First Week of Year Two

I'm going to blow your mind right now with a statement I know you've never pondered: Teaching is hard.

Like, really hard.

Maybe it's because I've grown accustomed in the last two months to quiet and reflection and creativity, but being 100% ON all the time while 160 13 to 16-year-olds stare at you and anxiously wait for you to make the tiniest mistake is exhausting.

And, apparently, bad for your body, because as I write this, I'm taking my first sick day from school. Five days in. It's not the flu or a cold or anything like that, so I'm pretty sure I didn't catch it from the kids. I'm pretty sure I was just born with an extraordinarily sensitive digestive tract on the verge of revolt at any moment. I've never had to go home sick from work before, but there was no way I was going to be able to teach and hurl at the same time in the same room.

All that being said, I had an awesome first week of school. Actually, I can't believe how awesome it's been. After last year and my explosive first day, followed by weeks of tears and exhaustion and frantically trying to figure out what I would do with my life now that teaching is obviously out, I was terrified for the first day of school. Terrified.

Over the summer, I read Harry and Rosemary Wong's book The First Days of School. I know I shouldn't buy into one book as my teaching Bible, but since last year's first day was so terrible, I figured I had to do something different to not repeat that experience. So I followed the book's advice and my first day went exactly as the book said it would.

A little bit about my assignment this year. My new administration created a new math class and gave that class to me. I feel very fortunate about this, because they didn't have to do it. I'm an employee of the district who is certified in language arts 4-8 and math 4-12, so they could honestly put me in any position they wanted. For a while there, it wasn't looking good that I would get to switch to math. The week before school started, my new principal told me that I would be teaching a class called Math II, which was exclusively for the 8th graders who had been retained because of their math scores, and the incoming 8th graders who failed their math TAKS last year.

Say that again? I'm a G/T certified teacher who taught advanced English last year... and you think I'm qualified to not only switch content areas but teach the kiddos that, by definition, don't get it?

But I love it. I love it so much. I love it more the first week than I ever loved my best day of teaching advanced kids. I've discovered an amazing level of patience with these kids I never knew I had. Yesterday I had them taking a pretest that covered topics that they absolutely have to know before they can advance to Algebra 1... things like graphing inequalities, linear equation tables, fractions and decimals, and ratios. This was all taught to them in 7th grade and they should, by state standards, have mastered it then. But I have the kids that didn't, and so I anticipated them not doing very well. But I got questions like... "How do you make a negative on the calculator?" "What does that dot between the two numbers mean?" "What does inequality mean?" "What if you don't know any of the answers?"

They are really struggling. But instead of being aghast that they came to 8th grade not knowing where the negative sign was on a calculator or what a multiplication sign was, I got excited because they had identified for me what they need to learn. And I can't wait to teach them. I realize I probably won't bring all of them up to Algebra 1 level by the time they leave, but the idea that they will leave my class knowing more than what they came in with excites me. I don't know if this happened last year. I made my advanced kids read Charles Dickens, who I adore. I'm pretty sure they left hating Dickens and are probably scarred for life. This year, every kid will know about negatives and positives and what signs are what. I can say that for sure.

Aside: If you had told me a decade ago that I would be a math teacher, an 8th grade math teacher of all things, I would have laughed. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and am like... what am I doing?!?

The absolute coolest thing about this assignment is that it's the students' second math class, so I get to design my own lessons and classroom and I get to move at whatever pace the kids need me to move at. This is a totally foreign concept to them because they are so used to being left behind. I could see the exhaustion in their faces when they took the pretest... "Welp, here's another 50 questions I can't do." Their behavior, which had been pretty perfect the three days leading up to yesterday, was dramatically worse during the test.

Hello... obviously! If someone asked me to color, I would have full attention on the coloring and enjoy making a pretty picture. If someone told me to build an airplane, I would last about 10 seconds before I daydreamed or doodled or did something else to avoid building that airplane, because I have no idea HOW to build an airplane... so why try if I know I'm only going to fail? That's what my kids are thinking every day they come to school. No wonder they act out and skip school. They're searching for something they're good at and can find success at, and math ain't it.

That is, until they met me. :) I'll start them off coloring, and then drawing their own picture and coloring it, and then creating their own 3D model and coloring it. They may not have an airplane built by the end of the year, but they will at least have the feeling that they could if they continue to work at it. This of course is a very simplified analogy, but I have a lot of faith in these kiddos. I LOVE teaching the struggling learners. I love the look on their faces when they ask a "dumb" question and are met with kindness and an answer rather than sarcasm and something like, "You should already know that."

Here's a funny story: We were numbering the pages in our notebooks. It's a 200-page composition notebook, so it's going to take awhile. I let them get started and was walking around the room to make sure everyone was doing it correctly. Then, something struck my mind and I said, "I'm assuming everyone knows how to count to 200, but if you have a question about what number comes next, be sure to ask." A little girl reached over the aisle to (lightly) punch a little boy's shoulder and said, "See, I told you you could ask her that." Some of them have probably never been in a classroom before where they could ask such low-level questions and get an actual answer rather than a nasty remark. I know I was guilty of that last year. This year, I've made a promise to myself and my kids that whatever they need to know, whether it's counting or two-step equations, they shouldn't feel ashamed to not know it.

It's going to be a great year. A lot of work and a lot of planning time on my part, but a great year. And if this is my last year in Del Rio (and we still don't know if it is or not), it will be a great way to go out.