Dear Mrs Z

An excerpt from a letter to my dear friend Rebekah, on our city’s youth violence:

” …Did you hear about the HUGE party/fight among high school students at the beach on Friday night?  (I hear it was on the news).  Apparently they stole a keg from a wedding reception, and a dozen or so fights broke out, prompting scores of police and even helicopters.  At the heart of the matter, these kids are pyschologically stunted and have no sense of empathy – no sense of other… no sense of consquences.  The violence extends far beyond gangs as well.  Fighting is “cool.”  They wear their black eyes like badges of honor. (Once again, I return to Erikson’s stages of development).

What we need, quite simply, are more adults who can serve as caring mentors and positive role models.  The kids just need face time with kind, understanding, patient people who can simply say “I care about you – and I believe in you.”  I feel like we might be able to brainstorm until we are blue in the face, and the answer all along has been simple – these kids just need love.  How can we provide for that when our social services are so stretched (TD and his mom are about to be kicked out of their shelter, with nowhere to go), and our schools do not have the resources necessary to provide kids with the 1:1 time and care that they deserve?”

I practice something in my classroom that I think of as “relational pedagogy.”  I develop rapport with my students.  I establish trust.  The only “rule” I enforce is: Respect.  And I enforce it warmly and positively.  When the bell rings and a student bursts through the door, a minute late, the LAST thing I want to do is issue a Lunch Detention for their 60-second shortcoming.  Rather, I welcome them to class.  I chose my battles.  The result?  Students show up.  At-risk students who regularly skip school show up.  And they show up in droves.  In fact, when they get kicked out of their other classes for being late or checking the time on their phones, they come “home” to my room.   They stay late into the evening, as I work… as late as 8pm… simply because it is a safe, positive place for them to be.  And they tell me, “If it weren’t for you, I would have already dropped out.”

The results of my “relational pedagogy” are easy to measure: One student isn’t registered in any of my classes.  He was on the brink of dropping out and was failing all of his classes.  Now he is passing all of his classes – he is the first person in 3 generations to be on pace to earn a single high school credit (let alone 6!)  One student, who is failing all of his other classes, has a legitimate, hard-earned 98% in my class.  He is an extremely intelligent, model student! (He also comes from a gang-affiliated family and was, himself, a crip until recently).

I fully believe that EVERY CHILD will not only NOT be left behind (eh hem)… but EVERY CHILD WILL SUCCEED with one important ingredient: love.

Where’s the love?

Over the weekend, I broke down and purchased a small collection of Flip Video Cameras.  My curriculum calls for Windows Movie Maker, but until now, I had no way to upload photos.  I asked a number of people for help… and no one had a solution.  I brought in my super old school camcorder and bought a UBS cable from Radio Shack, but I didn’t have the requisite administrative rights to log in and have the computer recognize the device… or whatever.  In short, it didn’t work.  So my donation to the district this year (in addition to the dozen pairs of scissors that have since walked out of my classroom and the freezer from my parents’ garage) – 3 Flip Video Cameras. 

The silver lining in this story is… Gustavo!!!  Pardon the exclaimation points.  That is how he writes his name.  And nothing describes his personality better than that punctuation.  Oh! Where to begin…?

Let me start with this – imagine Gustavo bursting into my room the other day, demanding that I type in my password because he NEEDS to get onto YouTube immediately – he has “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” stuck in his head and he needs to hear it.  Now!   I few days later, I’ve probably heard every version of the song – Judy Garland’s, Katherine McPhee’s, little 6 year old Connie’s, that big Hawaiian guy named “IZ”, Jason Mraz… and a host of others.  Don’t worry – Gustavo sings along to every version.  (He was also recently a back up dancer in our school’s production of Grease).

So enter the Flip Cams, and Gustavo!!! is now a producer.  Today I glanced up from my grading project to realize that “After School Movie Club” had spontaneously developed.  The set – PowerPoint and Google Earth.  The actors – two students, Brayan and Kelsy.  The costume – Brayan wore a big sheet of red butcher paper like a cape.   He was, of course, the “hero.”  The stage – all of my Computer Applications text books, piled in neat rows on the floor.  Wind machine (fan) – check!  Taylor plugged in a speaker and found a website of sound affects, so I heard the sound of rain, applause, laughter, even the sound of someone peeing (followed by bursts of laughter).  Gustavo, behind the camera, bossed the kids around and created his movie.  It was HILARIOUS!  I can’t wait until he posts it to YouTube.

Thank you, After School Movie Club, for making my donation feel so worthwhile.

Today I tackled a massive after-school project:  posting quarter grades.  It requires becoming current on your grading (after chasing down overdue assignments, digging through kids’ network folders to find the stuff they forgot to turn in and sorting through stacks of papers).   Our grade book doesn’t sync with the system that we post our grades to, so, class by class I comb through students’ scores and post them.  Then I add comments – “A pleasure to have in class” is number 101.  The numbers go into the 500’s.  I am frustrated that I cannot customize the messages, and it takes a while to scroll through them to find the appropriate message for each kid.  (To parents who wonder why their teachers don’t post comments on report cards – this is why!)  But the very least I can give my kids are short phrases of feedback and recognition.   Yes… it is somewhat pathetic.

By 8:00pm, the job was done.  My room had been tidied.  And I had changed over the date on my white board.  I left the building and… ah ha!  It was still somewhat light out!

Driving home I noticed that spring has sprung – I hadn’t noticed!  I hadn’t seen all the blossoms on the trees or the flowers poking up through the earth.  What?!? The tulips are out?  Where have I been? 

Oh yes… I’ve been living in a windowless classroom since September.

I cannot imagine taking a class in a language other than my primary language.  I commend my English Language Learners (ELL) for all of their extra hard work.  Wow – they amaze me!  The following examples really demonstrate the challenges they face in translating their work…

The Assignment:  “Dear Mrs Z” – What is your dream job?

“I write this letter to tell you about my dream job.  Everyone knows technology is developing. There are thousands of invention were invented every day. If you don’t know how to use the new machine or new technology, you will be  a backward one. One important, smart machine is computer.  They are upgrade and upgrade, until you don’t think that it is a machine.  That more likes a real person.  The computers can give the answer from the hardest problem for about half of second that you can’t do with by yourself or if you can do that, it may take hundreds of year. The computers also have a lot of useful information about every branch such as: space, music, Literature, math or so on. Website is a tool to show the information on the internet, like google’s or yahoo’s site.  They are big website. I was curious about how to make a website like that, so I find information about the language to design website like HTML, JavaScript, php, or so on. That why I choose to become a designer website of my dreaming job.”

“My dream job is a horse designer, because I love the horse design by Europe so much.  When I first saw the beautiful horse in a movie, I just can’t move my eyes from the design.  And I just started to find about the horse design.  They have used different style to make the horse, like the one first saw, they used the nature for theme.  They set each floor have some different flowers.  They used a best wood for making the stairway, and they used the brick for wall, and used nature stone for the bathtub. Also they have design garden around the horse. The whole design is around the nature, like you’re already into a forest of your own horse. I want to design one of my dream horses.  So I want to become a horse designer.  Sincere! Ivan.”

I just sent this to my friend, Carrie, a first year art teacher in England.   It really captures my thoughts on the year so far…

Hi Carrie,

I think I have mentally composed at least a dozen long letters to you – as I drive to work in the morning anticipating the chaos that will surely ensue, or as I process the day’s events while I lie awake at night. I know you have been with me on this crazy adventure, in spirit, this whole school year. 

Thank you so much for writing a couple months back. Wow, I suck for taking so long to respond. And yet, I know you understand – probably better than anyone!

My year has been more challenging – and more rewarding – than I ever would have dreamed possible. I needed a place to deposit my thoughts, so my friend Dartanyon created a blog for me. The trouble is, I never have time to write. But here it is: www.dearmrsz.com The name comes from an assignment I invented on the fly one day, in desperate need for a substitute plan. I had the kids write letters to me to tell me how their school year was going so far. The result was AMAZING – I got to know each of them on such a deeply personal level, and they developed a sense of trust in me far beyond that which they’ve had with any other teacher. Needless to say, I’ve repeated the exercise a few times. I find that my “Dear Mrs. Z’s” really define what education is all about. 

Here’s another example of my kids’ writing:http://www.timburgess.com/ Check out the March 8th entry.

The challenges:
Turning off my brain and finding balance among family and friends and basically taking care of myself. I swear I only pluck my eyebrows on school breaks, which is DEFINITELY not often enough.
Learning to work with a school discipline system that I do not necessarily agree with… that has proven ineffective… and proving to my administrators that my approach (which celebrates positive behavior rather than punishing bad behavior) ACTUALLY WORKS! 
Learning that my kids suffer from problems far greater than I was prepared to deal with: I have gang members (crips, to be exact), bi-polar kids, kids with manic depression and a host of other psychiatric disorders, kids who have suffered every kind of abuse, foster kids, kids who crossed the border illegally and are now fighting to become citizens, poor kids, hungry kids, kids who live in shelters, kids with parents or siblings in prison… and a TON of kids with IEPs (Special Ed) or minimal English skills. There are so many special needs… so many. I have found that there is simply not enough love to go around and not enough of me to give. And oh! How I want to bring them all home and adopt them.
Realizing that my kids cannot read or write. Period. I have had to scale back my expectations and/or build a LOT of basic writing/spelling/math lessons into my curriculum. I am so surprised by how ill-prepared they are. (I’m sure this is a far cry from what you saw on Mercer Island!)
Learning to let go and NOT have a perfect lesson planned out and ready to go. I am learning to be increasingly flexible and off-the-cuff. 
Learning to let my strict grading criteria go. I started with rubrics. Now I just eyeball. At the heart of it all, I find, it all comes down to relative effort. And I can spot that a mile away.
Realizing that I am a fairly progressive teacher among a fairly traditional set of colleagues. I don’t bat an eye if my kids swear, unless of course it is directly offensive to someone else. They can say “sh*t,” for example, but the minute they call someone a “f*g” we have a chat. I do not hand out Lunch Detentions when they are late. Rather, I welcome them to class and wish them well on getting caught up. I am TRYING to give them a sense of personal responsibility, and I find that they need to first trust me in order for that to happen. The minute I start assigning “meaningless” punishment (as they see it), the minute our relationship starts to break down. These kids need adults in their lives who they can trust. Needless to say, my classroom has become a safe haven for kids who get kicked out of their other classrooms. I ALWAYS have an odd kid or two who do not belong. They just join in my class and learn whatever it is we are learning that day.

The rewards:

REACHING the kids – particularly those who are most at-risk. I successfully coaxed a gang of crips into disbanding… a minor miracle. It is an ongoing challenge to keep them away from gang activity, but they are trying. I am so proud of them. 
Hearing my kids say, “Thank you” and “You’re my favorite teacher” and “You’re going to get teacher of the year!”… or even funnier, “Mrs. Z, when are we going to kick it?”

Laughing my ass off every day at something they have said or done. God, I love my job.

So here it is, Spring Break. I promised myself I would do nothing but lie around the house all week and unplug. It is so hard. My job is so inspiring, and I am ready to plan for these last 11 weeks before summer. It really does feel like a marathon, doesn’t it? And this is like the 17th mile. Our legs are numb with fatigue, but we know that if we just pace ourselves to the finish line, we will make it. My last day is June 19th (thanks to a wicked snow storm in December). When is yours?

We just finished Week 4 of the new semester.  I feel like my brain is going to explode and my body is going to break.  Is that possible?  I have never been more mentally, physically, and challenged all at once.  Don’t get me wrong – I am NOT complaining and this doesn’t take anything away from how much I love my job.  I am simply trying to make sense of how I am feeling.

So how am I feeling?  I have the worst insomnia I’ve ever had – I recently went three nights in a row without sleep.  I have raging headaches.  I’m hot.  I’m cold.  I am starving.  Then I’m dizzy and nauseous.  I feel, at times, mentally slow and disoriented – in the way that it takes me a long time to respond to someone’s simple question.  My back aches in such a way that I can’t get comfortable.  My neck aches in the same way that it does when I am about to get a cold or the flu.  My knees even ache.  I am exhausted, constantly.  Email gives me so much stress – it almost feels like a panic attack when I open Outlook.  You see, at the end of my teaching day when I finally sit down to check email, just seeing 38 new messages in my inbox only means that I have 38 people to respond to or new things to do – on top of taking attendance (finally!), planning for tomorrow’s lessons, grading, and giving the dozen or so kids who stop by to see me each afternoon the attention and support that they deserve.  I don’t go home until 8pm – and that’s not because the work is done.  It’s because I have a horrible sense of guilt for not spending the evening with my husband.  I come home totally stressed out… spend about half an hour talking to my husband and eating dinner, only to return to lesson planning until about midnight.  Work still not done, I lie in bed awake all night mentally planning for the next day.  On weekends, all I can think about is sleep – and the possibility of putting away the clean laundry I did last week.  But I have friends to get caught up with, birthdays to attend, dinner parties, you know… “normal people” stuff.  I am not a normal person right now.  I need a hall pass and a whole lot of forgiveness.

Why is it like this?  In the spirit of a class project I just assigned to my kids, I decided to be a “Data Analyst” in order to sort this out.  Using Field Research (observing my own behaviors) I have arrived at the following conclusions:

-  I work a minimum of 80 hours per week.  I know this.  But I wanted to figure out WHY my work takes so much time.  This is where it gets very interesting…

1st year teachers typically pave a new path, as they write, from scratch, all of their lesson plans.  At the same time, they are still developing various systems around the classroom – something that really cannot be done until you are in the process of teaching, in your own space, at your own school.  (Teacher prep programs give you some ideas for this, but the work really cannot be done until the 1st year).  They also have mentors/coaches to meet with, and extra “assignments” to work on in developing their craft as a teacher.  (These assignments usually come in the wake of an observation).  A typical first year teacher will be extremely busy planning for 2 “preps” (or two different classes taught throughout the day).  

As-of this semester, I started teaching 4 different classes.  I think it is fair to assume that every hour taught requires an hour of preparation.  4 preps x 1 hour each = 4 hours per day.  This is in addition to the 5 hours each day I spend teaching.  

What about my planning period, you ask?  We also opened the Student Store this semester, where I spend my lunch time.  During my planning period, I handle the accounting for the store – I close out the til, run reports, prepare deposits, etc.  You see, my students have to run off to their next class – so I do it.  So in reality, I work non-stop from 7:50 – 3:20 (our contracted time) + those 4 hours a day of planning.  If I were to stay on top of my grading (to include entering grades into the grade book), that would take an hour a day.  (We are already to 12.5 hours, in case you are keeping track)  I still haven’t checked – or responded to – my 38 emails.  Nor have I written letters of recommendation on behalf of my kids, or done my mentor “homework” or attended various professional development meetings, or done anything for the DECA program that I run.  Or placed orders with vendors for the Student Store… or run to Costco or Cash & Carry.  And back to establishing those classroom “systems.” Sure, these include filing and organization.  But they also include responding to every possible scenario – and developing classroom policies accordingly.  What about the student who SWEARS they turned something in, and I have torn my room apart and I cannot find it?  What about the kid who refuses to work on his assignments, but decides, instead, to make up a whole bunch of random extra credit assignments?  What about the 8 or so parents I should call because their kid has not shown up to class yet this semester – and of course I need help with this because of language barriers (I need to find the appropriate interpreter at school to help place the call!)  Never mind school events and fundraisers (I’ve been working on our upcoming auction for the last month).  

This job is sooooo consuming.  In fact, as I write this, I am developing a lump in my throat – like I am suddenly filled with sadness and about to cry.  I haven’t cried yet about this job, by the way!  My sadness isn’t for myself, though.  It is for all of the teachers who pour their lives into this job… they truly give it everything they have.  And yet, the expectations continue to increase… bring on the professional development!  Bring on some new set of standards!  And still… teachers do not receive the recognition they so deserve.  (I think I am an exception to this in that my kids thank me every single day – they are AWESOME!)  But no one has stopped me to simply say, “WOW.  You have four classes right now plus you are running a business.  That’s a lot.  That must be hard.”

Contrary to conventional wisdom (and my own typical beliefs), I do not simply need a coffee date with a friend, or a day at a spa.  I just need the time, space and understanding to get through it.  Relaxing, right now, only stresses me out more because I end up paying the price later.  I tried to relax over mid-winter break, only to come into last week unprepared.  (Let me refer, again, to all of my symptoms of stress and fatigue).

And so here it is… the plight of the first year teacher with too many preps… my come to Jesus moment.  Dear friends, I am sorry if I have been absent and short and spacey and non-committal.  It doesn’t mean that I love you any less. 

Mrs. Z

Every day my students ask, “Mrs. Z, why do you smile so much?”  And I answer, “Because I love my job.”  How can I not, when my kids amuse me so much?  This post is dedicated to some of the most entertaining, quotable moments of the year:

“Did you ever notice that bananas fit perfectly in your hand?  I think they should be called ‘hand-nanas.’”

“If humans had ever invented time machines, we’d already know about it by now.  Because someone would have traveled back in time to tell us about it.”

“…Do you mean the black snow?  Or the white snow?”

(Upon tapping a student on the shoulder to wake him up…) “Mrs Z, the (online grade website) MADE me fall asleep!” 

Mrs. Z: Taylor, you need to pay attention!
Taylor: But I can’t…                                                                                                                                                                                                           Mrs. Z: Why not?                                                                                                                                                                                                        Taylor: Because this class is too AWESOME!

(Upon running into one of my students in the hall, as she was on her cell phone): “Mrs. Z, I don’t think I can come to your class today because there is no reception in your room – and I’m trying to get Britney Spears tickets.”

“I’m not racist or nothin’ but I only like the white ones.” (Talking about eggs)

“I had such a hard time remembering my lines because I had to do it in a British accent!”

“Whoa… Mail Merge! That’s filthy!”  (Meaning, really cool).

Written on Resumes:

“I enjoy web design.  I want to make webs for the people.”

“Hobbies include… bat mittens.”

“Volunteer activities… I think I made a garden once.”

I am thoroughly convinced of this.  If there was more love to go around, our kids wouldn’t slip through the cracks.  They wouldn’t become truant.  They wouldn’t join gangs. They need to feel valued.  They need to know that we believe in them – that we trust them with our future.  That there is hope for them.  All they need is love.

I am thankful for you, my friends, who extended yourselves to one of my kids today – and told him that you believe in him.  He saw a glimmer of his future today – a vision of happiness.  He gained hope and optimism.  He gained confidence.  He gained the love that he deserves and requires to stay on the right path.  This kid will be alright, now, thanks to you.  

(But the job is never done…)

DECA, the student marketing club I run, is largely centered on developing leadership skills.  With the recent opening of the Student Store, my kids are stressed! We desperately need to work on team building, communication and leadership.  If you really liked ropes courses and trust falls in high school, this opportunity is for you!  

Bring your best leadership activities to our DECA meetings, Tuesdays from 3:00pm – 4:00pm.  

DECA is an extension of my Marketing class, so there are also plenty of opportunities to infuse leadership activities into my curriculum.  If you can spare some time during 4th period (11:35 – 12:25), let me know!  

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for kids to have positive role models and mentors.  They are always so honored to have a guest in the classroom.  You will feel like a hero – and you will really, truly be one to them!