Getting a handle on things

I find that to be a rather interesting colloquial expression - getting a handle on things. Think about it for a moment... Imagine getting off a long flight, and going to the luggage return area, only to find that all of the handles on your luggage have been broken off. Now this is a bag that you had to pay the excessive weight penalty for just to get it on the plane, so it's going to be no picnic pulling it off the track.

Your first attempt includes reaching out to grab the corner of the bag, but since it's both moving and rather heavy, it slips from your fingers for lack of a solid grip. So your bag does a lap around the carousel and on the second round, you derterminedly grab both sides of the bag and loft straight up. However, dedicating both arms to this venture has thrown off your center of gravity, and you are unable to summon the requisite moment arm to extract the bag off of the carousel.

And the bag makes another lap. However, throughout all this time there are more bags have been coming down the shute, and packing your bag down onto the track. By the time it gets around to you this time, there are countless other bodies crowding the edge of the carousel, pushing, shoving, trying to get their bags, which have been tightly lodged in with your own, from off the track. Game over. Your only hope now is to either find a shark hook and snag your bag out from among the masses, or wait until the vicinity is clear, and the carousel has stopped since there is no more luggage coming.

But if you just had that one handle on the top, to have been able to seat yourself and get that massive case off the track the first time, or any of the succesive trips around the track, your chances of success are greatly enhanced by the addition of that single grip.

In this example, I feel like the bag is full of lesson plans and a more simple life, one where I'm not required to spend 80 hours a week writing lesson plans and preparing for my class. One where I actually have a life that exists outside of my classroom. Now I'm not saying I have gotten that bag off of the carousel yet, by I feel like I'm making headway.

Thus far I've just been watching the bag make its rounds for the last 18 weeks, continually attempting, unsuccessfuly, to extract it from the track, where it is buried under a mountain of other bags and people. But I can see it now, and I feel that i've at least set anchors on the bag. And the handle is in the mail. We're making progress here people, prepare yourselves.

AS - After Students

BS - Before students

The night after

I just realized that my last post says that it was posted on October 4, 2009. That is totally wrong, and I'm not really sure why that's the date it has. Unless my mind has entered into some type of pre-temporal time vortex landing me back over a month, I am confident that I wrote that post just last Sunday while I was preparing for my Sunday School lesson. Which I did. I've gotta keep these sanity checks online, who knows where I might find myself on a daily basis.

Yesterday I administered my second unit test in both my 6th and 7th grade classes. I hated it, because I knew that the majority of the students weren't prepared for the test. But I did know that the students who have been following along, doing their homework, and not screwing around in the classroom were going to be ready. Plus, I'm about 1.5-2 weeks behind on my long term plan, and I can't afford to waste any more time. So it was time to move on, and I had to give the test anyhow.

It's a weird thing, as a teacher, the things that you get excited about. For instance, when I'm walking through the halls and I see a pencil on the floor, I get excited, because well, hey, free pencil! Or a new ream of paper for the copy machine - when Chris walks in carrying that new package of paper at 7:30 am after I've been nervously waiting for it since I arrived at the school at 6:45, it's like Christmas day has finally arrived. And on the line of strange things you get excited about, one is assessment data, like tests and quizzes - for it's a chance to really see how well your students grasped what you've been pouring your soul into for the last better part of your life. So I excitedly rushed into my little apartment last night, excited to see how my students did on a test, that I unfortunately knew beforehand that they didn't do well on - my excitement stemming from the fact that maybe in this steaming pile of failure there will be a diamond or two of success. I haven't finished grading the 7th grade tests yet, but I can say with certainty that in the 6th grade, there were more than two. In fact, to be exact, there were 5. 5 out of 34 students who did amazingly awesome on the exam.

My hopes were particularly set with one of my students, DJ, who pulled me aside during the exam and whispered to me "I think I aced this." My heart lept for joy, in the fact that I KNOW DJ is totally capable of doing so, for he is brilliant, but immediately sank as I recalled he had told me the same thing with the last exam. And it's not that he did horribly last time, because he did get one of the better scores in the class. But unfortunately, with how low my scores were last time, it wasn't hard.

Well, last night at 2:45 am as I was wrapping up grading the 6th grade exams, I about broke down in tears as I pulled out DJ's test, and graded it, cruising from answer to answer. DJ's intuition was right on this time, as he scored the class high of 51/53 - 96%. These students have the capacity to be brilliant, I just need to figure out how to get them to tap it.

But on the other end of the scale, these students blow my mind - in a number of ways. Allow me to title them, and then I'll expound.

1. We had homework?

2. What's this pencil you speak of?

3. Does this test count towards my grade?

1. With education, it's essential to establish routines so that your students know at any given time what is expected of them. My question is, how long does it take for a routine to be established? I'm hoping it's longer than 13 weeks, because that's how long I've been doing THE EXACT SAME THING EVERY DAY IN CLASS and my students are still like - "We had homework?"

YES! Every day for the last 13 weeks, with a few exceptions, YOU HAVE HOMEWORK! And what do I expect you to do with it? Well if you were to guess according to their actions, it would be leave it in the bottom of my backpack, throw it on the floor, put it on the overhead, put it on Mr. Woahn's desk, or essentially anywhere except for the BASKET THAT HAS YOUR PERIOD'S HOMEWORK LABELED ON IT! That just wouldn't make sense.

Or in addition to this, my next favorite response is, as I walk around collecting homework from EVERY PERSON AROUND YOU, to hear a student say "You didn't give it to me." Well, buck-o, somehow every person who was sitting around you yesterday in class got the homework, and if I had to postulate based on the evidence, I'd be willing to wager that you did, and it got left in the same place where you put your reminder to do math homework last night.

2. So if 13 weeks isn't long enough to establish routines, you'd think that 5-6 YEARS of going to school might be? WRONG! Let me share a little epiphany that my students seem to rediscover on a daily basis. Come over here, so I can whisper this into your ear... So, did you know that when you get to class, you need a pencil? Yeah, incredible isn't it?! It will change your life! I'd think that after 5-6 years of school, this is something that you might realize by now, but evidently, it's still an evasive secret. Or at least it is to a number of students, who, on a daily basis I can guarantee with a higher certainty of success than I could predict the sunrise, which students will DAILY tell me that they need a pencil.

For the first two weeks of school, I just gave them pencils. You've never seen 400 pencils disappear so quickly. Then I started trading them whatever they had in their pockets for pencils - gum, rubber bands, toys, cell phones, keys, wallets. However, as is evidenced by the drawer full of miscellaneous items, the only thing that happens from trading is that I get a drawer full of random student possessions. So I started selling pencils to them. 5 cents, or whatever coin they have in their pocket. And I don't give change back.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about the pencils, besides the fact that it's only been 6 years, which evidently isn't enough time to ingrain the thought that EVERY DAY IN CLASS YOU'RE GOING TO NEED A PENCIL, is that when they don't have a pencil, many of the students think they're punishing me by saying "Well then, I'm not doing anything today." At this same time, they could ask their neighbor, who likely has 100 pencils in their backpack. Or at least I'd think they would, because seriously - where in the world are all of these pencils disappearing to?

Next week, I'm starting a classroom incentive to start bringing pencils to class. It's going to be part of a larger classroom management system that I'm putting into effect, but essentially one of the way these guys can earn points is by everyone bringing a pencil to class, or at the very least not asking ME for a pencil.

3. And last of this posting rant, is "Does this test count towards my grade?" Yes, I literally had about 15 students ask me that yesterday. Does this test count? Well, let's consider the following:

After the last test, we spent an entire day talking about your score, examining the questions that you missed, and setting goals about what you were going to do to score better on the next test. Every day for the last 7 weeks, I've been telling you that the questions on the Quiz are going to be JUST LIKE the ones on the test, the important one where I can determine how well you understood the material. That EVERY DAY for the last 7 days, I've been talking about how we have a test this Friday, and that if you have questions about any of the homework, to come talk to me so we can get you ready for the test. Or how about the fact that we spent the ENTIRE last two days just reviewing for the test? Or the fact that every day on the Do Now for the last week, I've been talking about how this test has the potential to bring your grade up if you do well? That not studying, or worse, not taking the test, will seriously bring your grade down?

Do any of these suggest that the test might count towards your grade? Oh, not explicit enough? Ok, well, yeah, it counts. Good luck!

Seriously though, I love these kids. So much, that it kills me to grade these tests. It seriously puts my own ability to teach in question here, and if it weren't for the fact that I had a few students who totally rocked the test, I'd feel like a complete failure.

I just need to take into account the successes that I have had - the few inside of the classroom, but additionally the ones outside of it. I had one of my students run up to me after school the other day and genuinely give me a hug after her basketball game. I had another student come talk with me last night after school for an hour, just because. I had another student walk up to me randomly between periods while I was waiting for my next class to arrive, and randomly challenge me to a thumb war. These victories, one by one, are how this battle is going to eventually be won. And I will win - there is no other option.

Back (again)

If you were to read my journal, I start just about every entry like this:

"It's been awhile since I've written in here, and I really need to do it more. I was thinking about this today, and I'm going to start doing so now - at least once a week, hopefully more often..."

Then about 3-4 months later, there is a similar entry. I feel that is what has happened with this blog, and I don't want it to be like that.

Since I've been living by myself, I've started to talk to myself a lot. I'll pose questions to myself, and I will then respond to myself as if I were a different person. This doesn't seem excessively strange to me to think about, because I think a lot of people do this - but it does seem frighteningly real when I'm looking in the mirror at myself, and I am genuinely expecting an unanticipated response from the guy staring back at me. It's becoming apparent to me how Tom Hanks went crazy in that Cast Away movie. If I start referring to my roommate, Wilson, start getting worried.

But seriously, I've been thinking a lot over the last few days about this blog because today I am teaching a Sunday School lesson on finding joy in Family History work, and one of the ways that the lesson manual suggests that we might find joy in it is by writing in our journals. Which of course caused me to reflect on my own journal, and how long it's been since I wrote in there, which in turn caused me to think about this blog and consider how long it's been since I've written here. And when coupled with the huge demand that I've received from people, inquiring as to why I haven't written, I think it's about time to get back on the horse.

With that said, I need to finish preparing my lesson. But, I'm fully anticipating getting another entry in later tonight with some updates on how things are going. There are plenty of stories to be told - I just need to start telling them to someone other than myself.

I'm back

It's been what, two weeks now since I last wrote? All you faithful followers are probably wondering what's been happening, and for now the answer is: not much.

Following the last day of summer school for us, I went back home to Utah for about a week, where I spent the time with my family, having lunch with lots of friends, and preparing my belongings to take to San Francisco.

At the end of the week, my parents drove with me and all my temporal possessions to California, and commenced on a three day apartment hunt that resulted in my current location. That was about a week ago. Since then, I've been in the dark, disconnected, or as it is also known - without internet. It's been painful, I assure you, but after that long wait my patience has finally been rewarded. This afternoon a little malaysian man came to the apartment, hooked me up with cable internet, and now it's time to party.

So expect more updates coming soon. Particularly, I'd check back next week seeing as how school will be starting on Monday. From everything I've heard from the staff at my school, it's going to be an experience unlike anything I've ever seen before.

BTW - I have a job teaching 6-7th grade math at a 4-8 middle school in San Francisco. Guess I forgot to mention that...

152%

That's how much our students surpassed their summer growth goals by. I talked about the diagnostic that we gave the students at the beginning of the summer - and then we go ahead and teach them a bunch of units and subjects for the next four weeks, and then at the end we give them the final exam.

Turns out the final test is the exact same test that they took at the beginning of the summer. Using the initial diagnostic, we use their test results, and many summers of TFA data to determine what their approximate growth goal should be by the end of our time with them. For instance, if a student scored 30% on the initial diagnostic, using the TFA math magic, it calculates their growth goal should be somewhere in the vacinity of 70% by the end of the summer. So when they take the final exam, their score should be around 70%. If they scored 70%, then that means they met their summer growth goal by 100%. However, if they scored something like 50%, that means they met 50% of their summer growth goal. But if a student scores 90% on the final exam, that's like saying they met 150% of their summer growth goal.

The average on the final was 87%.

I don't know any facts or figures for certain, but I would be willing to bet that our students have one of the highest growth goal completions in all of LA institute, if not TFA. Most of the other collabs were reporting scores of 99%, 107%, which is fantastic, don't get me wrong. But I am so proud of our students for completely blowing the statistic out of the water.

It was hilarious because this morning, when we got to school, we all had this really somber attitude, and the students were heavily picking up on it. They were all really psyched to see how they did, and they could tell that we didn't seem very happy. So they were all getting super paranoid... And then we broke the news to them - that they had averaged 87% on the final, and they all started cheering.

Afterwards we met with them, one on one in the hallway, and talked to them about their goals, what they did to get there, and what they can do to continue on that path.

This was such an amazing experience - I can't believe how close I've become to these students after only four weeks. It's hard to imagine what thing will be like after an entire school year.

There were a number of awesome moments that stuck out from today. One is that I spent about 45 minutes talking to the class about a bunch of the projects that I worked on throughout my engineering education, and showed them some videos and pictures of my projects. After class, I had no less than three students who mentioned to me that they had been thinking about doing engineering, and after listening to me they felt a lot more confident about the idea.

Another moment was during class. One of our students, Amber (the same one who organized the cake for my birthday) pulled all four of us aside, and gave us each a card, and then proceeded to tell us what an amazing impact we had had in her life. She said that prior to coming to our class, she felt that she didn't understand math, that it was impossible and that she wasn't very good at it. But somehow, through our instruction, we showed her that not only was she capable of doing math, but she could do it well. She told us that we taught her to believe in herself, to have self confidence, and know that she could achieve what she set her mind to do.

This blew me away... This was the entire reason that I really wanted to join TFA, and I figured that this was an impact that I could perhaps have over the course of an entire school year. But never in four weeks. And yet, somehow it happened.

And lastly (of the many), was another student, Jessica. She stuck around after class, and had something to say to all the four of us. First, I should give a precursor about Jessica. Jessica is brilliant, but she was really sick for a lot of summer school (she missed at least an entire week, which when you consider the fact that we covered four topics daily, is like missing about 2 months of class during the regular school year), and so it was a tough road for her. But she came, she got all the homework, she worked on it, she studied it, and when it came to test time, she rocked it. Jessica had to get up at 5 am, and ride two different buses in order for her to arrive at Hamilton on time.

Jessica started off by telling us that she had had awful math experiences in the past. Her last math teacher failed her because he lost her homework, he lost her test scores, and never gave her mother an audience for a parent teacher conference. She had another math teacher who she said didn't teach her anything, who's life was threatened by a student to give him an A, and he did it. He had no control over the classroom, and she said it was literally a waste of time. She said prior to us, she hated math.

But over the course of the last four weeks, that opinion somehow changed. Jessica has ambitions of attending Berkely, and wants to become a teacher. She always had figured it would be in history or English, two subjects that she feels really strongly about. But not anymore. Now she says she's considering math, because she loves the way that we were able to break things down for her, how she was able to grasp the concepts, feel in control, and actually have fun with it!

And of course, we cried. In all of them, we cried.

What an incredible experience... it's been somewhat like a dream, there have been some definite highs and lows, but at the end of the day, one thing is certain: I'm making a difference.