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It's been three weeks since I left behind Mississippi, and my two years of teaching English in a rural Delta school district (and two partial summers of mentoring and coaching new teachers!). I've been meaning to sit down and give an "ending" to this blog, so to speak, and I think enough time now has passed that I feel like I can do that objectively.

Leaving Mississippi (or more specifically, education in Mississippi) was definitely bittersweet - certainly "relief" might be the first word that comes to mind. I am relieved to be back in an educated state, in a place I love, surrounded by family and old friends. I am relieved that I will never again have to face the pressure, stress, and heartbreak of teaching in the Delta.

But a part of me is distinctly frustrated at the thought of leaving the classroom, or the realm of education. I'd like to work a way back into the education sphere in some way - if not through a career, then peripherally as a volunteer, a board member, a community leader, or even as a participant in a sort of wider conversation about education reform. That was the root of much of my Mississippi woes - I would rather reform the way education happens (to avoid the huge gap in achievement for low-income students) than try to work within a broken system (as a teacher to those low-income students). That conclusion was reinforced as I crossed into Minnesota driving up 35N on my way home from Mississippi. Ironically enough, the first thing I hear over the radio in Minnesota was the last 30 minutes of the Minneapolis School Board Meeting (broadcast over public radio) -- I thought I was leaving education only to re-discover it in a whole new way as I arrived. Listening in on the meeting was fascinating. No board meeting in a Mississippi school district would sound like this. But they had their fair share of big problems, controversial issues and inside arguments, too. Made me want to hop on the bandwagon as soon as I can - and I still plan to.

And so ends this blog. I hope someday soon I will have the sort of incredible inspiration that teaching in the Mississippi Delta brought to me (with perhaps little more free time!), so that I might start a new blog, with new thoughts, on new experiences. I'll leave this blog up here -- partly because it serves as a easy way to remember my experiences, and partly because it might help future teachers cope with theirs. Feel free to read back, and back and back any time you wish!

For now, my time is devoted to writing for someone else's blog. And at the very least, I will still feel connected to the digital world on facebook, twitter and linkedin....

EDIT: An interesting conversation went on re: this last entry over on Ephblog, the Williams alumni blog-meeting space. Read it here. 

For their final exam, I decided my students were simply tested-out from this spring of state-testing craziness. So I borrowed a unit from a great teacher-friend of mine, and used the final project in place of an exam. After reading and analyzing the Virginia Woolf story "Widow and the Parrot", groups created newscasts to present the events of the story and explore the motives of the characters in it.

Overall, the kids did a FANTASTIC job! I've uploaded a couple clips here, and hopefully will finish uploading more soon!

My Learning Strategies class is in the midst of reading A Raisin in the Sun. Like my previous classes, they are loving it. They love having their own parts to read, the incorrect grammar, the occasional swear word for emphasis. The opening act includes three confrontational arguments (including a mother slapping her daughter!) and they love to yell at one another with animation while reading. 

Last-Minute Advice (and Thoughts) from Room 2**

Dear English II students,

    With the state test quickly approaching, I thought I would write you all a letter to share my last-minute thoughts and advice.

    First of all, let me say that I am very, very proud of you all. It takes a lot of personal discipline to focus on mastering these skills, and I have seen many of you shine in the last few weeks. You have put a lot of hard work into preparing for this test, and it has certainly paid off. Every day I am so impressed with how much each of you has improved when it comes to state test questions – I have no doubt that your scores will be much higher than those of last year's classes. (In fact, I can't wait for the scores to come back, and to see how you all knocked them out of the park!)

    My number one piece of advice? Relax. You've worked hard, you know this stuff, you are all going to do very well on that test --- as long as you don't stress out about it. I've said it before, and I will say it again, the students who fail that test are not the “dumb” students, they are the students who think they can't do it, who just give up and randomly guess because they don't take the time to just figure it out. Take your time, use your head, and trust that you can do this.

    Now, on to some more concrete advice:

    1. Please go to bed early Thursday night (really). If you normally fall asleep at midnight, try to make it eleven. If you go to bed at 10:30, make it 10:00. Whatever works for you. Doing this will give you that extra boost in the morning that you'll need when you first open that test booklet.
    2. Make sure to eat something in the morning. I don't care if you haven't eaten breakfast in 12 years – get a few bites of food in your stomach. There is too much research on the importance of breakfast to test scores that you simply can't ignore it. On the other hand, if coffee and donuts will make you full and sick to your stomach, stay away and eat something smaller, or healthier, instead. Don't forget that I will have breakfast in the classroom available starting at 7:30 -- even if you aren't hungry you are welcome to stop in for some last minute encouragement!
    3. Write all over that test booklet. It's yours, and no one else's. You can underline, jot notes, cross out wrong answers, or draw a picture to illustrate a paragraph. All of these things will keep you AWAKE, will keep you MORE FOCUSED on what you are doing, and will help you ANSWER CORRECTLY.
    4. If you bring a cell phone to school Friday, it better be COMPLETELY off (not just on silent!) and sitting in the bottom of your bag, away from where anyone is sitting. Do not ignore this piece of advice, or you may cause every single person in the room to receive a failing test score. (The really smart people in here will not bring their cell phone anywhere near the testing room).

Last but not least, congratulations. You've worked hard, and we have come to the end of our state test preparation. After we take the 3rd quarter exam, I promise you that you won't see another multiple choice test or quiz in English II (and we won't do a single state test question either!) Feel free to stop by my room on Friday when you finish with your test – I would love to hear how it went.

Good luck on Friday! (Though you won't need it!)

Ms. Morrison

I've had a dearth of positive blog posts this spring (stemming mainly from the stress and chaos of teaching a state-tested subject in the final countdown to the test!) so I thought I would repost an incredibly inspiring story for good measure.

I am in awe of AW's success -- something to inspire us all in the last few months of the school year!

Simmons brings home the Latin gold and more

By TERRI FERGUSON SMITH terriferguson@ddtonline.com

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 12:36 PM CDT

HOLLANDALE - Less than a year after Simmons High School began offering a Latin class, students learning the ancient language are earning high marks for their efforts.

Instructor Austin Walker said nine students recently took the National Latin Exam and six scored in the top 40 percent nationally.

“Simmons High School had a 67 percent award rate,” Walker said of the competition.

That is the highest in the state, tying with Clinton High School where six out of nine students received an award, and those teams beat Southern Baptist Educational Center, where 17 of 27 received an award; St. Andrews, where 63 out of 103 received an award, and the Mississippi School for Math and Science, where 16 out of 33 received an award - an award rate of 48 percent, Walker said.

Xavier Clay won a first place gold medal; Bianca Johnson won a second place silver medal; Alexis Hicks, Ulysses Aldridge and Horace Willice all won third place, Magna Cum Laude honors; and Kayla Patterson won fourth place, Cum Laude.

Simmons was the only public school in the Delta to take the National Latin Exam, according to Walker. He said that the private institution, Washington School, was the only other school in the Delta to take the test and won two awards.

“My students' success demonstrates that in every district there are students whose potential is not realized and who can compete with anyone in the nation when given an opportunity,” Walker said.

Sharing the news with his students was an experience, too.

“My students were elated to find their results,” Walker said. “One student was in the cafeteria when the results came in. When I sent someone to tell him how he did, he refused to leave the cafeteria because he thought that they were making fun of him. He didn't believe that he could do that well.”

The success has given all of Walker's students a boost of self-confidence, he said.

“They have demonstrated that they are among the elite Latin students in the country,” Walker said.

The students are already talking about taking Latin II next year and other students have expressed an interest Latin I.

If you are reading this, good for you, you are thinking ahead. A word of warning: it doesn't matter how much you read, how much you "prepare", or how much you mull over your future life in your head. Nothing will really prepare you mentally, physically, or emotionally for actually coming here and beginning to teach. My best advice? Relax. Enjoy your last months as a college student. Plan to roll with the punches. MTCers who can shrug off stress, who don't take themselves or their work too seriously, and who can simply relax under pressure will thrive. So start practicing.

Everything else that I might want to say to you has already been written well by a former TFA. He wrote a letter to an in-coming first-year that sums up our job. Enjoy.

A lot of the things I thought about when I read the executive summary have already been written, in a much-more thought-through (and probably better-written) entry by a colleague of mine. 

The Executive Summary is the kind of statistical research report that I enjoy reading on pretty much ANY topic other than how awful Mississippi, and the Delta, is in comparison to the rest of the country. It would have made for fascinating reading 3 years ago (oh, I would have eaten it up and found it incredible), but now it just depresses me. I put off this blog until the last day or so because I just didn't even want to read it.

Yes, Mississippi has a lot of problems. Yes, the Delta is an incredibly depressing place. Yes, Mississippi, and more specifically, the Delta, has the worst of all the good things you can think of (graduation rates, incomes, education, industry, life expectancy, "human development", health, hope, etc ) and the best of all the worst things (teen pregnancy, poverty, unemployment, crime, segregation, idiocy, laziness, etc).

No matter how many times we can repeat, quanitify, publish, diagram, color-in-the-map, or research them, it is still going to turn out the same. Research like this may be thought-provoking for outsiders, and a call-to-arms for Mississippians who believe in in the power of optimism and progress and prosperity, but I am feeling more and more pessimistic about the Delta. This place is stuck in a hole. There is no solution. Nothing will fix the myriad problems in this particular "county grouping", as the summary calls it.

The two-map comparison in the summary is one of the more depressing things -- the MEDIAN income for blacks in my county is between 13,000 and 15,000 dollars. The median income for whites in my county is 30,000 to 38,000. There's not much to say about that, other than I don't understand why every single one of my students isn't working their little behind off to get out of this place, with that kind of future looking at them.

But then I realize, the reason the median is so low, and the reason that many of my kids don't try in my class, is that many of the African Americans in our community AREN'T working. Here are the two maps I created:

We need character education. Our school attempts to run a character education program. We have a “character word” of the week, which is announced, along with a brief explanation each week over the announcements. But we don't actually teach behavior associated with that word.

I think our community could really benefit from is a strong program to teach character (I'm thinking along the lines of some of the programs in the KIPP schools) in elementary and middle school, and perhaps even into the high school, that truly teach proper behavior and etiquette. After going on vacation, and leaving the Delta, I remembered again how frustrating the lack of social manners in our community really is.

When you go to restaurants in this community, your order is constantly lost, confused, or met with a scowl. Rarely do store clerks look you in the eye, or secretaries respond with a smile. No one takes time to help you any more than their job requirements allow.

In schools (and out of them) most kids do not understand how to speak to adults, do not use the words “please” and “thank you” and rarely look you in the eye. They seem to struggle with the idea that others might have feelings, or that others might wish for the same respect that they themselves require.

It's not the kids' fault. They don't know. I've watched parents that are present for these types of behavior react as if all is normal, barely perceiving that their child's behavior might be impolite, or even outright rude and offensive. So much to teach; so little time.

This post is a response to a New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell titled Most Likely to Succeed. It examines the difficulties in predicting who might make a "good" teacher before they actually begin teaching, and how we have a critical shortage of these "good" teachers, with no way to determine how to find them...

I thought this article was fantastic, and totally on point. I liked the way the author so nicely blended the frustrations of a quarterback coach with the educational establishment's own "quarterback problem" -- an inability to predict an indvidual's success on the field, or in the classroom, until they are already there.

In an ideal world, aspiring teachers would enter into an extended student-teaching component for their education degree. Not only would these trainees learn from a veteran teacher in the classroom, they would also undergo a battery of tests to determine their overall effectiveness in any number of ares.

These tests would be developed along a nationalized scale --a sort of SAT, or GRE of evaluating teacher performance. Each teacher would be assigned a ranged percentile in each tested area. Public school would then require access to these scores when hiring, and schools could base hiring decisions on effectiveness in their preferred areas.

Of course, like most good ideas in education, it would never work.
There wouldn't be the money.
Schools of education would resist wholesale overhaul.
Teacher's unions would scream injustice and use their powerful lobby to end it.
And schools would be forced to hire low-scoring teachers anyway -- because it would do nothing to help our nation's shortage of QUALIFIED, DEDICATED educators.

Really, the only way to improve teacher quality is for our nation to actually invest in it. Teaching needs to become a desired profession of the elite -- if the job carried any prestige, or a decent salary, it could attract worthwhile candidates, rather than the bottom of the barrel. Thomas Friedman puts it wonderfully in this morning's New York Times -- if we want a real stimulus, we better start with "Tax Cuts for Teachers".

I found out last week that I will be teaching English II. My principal unceremoniously walked into my room, and while my students were quietly working asked me "If the state test scares" me.  "No, not really" I replied, trying not to get my hopes up. "Well, it looks like you've got it for the spring". I almost did a backflip when he walked out -- I was grinning from ear to ear.

I can't wait to teach English II this spring, for a number of reasons.

 Number One - It is a class that carries with it a concrete challenge. Not to just "teach" and get the students to "learn" (which for a vast number of people mean incredibly different things), but to get as many students as possible to score as highly as possible on the state test.

Number Two - The kids who are taking English II are well aware of the implications. They know that if they do not pass this test, they will not graduate from high school. Their parents are also well aware of the implications. As a result, the kids are more focused, and more willing to work hard  -- they are scared into it.

Number Three - Sophmores are more mature than freshmen.

Number Four - I have been teaching "to the test" (i.e. focused tightly on the frameworks, and getting kids familiar with the way the objectives are tested) this fall with my 9th graders, so I am much more prepared than I would have been for the English III and Learning Strategies classes that I was originally teaching.

Number Five - The fact that they are transferring me to English II says that the administration trusts me to teach it well. I may not be a great English teacher, but they know I am not lazy, and that I work hard, and that I will not be a complete disaster. This makes me feel good.