A Caring Administration

I just spoke with one of the administrators at my school.  I could tell she was a little preoccupied on something, since she was walking swiftly and had this look of grim determination on her face.  I didn't want to take long, so I caught up to her and said said "Hey, I have a quick question for you..."

And before I could get another word out of my mouth, she said "Nope.  I don't have time right now."

Awesome, just awesome.  What a great work environment.

Conflict of Schedule

Last Friday, I caught wind of a possible change in the schedule for the coming week.  There were words thrown around like "4 computer lab classes" and "possible elective courses" when discussing what my schedule was going to be like.  But nothing was ever solidified, and I left Friday without a clue what was going to happen with my own schedule come Monday.

Evidently, so did everyone else.

We got to school today, and in good 'ol WB fashion, there was awesome pandemonium as the students all attempted to figure out what their schedules were for the day.  No one had any clue, including many of the students who, for some reason had two 3rd period classes, and two 5th period classes.  I just shrugged my shoulders and rolled with the punches.  The version of me a year ago in this situation would have been pulling his hair out with anticipation.  The version of me today, well, he just figured he'd make it work.

Turns out, my classes had only been "scheduled" in the loosest sense of the word, and I ended up not even having a 4th and 5th period today.  I didn't complain.

What I did do, however, was head down to the counseling center, and offer my services to help fix the master schedule.  The counseling center was pretty chaotic, and I know that they hadn't had a chance to even think about the schedule due to the innumerable crisis that they are continually having to address.  My offer was appreciated, but apparently dismissed.

Until about 20 minutes later when I got the call.  I was up.  So I went to the center, asked some questions for about 15 minutes, and then headed back to my room to get things straightened out.  Approximately 45 minutes later, I took back a fully functional, fixed master schedule.  I don't know if it'll be used, but I'll find out tomorrow.

Just another day at the WB.

Day Two

Today was Day Two of the new school year.  Guess what the most extraordinary thing has been thus far?  The fact that nothing crazy has happened!  I can hardly believe it - my classroom isn't the epitome of perfection, but when you compare where I am this year on Day Two with where I was last year - well, the comparisons aren't even close!

On another note, we had our second "casualty" for the school year thus far.  I heard that one of the teachers yesterday had a really rough time with a couple of the classes, and I guess it was just too much for her, and she didn't come back.  It pains my heart to know that my students can act in such a manner, but honestly after I heard about the things that happened in her classroom - it's EXACTLY where I was last year after Day One.

If I have anything to say about Teach For America, that is definitely one thing that comes from its members - a desire to persist!  If I hadn't made that two year commitment to stick it though, I probably would have quit last year after my first day as well.  Anyhow, I'll keep my eyes peeled as I wait for the other shoe to drop.  Maybe it won't, but surely that's just wishful thinking...

New School Year's Eve

10 hours and counting.  Wish me luck.

And so it begins

7 days.  And counting.  I can't even begin to fathom how quickly this summer has gone.  Tomorrow I'll be back in the classroom, but I won't be teaching.  Not yet.  But soon, how time will fly.  And all that I have to say right now to you, my readers, is buckle up!  Get pumped for the incredible tales of excitement, disbelief, amazement, and adventure that I will be posting on a semi-daily basis - straight from my 6/7 grade math classroom.

So, subscribe to my blog, or bookmark it using any of the available URL's (thetfablog.com, theteachforamericablog.com, or still at jonathan.woahn.com, although I can't say for how long that one will be there), curl up with a nice hot beverage, hit the refresh key often, and prepare to be blown away.  I know I am, I can hardly wait.

Interesting side note - the lady in the stock picture above looks kind of like Wendy Kopp, the founder of TFA, to the right.  I think it's pretty similar to what her face would look like after reading my blog.  I'd summarize her expression as "incredulous endearment".  You?

The End is Here!

School's out.  By some incredible grace of the Almighty, I made it through my first year.  And to celebrate, I'm changing the format of my blog.  I really like this equation in the background, it reminds that at one point in my life I was actually doing some awesome math.  It seems a little distracting though, so let me know what you think..  It's still in flux...

The last week of my life was spent decompressing in Lake Powell with my family.  It was a week that I have been looking forward to since I was first invited to Powell, which I think was back in January or February.  I cannot possibly conceive of two more opposite environments than a classroom at my school, and staying on a houseboat at Lake Powell.  There were literally days during the week that I didn't look at a clock once, which was a huge contrast compared with the classroom environment, where I was literally checking my watch every 5 minutes or less.  I opened every single day not having a single thing that I expected or was expected to accomplish.  The demands of my time/attention were absolutely minimal, and the hardest decision I think I faced the entire week was whether I wanted to go wake boarding or finish reading a book I had.  Literally.  And if there is a better way to recover from the most grueling experience of my entire life, I don't want to hear about it because for me - this was heaven.

There are a number of blog entries forthcoming in the next few days, including, but not limited to my reflections from the year, highlights, takeaways, and my plans for the upcoming school year.  However, I wanted to dedicate this blog entry to one of the last epic, dysfunctional failures at my school to top off the school year.

Evidently our school has a tradition of having an end-of-the-year picnic.  People started talking about the picnic back in December, and was continually reaffirmed via various comments from other faculty members and administrators about the picnic the last week of school.  A week or two before the end of the school year, I find out that the picnic is going to be on Tuesday of the last week.  And that, my friends, was as much information as was conveyed to me about the picnic.

Have you ever planned a large event for groups of people?  I want you to take a moment and consider the essential information that is needed when planning an event.

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Now that you've had a moment to consider to think about it, allow me to share my thoughts.  In my mind, the essential information that you need to tell people is 1. When (not just the date, but the time as well) 2. Where 3. What (what is happening/what can I bring?) 4. Who and 5. How (as in "How are we going to get all 200 of our students to the picnic since it's at some undisclosed-location-that-is-not-at-our-school").  Does any of this seem irrational or out of place?  Am I missing anything here?

Now that I have outlined these thoughts, allow me to paint the picture of what happened.  Tuesday morning, I show up at school.  I know that we have the picnic, but I don't know what time we are supposed to be there.  And come to think of it, I had no idea where "there" was.  Someone had said that it was near Candlestick Field.  Since I'm from the area, I know exactly the park that was mentioned, and so I'm not worried about this at all, especially since I figured that the transportation method that was arranged would get us to wherever we needed to go.  We start homeroom for the day, and I'm hopefully assuming that during homeroom, which is the time we usually get our announcements, someone will kindly inform me of the details of this picnic that is supposedly taking place today.  Homeroom ends, and I'm no further enlightened than when I started the period.  So I send my students to first period.

Since it's Tuesday, the periods are shorter and I only have my kids for about 35 minutes.  I hadn't planned a lesson or anything since I figured that the picnic would last all day, so I improvise (I've gotten much better at this since working at my school).  Throughout the entire period, my students are continually asking me when we're leaving for the picnic, and I maintain my standard response - as soon as they release us.  The period ends, and I still haven't received any word as to what will be happening so I send my kids off to second period.  This is my prep period and I decide to do a little investigating and see what information I can scrounge up.

I stop by the office to see our secretary, Chris, and ask her if she knows what time we are supposed to leave for the park, how we're going to get there, and where exactly it is I'm going.   Unfortunately, Chris has been about as informed as I have, but she does have the benefit of being able to monitor the movement of staff/students/administrators in and out of the building, and she tells me that a number of the administrators have already left.  I'm slightly confused, and so I ask Chris how they got over there.  She told me they drove their cars, and so I ask her what I'm' supposed to do.  She told me that I needed to figure that out, and I needed to take my homeroom students with me.

Thanks for the heads up admin!  So, in case this isn't a clear picture yet - let me clarify the current situation.  I am supposed to get all of my homeroom students to a picnic that is taking place at some park in the vicinity of Candlestick Field, which is approximately 1.5 miles from my school, at SOME TIME TODAY.

Does anyone else see anything completely WRONG with this situation?  That's because there are a plethora of issues about this, but to be completely honest - I can't say that I'm surprised.  This is the exact type of circumstance that I have come to expect from my school.  This is just how we roll at my school.  Time to formulate a plan of action.

I hustle down to Masharika's classroom, and ask her what her plan is.  She tells me that she was just planning on walking to the park with her homeroom as soon as second period is over.  I tell her that sounds great, and ask if we can tag along.  Of course she says yes, because Masharika is just awesome like that, and I'm feeling much better about life at this point.

Second period ends, I intercept all of my homeroom students, and tell them that we are now leaving.  Once I get a visual on all of my students, I meet up with Masharika in the front of the school, and we head out.  The reason that I say "a visual" on my students is because I communicated to them that we were leaving and that they needed to come with me, but in the mass chaos that ensues between classes, trying to gather them all together would have been akin to trying to strain weavils from what.  Just not really worth the time...

Like a herd of cats, we're off to the picnic, me, Masharika, and 16 of our 6th grade students, walking down Silver Avenue.  This isn't the first time that we have conducted a walking field trip, and once you get comfortable with how incredibly independent these kids are, and that although it may seem at every turn like they're all about to run screaming into the middle of the street at any given moment, they won't, and you're set.  Actually, I was very impressed with our little crew - they ran around, they teased each other, played tag, jumped up to touch every hanging tree or street sign, a small group adopted a turtles pace and lagged far behind the main body, but overall, they were very responsive to Masharika and I.  They waited at every street corner like we asked them before crossing, they remained on the same side of the street that we were on, and some of them stayed near by and played games like "20 questions" and "Eye Spy".  It was a perfect example of riding the organized chaos that I have come to master over my year at my school.

About 30 minutes later, we were getting off the MUNI train that runs down Third Street.  The road we got off on was the road that would lead us to the park where the picnic was.  As we were walking down this street, I started seeing a number of the faculty members of my school driving down the road, waving as they passed by.  Sometimes they'd have 3 or 4 students in the car with them, but a number of them didn't have any students at all.  I recall passing a fleeting thought of "Strange, I wonder where all of their students are?..." but failed to give it further attention.  The thought was gone.

We finally arrived at the park.  At the final head count, we were only missing 4 students.  I jokingly mentioned that only losing 25% of our students was within my range of acceptable losses - anything over 30% and we'd probably have to go back and look for them.  It turned out that 1 of them had been picked up by his Grandmother, and the other three had been in the turtle group and been picked up by one of the other faculty members.

There were probably a million other things that I could write about concerning this event, but for fear of making this mammoth entry last until the next ice age, there is just one more thing that I wanted to touch on to share the ridiculousness of this entire situation that so perfectly encapsulates my year at my school.

About 45 minutes after Masharika and I arrived at the park, Sylvia comes storming in, cussing like a sailor and obviously upset.  I mean, she was seriously radiating fury.  Now, Sylvia is usually one of the happiest, most genuinely fun people that I've met in my life, but in that moment, she was wrath incarnate.   I was almost afraid to ask her what happened, but I really couldn't just let it pass, so I did and she spewed forth her story.

Due to the fanatical planning that went into this event, Sylvia had no idea what time she was supposed to leave for the field trip.  So she just kept going through the periods like the champion that she is, waiting for some kind of announcement to release us.  Well, it wasn't until about 1/2 way through third period that students started showing up at her door (during class) asking her what was going on with the picnic, and telling her that none of their teachers were in class.  It just so happened that in that moment, the only other adult in the school was Chris, the secretary in the front office.  So Sylvia was the last teacher in the school, with 46 students.

46.  That is literally the ENTIRE 7th grade class.  So Sylvia, by herself, drove her herd of students to the picnic.  And when I say "drove", I don't mean in her car, or in a bus, or any other type of mass transportation, I mean it in the sense like a cowboy drives home the cattle, or a shepherd drives his sheep.  I honestly don't know if any other teacher in the school could have done it - Sylvia commands the respect of the 7th graders like no other adult in the school.  But even still, she was left with the monumental task of making sure all 46 of those students arrived, in tact and unharmed.

I would have loved to see how she did it.  I can only imagine, and thank the heavens that it didn't happen to me, but it would have been quite the feat to see.  And what a way to wrap up the school year - a fantastic memory for me to hold onto over the summer, and anticipate for next year.

Dysfunctional failure?  Perhaps.  Can I wait to see what next year holds in store for me?  Hardly.  All I know is that it's going to be epic.

I need your opinion!

Greetings faithful readers.  I apologize for the lack of recent entries - I have a juicy one currently in the works that will be a solid read, I assure you.  Look forward to it with great anticipation.  Until then...

I need some input.  I am seriously considering writing a book that documents my experiences as a TFA member working in possibly one of the worst school environments in all of California, but I don't want to waste my time with it if there isn't a "market" for it.

The book would be targeted to be in the range of ~3-400 pages, written in the same, awesome style that I have written these blog posts.  The book would share my experience with TFA, my perspectives from the front lines, my experiences inside the classroom, and my take on the educational system with which I was thrust in to.  Basically, it would be very similar to the posts that I have written on this blog.  If you have enjoyed it, and you would enjoy to read more about it, or think that other people would enjoy reading more about me/my experience, please let me know in the comment section below.  So, for those of you who saw this block of text and jumped to the line below:

Please comment: (Yes/No) Should I write a book about my experience as a TFA corp member?  I'd love to hear your input, especially if it's a "no", because I want to know why.