EOY has come.  The last day of school is 2 weeks from today.  There are so many emotions and thoughts swirling and twirling in my mind right now, and I’m completely baffled that the end has come so fast.

I’ve reached a point with my blogging that I feel that every train of thought I have I’ve had before, and everything I want to write about, I’ve already written about. That’s why I haven’t been posting a lot; I feel like I have nothing new to say.

I can’t quite look back on the year yet, because I have to stay in the present; it’s NOT over yet, and these last 2 weeks have the potential to be (I hate to use a TFA word) transformational for me and my students.  And I absolutely can’t think about next year yet, besides vague ideas about what I want to do differently.

Though I’m tired of school, I’m trying to relax and actually enjoy the time I have left with my kids.  I really do love them (on the good days), and I love that I get to spend my days with such cool young adults.  On the other hand, I’d rather not be subjected to some of the nonsense that some of my kids do and say!  I guess nobody‘s at their best in 7th grade.

Wow. 2 weeks.

My kids are so done, and I’m running  out of ways to motivate them.  The 7th grade teachers are giving a cross-curricular semester project, and all of the kids just want to work.  What I’m doing in class is reviewing different topics that I know will be really helpful to them in 8th grade, like GCF/LCM, equations, exponents, etc.  I do a quick demo of 1 or 2 problems, and then they do centers with practice of that particular topic.  This is the most painless way I can think of reviewing that skill, but some of my kids just don’t want to do anything.  Their grades are dropping, and they don’t seem to care.

The difficult part about it is that I don’t really care either at this point.  How do you combat this end-of-the-year apathy?

Some anecdotes:

• I’ve started playing a “90′s pop” playlist on www.jango.com during class, and my kids won’t admit it, but they love it. “Play them Spice Girls again!”
• It’s STILL not acceptable that I don’t have a boyfriend.
• My kids are climbing the walls, and I’m doing the best I can to keep them in their seats and relatively quiet.
• Since my kids are just working in centers on review activities most days, I’m pretty bored.
• Now is not a good time to ask me if I want to be a teacher for the rest of my life.
• “Miss, you black!” (apparently I’m black because I bring snacks to school and really enjoyed “Think Like a Man”)
• I’m still a first-year teacher, and I’m still not allowed to evaluate my life.
• So. much. drama. 7th grade girls that spend waaaay too much time togeter = drama.
• I have to bribe myself to get out of bed in the morning.
• “Miss, are we going to dissect something in your class?”

My kids are begging me to move up to 8th grade with them.  I guess that’s a good thing, but right now I can’t imagine teaching some of them for another year.  They’re still my babies, though.  I love them more than I ever thought possible, and I’ll feel weird having different babies next year.

I’m adding to my list of things I’m going to change for next year, and thinking about how I want to structure my class differently.  Right now, I’m thoroughly TFA-ed out.  Just seeing “SWBAT” gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Does anyone have any experience with creating/producing video yearbooks?  Does anyone know where to find information about it?

Just kidding.  I do, however, have something that happened to work for me last week, and I’m hoping will continue to work.  Maybe it’ll work for you.

Basically, I’m running out of deterrents.  The kids I’m having issues with are no longer deterred by writeups, because they are written up almost every day.  Detentions and class points are starting to lose their luster.  I had a sub last Wednesday, and my kids were horrible.  I guess the office had to be called down for every class.  I spent most of Thursday vindictively thinking about how I would punish these kids.  I decided on a sort-of time out.

I printed off a packet of super easy math worksheets (we’re talking basic addition and subtraction) that I knew even my most basic students would be able to do without help and without a calculator.  I typed the lecture I wanted to give them onto a powerpoint slide and just projected that onto the smartboard instead of yelling; I know that yelling is just white noise for a lot of these kids.

So when my kids came in to class on Friday, I didn’t say a word.  Normally I’m like Minnie Mouse in the mornings, but I made an effort to look like I had just sucked on a lemon.  I had put the desks in rows, and I made a seating chart that spaced out all of the kids that I have trouble with.  The kids were terrified because I wasn’t saying anything.  My instructions, which were up on the SmartBoard, were that they were to work silently and independently on the packet for the entire 90-minute block.  If they finished early, they could read or draw but nothing else.  They would receive a warning, then a D-hall, then a Referral if they decided to talk. 

At first they didn’t really believe I would enforce it, but as soon as I started writing names on the board, they all fell silent.  They were actually working silently.  That NEVER happens.  I actually didn’t have to write any referrals, and the kids were miserable. The key was that I basically didn’t talk the whole block, and, oddly enough, that terrified them more than anything else.

I made the packet worth 100 points, so it was an easy boost for those who chose to do it. 

I learned that a lot of my students’ disruptive behavior is due to uncertainty/insecurity about math, and when they were given super easy work they knew how to do, then they were much more likely to actually WORK on it.  I had hoped to alleviate a lot of that insecurity this year, but it’s still there, unfortunately.

I also learned that some of my kids can’t do basic addition without a calculator, and some don’t know their times tables.  I’ll be starting with that next year.

Bonus:  With the problems from the worksheets, I have bellwork for the rest of the year!

So you might consider trying this if your kids are out of hand.  My kids realized what a privilege it is to do group work and all of the stuff we normally do in class, and I was empowered to take back a lot of the control that I had gradually ceded.  I also have the threat of another time out day to hold over their heads if I need to.

I’ve recently come to the conviction, though, that while TFA claims to fight the myth of meritocracy, we are also perpetuating it in some ways.  We acknowledge that the systematic oppression of our country is preventing our students from succeeding in life, but we say that education is the best way to fight this, mostly (though not completely, I know) ignoring the other dysfunctions in our students’ lives that will prevent them from succeeding, dysfunctions that even the best teachers can’t overcome.

TFA also has a myth of meritocracy with its corps members, I think. Maybe they do it on purpose, but, much like the United States does, TFA pumps its CMs full of idealism and lofty ambitions, then dumps them into a situation with so many factors working against them, then expects them to be incredibly successful.

At Institute we are shown video after video of these miraculously successful teachers and (basically) told we can be as successful as they if we just work hard enough.  But, like our students, we are blind-sided by so many other issues, both on our end and on our schools’ end, that prevent us from being as successful as we are supposed to be, even though we are working as hard as we can.  We are given completely inadequate training and resources, and to be thrown into a profession with the training/resources we are given is a joke not to mention an insult to the world of education.

To continue this line of thought further, TFA must believe that teachers in the United States are ineffective because they are lazy.  The notion of people who work 60+ hours a week for a salary that barely pays the bills are lazy is as ridiculous as saying that my students’ parents who work 3 jobs to pay the bills are lazy.  Sound familiar?

While there are some bad teachers out there, almost every teacher I’ve ever worked with is there for the kids and truly wants the best for them.  Adding more good teachers would help the situation, but there are so many other factors to consider that it is impossible to predict success in the classroom based on sheer personality.

As a CM, if you’re not successful, it must mean you’re just lazy.  I struggle all day every day with the belief that I’m not working hard enough.  I succeed in ignoring that niggling little voice most of the time, but it’s still there in the back of my mind all the time.

By how little training CMs receive, TFA must think teaching isn’t that difficult, or is something you can “just figure out” if you work hard enough.  I know that no training can adequately prepare a teacher for his or her own classroom, but 5 weeks?! Really?!

Instead of addressing all of the other issues that make educating children a difficult task, TFA oversimplifies our roles by just saying “work harder! make fancier powerpoints! track your data!”.  And if you don’t jump through all of these hoops and, God forbid, get more than 6 hours of sleep a night, you’re just lazy.  This myth of meritocracy thing, both in TFA and in American society, is glossing over a myriad of issues that must be addressed if our kids are to truly be successful in life.  Like health care, for example.  I don’t care how good you are at differentiating instruction; that kid whose parents don’t have health insurance and can’t get him glasses will not succeed in your classroom if he can’t see the board.

I’m tired of being told that if I work harder, I’ll be successful.  I’m starting to understand a small facet of the cycle of poverty.  Wouldn’t it be better to just say “Hey, teaching is incredibly difficult and there are innumerable obstacles you face; just try to stay alive.”?

Ugh.  I could write about this all night.  It’s just something I’ve been thinking about.  4 more weeks of school.  I’m starting to think about how I’m going to do next year differently in general, but I’m too overwhelmed with almost being done with my first year of teaching to go there yet.  4. more. weeks.

As a teacher, I have no patience for drama and I’m not very good at handling it.  Especially when the culturally correct response here to any kind of perceived insult (regardless of race or gender) is to fight about it.  So there’s all kinds of rumors going around of who’s going to fight whom, and girls are crying in the bathroom and yelling at each other in the hallway. Ugh. I don’t feel capable of making these kids un-learn a cultural pattern when they don’t see what’s wrong with their current pattern of physical confrontation. 

I usually just don’t engage, especially because most of the drama is about TRIVIAL things.  There are a few significant conflicts between students, and I’m doing my best to point out that fighting probably isn’t the best way to solve anything, but the kids just look at me like I’m crazy.

My kids have been working on a project all week, and I realize now that giving them that much unstructured time this week was a mistake.  I’m re-working my plans for next week to keep them so busy that they don’t have time to create more drama.  Most of my classes have also lost the privilege to talk at all.

Morale is really low among the teachers and the culture is really toxic among the students, so everyone’s just in a lousy mood.  I’ve been trying my best to keep school at school, so I’ve been really enjoying my evenings at home, but it’s getting harder and harder to drag myself to school every day.

By the tone of this post and my previous one, you’d think I’m miserable.  I’m not, truly — I realized that I teach middle school and that sometimes it’s just like that.  I don’t want to be super negative all the time, but I am trying to be honest.

I guess I should re-read “Warm/Strict” in Teach Like a Champion again.  Wasn’t spring semester supposed to be easier/more enjoyable? 

24 school days.

My plan for tomorrow is to put them under martial law, basically:  desks in rows and silently working on worksheets for the entire period.  If they talk or choose not to work, then it’s a D-hall or a referral.  I’ve copied off a big packet of worksheets for them to do, and I’m hoping that after a day or two of mind-numbing boredom, they’ll realize what a privilege it is to do fun projects like we normally do.

26 more school days.

My kids are fascinated with the fact that I’m single.  They absolutely cannot wrap their minds around the fact that I don’t have a husband/boyfriend.  It’s like I’m incomplete without one.  I mean, they are obsessed.  If we ever have a spare moment, they want to talk about the fact that 1) I don’t have any kids and 2) I’m not married.  “Miss, you fine, but you got no game!”  “Miss, why don’t you have kids yet?” “Miss, you need to get on one of them online dating services and find you a man.” 

It sounds silly, but this genuinely bothers me.  There are a lot of sexist holdouts in society, and this is probably one of them.  I’m not allowed to be single.  Does anyone else encounter this?

We have 31 school days left.  I’m almost done with my first year of teaching.  I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished, but it’s disheartening to think about what I haven’t accomplished. My babies are taking Benchmarks this week, and it’s kind of liberating to realize that I’ve done all I can to prepare them; I just have to hope and pray that they remembered some of what I tried to teach them.

My babies have grown up so much this year.  They’re definitely mini-8th graders now.  I started sensing a shift after Christmas break, and it’s obvious now that this is not the same group of kids I started the year with.

I never thought I would love my students as much as I love them.  I would do anything for these kids, and in a lot of ways, I’ve done everything I can for them. I’m working on writing a letter to each one to give to them on the last day of school — I keep flip-flopping about it, though.  On the one hand, that’s a lot of work.  On the other hand, not every letter has to be profound or pages long, and those students I do have a special connection with I can write more to.  All I know is that if one of my teachers had written me an encouraging letter, especially in middle school, I would’ve kept it.

Have any of you out there in cyberspace ever written your students letters?  Any suggestions? 

I’m going to work on saying only positive and encouraging things to my kids, especially the ones I’d be tempted to tell “You really need to stop doing this, this, and this.”.

I see myself slowly starting to morph from First-Year Teacher to just Teacher.  As it stands, I don’t really work on the weekends.  I usually don’t bring work home.  I leave school for lunch, and instead of getting to school before 7 every morning, I’ve been rolling in around 7:20.  I could be 1) lazy, 2) more efficient, or 3) burnt-out.  I think I’m all three.  Talking to my roommate this morning, she made the point that “We’ve been burned out since August!”. TFA, especially with Institute, brings a whole new level of burnout to the whole First-Year-Teacher experience.

I’m trying to finish strong, but it’s hard when everything in me wants to just coast through the rest of the year.

Funny story of the day:

We were playing “Never Never Have I Ever” (the kids had taken Benchmarks all morning and could barely think straight/sit still).  Basically with this game you say “Never never have I ever _________________”.  If you have done that thing, then you get up and have to change seats. One girl said

“Never never have I ever…sang in a karaoke bar!”  The other students paused for about 20 seconds, wracking their brains as to whether they had been to a karaoke bar.  After a while, one student realized

“Hey! We’re too young to go to karaoke bars!”.  Another piped in with

“Yeah! We’re too young to go to any bars! We’re only, like, 13.”

I don’t know why I found that so funny, but for some reason I did .