Must Be Nice!

Every teacher has heard this at some point.  "You're a teacher?  That must be so fun.  It must be nice to get off at three.  It must be nice to have your summers off.  It must be nice to get a long break at Christmas."  I know that I probably have misconceptions about the jobs other people have as well, so I try not to get too hacked off by the ignorance of these statements.  However, it might be time to respond to a few of these crazy statements.  Before I do, I want to issue this disclaimer.  Nothing I write in this post is a complaint.  I love my job and wouldn't want to do anything else.  I just want people to have an understanding of how nonsensical their view of teaching is.

1.  Yes, teaching is fun for me, but it would not be for you.  The "you" I am referring to here is the crazy person making the statement, not you the wonderful reader of my this blog post.  The people who say, "that must be so fun" have a belief that teaching is playing with kids all day.  I have taught kids from 0-3 in child care as well as middle school and high school, and I have never spent one day just playing.  Even when I got to play with kids, I was responsible for their safety and the cognitive development that came from that play.  The fun I have at school comes from the love of planning lessons and delivering content and trying to give real answers to crazy, hypothetical questions like, "What would happen if everyone in the world jumped at the same time?" because the student who asked the question wants a real answer.  The person who wants to have fun playing with kids all day would not find that fun.

2.  I have never gotten off work at 3 o'clock.  The person who makes this statement usually works a nine to five job.  They are jealous of my work hours because they believe that I only work when the students are there.  Let me just set this straight.  I get to work at 6AM (because I would set off the alarm if I got there any earlier).

6:00-7:30 - I get the day ready, which involves, writing the objectives and agenda for the day on the board, gather materials for whatever hands on demonstrations or labs we are doing that day, answer e-mails, make a list for the day of what must be done (lesson plans due, meetings to attend, assigned duties, what must be graded today, what games I need to attend for yearbook photos, etc.).
7:30 - 8:00 - I go to either a teacher's prayer meeting two days a week (or door duty if it my assigned month for that - which is sincerely my favorite duty of all, I wouldn't mind doing it every day).  If it is not my assigned month, I set to work on my list.
8:00 - 11:30 - There is no way to explain how exhausting the actual act of teaching is.  Preachers probably get it, and I would think stage actors would as well.  For six hours out of every day, I am on stage.  However, I can't just perform; I have to also gauge the audience because it is more than an act.  They'll be tested on it, and I'll be evaluated on their performance.  They have different learning styles and abilities and gifts and strengths and weaknesses and personalities and home lives, so I am not teaching one class but rather 24 individuals.  When I say this is exhausting, I don't just mean tiring; I mean it depletes you.
11:30-12:00 - If it is not one my assigned months for lunch duty, I will get to sit and have lunch in the teacher's lounge with a few friends.  If it is a duty month, I will eat while walking around a room with 125 middle school students.  I am responsible for their safety, making during no one is eating alone, making sure that any student with a recognized eating disorder isn't throwing away their food, making sure the kids clean up after themselves, and making sure they get back to class on time (oh, and that I do too).
12:00-3:15 - Back to the stage for some more performances.
3:15-4:30 - Depending on the month, I may have door duty.  We have to make sure no one gets run over in the parking lot.  On Mondays, I have faculty meetings.  On Wednesdays, I have help days.  If my club is meeting that week, it is probably on Tuesdays.  If none of those things are happening, I am usually at an athletic event or possibly a play rehearsal to take photos.

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the list in a while.  Most of the list gets taken care of in the mornings, and I do have what is called a planning period, so that grading and planning and test writing and stuff might happen then.  Sometimes it doesn't, so that is what Saturdays are for.

3.  Yes, it is nice to have summers and holiday breaks.  You have no idea just how great it is.  Considering that a 70-80 hour work week is normal for 10 months out of the year, you can't begin to imagine how nice it is to have time to do something like clean the bathroom or work out or read a book.  (Reading for pleasure really is the best part of summer.  At the end of the summer, I'll do a post on everything I have read this summer.)  It is great to make repairs that have stayed broken for months because other things took priority.  Don't think that teachers don't do school work during the summer and Christmas and Spring Break. though, because we definitely do.  We do it differently and less under the pressure of urgency than we do during the school year, but we do.  I have read three school related books, started planning a project, and thought about yearbook stuff for next year.  I have also been composing an e-mail in my head to some colleagues about a potential cross curricular lesson.  I am supposed to making a few "flipped lesson" videos for next year, but I haven't done it yet (It's the end of June, so I can probably do that in July).

So next time someone tells you they are a teacher, don't reply like the ignorant.  Say something like, "That's great.  You must be tired."  In all likelihood, the teacher will reply, "Yes, I am; but I love it."

Keep Your Fun Teachers Fun

My favorite memory of high school was the Gatsby party.  After all the classes that read the Fitzgerald classic were finished, the entire English hallway was decorated as a great tent.  Students brought food that reflected the novel, dressed in costumes that reflected the 20's, and danced the Charleston to jazz music.  While we were only supposed to come during our English class period and lunch, party crashers are motif of the novel; so it wasn't considered particularly egregious if you tried to come during another time.  Half your grade was based on your committee work (project based learning before the internet made it easy) and half was based on your costume.  When I taught at my old high school, I was horrified to find out that they no longer have this event.  Why?  It got out of control.  Students trashed the rooms and the hallway and didn't stay to clean up.  This great event no longer exists because a small number of people couldn't exhibit a minimum of responsibility.  It would have only taken about 10-15 students out of over 350 students, but there weren't that many.  As a young teacher, my first thought was to put 15 students on a clean up committee, but I now realize that committee would not teach content the way the other committees do.

Teach for a while, and it will happen.  You will stop doing something you used to love doing because it just isn't worth the impact on your classroom.  The chaos that comes from playing a particular review game or engaging in a certain project is just too much to control.  Then, some outspoken student will say it, "I heard you used to be fun."

One of our teachers was once known for his review games.  They were so intense that there was once an injury.  That teacher no longer plays review games because students were so focused on diving for their answer, they wouldn't take the time to listen to the review part of the review game.  This past year, I stopped playing Kahoot as a review game with one of my grades because they stopped reading the choices and just hit an answer, which made the test average the next day much lower than normal.    When students use that phrase "used to be fun," they don't stop to think about where the fun went and why.  Therefore, the rest of this post is a service to students.  These are the top five ways you, as a student, can keep a fun teachers fun.

5.  Learn each teacher's "tell."
Every teacher has a signal that you are reaching the line or are crossing it (every human being, for that matter).  If you learn that "tell," you won't have to recognize the one that says, "Look behind you.  The line is back there."  For some teachers, it is that they top talking and close their eyes (probably counting to ten).  For others, it may be a facial expression.  For me, it is when I say, "Alright, enough."  I actually mean enough when I say it.  If students would stop whatever they are doing right when they recognize the "tell," they would end up in much less trouble.  The kid in your class with interpersonal intelligence will be able to tell you what it is for every teacher.

4.  Own your guilt.
I don't know who decided that denying what you have done means you didn't do it, but it doesn't.  If you didn't do your homework, say it rather than telling your parents that the teacher lost it.  If you didn't write a paper, don't pretend to look for it in your book bag.  When a teacher tells you to stop talking, it is because they have seen you talking.  Saying you weren't talking is the equivalent of calling them stupid or liars.  The last time I truly lost my cool with a student was because of this.  The student had talked and laughed during our opening prayer.  I found this disrespectful to me as well as to God.  My eyes were not closed (not only because I'm not crazy enough to close my eyes in class but because I lose equilibrium and fall down if I close my eyes while standing), so I had seen him.  I sent him to the hall.  When I went out to talk to him, he actually said, "Miss Hawks, I don't know what you are talking about."  I knew what I had seen and lost my mind.  If he had said, "I'm sorry.  I know it was disrespectful.  It won't happen again." I would have forgiven him.  His insistence on adding lying to the disrespect was the worst possible idea.

3.  Recognize why you are at school.
So, this is where the problem with review games and hands on activities comes in.  Teachers don't play review games with you because they care about you having fun.  We like that you are having fun, but that is not the point of the game.  Teachers know that serotonin, the neurotransmitter released when you are having fun, is also responsible for writing long term memories in your brain.  That is why my teaching involves jokes and stories about my cat and analogies related to childhood toys.  It is also why we play ScienceLand and Quizlet Live and Kahoot.  However, the most important part of the review is between the questions, when we review what makes the correct answer correct and the others incorrect.  That's the review part, and that's what will help you with your test.  Focusing on points (the marks on the board that will literally become dust at the end of class) is not going to help you.  It is also only going to frustrate the teacher who wrote the test when we are trying to give you information about what is going to be on the test that we wrote.  We know what you need and are desperately trying to give it to you; trust us.

2.  When a teacher is fussing at you, DO NOT LAUGH!
I had trouble deciding on the placement of this one because it could easily be #1 on this list.  Imagine that you are talking about something that is bothering you.  It is really important to you, so you are kind of worked up about it.  Now, imagine that the person you are talking to about it starts smirking at you or laughing in the middle of what you are saying.  Would you be upset by that?  Add to that that the person who is openly laughing in your face is the reason you are bothered in the first place.  Would you find that horribly dismissive and disrespectful.  A student left my room last year and said, "I got in trouble for smiling."  He was half right.  He got in trouble for smiling at the worst possible time.  Your teacher isn't just in a mood, so be respectful.  In the end, that will earn you the respect of the teacher.  Laughing in that moment will not.

1.  When a teacher tells you do something, do it.  Don't explain why you aren't doing it.  
I put this at number one because if students did this alone, it would eliminate most of the need for numbers 2 and 4.  When a teacher says, "Please sit down," the result she is hoping for his your but in a chair.  She is not looking for an explanation of why you were up in the first place.  When a teacher says, "get back to work," she wants you to get back to work.  She doesn't want three minutes on what caused you to get off task to begin with.  Very few things in class actually require a full explanation.  Here's a good rule.  When a teacher says something to you, the next word out of your mouth should not begin with "but I was just."  If an explanation actually would be helpful, your teacher will be much more open to it if you have already done what was asked.

The Teacher Next Door

"Great teachers aren't born.  They are made by the teacher next door." - Harry Wong

This week, I was writing an e-mail to my pastor in which I asked for prayer for my friend, Cheryl.  In the e-mail, I referred to her as the teacher next door.  After typing that sentence, I realized that the only information he would get from that phrase was her location at work.  If I had been speaking to another teacher, they would have understood the depth of relationship that phrase implies.

Then, it occurred to me that this relationship may be unique to the world of education.  Lawyers and accountants may not feel particularly close to the person in the next office.  Architects may not ask the neighboring architect for help with a difficult design.  An engineer probably can't communicate a request to another engineer with just a facial expression.  In teaching, however, the "next door" relationship is incredibly meaningful.

The "teacher next door" is the first person you see when you when you exit your classroom.  Depending on the set up of your school, this may be the person across the hall or the person with an adjacent wall.  The architecture of my school gives me three (an incredible blessing that should be considered in school design).  The teacher next door is the person you vent to when a class has driven you crazy.  He is the person you laugh with in the hall.  She is the person you seek advice from when "that" parent calls.  She is the person you can make eye contact with from the hall, and she will know you need her to watch your class while you run the restroom because you feel nauseated without you have to use any of those words.  It is a powerful bond.  The depth of this relationship means, of course, that when one of you is in pain, you will hurt more for them.  It is worth that risk, however, to have that person in the place you will spend most of your time and most of your heart.

If you are in the unfortunate position of not liking the people nearest to your classroom, you should be very intentional about forming a close relationship with someone in your school.  You need this person.   If you are fortunate enough to have a good relationship with the teacher next door, you should thank God for that blessing.

You Can't Save Them (at) All

I entered teaching at the age of 23 as an idealist, believing that if I did it right, every student would love learning, have enthusiasm about my class, and behave perfectly.  The education system eats people like that alive.  Go into a classroom with that expectation, and you will be shot down.  Get shot down too many times, and you will become jaded and cynical.  If that happens, leave the teaching profession immediately.  Go work in a bank, a factory, or a radio station.  Become a postal worker if you have to, but don't keep teaching.  Much damage is done by the cynical.

Fortunately, I had a great group of people around me, from fellow teachers to administrators.  They didn't dash my hopes and dreams, but they did teach me to have realistic expectations.  I'll never forget the time my principal, Mr. Matthews, sat down in my room on a teacher work day just to check in (this is the sign of a great administrator, by the way).  We chatted a little, and at some point in the conversation, he said, "You know you can't save them all.  I can see that in you."  Between those two sentences, I had already burst into tears.  I didn't know I had strong feelings about my ability to save every student from their drug use, abusive home, learning disability, or their own apathy.  He had seen this in me when I was too busy to see it in myself.  He reminded me that while it is great to have compassion for students, I could not take on all of their problems.  Other teachers set my perspective as well because even the best ones have some difficulties with classroom management or lack of student performance at some point.

Going into the classroom with a realistic expectation rather than an idealistic one is the reason I can still enjoy my job 17 years later.  If I had insisted on keeping my Mary Poppins view that my classes would be "practically perfect in every way," I would have quickly become disillusioned.  Having a realistic expectation means you can enjoy the positives and deal with the negatives without going on an emotional roller coaster.

I have been fortunate in my career that I have only had one year in which I couldn't have that kind of honesty with my superiors.  Mr. Matthews couldn't have been a better first principal for me to have.  No matter what happened in my classroom, he had a story about how the same things (or worse) had happened in his career.  I also had a great principal whose office I felt comfortable walking into and saying, "I have a question, but it may sound kind of rude."  to which she said, "Well, sometimes, you have to ask a rude question."  Last week, I cried through the end-of-year meetings with both of my administrators, was encouraged by both of them, and then went to lunch with them and a few other teachers.  Administrators who can make you better teachers while recognizing your growth are worth their weight in diamonds.  If you are lucky enough to work for one, don't give that job up for any amount of salary.

I have digressed from my original point.  Teachers face 25-125 students each day, depending on the grade level they teach.  Each of those students has something from which they would like to be saved.  For some it is trivial; they would like to be saved from the kid sitting next to them or their lunch that they don't like.  Others have truly serious problems which they have absolutely no power to solve.  If you take on your own shoulders the problems of even half of your students, trying to save them from everything they bring to school with them, it will cripple you.  You should pray for them (and with them, if you are able).  You should give them a safe place in your classroom.  You should get help for those in serious need, of course.  But do not fall into the trap of trying to "save them all."

Now that I work in a Christian school, I have yet another perspective on the conversation I had with Mr. Matthews.  Not only can I not save them all, I can not save any of them at all.  I am tasked by my calling to do my personal and professional best.  I am tasked by my school's mission statement to spiritually and academically equip, challenge, and inspire.  I am tasked by God to obey His Word and present the gospel to my students.  I am not tasked with saving them.  Only the blood of Christ can do that.  It is my honor to walk with some of my students on their redemption journey, but I cannot save them at all.

GRACE EdCamp 2016!

This is GRACE's third year of EdCamp.  It is one day of professional development done by teachers for each other.  We sign up for topics ahead of time, make a schedule, and choose either what we want to learn about or who we want to learn from.

My presentation this year was a joint presentation with awesome English teacher, Marcia Wingerd, on cross-curricular blogging.  If you follow my blog, you know that we have been in a public experiment on 8th graders publicly reflecting on their learning experiences (See this post and this post for background).  We feel that it has been successful (See this page for links to the student's blogs) enough to keep doing it and suggest that other teachers be part of it on across many grade levels.

One of my goals for next year is to develop depth in the four C's, which are critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration.  The best ways to develop those are project based learning (PBL) and challenge based learning (CBL).  While I have been doing a CBL for two years (see this post if you are interested), I haven't gotten where I want to be with it yet.  I want students to really develop in these four areas through all my projects, especially that one.  Therefore, I chose my other topics accordingly.

One workshop I attended was on a project one of our incredible history teachers, Nate Dewey, presented.  He has his freshman create a Manor Faire, based on the serf system they learn in history.  They create maps, food, costumes, explanations of the role of all types of people, explanations of daily life, and they incorporate technology, interact with all attendees (probably 150 of them).  It is a great project, but I only knew it as an interested visitor.  I wanted to learn about his end of it.  What is he communicating to his students to get the great outcome he is getting?  How does he turn everyone's observations into a grade?  The majority of his focus was on creating projects that require kids to be interdependent in group work.  While it was great that they learn the history, he talked about the life skills students learn - teamwork, conflict resolution, debriefing, managing time, and problem-solving.  These skills are as imporant (perhaps evenmore important) than the content.  The hardest part is figuring out how to create the time in your classroom to make sure you are still addressing the content you would have covered in that work time.  He used flipped class videos with occassional checkpoints, using games.  His other main point was that you need to be comfortable with the chaos that large group project create.

Our amazing calculus teacher, Cheryl Herrington, was my choice for the second session I attended.  She presented on teaching creativity.  Yes, that's right - our math teacher talked about teaching creativity.  I have been interested in this topic for - well, forever.  Learning HOW to do it is something that is harder to grasp.  I have read and listened to everything Sir Ken Robinson has ever done (See his TED talks here and here and here).  Because I know Cheryl well and have taught next door to her for the last eight years, I know that she is a very creative teacher.  I was excited about what she would have to say about teaching kids to be creative.  She talked about the difference between imagination, creativity, and innovation.  She talked about how everyone can be creative because we are made in the image of a creative God; it isn't just for a special subset of people.  It also doesn't just mean making a project pretty.  She used the book Imagine to talk about three different types of creativity - the Aha! Moment (Sudden Insight), Incremental Creativity (more of a step by step process), and Getting in the Flow.  Sometimes, you need to practice all three.  Your sudden moment of insight might be good, but if you spend time in incremental creativity, you can trade in good for better.  Getting into a creative flow might require imagining how a child would do it.  Creativity can only thrive in a safe space, where you don't believe you will be penalized for a dumb idea.  She mostly encouraged us to practice creative process in our own lives so that we could then model it for our students.

My choice of the next session was on Inquiry Drien Projects presented by the wonderful Kristen Foxworth-O'Brien.  This was our second year doing 20% Time projects at GRACE, and it was this teacher's first year.  I only got to attend three of her presentations this year, and all of those three said they had failed to achieve their goal.  This was not representative of all her groups because she tweeted some absolutely amazing presentations (e.g. a sophomore who built his own computer), but it made me wonder how many had reported that they didn't get what they wanted to out of this time.  She gives them 20% of her class time, so she obviously wants them to grow in something they are passionate about.  I was interested in finding out how she checks in with them during the project so that she isn't surprised by their outcome (and again, how she grades it).  She talked about buy-in from students when they are choosing their own topics and getting to higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy because of the depth of research.  She spent a lot of time talking about how to help students refine their topics to things worthy of giving up 20% of your class time.  Setting goals throughout the year is important for keeping students on track and accountable.  First quarter, they had mentor meetings.  Second quarter, they held pitch sessions to people who would ask them guiding questions.  Third quarter, they had to submit an annotated research document.  Fourth quarter was their final presentation.  Throughout the process, they blogged about their topic.  Blogs can be
1. Resource recommendations
2. Reflections on your own journey
3. A topic talk post, which could be used as a resource for someone else.
Homework grades are given for blog posts, and each quarter's major goals are test grades.

This has become one of my favorite days of the year, and I have thought a lot about why that is a case.  I believe it is because I am learning from people that I know and trust as educators.  I have attended many good and many bad workshops over the years.  Even in the best ones, it takes time to decide how credible this stranger is.  I don't have to spend that time deciding when the presenter is the teacher down the hall, whose class and teaching I know well.  I can just jump in and start learning.