"looking at your face..."

Heard from one of my coworkers as we were in a meeting after school and one of her students came in to get homework he left in his desk...

teacher: Hey, if I give you this chapstick will you use it every day?
kid: Yeah.
teacher: Alright, here you go.  Don't worry about how it looks, it's just cuz I use toothpicks to scoop it out.
kid: Ok thanks.
teacher: Cya tomorrow Billy*. As the kid has just left the room, Looking at that kid's face makes me hurt.

After we all had made fun of her for making such an inappropriate comment, especially since he was probably still close enough to hear it, she qualified it by saying she meant that his cracked lips always made her cringe.  And she joked around with him every day about his lips being cracked.

HA! 

*name changed

Desperate Times

There's a million other things I should be doing besides blogging, but I need to release this or I'll explode. Please pray for me this week, I really need it.

I love reading Psalms. The writing is so painfully honest, so soul-searchingly real that it leaves me breathless at the writer's ability to bare himself so openly. When I struggle to find words for my emotions and thoughts, I am able to borrow David's words into my own prayers.

Today I think I finally understand how David felt when he keeps writing about how "evils encompassed me beyond number, my iniquities have overtaken me, and I cannot see; they are more than the hairs of my head; my heart fails me." (Psalms 40:12) Coming back to school today after missing 1 1/2 days due to the flu, I got bombarded by news from fellow teachers and the principals that students in my class had gotten into serious trouble. Without going into detail, most of today was spent in long, serious discussions on how my partner teacher and I had dropped the ball on this and how to rectify the situation. On top of this, the administration has been getting on all the teachers on the lack of progress many of the struggling students are exhibiting. Tomorrow my partner and I will be making our case to the principal and I am pretty scared.

Later today, I find that when I was gone, a couple students had ended up stealing sticker sheets from my desk that I use as rewards, and had to address that issue at the end of the day. By the end of the day to say I was discouraged would be the understatement of the century.

What does God want me to learn through this situation? How do I still glorify Him in the midst of all this crap?

This is where Psalms straight up inspires me. "Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required... I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart... your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me!" (Psalms 40:8/11)

My joy and delight must be in doing the work of the Lord. This comes in remembering my purpose in teaching the kids. This involves teaching them academically, but also how to be better people. Just like how parents must feel like pulling out their hair in disciplining their kids, I must persevere and continue to love my students in their times of failure.

As I remember God's faithfulness and continual presence in my life, that will continue to keep my hope even in this dark time. Thank you God for your timely Word, but more than just being a neat intellectual exercise, I pray that this will be a nugget of truth that takes root in my heart.

Prayer Reqs:
1) A heart that revels in God's presence. Not letting circumstances dictate my faith.
2) HMCC Austin students. Pray that they are anticipating something amazing to happen at the retreat this weekend.
3) My students. They will gain a greater heart for learning and I have wisdom/ patience in working with them.

Book Fairs make teachers happy

It's funny what makes me happy nowadays. I was at work last night and one of my co-workers stopped by and we started chatting about what we were planning for our kids for Christmas. I mentioned I was scrambling to try finding a cheap place to buy books for my kids and she mentioned the most amazing thing: Scholastic Book Fairs for teachers.

Today after school, I jetted it to pretty close to San Antonio and was greeted with a glorious sight of a gigantic warehouse full of aisles of books for CHEAP. You could pretty much get any book for 50-80% off, meaning most books would cost around $2-6. I ended up getting 68 books for $140 (after getting $35 off by sweet talking the cashier)!!!

Definitely worth the hour and a half drive.

Little Encouragements

I'm such a loser. Not in the typical "I can't win" sense, (which is obviously not true, ;) ) but when it comes to needing validation in what I'm doing. Even now as I'm doing a quick update, I'm looking at my wall and I have pictures of friends and family, encouraging notes and mementos (yes I keep all of them), and general paraphernalia that keep me optimistic.

As work has been a constant struggle with the endless meetings and lesson planning and modifications, I've been quickly becoming drained and discouraged at my students' lack of retention and my lack of improvement at teaching. As all the veteran teachers have been telling me, "You'll suck your first 3 years of teaching", I still hate to be the status quo. Anyways, I've been getting lots of visits from interventionists giving suggestions on changing my schedule (always constructive, but still criticism), visits from my Assistant principal doing informal evaluations, and mandatory meetings to learn about different teaching techniques.

I might rant in a later post about all those meetings/trainings later on, but that's not the point of this post. After a mediocre 1st 6 weeks, I was looking forward to a fresh start in my 2nd 6 week semester. Too bad the past week SUCKED. My afternoon class is "difficult"... to put it mildly. After each day, I feel like I've fought a 3 hour battle with them and want to do nothing else but eat junk food and sleep (which I do).

Yesterday though, I got an email from my AP (assistant principal) that honestly brightened up my day. I wish I could be less reliant on people pleasing, but it gave me renewed hope for the year.

Tim,

Just wanted to let you know that I think you are doing a great job so far! You are extremely reflective about your teaching practices, open to suggestions and take proactive steps to do what is best to support kids in any way you can. You will have your ups and downs on a daily basis in your first year, as you already have I'm sure, but you are off to a great start. I wanted you to know that your efforts do not go unnoticed.

Have a great weekend!

My Classroom

Shoot, I had meant to post pictures of my classroom, but then my life turned crazy and I forgot. Anyways, here is my room before.

I love the brightness of the room.

After 2 days of organizing, rearranging, and decorating (not to mention getting tons of free posters and stuff from coworkers), here's my incredibly sparse room.

Word wall and shared reading area

student cubbies with genres posters (borrowed from 4th grade teacher)

4 table groups... which I'm kinda regretting at this point. headaches.

I love that window.

I think I mentioned how some of the other teacher's classrooms looked amazing. I'll try to take pictures of some of them. They are freakin legit.

1st week of hell

Wow. What can I say? I survived. Survived is pretty fitting since I'm pretty positive I was sucktastic my first day. Even though I told my students I taught middle school last year and taught in Michigan, they smelled my noobness and I think I came close to losing my homeroom. Thankfully I'm team teaching this year, so my afternoon class was a lot better because I was able to learn from all my mistakes in the morning and they at least are afraid of not following my instructions.

Teaching Rule of Thumb: Always, always, always start the year off tough and incredibly strict on expectations. Under no situation do you give the kids new freedoms than what you clearly stated unless you are a teaching guru.

I made that classic mistake again when after an amazing first morning, I loosened up and started smiling and being friendlier with the students. Mistake. They immediately sensed that shift in my demeanor and took the tiny inch I gave them, and ran with it. The rest of the week was spent doing damage control. Today I blew up the seating chart and laid the smackdown in taking away all groupwork privileges and implementing a silent independent work probation period of 2 weeks before trying to integrate groupwork again.

No lie, teaching is tough. Many times, I really want to strangle some of the kids, especially the ones that are blatantly disrespectful. But that all comes with the territory, and as many teachers share with me, those end up being the ones you care about the most. Probably the hardest thing right now is the enormity of responsibility that is on my shoulders; based on how well I prepare these kids for the next level (whether the TAKS standardised test or even for middle school), it will play a huge role in defining them. This is what I always say I'm in teaching for... but actually being in that position is terrifying. There's so many things I need to keep in mind, meetings up the wazoo, and continuing to learn better teaching techniques, I am finally realizing that education is so similar to how our faith should be. The moment we think we've learned all we need to know is the moment we've lost that spark.

On one hand, I'm really encouraged to be working with a mentor teacher (and frankly the entire staff) that are so passionate about teaching that I really wonder how I got chosen to teach at this school. There's so many things I want to write about but I should catch up on sleep.

Don't worry about me though... each day is getting a little bit better. I am no longer running around like a headless chicken, although I'm still ripping out my hair trying to figure out how to work with this autistic kid who I have absolutely no authority with... ughhhhhh.

AHHH!!

Ha. I'm noticing my coping mechanism for stress. Conscious obliviousness. All during training the past 2 weeks, I was so surprised at how calm and unworried I was at school starting. Even during Open House, where I met most of the students for the first time with their parents, I was pretty chill. However, the moment the weekend started, I started getting the nerves. Saturday was a full day of OCR, and trust me, I really wanted to be out there meeting new students, but my lesson plans for the week were still incomplete, many of my structures and guidelines: unmade. Pretty much, I needed to spend a good half day working.

It's funny how God always tests our resolves with things that are never a clear "Good decision/ Bad decision". On one hand, I could be justified with taking the day to work, but my main commitment for coming down to Austin was to serve the church. In the end, I believe that trumps my work responsibilities. It is now 11pm and I just got back and I am so scared of crashing and burning tomorrow. If you read this, I really covet your prayers. I'm planning on waking up at 5, drive over to work and try to finalize the final details of the day.

Why am I blogging if I need to work? Because my mind is roiling and I couldn't sleep. This is actually incredibly cathartic for me. =P

On a side note, I'm really excited for the new year for our church... please pray that the froshies that are getting connected end up experiencing Christ's love tangibly and commit to stay. This batch has something special about them... or maybe it's just my delirium. Anyways, good night.

1st week of Training

So I've had 2 days of educational training thus far, and they were like night and day. My first day was actually the final day of First Year Teachers training. Right when I entered, they were blasting Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca" and other hyper pop hits of the early 2000s with a crazy Hawaiian Luau decoration theme. I couldn't help but laugh at how over the top things were. The next thing I noticed was just how many "newbies" there were; I estimate about 50 new hires for the entire district. Everyone was so young, the majority of people in their mid-late twenties. It was really cool meeting people in my table. There was one guy who was from Holland (the country), who met and married his wife who was from Holland, MI. He's starting as a spanish teacher in 4th grade. Crazy right?

Anyways, I won't bore you with details, but I LOVED all the info being presented, and actually took a ton of notes. It was really inspiring to see teachers so willing to welcome and impart their hard-earned lessons so freely.

Contrast that session with today's complete waste of time. Other than learning about how awesome Smartboards are (imagine whiteboards that kinda do what Tom Cruise's computer did in Minority Report), the day was a complete wash. Most of the programs and seminars I attended taught me nothing but how technologically illiterate old people are. Today was predominately the seasoned veterans (with a handful of new hires who missed previous training days like me) who needed professional development hours.

I think a large part of the turn off for today was the fact that I couldn't really participate b/c I still hadn't received login information, but even still, I felt like I knew more than many of the instructors and I was merely rotting away 7 hours of my life.

I think the highlight of the day was eating lunch at Chik- Fil-A. Spicy Chicken combo... soooo gooooood.

"Consistency"

The buzzword for today's teacher training session: consistency. Consistency in teachers leads to predictable students. Personally, I thought that was pretty hokey, but I get the point behind it.

When students know what to expect every day (rules, routine, etc) there is a sense of security. I've sat in on teachers who are amazing at developing that rhythm. Everything just seems to flow seamlessly into the next event and there's minimal disruption.

As I sat w/ some other teachers, we kinda realized that sometimes you develop that awareness of timing and rhythm through experience. Keep things simple, have clear expectations, and be consistent in all that you do.

Snacking

I remember last year I had a conversation with Ruth about how teaching was going for her. She mentioned that she always kept food at her desk which led to her unconsciously snacking on it during her downtime. After judging her silently, I just nodded along to keep the conversation going.

The shoe is now on the other foot, and I can now understand a little bit of what she might have been going through. There's something really hunger-inducing when you have to interact with students all day. Maybe it's all that walking around and talking that comes with teaching, or maybe it's the stress of trying to juggle a million things at once, but dang, you get so hungry throughout the day.

Before I started keeping cheerios and crackers at my desk, my stomach would rumble so loudly that I became self-conscious that my kids would hear. Once I started keeping a stash of snacks in my drawer, I found myself unknowingly grabbing saltines or handfuls of cheerios in between class periods or during prep hours. Last week, I found that I had eaten half a stack of saltines (plain!) in the span of 2 hours!

All I know is, there is something mind-numbingly therapeutic about snacking. Unfortunately, all that constant eating has come with the consequence of making me a bit chunkier around my midsection. Thankfully the One Desire liquid-only fast will teach me how to deal with my stresses in a better way.

What frustrates you as a teacher?

After half a year under my belt, I feel like I've become less idealistic about what I can hope to accomplish in the lives of the students. To be honest, much of it was probably an inflated sense of what I thought I could do based on my limited experience and personality, but a lot of what a teacher can do is also based on forces out of his control (administration, parents, student's experiences).

Bribes, emotional appeals, one-on-one talks, and threats are all things I've had to try in order to get my kids to do the simplest of jobs, like going to class. What works for one student bombs completely with others, and sometimes what works one day fails the next. Every day feels like you're walking a tightrope. You get ignored on a regular basis and cursed out just as often.

What does get me amped and encouraged is when students are able to pull things together and exhibit progress in practicing self-control. One kid in particular has really grown up. Last year he would regularly be called down to be disciplined, and while he was in the room he would throw the most violent tantrums I've ever seen. Just a month ago while I was guarding one of the doors he ran up in front of me and kicked a hole in the wall right next to me. We tried everything with him and nothing ever seemed to work.

This new year he has been a completely new person. He hasn't been sent down to us for behavior issues (although he does act up sometimes) and when we praise him for all the good work he's been doing, he mentioned that his mom told him that the new year she wouldn't put up with his old behavior. (YES! Positive parent involvement!) Today we ate lunch together and I could just see a difference in his demeanor that made me so happy.

Conversely, when a normally good student gets in trouble for something so stupid, you just feel like crap because you invested so much hope in that kid. One of my kids is incredibly smart, behaves well 95% of the time, and is a lot of fun to talk to. Unfortunately he hangs with a bad crowd and today it got him into trouble when we found out after school that he just got caught with drugs. Efffff, what were you thinking??? It was such a crushing disappointment because that one lapse in judgment has such serious consequences.

I think it's the ride teachers unconsciously get taken on when we start getting attached to our students that gets so draining. When students do well we're on cloud 9 but we're also kicked and dragged through the mud when they choose to give up. In the end, it feels like your efforts are so inconsequential that you start to question how much you are really impacting them.

All in all, I do believe that teachers do play a large role in shaping the lives of their students. However I am well aware of all the hurdles and difficulties that lie in really reaching that goal. I gotta keep learning and equipping myself for this marathon.

What Consumes Me?

When I was still in undergrad, I always wondered what it would be like to be working. What kind of things would I be focused on? Would I end up working at a place just because I wanted bi-weekly paychecks? Will I be motivated every day to continue learning and getting better?

It's so funny how old questions always resurface and you're able to do some real evaluations on how some of your expectations were totally off; or right on the money. One of my biggest worries when I started the teaching program @ EMU was whether I would be a teacher who just does the bare minimum to get by and get paid or if I would be genuinely invested in the students' well-being.

As of now, I think I am a bit relieved to see that I definitely do care about seeing my kids grow and learn, although I am starting to become a little alarmed at how much my thoughts always drift back to them. Pretty much every week I'll have at least one dream where I'm trying new teaching strategies with my kids, and even more recently, I find that when I start zoning out, I'll randomly start brainstorming ways to motivate a particular kid that I've been having problems with that day.

In moderation, I definitely see how this can be a healthy desire to help my students, but I think I'm walking closer and closer to that fine line between that appropriate self-reflection and obsession. What is my motivation for all this? Are there hidden agendas? I dunno right now.

But all I know is that I am so thankful that I don't have to go through these draining experiences by myself. During the day when I feel helpless, I find that when I lift up a quick prayer I get re-energized. I remember once again why I'm teaching, why I'm here in Austin, and why I'm still alive.