look in the right corners. It's not quite New York (or even a New Orleans) but it is something.

There are going to be a lot of annoying people here. Ole Miss has a lot of those people. The kind of girls that put makeup on to go jogging and guys in polo shirts with awful hair. If I see one more "Southern Boy" haircut I am going to grab some scissors and cut off those bangs. Grown men should not have bangs.

More seriously, you can't talk about Mississippi without talking about race and by direct extension, poverty. It is surreal to what level race is the unspoken backdrop to conversations here. You will be working in some of the most segregated areas of the state. You will find that Jackson is surprisingly segregated. You will find that the Delta is more often than not, disgustingly segregated. The school districts become showcases for what happens when half of the community (the white half) doesn't support the schools and the other half (the black half) doesn't seem to know what to do.

On a more practical level here is some advice.

Enjoy your senior year of college (or whatever you are doing right now). It's fun on its own and you need to get rested up for the year. There is a good chance that once you step foot in Mississippi that you are not getting any significant amount of time off. Sorry. I graduated from college on Sunday afternoon and ended up in Oxford on Tuesday morning. After June and summer school came July and TEAM. After that last week, I had a week of district induction. Then school begins. Then somehow your body makes it to Thanksgiving Break. It is painful but that is life.

Don't stress out.

Repeat.

Don't stress out.

We (the future second-years and the MTC staff) will take care of you. We are going through the experience right now. We will give you any wisdom you need that happens to fall our way. We will give you any hugs and support you need. Things will be OK. Trust me. Now take your PRAXIS II and get away from the computer.