22 posts tagged “teaching”
When teaching in the districts that MTC places us in, tangible success is often hard to come by. Failure seems to be what is constantly in our face as we think of all the things that our students are doing besides learning, all the places that our students will likely end up besides college, and all the classroom management issues we face that make us want to roll over and call out sick. Every. Single. Day. Still, it's in the little things that teachers anywhere but especially in "critical needs" districts must focus on to maintain drive and focus and continue doing what too many others have deemed highly improbable or flatly impossible for centuries: educating poor Blacks.
In many of these districts MTC teachers teach in standardized tests are seen as foreboding signs of eminent doom and embarrassment. In these places, teaching "to the test" is often resorted to as the means through which educational salvation is reached. Teaching to the test is one thing but when you're in a school environment where, from day one, what's communicated to teachers is that teaching to the test is the ONLY thing, well then you're at KIPP. On some level this is understandable as testing determines so much at charter schools like KIPP from our enrollment to our ability to woo private funders to the very renewal of our charter with the state of Arkansas. However, I cannot help but shake my philosophical belief that I have more important life skills to teach my students than finding equivalent fractions and answering multiple choice items using process of elimination.
In any event, our big state test in Arkansas is called the ACTAAP or the Benchmark Exam. KIPP Delta in Helena has some of the highest test scores in the state at the middle school and high school levels. Last year, 94% of our 7th graders at KIPP Delta scored proficient or advanced on the mathematics Benchmark Exam compared to 66% of 7th graders statewide and only 33% of students in Helena-West Helena's regular public school system. What makes this even more remarkable to many is that our school is 99% Black, 99% free/reduced lunch, and in the heart of dilapidated downtown Helena close by local housing projects, gang territory, drugs, and prostitution. Last year's 7th grade math teacher who got these results was so successful that she has been given the green light to found her own school which will be opening in Blytheville, Arkansas in the fall of 2010 as a new KIPP middle school. She's only a year older than me. The venerable 7th grade math slot was thus available when I applied to KIPP this past spring and who teaches this course with the districtwide spotlight on it now?: me. The Black, hood guy from Harvard with two years of (social studies) teaching experience who's a few credits away from a master's degree in education.
Anyway, to my success story. In preparation for the end-of-the-year Benchmark Exam we take practice Benchmark Exams every month. We chart the progress of our students and use the practice Benchmark Exams to target particular students and skills for remediation and re-teaching. Results are scrutinized for hours on end at the individual, school, and district levels. It is highly nerve-wrecking to see where your students are at month-by-month and to know that the results will be known almost immediately by your peers and superiors and reflect your quality as a teacher. Lovely. In any event, the first practice Benchmark Exam we took was in late September. We took a second one two weeks ago in late October and although the success or failure of my students on the September exam could largely be attributed to what my students came into 7th grade knowing, my school director was clear in communicating that the October exam's results would be all my own.
Much to my surprise and the surprise of many a colleague, I'm sure, not only did my students' scores increase from the first to the second practice Benchmark Exam but these were the only scores that increased in any grade level, in any subject area at the entire school. Fifth, sixth, and eighth grade math scores went down. Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade literacy scores went down. Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eight grade reading scores went down. Fifth and seventh grade science scores went down (we don't do sixth and eighth grade science testing). ONLY 7TH GRADE MATH SCORES WENT UP!!! I was elated when I saw the numbers displayed on the dry erase board at our faculty meeting the night we stayed at school until 10 p.m. grading exams and inputting results on our district network for more scrutiny. When looking at the individual students and their performances from the first to the second practice Benchmark Exam, I also noticed that most of the students whose scores increased were taught by me and not by the more experienced and better respected 8th grade math teacher who takes 15 of my 7th graders into his algebra class each day.
That's wassup. Right?
The research article that I read was "The 'Building Tasks' of Critical History: Structuring Social Studies for Social Justice" by Wayne Au. It was published in Social Studies Research and Practice in July of this year. In the article, Au looks at two case study lesson plans by social studies teachers who actively seek to raise the consciousness of their students around social justice issues. The author utilizes discourse analysis where people "use language to operationalize certain 'building tasks' in order to express meaning, ideology, values, and other aspects of our identities in a given situation." Au concluded that these lesson plans were quality classroom pedagogical devices due to their service as vehicles for students to critically question social relations historically and in the present-day context. In doing so, he dismissed the claims of some that lesson plans stifle the true learning process by assuming that the planning and executing instruction occurs in some sort of linear fashion to a "predetermined endpoint."
So here I sit in my kitchen in Belzoni on my last day of official residence in Mississippi.
Feelings, reflections, and stray thoughts abound. I'm excited about moving to my new town and school though nervous about the level of commitment that my new position entails. I am very sad to be leaving 99% of my students who I truly care for and worry about as well as many of my colleagues who are remaining here and continuing to work for those wonderful young people's betterment in a very raw and sometimes hopeless environment. I reflect on my beginnings in the state, my trials and tribulations with housing, and what I hope to accomplish with my new group of students. And to top all of this off random thoughts about my plans for after this upcoming school year, the importance (or lack thereof) of the work I'm doing, and more jump into my mind like little girls playing double dutch on a sidewalk.
So here I sit in my kitchen in Belzoni on my last day of official residence in Mississippi.
Feelings, reflections, and stray thoughts abound. I'm excited about moving to my new town and school though nervous about the level of commitment that my new position entails. I am very sad to be leaving 99% of my students who I truly care for and worry about as well as many of my colleagues who are remaining here and continuing to work for those wonderful young people's betterment in a very raw and sometimes hopeless environment. I reflect on my beginnings in the state, my trials and tribulations with housing, and what I hope to accomplish with my new group of students. And to top all of this off random thoughts about my plans for after this upcoming school year, the importance (or lack thereof) of the work I'm doing, and more jump into my mind like little girls playing double dutch on a sidewalk.
On Wednesday afternoon I was running errands around Belzoni when I received a phone call from my high school principal. She asked me where I was and despite telling her that I had already left school she asked if I could return to campus. She needed to speak with me. In person. Now. I turned my car around and drove back to school knowing that such a prompt, unexpected request couldn't be the harbinger of good news.
When I got back to my school, I went to my principal's office only to see that she wasn't there. Our guidance counselor was also there waiting to speak with the principal who she said was in the bathroom at the moment (she has a private bathroom connected to her office). Soon my principal emerged and asked for me to step into her office and shut the door. Once inside she seemed hesitant about what she was going to say and did not make eye contact with me for a while. Eventually, she sat down and told me that the school district will not be offering me a contract for employment next year. As she began to explain how the school district came to this decision she initially stated that the decision was based on budget cuts. Soon this somewhat suspect premise gave way to the true reason for my contract not being renewed: too many students were failing my classes. She stated that she knew that I tried to help my students and that much of the blame for their academic predicament should be placed on them but still, the superintendent felt that this is what is best. She thanked me for my work, stated her belief that I will be a remarkable educator and man, and bid me good afternoon.
I knew this day would come. From my first semester of teaching in Humphreys County when I developed my infamous reputation for having a majority percentage of students fail my class I knew that the upper brass of the school and district did not like the situation. Failing students (sometimes) means angry parents. Angry parents means principals get screamed at in their own offices. It also means that (elected) superintendents lose votes. Not cute. It did not help that that school year, my first in Humphreys County, just happened to be the first year of Humphreys County's embarrassing trek to state takeover. Humphreys County was a priority school which meant that we did not meet achievement goals or show expected academic achievement (as determined by standardized tests). We were a Level 1 school "all of a sudden" after consistently being a Level 3 school. Thus, state auditors were in and out of our school building and school district throughout the year evaluating, interviewing, and observing everyone from the superintendent and school board to the janitorial and paraprofessional staff in an attempt to determine exactly what the heck happened. The grades of my students and the pending massive failure rate was a striking blight that the school and district could not afford. Thus, despite the myriad extra credit/make-up work, parent phone calls and conferences, staying at school for extra assistance until six or seven each night, etc. it was a "teacher problem" that prevented my students from academic excellence, in the words of my superintendent last year.
For me there are two ways to look at this situation. First, the bad. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, despite its plethora of vast "worst in the nation" educational/health/social/racial/economic/gender/etc. issues, I love the Delta. I love Humphreys County. I have strongly considered buying not only a house but land here. If things go as planned this will occur and Humphreys County and the Delta will be forever changed before I'm 40. The plans are in the works. I will truly miss my students that I've formed relationships with here over the past two years. I see myself (or various childhood friends and siblings of mine) in many of them. I've tried to guide them along a positive path both educationally and personally through almost daily outside-of-lesson-plan-but-you-need-to-know-this-or-know-about-this "teachable moments." I've talked about my life and upbringing along with those of my friends quite a bit with the hopes of my students learning from the mistakes that we have made. The easy way. As oppose to making the same mistakes themselves and learning the hard way. Over and above all I have tried to get my students to understand the power that each of them possesses as an individual as well as what they communally possess as a collective. Far too often things just HAPPEN to my students. My grandma took me in. That boy got me pregnant. That dude said something to me first. Mr. Amutah failed me. I strongly believe that the students I've worked with here have great, limitless potential though their work ethic, self-esteem, and access to channels of success are severely lacking. I fear that my aims have not been fully accomplished yet and thus leaving now is painfully disappointing in some sense.
Still, there's the good that comes from this. I feel that, if nothing else, I have made it known to my administrators that I would not bend to their personal and political whims. Playing with students' grades is playing with students' futures. It's the same thing that my former principal and other administrators in my hometown school district are being sued, fired, and blackballed over. Students (and parents) need to understand that they put in what they get out of life and that not everything will be handed to them without attention or effort as easily as EBT cards or "crazy checks." Secondly, I have proven to myself that I can teach. I can even teach in an environment with scarce resources at times (copy paper? dry erase marker? LIGHTS???). Thus, I know that my experiences in Belzoni have prepared for a long-term career in education that can only become easier and more acceptable with time. Finally, I hope that I have challenged my students intellectually and personally more than they have perhaps ever been challenged before. I've posed questions to them that they may have never thought about (i.e. do you support segregation? Why or why not?). I've given them access to people they may have never been able to meet (i.e. a Skype-brokered interview with my mother when talking about push and pull factors imapcting immigration). I have shown them that at 23--or 20 or 16 or 13--they, like me, can be both "mad smart" and "straight ghetto."
As for the next steps for me, I'll still be teaching next year in either Mississippi (preferably north Mississippi) or in the Arkansas Delta. I'll leave you with these words from the Harvard Black Men's Forum shirt I still wear often:
Makes me wanna gag and hurl. The students at Harvard are by-and-large herded into careers that put people before profits (shoutout to my boy Philip Parham '09 who appears in the video, however). It relates to another discussion going on as well.
...we make a move and act a fool when we up in the class....
FIRST YEARS WITH LITTLE TIME ON YOUR HANDS, JUST READ THIS: THE BEST AND MOST SUMMARY ADVICE THAT I CAN GIVE YOU IS TO BE BOTH FAIR AND CONSISTENT IN YOUR CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT. THAT'S IT.
Now get back to lesson planning...nubes...
My classroom management this year was...different. Oftentimes it was horrible by a number of teachers' standards. Those are often the teachers who yell, degrade, and abuse (literally...in more ways than one) students. I'm not for any of those practices in the least. At the beginning of the year I started off with the philosophy that I would just "keep it real" with my students through-and-through. If they broke a rule, they received a consequence. If they did something especially good, they got a reward. If they said something funny (APPROPRIATELY funny, that is) I'd laugh. I did a fairly good job at going up the ladder of consequences but a pretty terrible job at doing the same for rewards. That's not cool. Also, none of my students ever got that custom t-shirt at the top of my rewards list if the students turned in 30 tickets. The reality of the classrooms that Teacher Corps puts us in is that you *have* to be an a-hole in order to have great classroom management. The sad reality is that students respond to teachers who are really, REALLY hard on them because that's often what they're used to. Anything less is an open invitation for anarchy at worst or at least controlled chaos more consistently. Philosophically and practically, I could not bring myself to be a dictatorial teacher in many instances and thus, my classroom management suffered.
Regarding my other recent post I have to acknowledge that, in part, my classroom management woes contributed to so many students failing my class. If your class isn't attentive and under control then very little learning will happen in the classroom. It's actually amazing how much we were able to accomplish on certain occasions when only one, crucial student was absent and/or suspended. Lovely. At times I would dole out no consequences when a bunch of students were talking or not staying on task or joking around. Other times I would kick out a bunch at a time...seven or more on numerous occasions. Not good (return to the top of the post...CONSISTENCY IS KEY). Note that students who have major academic deficiencies and students who are academically far beyond the other students will most likely give you your major and consistent disciplinary issues, first-years. The students who have academic deficiencies often act out to draw attention away from said academic deficiencies and, sometimes, to get put out of class (especially academically rigorous ones with teachers who don't give excessive breaks...mine!) and eventually sent home where academic burdens are non-existent. The students who are far beyond others academically act out because it's cool, to draw attention away from their academic astuteness (which often detracts from their social capital), or because they're simply bored with school.
A big issue that came up with my classroom management at the junior high level this past year was the fact that I do not paddle or, in any other more creative way, strike students. I don't feel like I have the social justification to hit a child. Perhaps legal in some instances, yes, but I do not feel right doing it. I think that last year I blogged about "the state" statutorily monopolizing legitimate violence against "the people" or something like that and, as an agent of the state, I cannot bring myself to beat poor, Black children and expect them not to fight back, rebel, and/or abhor me and that which I stand for. Strange, since I want them to develop these feelings towards the state though....
Next year, I plan to reform a few things. Firstly, I plan to have detention as my third consequence as oppose to the student calling home and explaining to their parent or guardian what they did wrong. I did not have a student call home one single time and this was in part due to my inability to turn my back on my room without them doing something crazy. Secondly, I plan to contact parents more often about disciplinary issues with their children and keep a better tally of infractions. My oft-plugged favorite teacher website (TeacherEase.Com!!!) does a great job of this as behavior logs--accessible by parents and printed out on progress reports--are one of the features there. Thirdly, I need to follow my own advice and be more consistent with my punishments and rewards. I can't emphasize how tough this is in the modern day Mississippi secondary classroom but I also can't emphasize how necessary this is to be a successful teacher. Also, I still believe in the mantra that "you catch more bees with honey than with salt" or something to that effect so I may try to over-reward them more than over-consequence (?) them. This could be disastrous. Or, this could be logic supported by science.
Today I ended my first year as a teacher in the Mississippi Teacher Corps. As I had hoped for last year when I was going through my final year of college, I was placed in the Mississippi Delta--Belzoni, Mississippi to be exact. Words cannot explain all that I have endured this past year as a teacher. By far, this has been the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.
I am tired and shall now gather up my things (in both my high school and junior high school classrooms), head home (after walking two blocks down the street to where I parked my car...far away from would-be last day student vandals) and go to sleep (after catching the itis from eating some of the cheesburgers that I will cook upon returning home...mmm...cheeseburgers). More later.
- Mr.Amutah
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