The Home Stretch: On Broken Air Conditioners and Empty Vessels

Today is my penultimate day at Institute, which I know is true but don’t really believe, partially because the whole Institute structure has totally distorted my sense of time. Constantly planning a few days ahead leaves me continually grasping to figure out where I am in the present; I simultaneously feel like I’ve been here for MONTHS and for only a few days. I think it will do me some good to get out in the real world, to say nothing of reuniting with my husband and cat.

We had our SUMMER READING SPECTACULAR on Tuesday, and it was really a special thing. Our faculty adviser lent us “mood lights” and we bought snacks and had ourselves a legit community event. It wasn’t perfect by ANY means: the air conditioner turned off about twenty minutes before the event started, and when we got a hold of the janitor he wasn’t able to do much for us but say “That sucks” since the system is on an auto-timer. I believe the temperature was 104 degrees that evening, but it certainly became a good deal hotter in the crowded room. Because it WAS crowded, which is totally amazing. Our kids brought their moms, their aunts, their grandmas, their cousins. Almost all of our school site staff was there, and a ton of my fellow corps members. Not just corps members that people in my collab were close to, either– just fellow new teachers who wanted to be supportive of our students, possibly because some of them could be teaching them in the fall. It gave me the TFA warm-fuzzies I think for the first time for REAL this whole summer.  These guys just care about these kids and this school; they gave up an evening of watching Netflix or planning to be there for our class, and they did it joyfully, and they loved what our kids had to say.

The kids were magnificent. They were dressed up to the nines and calm and poised and expressive. When they weren’t reading they sat up straight and paid rapt attention to their classmates, even though they’d heard these stories and poems several times before. They took it VERY seriously, and so did the audience. I wish I were more eloquent and could adequately describe what an amazing place that PTA room turned into. It was like everyone was glowing, though that may just be the heat. Back in my dorm that evening, after serving and cleaning up snacks, taking down posters, moving  chairs and buying a celebratory chocolate malt, I was up past midnight just being happy for them, unable to get back to sleep.

We had the kids write reflections yesterday morning, and it was really clear that they got out of the reading exactly what we had hoped. “I did things in front of an audience (before), but these were teachers who would notice if I made mistakes, so that was nerve-wrecking (sic?)… I think we impressed everyone there, though” said one, and another said “The thing that surprised me the most is when I got up to read I used PEP (our little acronym to teach kids how to read publicly: Projection, Enunciation and Posture) greatly, I wasn’t moving around, I didn’t have stage fright.” These kids are boss, yo.

Two of my students, sadly, didn’t show up, despite their repeated promises to do so. We’ve tried to figure out whether they had emergencies or just decided they were too cool to come; they’ve both given us several stories ranging from a family member in the hospital to going shopping for clothes. I think they walked into class yesterday feeling pretty smug about “getting away” with not attending a non-mandatory event (sigh), but the kids who DID participate were so stoked and were getting so much positive attention from OTHER teachers that they started to feel pretty bad about it. Which I would just chalk up to a learning experience and say “oh well, next time give it a shot,” but I think it’s kind of killed their investment in the class. This is not by far the first time they’ve missed stuff for the class– their attendance has been spotty (sometimes for legit reasons) and as a result they haven’t turned in final drafts of much, haven’t gotten the formal feedback from us, etc, and I think yesterday they both realized that their writing hasn’t improved as much as everyone else’s because of it. Both told me they didn’t want to submit to magazines yesterday, I think because they know they’ll get the rejection letter. What we’ve tried to stress to them is that the rejection letter is probably going to come for all of the them, that it’s not getting accepted that matters so much as it is putting yourself out there and trying again and again and getting as much feedback as you can. Today I’m going to read them the section from Stephen King’s “On Writing” about how he had to get a railroad spike to keep his rejection slips on the wall. But it’s going to be lost on L, at least, who I just found out didn’t show up today, is missing the final assessment, and as a result is failing a half-credit elective creative writing class. It sucks.

It makes me think a lot about student investment, in general, and how TFA kind of approaches it. L had a legitimate enthusiasm throughout most of the class (though not as much as some of our students, who had been writing on their own for fun long before the class started), and despite our best efforts to keep her jazzed it just fizzled, in large part because of stuff going on at home. The TFA line is that really great teachers figure out how to have more influence over their students than that stuff, somehow, and I find myself wondering what I could have done to make that happen for her in the 3.5 weeks I and the other teachers have known her.

We’ve done a lot for her– lots of phone calls home, worked with her to get those long term projects done or made-up, we brought her a birthday cake yesterday to make sure she wouldn’t skip out to celebrate, and my adviser promised her a one on one game of basketball if she showed up all week. Ultimately, my gut feeling is that different people respond differently to different challenges at different times in their lives for different reasons, and that L didn’t quite get everything she could have out of this class (she for sure did have SOME positive experiences with us, of that I am sure) isn’t a bad thing anymore than it is a good thing. It just is. But all my shiny new training has me doubting whether those are valid thoughts to have. If Wendy Kopp came and talked to me right now I think she might ask me if that was me having low expectations or giving myself an out for doing more. And I really wrestled with that last night, if I had failed this kid in some way.

Basically, TFA teaches that kids are empty vessels shaped by competing forces in their lives. Your job as a teacher is do be the dominant force, so the kid will do what you want them to do and succeed in your class and go to college. But that doesn’t give the kid enough credit. They’re people, you know? They have free will. They are just as frail and fallen as the rest of us. What they do have is time on their side, and I think the best you can do as a teacher ultimately just comes down to trying to gently influence them to make something of that time,even if “gently influencing” looks like you being the hardcore disciplinarian “I don’t play” teacher. That kid is a person, not a product, and there’s no mathematical teacher formula that’s going to change that.

TFA wants us to ask ourselves if we’ve made “transformational change” in the lives of our students this summer. For some of my colleagues teaching core subjects, the answer is clearly yes. Their kids are passing the tests that are moving them onto the next grade instead of being held back. That is fundamentally changing their life path. But for my kids, who were with me for the specific reason that their current life paths look a little clearer and more well-paved than their failing counterparts? I don’t know. This class has definitely been GOOD for them, of that I have no doubt. Is it “transformational”? It felt like maybe yes on Tuesday night, it felt like they had found something new to do with their lovely, special voices, had gained some confidence, had a better understanding of WHY people write these things and why those things are also worth studying and analyzing and wringing meaning out of. But I don’t know if that qualifies as “transformational” to TFA or myself, or just nice. Or just something they would have figured out on their own. My kids will get happy little progress reports with happy little grades on that clearly delineate “how they’ve done” this summer. I get one, too, of a sorts, that goes to my region and has all sort of little marks on a rubric to gauge what kind of teacher I am. But that paper is ultimately bull, and I’ll never get the sort of clear cut, satisfying measure that my kids will. Maybe in a couple years one of them will drop me an email from college and I can say “right the eff on,” but I’m never going to get a pie chart of what percentage of that will be from my collab’s work, the other teachers, his/her family and just his/her own awesomeness and good fortune.

I am so, so happy that things went so well for four of my kids. I am so, so bummed that we lost one in the home stretch, and that one is pretty much checked out and is just limping to the finish line because he thinks there’s a pizza party on Friday (surprise! There’s not kids. We poor). The being bummed doesn’t cancel out the being happy, it doesn’t even come close to be equal to it. They just sort of coexist in an uneasy impasse inside of me. And they both are asking me whether or not any of this will prove to be useful in making me a decent teacher in the fall. Jury’s out on that one, folks.

TLDR: Sometimes teaching is fun, sometimes it sucks. It is always hard.

Teacher Beats

The bus ride to the school where I teach is about 20-25 minutes long, and that is some precious listening-to-music time. Anyone who knows me can attest to how terribly picky I am about music, especially when traveling. Most people use the bus ride to sleep or bs with one another, but I NEED that time with my headphones on to get centered for the day, or I am much less enthused about the Teaching I need to do For America that day. So here, in no particular order, are some of the songs that have been helping me cling grudgingly on to my sanity for the past several weeks:

1. Janelle Monae- Cold War: Because teaching is kind of like being an android revolutionary.

2.The Beatles- Getting Better: From the "fake it til you make it" files. If I listen to this song enough I can almost convince myself that my teaching is, in fact, getting better all the time.

3. Jill Scott- Golden: Despite the 5am wake up calls and the, shall we say, disheartening lunches, being here is what I want to do. I am living my life like it's golden, thankyouverymuch.

4.Sufjan Stevens- Chicago: This isn't the first major life event this song has gotten me through, and I daresay it won't be the last. I think this song is the "Don't Stop Believin'" of our generation, and I look forward to its saccharine Glee cover.

5. Fleet Foxes- Helplessness Blues: "I was raised up believin' I was somehow unique/ like a snowflake, distinct among snowflakes unique in each way you can see/ And now after some thinkin' I'd say I'd rather be/ a functioning cog in some great machinery servin' something beyond me. /But I don't, I don't know what that will be. /I'll get back to you someday/ Soon you will see." This IS the first major life event this song has gotten me through, but I can tell you it won't be the last (Montezuma also gets played a whole lot)


6.The Roots- The Fire: While I knew that this song will totally pump me up no matter how down I might be feeling, I did not know until I looked up the video just now what a baller music video it has. Whoa.


7.Nickel Creek- When In Rome: "Where can a teacher go?/ Wherever she thinks people need the things she knows."


8. Stevie Wonder- Higher Ground: Not only will this song prompt me to shake my booty wherever I happen to be, its zen message reminds me to stop trippin' about whether my lesson plan is getting rated BP- or BP+. (BONUS: There are some really amusing Youtube comments for this video).


9. Goldfish- This Is How It Goes: This is great chillin' on the road music, and when I played it for my kids last week during their independent work time they LOVED it. Their taste consistently surprises me.


10. Florence and the Machine- Dog Days Are Over: Why no, I'm NOT sick of this overplayed song. If this song doesn't make you feel generally okay about life you should probably make an appointment with your health care specialist. Because I'm concerned about you.


11. Alabama 3- Let's Go Back to Church: Pay no attention to the footage of Vietnamese markets; this song is Delta as all get out.


12.The Decemberists- This Is Why We Fight: This is my favorite Decemberists' album to date (don't hate) and this is one of my favorite tracks. If you were playing close attention to this list you might notice a theme of youthful idealism for the slightly less youthful listener. I never said I was deep.


13. Utada Hikaru- Simple and Clean (remix): "Regardless of warning/ the future doesn't scare me at all." SUGOI!! ^_^ Whatever, I'm not too proud.


14. Sarah Jarosz- My Muse: I downloaded this album on an impulse because it was a dollar on Amazon, and it was one of the best decisions I've made since arriving at institute (along with the purchase of a $9 electric tea kettle). It's completely gorgeous beginning to end and I can play on repeat for hours, but this song just sort of slipped inside my heart and has stayed their for weeks.


15. Daft Punk- Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: That's what I'm here to become, right? "Our work is never over."


Only four days left! My kids have their reading tomorrow and I couldn't be more stoked. I can't wait to see them all dressed up and showing off their work!

No Excuses!

I refuse to let this blog languish into nothing like so many of the ambitious TFA blogs before me. REFUSE. I am consistently amazed by how little I find worth saying at the end of the day, when my days are longer and more packed with stuff than they've ever been. I can't in good faith blame exhaustion, either. I'm busy and dog tired, sure, but compared to most of my Institute compatriots I've gotten off pretty easy. My amazing co-teacher and I manage to get almost everything nailed down well in advance, we have an adviser who is supportive and gives us a lot of freedom, and I rarely find myself having  to go to bed any later than 10:30 or 11pm. I hate the early wake-ups, but my hours are as close to civilized as they can be, given the circumstances. I've even managed to make it through most of Different Seasons on the weekends. So why the lame showing?

Well, in order to write, you have to start somewhere, and this whole experience is so big and busy and barely contained that most times when I sit down and try to write I can't find a place to begin. Much easier to call Mike and tell him about my day in a roundabout way, at which point I've made some sense of it, but have no desire to retell it. Also, and I think this may have a lot to do with why all the other TFA blogs are so quiet, is that there is just a LOT of what we colloquially refer to as "drama," and no one wants to put that stuff up on the internet. The tricky thing about drama is that, when you're concerned with it, it swallows up everything else going on in your life and you find it impossible to talk about anything else. Drama is murderer of perspective. While I want this blog to be an honest record of what I believe will be two very important years of my life, I don't want to record my thoughts on "Can you believe so-and-so did THIS?" or "I can't BELIEVE they made THAT decision and I have to go along with it." I don't want to give such things more room to grow and breathe.

So what HAS been going on in the two weeks since I last updated? Great things. Terrible things. We lost at least two, maybe three students (this next week will tell). At least one was lost to "drama," of the particularly vicious heartbroken teenage variety. It bummed me out. I wish I could march over the kid's house and shake them: "This stuff that's keeping you at home? It does not matter. You will be embarrassed and mystified that you ever could have cared about this in a few years. What's going on in our class DOES matter and you are MISSING it and the class is worse off for your absence." But other than a polite phone call there's not much we can do.

But the kids who do stay? They're amazing. They get better, every single day, even when I watch the lesson I painstakingly put together fall flat on its face. Somehow they figure it out, and incorporate it into their work, and the work is better for it. Just a few weeks ago they were shy, uncertain, incapable of giving on another feedback more substantial than "I liked how you wrote about a cat." Now they fall over each other to share, read loudly and confidently, and really push each other to improve. Mike and I decided most of the improvement can be attributed simply to the act of sharing. They really do support each other, but I think deep down it's a desire to one up the other guy that's doing the magic: "Well, if she can do that, I DEFINITELY can, too." It's a pretty great thing.

We're having a reading on Tuesday night for their friends and family and some TFA folk. The unit plan called for us to have a class reading on the last day, but that seemed dreadfully lame to me since most of what they do in class every day is listen to each other read. So we got special permission to open up the school in the evening and printed up some invites and by God we're having these kids read their stuff to the public. I didn't know if they'd be into the idea, but they seem really stoked. I knew it would work when I was leading the kids to lunch and a boy from another class started walking next to S, who batted her eyelashes and coyly invited him to the event. SCORE! It's such a little thing, but no one's ever really given them a shot at something like it. I'm tremendously proud of them and I hope our little open mic night help them see how proud of their own work they should be. I will definitely be updating about how it goes down.

I just wish I could shrink them all down and put  them in my pocket and take them back to Charlotte with me. I'm beyond ready to be done with dorm life and institutional food and the hyper-structure of Institute, but I feel like kind of a sleeze walking away from these kids. One of my students wrote me a "shout-out" in which she expressed hope of being in another one of my classes, and I felt like dirt. I'm having Mike send me a giant box of books and lit mags and will be doling them out this week along with personalized reading lists, mostly out of guilt because I won't be around. I never would have imagined feeling this bad about having to walk away.

One of the books Mike found as he was boxing them up was the collected writing of Nietzsche. That would have been a nice parting gift, huh? "Peace out kids, here's some Nietzsche. You're on your own now, suckers!"

True Confessions of a Newly Minted Teacher

The first true confession being that I'm usually so frazzled and brain dead after the day is done that I'm in no mood to blog. I want to be oh-so-pithy and clever you see, and that's just not the headspace I'm in by the time I get (somewhat) caught up on work. But being honest is more important, right? So if this post is short on keen insight or chuckles, know that it is at least accurate.

So this week is the first in which kids referred to me as "Mrs." rather than by my first name-- I'm having a hard time adjusting to it. I straight up introduced myself to a student as "Danielle" at one point and then we both immediately burst into apologetic giggles. I figured the kids would hold it over my head for the rest of the week at least, but they were gracious about it; really my co-teacher and I just answer to "ma'am" more often than not. Yeah I know. It's pretty adorable.

We had two students on the first day, which was pretty devastating. Two wonderful, earnest, super motivated students, mind you, but the class was in danger of getting canceled (at least one of our sister programs at another school site did get the axe). Luckily the leadership at our school is super committed to bring creative writing to kids who will otherwise probably never get the chance to take it, and they pulled some strings and made some phone calls and as of today our roster boasts nine--count 'em nine-- really wonderful young human beings. I guess a best-case scenario would be me teaching 30 surly, unhappy kids, to get me good and ready to be a tough guy teacher in the fall, but really for a writing class nine is just about perfect: small enough that they'll get close and trust each other and everyone will have enough time and opportunity to get plenty of feedback, but large enough to have lots of different opinions and styles on display. So basically I get to have a wonderful summer and what will probably be a very trying fall.

The kids impress me every day. TFA (and my own experience with the students I worked with in Cal-SOAP) teaches that the kids we serve really just need someone to believe in them and hold them to high standards. But these kids don't need me to believe in them any more than a dog needs a subscription to Cat Fancy. They believe fiercely in themselves, the value of their education and the work we're doing in class. They all plan on going to college. One wants to go to law school, another wants to be a psychiatrist, and another plans on curing AIDS (you know, no big deal). All this "get the kids invested" stuff TFA has been stressing? I don't have to really do much. The kids just bring it, every day. And they're getting better, every day. And it's inspiring but it's also really intimidating when you can know exactly the sort of teacher that they need but you're very aware of how you're just not that person yet. But I'm working on it.

Time to stop writing so I can wake up at 5am and keep working on it.

Institute Is Kinda Weird

Weird, I tell you. Besides the intense, long days that you'll hear about from everyone who's every done it, what you don't hear about is the really weird developmental place you're in. The message from TFA, and it's one that I don't think they can stress too much, is "Hey, we know you just graduated from college and you're high on life and all, but you need to grow right the eff up, NOW. There are children coming on Monday and they need you and you and only you are responsible for their future, so hoist up your big boy pants." Which is exactly right, and totally scary, but it's kind of undermined by the reality of daily life at Institute.

For starters, you're living in super traditional dorms; most of us haven't done that for years (while some of us, like me, never have), so you get a lot of people running around giggling saying "aww, we're freshmen again!" It doesn't feel very adult at all. Then you get up early in the morning, grab your backpack, put a sandwich and a cookie in a lunchbox with your name written on it sharpie so it doesn't get mixed up with anyone else's, and board a bright yellow school bus. Then you get to the school where you sit in little-people chairs all day and your every minute is structured and when the teacher says "1-2-3 Eyes On Me" you shut right up and listen to whatever she has to say. I get all the rationale behind all of this, but it is impossible not to feel infantilized.

In other news, while I still have no idea what I'll actually be doing in Charlotte, for the next four weeks at least I'll be teaching creative writing to high school students, which I couldn't be more thrilled about. And that's good, maybe, because the other people I'm co-teaching with seem less than thrilled. I'll just have to be enthusiastic enough for the four of us! We had to take the pre-assessment today so we could patch up any gaps in our content mastery if need be, and I was pretty impressed both with the intensity of the exam and the quality of the texts we were asked to work with, including not just the perennial favorite "The Lottery" (which still gives me the heebie-jeebies every. time.) BUT that awesome scene from Watchmen where Rorschach has broken into Daniel's house and his eating his beans; students were asked to talk about characterization. I know, right? Totally perfect. This is the first time I've seen teens asked to study Watchmen legitimately, but I hope it's not the last. We're meeting the teacher in charge of the project tonight, and I hope to give him a high give on his excellent taste.

I can't wait to meet the students, even though I'm pretty terrified. My biggest worry, though, is that this class will be so chill that it won't prepare me for being the no-nonsense adult teacher I'm going to need to be in the fall. My adviser said this class is supposed to be kind of relaxed, which is exactly what a creative writing class should be, but that's not very helpful to me trying to develop a professional persona.

 The weird thing about TFA is that no matter how well you research it before you sign up, no matter how many feel-good recruitment events you go to, you can't really get a sense for its culture until you're actually in the thick of it. I'm still trying to get a handle on it, really. When I try to succinctly describe the Teach For America approach the only word I can come up with, honestly, is "American," with all the cultural baggage both good and complicated that word implies: A worship of exceptional individuals, a hunger for biting off more than is maybe a good idea to chew, a youth-driven, DIY, haters-gonna-hate, never-tell-me-the-odds sort of mentality. It's as inspiring as it is sometimes troublesome. Sometimes I get really into it, sometimes I think it's a little short-sighted. But at the end of the day, you have a bunch of brilliant, dedicated people who are working tremendously hard in a teeny tiny swelteringly hot town to help kids, and it's exciting to be in that environment. I'm really interested to see how the next few weeks play out, and I'll try to update as often as I find time.

In the meantime, I have to go stand in a very adult line to eat my very adult dining hall dinner.

The Blog Before the Storm

Finally in the Delta, and even though I can't think of much to say it would be a shame not to post a blog on Institute Eve, when everything's been so built up. So just to take stock before I go to bed, I guess:

People in the Delta really are as sweet and gracious as I'd been told. This goes for people in the South generally (not that I think people in California, for example, are mean-- they just don't really go out of their way to engage with strangers the way that Southerners do), like the lady I spoke with briefly in an Alabama gas station this morning. As I passed her I told her in the quick, offhand way that I like to do when I see strangers with something I admire, that I liked her purse (It was zebra print with a giant blue leather bedazzled rosette in the middle. Ultimate purse). She took a second to figure out that I had been speaking to her and her "Oh, thanks" came as I had almost turned the corner. When I came BACK from the bathroom she stopped me to tell me the website it had come from and all of the different types of purses they had an oh hadn't she seen one that would look just adorable with the skirt I was wearing and I must be careful out on the roads, now, ya hear? It's that extra little bit of conversation you just wouldn't get back home. Anyway, Delta folk couldn't be sweeter or more hospitable (they had boy scouts helping us move in. BOY SCOUTS!), which I particularly appreciate when you hear about some regions where TFA's, er, controversial nature means corps members aren't really welcome at all. So I have no idea what's going to come in the weeks ahead, but at least I know that I have the full support and well-wishes of Cleveland, Mississippi, and I'm super stoked for the fish fry on Friday.

I've seen more of the United States in the past few days than I have in my entire prior life combined, which is pretty awesome, and I've met a ton of people from loads of different backgrounds and even though it's kind of the lame "what's your major" question it's been really interesting to hear what brought them all to apply for and eventually accept a commitment to TFA. The reasons are varied and mostly (but not always) noble, and no two are the same. I have something I want to say about that but I'm pretty exhausted right now and I have to get up EARLY. Checking out my summer school in the morning!

DOOM!

I am not looking forward to the ESL PRAXIS II in the morning.

That is all.