"You are not alone."

This is one of the things TFA tries to pound into our heads before we start the year. And right now I am struggling to keep it at the forefront of my mind. Not sure why, but I am feeling horribly alone right now.

There is always some alone-ness in my day to day. There are no TFA second years in my county. I can go the entire school day without seeing any of the other teachers at my school, let alone the other TFA teacher. I am the only person teaching social studies at my school and the only SS teacher I interact with on a daily or weekly basis (there is another down the street, but I very rarely see him). When I am together with TFA, I am one of two alternative-setting teachers. I am almost three hours from the TFA office, so it is only on a very scheduled basis that I interact with staff. I see or interact with mentors from the district (principals, DPI, curriculum specialists, etc.) less than once a week. This all adds up to feeling the lone soldier, or at least part of a very small army, much of the time. In the abstract I have no doubt that I am part of a larger TFA and educational movement. But I also have constant evidence of how the educational system has already passed over my kids, so while I am part of a district, I'm on the fringes of it.

And the thing is, I'm usually fine with this. Lone Ranger, stickin' it to the man as part of the minority... Not new. And I don't know if its because I haven't heard from my PD for weeks, or because I spent Thursday and Friday as the only (or one of two) teachers at school, without the kids, or the fact that the Superintendent didn't return my call like he said he would, but something is making me feel very much like an island right now.

I'm hoping this passes as we get further into second semester. If nothing else, my three preps should keep me busy enough that I won't have time to think about or dwell on any feelings of alone-ness. I just wish I knew why I feel so isolated RIGHT NOW. Wish my brain would figure out who it is I'm missing so that I can fill that gap and get refocused.

On a completely unrelated note, a small part of me is not looking forward to school tomorrow because I am a huge softie, and my kids know it. Especially H.

H, a middle schooler, is one of my buddies - those kids who spend their free time loitering in my classroom, asking random questions - sometimes academically focused, sometimes to solicit a particular response (their fave is hearing me say "homeboy"). He's a good student and is usually a better behaved kid. There have been times, though, that he gets in trouble. H HATES being in trouble. And he lets me know it. The last time he made it three steps down the consequence ladder - to silent lunch - he didn't speak to me (in or outside of class) for almost three weeks. I was crushed. It took all my resolve to not apologize to him for... following my own rules... or something... I knew I shouldn't feel guilty, but he was so hurt and put out. Or was, at least, putting on a very convincing show of it.

Today, during after school remediation, H earned himself silent lunch again. I can tell from the conversation we had when I informed him that he was indeed in that much trouble that I am in for it tomorrow. Silent treatment, here I come. I wonder how long it will last this time.

Eight hundred fifty-five hours later...

The results are in. And they don't look so good.

End of the semester means that all North Carolina high school students are taking end-of-course tests in any of the eight exit standard classes (along with finals in the other classes they are taking). There are two different exit standard classes in social studies, and this semester everyone took Civics and Economics.

The testing schedule in my district was split, giving us three days of testing last week and one day this week. I was the lucky short straw that had three extra days during which to sit and wonder and fuss about how my boys would do on their exam. I watched as teacher after teacher saw their test scores came back, virtually helpless to have any greater impact on my kids before they tested today. Each successive day of testing we joked how it was increasingly on my shoulders to ensure we made our share of annual yearly progress. And I let myself hope that almost good English scores would harbinger good or almost good Civics scores.

To no avail.

Social studies tests in North Carolina are particularly difficult to pass. The tests are longer than other subjects (by at least 20 questions), and the percentage correct required to receive a passing score is higher than in other subjects. I'm not certain if this signifies the subject's importance or exactly the opposite. Either way, knowing this and knowing my students and district, I was foolish to get my hopes up.

I wish it wasn't so, but after all my worrying, we did abysmally. So much for meeting AYP, I had the lowest scores of all the classes. One student placed at or above the 10th percentile. (Yikes.) I know some of the problem is that while we covered civics thoroughly and I see excellent progress in that subject, we ran out of time for economics - barely made it through supply and demand.

The new challenge moving forward will be balancing remediating C&E while also moving on to US (which has even more content than C&E) and World history for the next month. One would think, with nine and a half hours of school each day, that I wouldn't feel crunched for time, but I absolutely wish there were just one more hour in the day. Maybe I'll steal writing for a month.

One positive: I asked the boys to estimate how many questions they felt they could answer correctly, in response to them telling me they would fail this morning before the test. While they didn't perhaps do well, I can go back to them tomorrow and tell most of them they did better than expected. I mean 45 is greater than 15. And that has to count for something.

Nutshell

Write a one-two page reflection on your experiences thus far this year as a teacher. How is it going? What is going well? What are your goals for after the holidays with your students? For yourself as a teacher? How are your students doing in terms of tracking and your "big goal" for the year?

This first semester of teaching is in many ways reminiscent of my first trip out to Durham. I normally enjoy driving and being alone with my music or podcasts and the open road. Nothing about that trip was normal, however. I got stuck on the Indianapolis beltway for three hours due to a three-car accident. It poured to the point of whiteouts in Ohio. The mountains of West Virginia made my move feel ominous and permanent, with each hillcrest creating another boundary between my past life and my current life.

In much the same way nothing about this semester has been normal. I was sexually harassed by a student. I found many of my high schoolers at a 3rd or 4th grade reading level. My school’s leadership is often completely lacking, and we as a teaching staff are left to fill in the gaps. I’m enjoying teaching world history more than Civics. I don’t have textbooks or teaching manuals. There are no second years to look to for guidance.

All abnormalities aside, I am generally very pleased with how the semester has progressed. Most of my students are meeting our big goal (HS - Pass Civics with a C or better; MS - Pass Social Studies with an 80% or better), I feel I have been able (most of the time) to keep my expectations for my students set high with out overwhelming them. After arguments, debates, and many consequences, I feel my classroom culture is - finally - almost to the level of comfort and safety my boys need to learn.

I could improve on the quality of my daily lesson plans and the amount of practice I am giving my students. I need to continue building my sense of what is a feasible amount of knowledge for my kids to learn in 45 minutes a day, to keep my units and long-term plans better on track (I’m starting Econ today, about three weeks from the EOC). I need to become better organized and ensure I am using my time outside of my 7:30-6:30 school day as effectively as I can.

One of my biggest goals for next semester is to increase the amount of literacy instruction in my classroom. A major help for this is that I have textbooks for two of my three preps next semester to draw on for readings for students to practice with. I also have three other teachers at my school who are very effective at teaching literacy, and I can tap them for ideas or build on what they have already been working on with students.

This post was initially written as an assignment for my certification class.

What am I doing here?

The answer to that question is simple:

"If you're aware of injustice, you can either ignore it, say there is nothing you can do about it, complain about it and not do anything, or put your energies into doing something about it." - Ben Cohen

This is me, putting my energies into doing something about poverty, about the educational achievement gap. That's what I'm telling myself at least. Because many days I don't know what I'm doing here. Or I don't know how I'm doing it.

I'm a first-year teacher, still working on official certification, recently relocated from St. Paul, Minnesota to wicked rural eastern North Carolina. I'm white, teaching in a 100% African American school. I was a straight A student (until college...); my kids read and perform math multiple years below grade-level. I can name all 50 states, every European and South American and most Asian and African countries if given a blank map. My kids don't know what country they live in. I am polite to a fault. Most of my kids can't make it through an entire period without cursing or name-calling. I am female. Every one of my students is male.

What am I doing here?

"Ms. L... Slaves got paid, right?"

What? No! What are you asking me? Do you seriously not know what slavery is? How am I supposed to tell you that my ancestors treated your ancestors like dogs?

This was my first week of school. We read the Autobiography of Frederick Douglass in preparation for a speaker from the non-profit that funds our alternative-setting school. Our speaker was a well-educated African American man, who started his own business and was very successful despite coming from a very underprivileged background, similar to my boys. Frederick's writing had apparently had a huge impact on this man, and he wanted to share that with our kids.

Suddenly it wasn't seeming worth it.

Not only was I responsible for reading the entire book aloud to them, because there was no way they were understanding it on their own, now I had to explain slavery?

"Nope. Slaves didn't get paid. Let's talk about this word: Dehumanize."

This is how I began teaching Frederick Douglass. Breaking a word into pieces and explaining that people once treated each other like animals.

From this point my reading students have grown a year in 4 months, my middle schoolers conquered two continents' worth of geography and history, and my high schoolers can now tell you how a bill becomes a law.

But we still have a lot of ground to cover before graduation, before my boys will have mastered enough academic and social skills to return to a traditional-setting school, and that is why I'm here. Or so I keep telling myself.

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe." - Frederick Douglass