Teacher's Diary

Renewed Excitement

After feeling like my teaching career was faltering and I was hitting a total wall, I have been rejuvenated by...you guessed it...professional development. Although my school has been struggling with many issues, my administration had the good sense to send me, along with another teacher, a dean and an AP, to a Harvard Institute for New and Aspiring Leaders. I don't have time to write about it now, but there is more to come on all the exciting things I learned, am thinking about and would like to share with all of you.

Keep checking back! Probably this weekend I will have time to post more thoughts and tips. It will help me organize my thoughts and give you all an insight into what goes on behind those Ivy walls!

Photo of the Week - Supermoon

I hope that many of you were able to experience the "supermoon" that occurred yesterday. The moon was full and it was also at perigee, the point of closest approach to Earth, so it appeared larger than a typical full moon would. I was unfortunately at the movies and missed the rising of this moon, so I only got to see it once it was higher up in the sky. Even then, it looked bigger than usual.

For those who missed it, the moon should still appear fairly large at rising, even though it is no longer completely full. Plus, there are countless websites on which to browse pictures of the event, from the website where I got this gorgeous photo to the BBC's collection of amateur photographs. Enjoy!

Another Great Japan Resource

I was just sent this site from ABC news, where you can actually hover over images to see before and after aerial shots of different parts of Japan that have been affected by the earthquake and tsunami. Below is a screenshot.

Photo of the Week - All Eyes on Japan

Of course, even my students are being inundated with information about the 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck just offshore Japan, causing widespread damage, creating a tsunami that traveled all the way to California and igniting fear of a possible nuclear meltdown at a 40 year old power plant in Fukushima. I have been amazed by the fact that, not only were the earthquake and following tsunami devastating, but hundreds of aftershocks are still going on and many of them have been over 6.0 magnitude themselves. This was an incredibly powerful earthquake.

And talk about a teachable moment. I have just begun the unit on plate tectonics and earthquakes with my students and they are suddenly so excited and engaged in what they are learning. On Friday, when I had barely wrapped my head around what had happened, students were rushing to my room, asking if I had heard about it. This earthquake has the potential to discuss topics ranging from subduction plate boundaries to earthquake engineering. We have already compared the damage to the earthquake last year in Haiti and discuss the differences in infrastructure between the two locations. Many of my students are from the Caribbean islands, so the Haiti earthquake struck close to home.

In the map above, the original earthquake is the largest red dot, right in the middle and partially covered by the aftershocks. This map, and more like it, can be found at the USGS website. There are also a number of good videos of the earthquake, tsunami and earthquake damage at the BBC website. While this is a great opportunty to get students engaged and involved, my thoughts are with those who have lost loved ones in this tragic event. I hope that many of the people in Japan who are still missing will be found alive soon.

The Doldrums of Teaching

The past week has been utterly awful. I'm getting sick, my classes are crazy, the weather is terrible and my lessons are falling flat, no matter how hard I work on them. I am simply not enjoying being a teacher right now and find it hard to even get myself out of bed in the morning because I dred going to work.

I had a similar slump last year around this time and it makes life a chore. This year, things seem really hopeless - at least last year, I could pass my failures off as rookie mistakes, but now I feel I am failing as a teacher. It has gotten so bad that I'm having vivid nightmares involving school and can't seem to get anything done because I am constantly paralyzed by how far behind I feel.

Feelings are similar throughout my school. My co-teacher had to take Monday off because he was having such severe panic attacks and most of the staff is hanging on by a thread. On top of that, we had a visit from an expert on school safety come from the union and she essentially told us that our school is in serious violation of lots of safety protocols. The task now falls on us to fix the gaping holes our administration has left in the safety network. It is disheartening to think about how awful the situation is for our students.

I have been avoiding talking about many of the problems in this forum, simply to protect my anonymity, but I feel I should share that my school is going through a slow process of falling apart. Our principal has been told that our scores must drastically improve to avoid change of leadership and/or shutting down of the school. The great idea of small schools is turning out to be just another failed attempt at fixing a system that is fundamentally flawed. Many small schools are struggling to stay afloat and teachers are discouraged by the lack of job security (or at least the feeling that their jobs are not secure). We are overworked, underpaid and seriously underappreciated by both our students and our administration. At least that's how it is at my school.

I had said I was in this for the long haul, but now I'm not so sure I can handle it. I hadn't intended to look for another job, but I'm thinking I might have to. Still, I try to find something good about every day - no matter how small - because at this point those small things are the only things keeping me going.

Photo of the Week - Sunset on the Gulf

This photo of the week is a day late, but as they say, better late than never. I already skipped last week, precisely because I was enjoying wonderful views like this one and basking in the warm Florida sunlight. After a relaxing week in Sarasota, it was difficult to get back on track last week, but now I'm finding a rhythm in my new unit and gaining ground. I'm holding this picture of the sunset in my mind in anticipation of summer. I'm already ready for it to come!

How to Turn a Student Around

The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer. In fact, it might have been titled How to Do Nothing and Get Results, but I had a good experience with a student this week and I want to share it. Maybe in writing it down, I will get some insight into how to replicate the results and reach more students.

I have a student, we'll call her Ella, who has been really getting on my nerves this week. At the beginning of the year, I recognized how smart she was, only to realize that she seemed to care little about school and certainly wanted nothing to do with my class. For the past week or two, she has not listened to a single word I have said, and when I call her out or ask her to stop talking, she simply snaps at me. The exchange goes something like this:

"Ella, could you please focus on the lesson?"

"Why? This class is boring. Nobody even understands what you are talking about."

"Ok, well we need to learn this, so if you can't focus and stop being distracting, I'm going to have to ask you to leave the classroom."

"Thank God!" [here, she gathers her stuff and saunters out of the room]

I was not feeling great about the whole thing. While I complained to everyone who would listen about how frustrating this student was, I also blamed myself. Maybe my class really wasn't engaging enough. Maybe I wasn't putting enough time into creating interesting motivation and buy-in from my students. Maybe I wasn't giving Ella enough attention - I was losing her and not helping her catch up, so she was discouraged and lashing out to make up for it.

With all these thought running around in my head, I tried to stay positive. I focused on my lessons and tried to give Ella more one-on-one attention. Even though she didn't really respond to my efforts, I kept trying and didn't let on how discouraged I was. Still, it seemed to be having little effect.

Then today, something miraculous happened. Perhaps outside pressure had something to do with it, but for whatever reason, Ella decided she was going to stay with me during lunch to go over a quiz we had just taken. When away from her classmates, Ella is an intelligent and respectful girl. She closed the door so that she wouldn't be distracted and sat with me for the entire period until she really understood the material she had so roundly discarded the previous days. She redid her quiz and ended up with almost a perfect score.

I took the opportunity of having her captive to talk to her not only about the material, but about what had been going on in class behaviorally. I apologized for not giving her enough attention and she in turn laughed at her own "mood swings" and said she would try harder to focus. I also asked her to give me suggestions about how to make the class more interesting, acknowledging that the Earth Science material can sometimes feel a bit dry. Although she didn't have ready suggestions for me, I fully expect to hear back from her. If I don't, I will make sure to ask.

Hopefully by giving her a sense of ownership, I can get her to become a productive member of the class and she can serve as a model for other difficult students. She is popular and charismatic, so I hope others will be inspired to follow her lead.

High Honors

The sentiments at my school are not great right now. Morale is low in the wake of a mandate from the chancellor to improve test scores or risk closing down plus the threat of layoffs on the horizon. Teachers aren't particularly inspired right now, especially coming off break and feeling the mid-year slump. Students are restless and can sense that the teachers aren't happy. All this combined seems like a recipe for disaster.

Yet I find a way to see the silver lining.

As my regular readers know, I founded an Honor Society at my school last year and have been steadily increasing my ability to run the events successfully. Tonight was a win in that department. Based on their grades from last semester, I inducted a new Honor Society at a celebratory dinner tonight, and it was the best of the three I have done so far. Instead of running around like a chicken with its head cut off, today I was able to plan out the food preparation, decorations and certificates with relative ease. It felt good. I'm getting better at this.

The dinner itself was exactly what I needed. Rather than scolding unruly students and bemoaning their lack of enthusiasm for science (or school in general), I was able to celebrate the success that some of them are having. I met parents and got to know some of the 9th graders who I have not taught yet. I helped prepare a delicious meal for them and passed out awards. After a long day, it was so nice to see that some students truly are learning and achieving.

I guess part of the lesson for me is that I need to step back and look at the full picture more. I am becoming a worthy teacher, despite the fact that not all of my students are meeting my high standards. My students are learning and growing. I have accepted the fact that I can't save all of them, yet I still yearn to see them all pass the Regents at the end of the year. I still set high goals, but I am ok with the fact that I may not achieve them this year, or next year, or the year after. I just have to keep pushing through and finding new ways to inspire as many of my students as possible.

Rewarding the high achievers is something I have to do more of. These kids get so little attention, since our school has so many behavior and attendance issues to deal with. They need just as much attention as the other students and I truly value seeing how excited they are to receive recognition for their hard work. So bravo to them! I hope they can keep it up through high school and beyond!