PASSED

I passed my certification tests! If you remember, I prepared for them by eating junk food and talking to my mom on the phone.
Phew.
1 less worry.

Still no internet access.
Life is chaos and there's no students to give it focus....yet.
10 more days!

An attempt at a vacation in Kansas with my family + more TFA training + the start of grad classes + an apartment that is still in transition because the belongings of 1.5 out of 3 roomates are present = 1 very distracted girl with no time (or internet access) to blog.
Our first day of grad classes was today, with our second full day being tomorrow. I have a literacy workshop all of next week, then school training the week after that.
At some point I want the training to stop so I can PLAN.
Relaxation and sleep would be great too, but planning is my first priority right now.
Things will slow down, I'm sure, and the first day of school will come whether I'm ready for it or not, and I know me and I will be ready.

On a side note, a friend and I got lost looking for empanadas and ended up down on Wall Street at the Trump Building. Talk about tourist central! Pictures and crowded street food stands and people who stand - STAND - in the middle of the sidewalk make for very frustrated...'New Yorkers'. Are we New Yorkers yet???

Maybe it was the 20 boxes of 10 cent crayons or the 30 spiral notebooks (also on sale for 10 cents) or the 8 boxes of markers that gave me away but somehow the Target checkout lady knew.
I was a teacher.
"Where do you teach?" she asked.
"The Bronx," I told her.
"Oh, that's nice," she said.
She continued scanning crayons and notebook paper and stickers until it clicked.
"The Bronx? Like New York City?" she asked.
"Yep," I said with a smile on my face. The pride my students have in being from the 'BX' has rubbed off.
"Wow, I bet that's scary," she said, still not scanning.
"Actually, I love it," I said, still smiling.
The next couple of minutes were full of scanning, then pauses to ask questions I could tell she wasn't sure were appropriate. She wanted to know if my students brought guns to school, what their families were like, if there were metal detectors and police officers in my building.
One by one I answered her questions and after nearly every answer she would say, "God bless people like you."
People like me???
She continued scanning and totaled up my supplies. By now other people in line were also involved in my story, asking similar questions and giving me similar 'God bless you' looks.
I picked up my bags full of pencils and paper and folders and scissors and walked confidently out of the store, having shared more of my life than is normal for a 2 minute checkout line conversation.
"I'll pray for you!" said the check out lady as I left.
The phrases 'people like you' and 'pray for you' stuck in my mind all day.
The stereotypes people have about my kids make me sick. The only way to break them is to keep sharing, honestly, what has been my experience.
My experience has been that my kids, who have lived much more life than I had at their age, just need someone to teach them how to believe in themselves.

Done

Well...almost.
Tomorrow is clean up the school day.
Time to take down posters and erase chalkboards and make it seem like we didn't spend the last 5 weeks pouring every ounce of ourselves into that building.
Our room, however, will stay as is at the request of our summer mentor teacher. The kids are invested in our system and are already upset enough about us leaving that to change the room would only remind them of the fact that we are not coming back. To hear that come from the person who sat in the back of the room as a bystander on both our best and worst days is possibly the biggest compliment we've gotten all summer.
In the process of investing our kids we also invested ourselves and in each other.
The feeling of having made it though this experience is impossible to explain to someone who hasn't been through it.
It's exhausting and inspiring and humbling and unbelievably intense.
I've ridden on 100+ degree school busses and eaten bagels with gross cream cheese and soggy veggie burgers for over a month now. I succeeded and failed and laughed and cried and I can safely say, as I near the light at the end of the tunnel grows near, this is the most important thing I've ever done in my life.
Don't believe me? Ask me to send you pictures of my students.

Celebration

Tomorrow we celebrate!
The finishing of papers and mastering of concepts.
The passing of time and the perseverance that brought my students to school even when it was "optional".
The fact that, together, we learned...them from us and us from them.
That they will, in less than a month, walk in to someone's classroom as 7th graders.
There is so much to celebrate but try as I may I cannot get comfortable with the idea of celebrating our departure.
I need more time with my kids.
Maybe not need - want.
I fell in love with all of their too many hormones and not enough deodorant selves, and now I have to leave them.
I will celebrate my own freedom on Friday with no reservations. I am ready to leave this place and when I return the relationships I have formed will be here to welcome me back.
But tomorrow I leave my kids. Not the bureaucracy and red tape and micromanaging, but the best part of this whole experience - my students - and the lump in my throat won't go away...

Shout Out To Myself

All my lesson plans for this experience are done.
Tomorrow my kids turn in their final drafts. I can't wait to read them. Check back for highlights - they have a lot to teach all of us.

What would DCA think about our white girl dancing?

After sitting in an unairconditioned auditorium with 550 other sweaty, smelly, preoccupied corps members and being told that "we are Teach for America" even though the very fact that we have to be told that proves that we aren't....yet....we de-stress.
Eminem blasts out of laptop speakers and we dance around.
We should be lesson planning.
We should be grading.
We should be reading or collaborating or contemplating...
But we dance.
We look rediculous and laugh and if feels like life, if only for a few minutes, is a little more balanced.
When we're done we pack.
Not too much, but enough to comfort ourselves with the fact that we're almost done.
Soon we'll quit packing, quit dancing, finish lessons, talk about our amazing students, and go to sleep.
Tomorrow we'll be better teachers because we danced.
We'll be sane people because there is a half packed suitcase that serves as a reminder that even though we're almost done we have 2 more days to make an impact.

Dear Students,
Today was not our best day. I tried to teach too much in too little time. I didn’t give you enough time to transition or go to the bathroom or do things I know I would need if I was in your position. I need to remember that you are humans and not learning robots. I didn’t enforce consequences and when I did it was too inconsistent to be effective. I gave you the “I’ve passed 6th grade and don’t need to know this,” talk. I hate that talk. Today I was not me in my classroom.
Tomorrow will be better. If you are disrespecting your classmates by interrupting their learning time, there will be a consequence. I will not argue with you about this. It’s week four of our time together. You know what is expected of you. I care about you too much to let you waste these next three days.
Tomorrow I promise to leave my outside life at home. I am your teacher. I am not allowed to bring my sleep deprived attitude into the classroom. It is not your fault that I have to jump through hoops to leave this weekend. It is not your fault that I stay up late grading TAI. It is not your fault that I am really tired of evening sessions and that the weeks of 17 hour days have left us all feeling very…exhausted. I ask you to come to school ready to learn. I will come to school ready to teach.
Be ready for the old Ms. G to be back tomorrow. I expect silence when I tell you to work silently. I’ll hand out lots of ‘scholar dollar’ stickers. I’ll smile when you do something great because it really does make my day.
I told you I was disappointed in you today. Tomorrow I’ll do everything in my power to make sure it never happens again.
Love Your Chicken Noodle Soup Dance Teacher,
Ms. G

You stand in the line just to hit a new low
You're faking a smile with the coffee you go
You tell me your life's been way off line
Daniel Powter

We have 5 days left. 4 days with students. Too tired and overwhelmed to do a 'what I learned' list - maybe tomorrow.
There's been so many moments this week when I feel like we're failing our kids, not because of lack of effort or even that we're bad teachers, but because politics put us in the middle of a battle we should never have seen.
Elaboration here would not be appropriate as I do not know all the details, but I do know that the past 3 days have been chaos.
What I need is Minnesota. Friends and babies and hugs and a slower pace of life. I miss afternoon walks with strollers and weekends filled with live music and coffee and friends who had become my family.
We're all a little homesick, I think, and as much as we'll miss our kids my 7 am flight a week from tomorrow cannot come soon enough.

Draft Party

During lunch today we had a draft party for our kids who had finished their rough drafts for their non fiction pieces (everybody qualified!).
We had donut holes and candy and more upbeat music than I usually let them listen to.
They asked about our families and pets and where we lived...they talked about where they lived and what they want to someday be and they taught us the chicken noodle soup dance.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen. There is a dance called the chicken noodle soup dance.
It's to an actual chicken noodle soup song.
It's the rage among middle school students, kind of like the macarena was when I was in middle school.
It's embarrassing, and pretty much ridiculous, but it felt like an honor for them to teach it to us.
The principal walked by and did a double take.
25 minutes after school was out all of my kids were still in my room.
And we were dancing to a song called chicken noodle soup. All I could do was smile.
I'm pretty sure it's one of those moments I'm going to remember forever.

Rising Above...

Dorm rooms with no water.
Traffic that doubles our normal commute time.
Lines so long at dinner we don't get to eat.
Kids who punch other kids and principals who refuse to have students in their office unless they are being kicked out of the summer program.
Curriculum that changes daily and big wigs coming in to our class and making judgments about our teaching and our students when they do not have the courage to stand in our shoes.
It's time to rise above.
To take ahold of our kids and invest and care and put things in the language they need to be in to appease the politics while still giving our kids what they need to make it out of this system that only continues to fail them.
Egos and suits and Rolodex watches have no place in my classroom.
Hands and clothes covered in chalk and an arm full of worksheets at all different levels - that's what earns you respect in my room.
Overheads that don't work and chalkboard without erasers and air conditioners that work sometimes and the lack of a working pencil sharpener are nothing compared to the obstacle of people with too much power that don't take the time to connect before condemning.

Small Successes

The space between
The tears we cry is the laughter keeps us coming back for more.
Dave Matthews Band

In the midst of the chaos and fights and kids who punch walls and curriculum that still isn't totally in place and report cards done at the last minute and people who are ever so quickly burning out lies success.
Assessments that prove my students are learning.
Hand shakes and smiles and attitudes that show me they're invested.
6th graders who work cooperatively in teams because I expect them to and that's reason enough.
A morning and afternoon routine that is executed silently because we taught it that way.
I LOVE my students and am so incredibly sad that I only have 6 more days with them...

I prepared by eating a cookie and talking to my mom for the second time today and looking online at grad programs trying to figure out where my life was going...(any ed people out there have advice on Pace vs Bank Street?)
My test prep book provided by TFA is sitting on the bookshelf, exactly where it's been since March when they sent it to me. It's been moved to 3 cities but never opened.
I need to sharpen pencils, take a shower, and go to bed.
Studying for these kinds of things is over rated anyways, right?
For the sake of my students, let's hope so.

Pineapples + Printing Cartridges = Sanity

On a crazy Friday afternoon where our bus ride home was an hour longer than normal and we're all frantically preparing to take our certification exams tomorrow, sanity comes in the form of printer cartridges and pineapples.
Who sends pineapples in the mail, you ask? That would be my mom :) My parents just got back from vacationing in Hawaii where they toured the Dole plant and who'd of thought - Dole will ship pineapple care packages! I wish I was teaching so I could share with my kiddos....we're not allowed to provide food for our summer school students :(
Time to get back to work studying for a test you can't really study for, but we'll all try anyways.

Capturing Honesty

It's easy to be calm and reflective and optimistic on Friday nights.
The 4 nights of the week that lead up to Friday are much more raw.
Curriculum changes that happen daily, unclear expectations and not enough guidance coupled with too much micromanaging leave us all understanding why there are many that don't make it through this part of the program.
Being one of many and stuggling to learn and teach at the same time is exhausting and more intense than anything I've done in my entire life.
The straw that breaks the camel's back comes in forms of showers with no water and 100 degree busses in stalled traffic and bus drivers that, despite driving the route everyday, still get lost sometimes. Phone calls home to vent are cut off by the obligation to do more....go more...stress more.
The only time I feel calm and confident is when I shut my door and teach my kids.
The first day of induction we did an observation at a school. 60 of us got off the bus in our business suits and walked up the sidewalk in the South Bronx and as we neared the school a car pulled up. They rolled down their window and asked, "Are you teachers?"
We looked at each other and eventually somebody said, "Yeah."
"Good," they said. "We need some here."
I smiled. I still smile when anyone tells that story.
We're here for a purpose.
The struggle to hold on to that is one that I face everyday.
But I'm still here...and so are so many people I've come to admire.

How Do I Reach Them?

Kassy- boy crazy, always tired, so incredibly smart that she's bored and never does her homework
Sael - into classical music, wants to please me so much that he turns in 2 drafts of his homework everyday - unfortuneately the fact that it's revised and neat doesn't change the fact that he's missing the content...
Los- Kindergarten reading level, has trouble merely copying down information, let alone processing it. Bully - socially expected to give me grief - wants to pay attention but knows it's not socially acceptable
Bry - Intellegent, polite, wants to be president someday - stuck as a 'role model' at a table where he constantly gets reprimanded when I warn 'Table 3 to respect me as I respect you...'
Imir - Math genius but so incredibly lost at reading
Aldrio - Chip on his shoulder that's way too big for me to eliminate this summer
Shak - Sweet girl, so incredibly behind...
*Names have been altered to protect the identity of my kiddos...*

The list goes on until there are 22 names, each with their own strenghts and weaknesses and personalities. Their own way of saying my last name so that it is no longer German/Swedish but 'gansta'...head bobbing to the white teacher music of Nora Jones and Amos Lee and Jack Johnson that I sometimes play during their independent work time.
There are 5 tables of them...some enrichment (meaning that they choose to come to summer school and are on or above grade level), some special ed (so behind I can't believe the 'system' hasn't caught them yet), all reaching out for some part of me I'll need to leave with them when institute is over...

Things I Learned

-Eating peanut butter and jelly everyday makes you never want to eat it again in your life. This is a bad thing if you're vegetarian.
- I have a lot to learn about implementing reader's and writer's workshop. My students are not getting nearly enough independent practice.
- Management is the key to all things good in the classroom. So far it seems to be my strongest trait as a teacher...
- 6th grade is a fun age. The girls are all taller than the boys so it's cool to like 'shorties', (short boys).
- It's hard to explain things like least common multiple and greatest common factor.
- Some of my students are reading on grade level or a level above.
- Some of my students are reading at a kindergarten level.
- The achievement gap is real and exists in my room. I have 3 weeks to do something about it.
- Even 13 year olds will work for stickers and jobs like 'master of the overhead' (which is really just someone to turn off the lights, pull down the projector screen, and hit the button to turn the overhead on.)
- You don't really need a pencil sharpener in your room. If you don't have one kids learn how to be more careful with their pencils.
- Working 17 hour days 5 days a week is not good for anyone.
- I LOVE TEACHING. The 90 minutes when it's just me and the kids is the best hour and a half of the entire day. No politics, no classes, just students.

Life could not get much more crazy.
Deadlines and no sleep and stressed out people and classrooms with no air conditioning.
Medical emergencies and friendships that only grow every day and realizing that this organization really cares about our well being.
We're making it through this together.
Faces are familiar and we greet each other with hugs instead of 'what's your name again?'
Moment by moment this is becoming home...

Manic...Sunday?

Crazy.
It's the best word to describe today.
Realizations that taking days for ourselves yesterday that included 3 hours in Staples meant a 13 hour day today. My hands are covered in glue and smelly marker and I had to charge my laptop twice. No workout or talking with friends or breathing, just frantic lesson writing and copying and decorating and creating and thinking because tomorrow this all becomes very real.