What happens when the sky clears

Los Angeles, eager to please, changes her clothes continuously. Misty mornings, glowing middays, and balmy afternoons intermix with overcast, rainbow-bearing, never-mind-it's-going-to-be-95-degrees-today days.

To say that a classroom could be a microcosm of an entire environmental habitat would not be untrue.

When I was forming my end of the year surveys, I knew it would be a difficult experience to read the feedback the students gave to me. Growth doesn't begin to describe this year. From naive to mousy to raging to stern to uncertain to confident to silly to... well, more on that later-- from all these changes there has come a quite nice rhythm, each day, each week, each unit. I don't have to be the same every day. Good teaching doesn't look the same every day. Good studenting doesn't look the same every day. You could excise a two-week slice of our the life in our classroom and see everything from active test monitoring to frenetic finger painting to peer-editing cross-cultural communication journals to off-the-cuff fishbowls on whether justice can even consider the implications of race. What would students say?

Cowardice has kept me from looking over them all yet, but from what I've read so far, students are far more incisive than I might have hoped for. They sense the growth, the increased ease, if not continual ease, then the ability and knowing when to fall into it. 

So I've come to brood over how to know what a good day looks like, sounds like, feels like. For them, for me, for our entire biosphere. What weather should I be dressing for?

I still don't know. To be honest, I'm still not sure what weather I'm hoping for. Maybe it's too difficult to decide just now, this early on in teacher-life, despite the management and pedagogy books' exhorting, maybe it's better to be a little flexible, a little open, a little prepared for it all. An umbrella in the trunk, dressing in layers, willing to receive whatever the day brings.

A steady, grateful face turned to the sun and the raindrops alike, maybe that's what it takes to live in this little world of the classroom. 

What happens when change happens

Full circle doesn't begin to describe it.

Blue skies so powerful they wound, brown land so expansive it inhales the moisture out of your bones, I think I always knew I would come back to this place.

When I was student teaching I felt the wispy beginnings of a vision to come back to skies and land and kids because when you get right down to it, there's something about the knowing. I just know this place. I know these people. These mountains, this air, this life raised me.

Los Angeles has been everything this place wasn't. And can't be. It's green and grey, filled with people so numerous and unidentifiable as to origins, dreams, creeds, and ticks that anything is possible. Truly anything is possible. And so many anythings have happened this year (of which I am especially reminded when we go on lockdown for the umpteenth time as a police helicopter circles the neighborhood) that have taken me to the edge of delight and the brink of sanity.

Just as fairly to be said it that this place is everything Los Angeles isn't. It's fifteen million shades of azure and sixteen million shades of yellow-brown-white-more-brown. And the people, while utterly irreplaceable, tend to be more of a continuum than a spectrum: a variation on a theme rather than a Philip Glass symphony. This place lulls and invigorates with the same nourishing embrace.

Everyone from family to principals to (long story) strangers have asked me why I am moving back to my homeland. And the answer, lazy thing, has had six months to percolate with barely a stronger answer than when it started.

Because I need to. You know when you just know? I need to be here. Not forever. Or maybe. Who knows. Call it coming full circle, or reconnecting, or taking a respite (unlikely), or divine plan, or serendipity.

This is where I need to be. With these kids, in the place, doing this work.

Switching the from charter to district, inner city to rural outpost, uniforms and alphabetical order to monster truck baseball hats and teeny tiny shorts ain't going to be no easy thing. Switching from total instructional design control and nearly constant coaching and observation-based feedback to a curriculum, a consortium, and an open hand isn't going to be an easy thing.

But today while I sat in on an English Development class at my new school, a sixth-grade girl (maybe my student next year) sidled up to me: she handed me the bright pink and bright blue napkin-flower she had made, smiled that shy-proud smile only middle schoolers can smile, and sashayed away. And I knew. I just knew as I've known.

This is where I'm supposed to be.

What happens when it's time to start letting go

My instructional coach is psychic, and I love/hate her for that.

It's been a wicked intense year. Nothing but constant growth. (Do you remember being in elementary school and literally lying in bed at night with growing pains? Yeah. That. This year.) And apparently what you do when you've been growing and your students have been growing all year is... let go.

Let go.

Before you dare to launch into a certain twiddly winter fantasia melody, I don't mean let some ephemeral "it" go. There is nothing viscous, intangible about this loosening. It's letting students struggle with material. It's letting them miss the answers because they'll circle back around to it, they will, later in the discussion, or tomorrow, or next week. It's letting students be at different levels, having gotten there at different paces, and by different strengths and weaknesses. Not everyone's graphic organizer of the day will be beautiful. But some will. But some won't.

Let go.

It's realizing that my time in Los Angeles is voluntarily coming to a close. It's being okay with the waves of realization, rapidly increasing in tempo and strength, that come crashing in and pronounce that things will never be the same again. It's the cocky epiphany that not only is it okay things will never be like this again but also it's good. It's the growth, the growth right there— put your pointer finger on it and watch it disappear: it's so small even your little finger could cover it. It's a plucky little revelation. That teaching somewhere else is still teaching, and students somewhere else are still students, and growth somewhere else is still growth. Maybe even better growth, because it's the growth that's supposed to happen next.

Let go.

But back to my instructional coach. She knew just what my kids and me needed in these last six weeks of school. We needed to break the life-or-death embrace we'd been locked in for the better part of this year and take a step back and hold each other at arm's length and take a look at what lasting impressions had really been made. Could we see them, the impressions of each other's hearts and minds and experiences and values and obstinacies and deal breakers? Could we see them, like the weave of a knit throw pressed ardently against the face during a sticky afternoon nap, on each other's faces?

I have to let go that I don't see the impressions on some faces. Just like I have to let go that some students haven't left impressions on me either. It would be dishonest and patently marketeering to say that I love all my students. Lesson number one my first mentor teacher taught me.

Would I sacrifice my comfort and strength for any one of them? Yes. And I have.

But I have to let them go. The ones I love, the ones with whom we just couldn't get to that bond. They all have to go. They're growing up. And so am I.

The irony that this song has been going through my head recently is not lost.

Maybe I'll play it in the classroom tomorrow. In between 2pac and Biggie Smalls, you know.

What happens when it's tough love again

I felt that I should clarify after the last post when I took on the responsibility of remembering that kids aren't done growing, and how that's okay.

Lest anyone (including myself) think that students shouldn't or can't behave to an exceptional high (as in, decent human) standard of behavior. Because they can. Oh, they can. And they will.

Our principal recently sent out an email to all the teachers and staff about 1) how our eighth graders are suffering from senioritis (I did not know there was a middle school version of this. There is. There is. Oh there is.) and 2) how the sixth and seventh graders (i.e., little people) are suffering from spring fever (I did very much know there was a version of this for every human being). She encouraged us to revisit in our practice the routines and procedures we set in place in September, as well as the care with which we enforced them.

Wait, September?

If there were a line for people who have forgotten, misplaced, discarded, or casually watched die the procedures they set in place in September, I would all ten of my toes fully over that line.

In place of student-led, student-accountable procedures, my classroom has The Timer. This lovely little device didn't arrive in my classroom via Target until December. I think. And it changed everything. Because while I couldn't get students to move quickly through entry routines and transitions, The Timer could. The Timer would mark how long students had to stay into break. The Timer marked in ten-second intervals how many grammar sheets students would have to complete (I'm a little ambivalent/ ashamed about that one still). The Timer motivated students when I couldn't and they wouldn't.

It's May and I'm realizing that The Timer, bless its unbending digital inner-workings, has made our class more efficient but not fuller of students powered by character.

Or even habit. I would take habit at this point.

So all of this to say, while my standards for behavior are very high, I'm realizing just in time to start planning for next year that my standards for character need to be even higher.

We've still got six weeks to work on this... Updates to come.

What happens when we're not quite done growing

Do you remember that field trip I mentioned before?

Three resolved teachers and three brave parents took eighty-five fidgety eighth-graders to the Museum of Tolerance at the end of a long week of testing.

Learning to cherish hose rare moments when you know they're
getting it  (left on my desk after reading Gary Soto's "Oranges")

We were ready, let me tell you.

About a third of the students have been listening to a beautiful audio recording of Elie Wiesel's Night. The rest watched and read background information about the Holocaust and took on poster projects. All students have been analyzing and reflecting on bias, prejudice, the power of rhetoric, censorship, and discrimination through To Kill a Mockingbird. 

We were ready.

After traffic-mired bus ride, a jaunt around a West Hollywood park, and an inconceivably long wait in line (fifteen minutes, according to them, is forever), our intrepid scholars entered the museum and began their collective and individual journeys. 

And what journeys they were. The kids were dazzled by the interactive displays. They liked being asked their opinion. They benefitted from moving from activity to activity every five minutes or so.

But when our tour guide went on her lunch break and I realized that I had been left without a parent chaperone, it was just my twenty-six wards and I who began our trek through the Holocaust exhibit itself. What I saw in my students began to dishearten me. They were so worried about where to stand, where to sit, whom to be next to, whispering about the accents, the colors, the most insignificant details. I am strict and have expectations and was experiencing the exhibit for the first time myself. I put the students in order, separated the talkers, shepherded them from display to display as the lights and audio moved us along, clarified ill-timed questions. But it became hot. There weren't enough sits. The amount of information became greater and greater. Students were tired. Thirsty. Having difficulty concentrating.

By the time we reached the rooms that modeled an actual concentration camp, culminating in a gas chamber, I was dismayed by the students' reluctance to be absorbed by the experience. Despite warnings, they whispered through the apex of the tour, as we watched a nauseating procession of pictures and videos of actual victims undressing and walking to their deaths. The bodies afterward. The horrors exacted on them. 

We moved to the final video in the next room, the concluding question being presented ("What will you do? How will you stand up for change?"), I wondered about these kids, my kids. Was their apathy and lack of visibly being moved by what they had seen evidence that they were destined not to stand up for change? Had I failed somehow to prepare them to be empathetic participants? Were they even capable of absorbing what they were seeing?

As we swayed in our seats on the bus ride back to school, the students were noisy, silly, exhausted. A few friends launched into a round of fat jokes. Then a homeless person joke. I stopped them, exasperated, trying to lead them to make a connection between what they had just experienced and the hurtfulness of stereotyping others for the sake of getting a laugh. Repeating silently to myself over and over Their pre-frontal cortex is not developed. They are middle schoolers. Their pre-frontal cortex is not developed. They are middler schoolers. The students stopped and began jovially discussing other topics. They are good kids, I reminded myself. They had proven before that they could understand themes and abstract ideas. They were just tired today.

"Why so serious, Miss?" one student pondered my tightly drawn face with genuine concern. "Don't you want to be happy?"

And I thought about the weight of my disappointment, how I had set my expectations high, so high. Can thirteen-year-olds behave during a tiring three-hour tour? Yes. With difficulty, yes. Can they, in those circumstances, act and reflect like adults on atrocities against and by humanity? 

Probably not. Maybe a few.

My students are still growing. And they are very much verbal processors. Some of them, perhaps, saw or heard something that will stay with them and change them. Maybe they will tell stories about this field trip, its pivotal impact, when they become human rights activities and social workers. And probably most of them will remember a long, hot day on a field trip, when they got to play soccer at the park with friends, the slightly grumpy teacher, and an all together not terrible Friday.

The irony is not lost on me. After this trip to the Museum of Tolerance, I will remember more acutely what I see every day in the classroom: despite how wildly they howl in protest, junior highers are children who are only just in the process of developing an ability to be uncomfortable for the sake of others. Most of their world revolves around themselves. And it's going to be a slow, difficult journey to change that. 

Don't get me wrong. Some students are getting lunch detention next week. But all in all, I'm proud of my students. I'm going to hold them accountable to keep trying. And yet when they act very much like the kids they are, I'm going to be a little more patient. A little more tolerant. 

What happens when SBAC starts

Someone thought it was a feasible idea to have three job interviews, SBAC performance task testing, and a grade-level field trip in one week.

My name is Ms. Cash, and I have a scheduling problem.

But you know what? These students. They have jumped into the second-year SBAC pilgrimage with the sobriety of Aeneas founding Rome. We their teachers and administrators have told them again and again that they have an intellectual lineage to forebear for themselves, and they have risen to the task with barely a stopover in the Carthage of testing anxiety and general goofiness.

As I circulated the classroom today during four hours of active test-monitoring and recovered from only half-a-dozen technology-induced heart attacks, I noticed that between hiccup attacks and giggle fits; slouching in seats and wearing sweaters on heads; chewing on plastic baggies for earbuds and (in)advertantly humming to the chagrin of seat-mates; students were deeply engaged by the eighth grade performance task material.

Most of them. Some of them were the kind of engaged you find yourself when tied to an anchor and dropped over the side of a boat.

This test is difficult. I would have sweated a bit if I were given it the freshman year of college. Watching students have to work even to cipher the instructions for the writing tasks makes me wonder: what is it exactly we want students to be able to do? Common Core is a lofty vision, a noble one. But is it realistic? Lesson planning with the standards is a subtle mix of ambiguous, challenging, stretching, and deeply gratifying. But testing with the standards sometimes feels like merely a heroic way to die.

The lower grades have taken six days to finish this first-half of SBAC. I've warned my little Trojans it could take some time to reach our destination. Oh, and bribed them with mints and threatened them with grammar homework.

Only time-- lots of time--will tell whether we all make it to the end with the same courage which we've begun with.

What happens when we slow down

Another day. Another Monday. Squirming, squealing, grunting all the same, but in that fluid and almost lithe way that the adolescent body moves through a first day back from a break, spring break. As if limbs still believe they are slung over couches and on floors, gaming controls in hand.

It was a wicked day to give a pop quiz do now. Which is exactly why I chose to give it. How many students did the homework over the eleven days off? (Assignment: "Check your annotations for the first nine chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird. Make sure you underlined vocabulary words. Circled words you don't know. Wrote question marks next to burning questions. Place one inference per chapter in the margin or on a Post It.")

And would you know, most of those students did it. I mean, there were plenty of papers turned in emblazoned during the ninety-second peer editing melee in orange gel pen (have currently given up that battle) with 40%'s, 30%'s, and sigh 10%'s. But more than half received modest 70%'s, cheeky 80%'s, and you little scholars 100%'s. "Okay. You read. What now?"

After-school intervention was quiet today, sweet. Five out of ten students present. Divide them up into pairs: "Honestly, where are you in the book? Chapter three? You two read together then. Chapter eight? You two will be partners." Scooting my chair closer, I crossed my leg over my knee and listened as the lone girl read aloud about the first snowfall in Maycomb after a short fifteen minutes of getting her materials out. Threatening, cajoling, laughing don't work with this girl. Only time.

Five minutes left in our hour liturgy. The student who balks from reading like only a too-cool-for-school, nearly fourteen-year-old can; who has been braying his reading aloud, a not-so-silent protest against being here, being told what to do, being forced to change and grow and work for things that don't seem valuable-- suddenly interrupts himself to make a connection with the film version we had previewed that morning. 

Like, a really insightful connection: text-to-text, text-to-world, text-to-self. Multilayered. That kid. 

These kids.

We use those last five minutes to slow down. Questions emerge. Random questions. Google traffic patterns in LA. Google the number of escape attempts from Alcatraz. Share some very candid, very brave metacognition about the struggles of being a teenager: "I think I try sometimes because I'm curious; I think I don't try sometimes because I don't like to be controlled."

I halfheartedly suggest we should read a little more in these last moments. They protest, not sneakily but disappointedly, as if they are actually hungry for this moment of connection. Oh. Oh. Okay. But can't we talk a little more?

I think Scout actually misses her mother.

The movie communicates emotion better.

But the book has more details.

I wonder whether I'm a different person depending on where I am.

And then time is up and the students pack up. "Thanks, Miss. Bye, Miss. Wait for me! Let's walk together."

The sneaking suspicion... those were the best-spent five minutes of the day.

And all we had to do was slow down.