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Last year I was freaking out all day on my first day. Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. I was sweating like crazy, nerves totally shot, my feet were aching and I was moving a mile a minute. I couldn't think clearly about anything -- I was simply plowing through my meticulously organized list of things to cover in class that day. At the end of the day, I felt like I had just survived an armageddon. I could barely collect myself and ignore my pounding feet enough to make it home, and crash onto my couch, sick and tired.

This year was worlds different. I was surprised to find that I was actually a bit nervous in the morning as I waited for students to arrive. But once I was up in front of the class, it was a breeze. I rolled through my rules and consequences like a pro all day -- and the schedule was perfectly normal (15 minutes got cut out of first period, but that's all!) 

I think the biggest difference, for me, was the students in my room. I love freshmen. Seniors think that they they are "grown". They kick up rules and consequences in your face and take structures like these as if you are disrespecting THEM.  I got backlash on day ONE, and it didn't stop there.

The freshmen don't know any better - they are new, and this is their first experience with high school. They are going with it, for now. I expect some issues to come up, but at least we have a good foundation.

The other big thing is my anxiety level - I am way more at ease. I don't mind if my lesson isn't perfectly planned the first three days of school, because I know I've got some activities in my classroom (and the back of my mind) that I can pull out if need be. I am not worried about what the kids think about me at every moment - because I don't care. I don't worry that my units aren't good enough, or that I won't have time to finish everything, because I know they aren't, and I know I won't. I don't mean to have low expectations for myself (or the kids) but I just know that I can't get myself worked up about things that are beyond my capabilities. I am doing the best job I can, and I am satisfied with it.

So, year two: good things.

The two-month hiatus finally over, I am heading back into the classroom and onto the blog....

I am teaching English I (freshmen) all classes, all day this fall. I am slightly nervous about teaching younger students -- for a number of reasons. Younger students don't know me; they will see what my students saw in August of last year - a young, white, non-Mississippian. It would have been nice to get kids who recognized me, who knew my "reputation".

Also, the middle schools were chaos last year. Many of the incoming 9th graders are used to an atmosphere with few consequences, and a lack of authority. They were CRAZY when they came to tour the high school. They didn't listen to their teachers at all. Add that to the fact that the "bad" kids have not yet dropped out, and the 9th grade could be a recipe for disaster. Everyone says that this year's freshmen are the "worst class to come out of {middle school #1} and {middle school #2} in their history".

But, I am fantastically excited about having only one prep - I will only write a single 100 minute lesson each day, and then teach it 3 times. Not bad. My classroom looks better, cleaner, more organized, and more fun. Colder teachers, custodians and secretaries have suddenly come around now that I am back for year two, and they seem warm, if not outright friendly. I have 2 weeks of solid lessons planned, and a detailed plan of daily topics for 1st quarter and 4th quarter (when I know I'll start burning out!). I've started writing my 1st quarter exam.

Against all odds, I am actually excited for the students to arrive tomorrow. I had imagined that my return to Mississippi would be grudgingly executed, that I would be dreading work and hating myself for returning. But, surprisingly enough, none of this (so far) is true. And I'm hoping it stays that way! As my students would say, "b'lee 'dat!" Here's to a good start of the year.....

I feel a bit repetitive writing this blog, because I gave a lot of advice this summer about the first few weeks of school. There were three things that kept coming up -- things that I learned after they had mentally, emotionally, and even physically torn me apart in the fall. So for those of you who haven't already heard my lessons, here goes....

Make sure you have at least a week, and hopefully 2-3 weeks, planned before school starts. My first day of school, I lost my planning period, and so I couldn't go get my lunch in the teacher's lounge, and as a result, got sick to my stomach. Instead of eating when I went home, I sickly crashed onto the couch and fell asleep until 8:00pm. This began a cycle of horrible sickness, sleeping everyday from 4:30-8:00pm, sleepless nights, not being able to keep food down, fatigue, anxiety, and general chaos for the first two weeks of school. I didn't plan a single lesson for a week because I was so ill -- and I wouldn't have made it if I hadn't had those lessons already prepared. You never know what might happen, or what your mindset might be. (This could very well lead to advice #2 - make sure you EAT.)

Punish disrespect. Right away. If a student says quietly under their breath "I hate this class", don't let it slide. Don't laugh and move on. Punish them. Give them paragraphs, give them a detention, take away their bathroom pass. DO SOMETHING. Because if you don't, you send a clear signal to the class that they can say anything about you or your class without being punished. That under-the-breath saying will turn into a loud voice and then into a chorus of voices that tell you "We hate your class, why don't you go back where you came from. This boring. I hate this. I hate you." It will foster an environment of negativity, and it will drag you down. You need to START firm. If you do punish them, they somehow end up loving you instead. I had the good fortune of having semester-long classes last year - in the spring, I discovered where I had gone wrong in the fall....

Take a short break from teaching-related things each day. Even if it is only a 20 minute break, do something for yourself. You'll hear this from everyone, and some of you, like me, will ignore it. You will think you have too much to do, that if you take a 20 minute break you won't get it all done, and then you will never be able to catch up and get ahead. You are right. But you will never catch up and you will never get ahead -- There is always more to do. If you don't make time for yourself you will go crazy. I didn't, and it was no fun. I came about half a step from quitting because I couldn't let go of my type-A-ness.  The moment I let go, just a little, I realized I had been crazy to want to leave.  So keep a book next to your bed, keep the bicycle chain greased, find your local coffee shop, open up that cookbook, buy yourself a gym membership, whatever -- you will be 10 times the teacher once you have something OTHER than teaching in your life.

And, finally, one last bit of advice using my new second-year perspective - ask for help and advice. We are all here for you (and there are teachers and principals at your schools that don't want you to stumble either!). Don't wait until its too late to ask for help. We were all in your position and we understand - use us! 

Good luck this week!!

There was an interesting editorial in the New York Times a few days ago about ACT test preparation in Chicago. A study came to the conclusion that test prep was taking away from class time, and NYTimes editors concluded that this was disasterous. This is a topic of great interest to me as I was given a course last year described by the counselors as "just an ACT class".

An even more interesting read is the reader response to the issue. Personally, I am in favor of test prep to a certain extent, particularly in underprivileged communities. You cannot "test prep" someone to a perfect score. I think that intelligence is still the major factor when it comes to testing well. Some might worry that too much time is spent on test prep, but if it means the difference between college or no college, graduation or no graduation, I think there should be no question. I understand the fear, but it's worth it to give everyone a (more) even playing field....

One of the reasons I find this blog hard to write is that I didn't do a very good job setting 'learning goals' for my students. I was so preoccupied with keeping my head above water all year, that I had a hard time trying to think ahead  - and create those big goals. This year I've got big aspirations; not only am I going to spend July unit planning, but I am going to create units with tangible goals -- and measure them. I'll have my freshmen take a practice SATP the first week, and then work the four competencies as rotating units in my curriculum. I plan to see some improvement in their post-test, and I'll have the data to show me what learning goals were met, and which weren't, come December.

But I didn't do that this year,  and as a result, I am a little less sure of what kinds of tangible progress my students really made. But I will take my best shot:

Most Successful
I think the learning goal where my students were the most successful, in all my classes, was definitely in the general area of reading skills. They were more comfortable readers, faster readers, and closer readers when they left my classroom. The number one reason, I believe, is that I am passionate about reading. My grammar lessons are about as fun as cement, but when I teach reading, I am bounding, cheering, pulling the students along in my excitement of the story. The days where they all laugh at me and look at one another shaking their heads, "She crazy. You crazy Ms. M". They roll their eyes, but they are enjoying it. I can't make grammar fun, I rarely make writing fun, and I often don't even make reading fun -- but I do show them how much it means to me, and how important I believe it is for them to read -- and that passion really makes a difference.
 
That passion also influences me to work harder at reading skills in general - I think about worksheet formatting, variety and pacing of worksheet questions, individual silent reading vs. reading groups, lessons on close reading and inferences, what types of texts, how much reflection, etc and so forth all the time- an amount of analyzation I would never engage in for a subject I dislike or even feel ambivalent about.

The other major reason my students' reading skills improved was the sheer volume of reading done in my class. We read a sizeable amount almost every single day. In addition to poems and short stories in all classes, my learning strategies classes read 2.5 books and a play (the .5 was their own book at the end of the year- to be finished on their own time in the summer), my English 4 kids read a long epic poem, a play and a longish novel, and my English 3 kids read a looong novel (250ish pages), and a play. It may not seem like much, but three months is not a very long time for all this, in addition to the other English skills. And I think, at a certain threshold, pure time invested makes a big difference.

Least Successful
The least successful learning goal in my room this year was probably my students' writing style. My students could spit out a 5-paragraph essay with good topic sentences and supporting details and the whole drill. No problem. But the actual sentences they were writing were, at best, bland, and at worst, horrible. Even though most of my seniors had subject-verb agreement down fairly well, and their spelling/mechanics were decent -- their sentences were canned, short, and boring. And the worst part is, I know exactly why. Without a state test looming over my head, I barely touched grammar and sentence structure except for the necessary basics. Also, I was just overwhelmed by the sheer logistics of improving so many different levels of ability for such an individualized skill. I have trouble differentiating among three big basic divisions (the talented, the mediocre, and the struggling) in my room, let alone 20 different kids with 20 different writing abilities/styles/issues. So I took the easy way out and let it slide.

This year I am going to spend more time on sentence construction - especially since I have ninth graders. We are going to practice all different "types" of sentence, making the kids construct lots and lots of them until they feel comfortable, perhaps, using a sentence that flows with multiple clauses in a paper, without prompting.

I am also going to work on that grammar thing.

TMAO writes an incredible blog: a letter to a first-year, Teach-for-America-type teacher, describing in detail how life is about to change.
 I am practically speechless at the perfect way he has captured so many of my own thoughts and feelings - I laughed out loud at moments, felt guilt twinges at others, and genuinely agreed with everything he has to say. I hope someday I might be able to write the the same clarity and insight about something so difficult to describe.

I really enjoy the role of "instructional coach". It seems to perfectly bring together two things that I love: helping people, and analyzing situations to come up with solutions. This is something I could certainly see myself doing more of in the future...

As an instructional coach, I generally tend to get a bit too excited about my advice - which I think is both a positive and negative. It is obvious to a potential mentee that I am doing my best to help them. And, I think, it's clear that I care. Unfortunately, I think I sometimes go way overboard, and probably overwhelm them with information. My observations and ideas are often minute and trivial, but I just can't hold back when I think something that just might strike a key. I guess prefer to err on the side of too much advice, than to let things go that might really help. But I do worry about discouraging first-years with a mountain of things they need to work on - when in reality, they are all doing just fine (way to go English III/IV first years!).

It's funny, during my informal observations last week, I started thinking about all the things that I personally need to work on in the classroom. I found myself starting all kinds of sentences with, "Well, to be honest, if you watch me teach, I am really not a great example of this, but...." or "You'll see that I will often make that same mistake..." or "I tend to XYZ, too." I repeatedly saw myself reflected in the first-years' various missteps and rough edges. When I got up to teach on Friday (having mulled this over much of the week), I was acutely aware of everything I was doing --consciously monitoring and modifying those things I had pointed out to the first-years. .....And I taught the best lesson on Outlining an Essay I'd ever led (a topic which I have had perennial difficulties "teaching" well to my students from both the fall and spring semesters). I finished that lesson feeling fantastic.  Here's to instructional coaching!

After realizing that I didn't give much in the way of tangible advice, (and, getting inspired by Karl's advice) I am adding one last piece of advice for new teachers:

Use rewards.

First semester I refused to give rewards. I thought it was childish. I thought that by showing these high schoolers respect, and challenging them daily, that they, in turn, would rise to that challenge. Well, I was wrong, and Wong, Dr. Monroe, Ben Guest, and the Reluctant Disciplinarian were right. My transformation came sometime at the end of November. I was at my wit's end with a certain class -- they had gotten into a pattern of lazy, chit-chatting groupwork. They weren't getting much of anything done. A heroic third-year teacher (to this day, I am in debt to RK) suggested that I quietly set small pieces of candy on the desks of a hardworking group.

Within 48 hours of that advice, the entire classroom environment had changed. When I said, "Go ahead and move into your groups" kids would rush to get their desks together, hurry their partners, and immediately start reading and discussing their books aloud. They asked eachother questions (I often dropped a piece of candy down for questioning a group member) and began to actually get into the book. It was amazing.  Of course, I was spending an arm and a leg on mini-Snickers, and mini-Reeses, but it was worth it.

With this revolution in mind, I re-vamped my classroom management plan in January. I began using a ticket system  -- something I had hitherto chalked up as childish, time-consuming, and annoying. I never have a moment where no one raises their hands -- students race to get their hand in the air for a chance to get a ticket each day. Now I still think this is childish, but my students love it so much that I just don't mind anymore. On my end of the year evaluation sheets, a large number of students wrote some derivative of "More candy, more movies, more fun stuff" (note answer #1 and #2 can be earned with tickets) so things can't be going all that badly....

Perhaps someday, if I end up teaching in an environment where learning itself is a reward and an excitement, I will stop using tickets and rewards. But in this environment, the kids are not intrinsically motivated by the material - so, in my opinion, something else must do.

Although my specific techniques for classroom management changed subtly over the course of two years, each change would fit within the same basic philosophy. In managing my classroom, I aim for the following:

Give students plenty of choices to do the right thing.  I have 4-5 sequential consequences that students work through before they are sent out. (Most recently, this has included copying increasingly longer paragraphs about the importance of education) By giving them multiple, sequential consequences, they have plenty of options to “back away”. If a student begins to explode over a consequence, chances are, he or she will calm down and concede once given a second punishment, and a moment to reflect. Sending that child to the office after the first explosion simply magnifies the problem – now they are missing class, and their punishment is out of my control.

Keep classroom behavior under my control until absolutely necessary. I also use this long ladder of consequences to prolong sending a student to the office– which would take their punishment out of my control. I want the students to clearly see the strength of my authority – not the fact that I have to rely on the office to handle problems. If most behavior problems are handled in the room, the students will recognize that I have authority.  When a student does reach the office step, that consequence will carry more weight by its infrequency.

Keep the mood firm, but lighthearted. I made the mistake, at the start of the year, of being just a little too strict, something that summer training made me believe was not possible. My students reacted each day with frustration and anger and took the wind completely out of my sails when I needed it most. What I eventually came to realize is that a little positive energy goes a very long way. A joke here, and smile there, can change the entire atmosphere of a classroom. Humor can defuse an agitated student, and kindness can warm (most) angry hearts. Students treated with these small gestures will then respond better to directives and are much more likely to follow my rules.

My warning to the first years: do not look at my last bullet point and take that as vindication that you don't have to be tough with your students. You need to be tough. I am MUCH better off for having started out harder. If I were to do it again, all would be the same. Start hard, but make sure the students know you have a heart. A kind word after class, a moment spent asking about their weekend, a comment about their work or their shoes or whatever.... will go a long, long way, even if you just assigned them a detention and called their mother twice this week.

So, the biggest change in my classroom management plan was learning that "strict" and "kind" can coexist, that showing love is not showing vulnerability, and that sharing my own experiences and interests isn't necessarily undermining my authority. In fact, doing all of these things will encourage my students to follow rules, respect my consequences and generally "do right". It makes the job of classroom managing a whole lot easier.

In five Mississippi counties, the average resident spends more than 13 percent of their income on gasoline. According to the graphic, one of them appears to be mine.