Phone call #4

I call my parents after school daily.

It's something I started last year. I need to process the day with someone from outside the system and they're great for it.

They had a meeting this evening, so I called a friend instead. I had stories from tutoring that I wanted to share.

Because I talk to my parents so often, I forget how sensational my stories can be. I remembered somewhere in the midst of telling my friend--a friend who's on the phone with me weekly; who has other teacher friends--because I didn't want to paint too negative a picture.

The theme of today's stories was one of hope. The lightbulb moment when a student saw the connection between repeated multiplication and addition. The awe that I've become a person that students can tell me some of the problems they're dealing with. And the way that students face their challenges.

These are the moments that remind me both that I have improved since last year and of the power of being a consistent presence here. These stories hold the promise of the coming year. My friend was able to catch the hopeful rays, but there's still the shadow reminding me how different the world my students experience is from my own.

After all, I can call my parents every day.

End of Summer

I report to inservice in 40 minutes. Two weeks and then students.

A photo I took on my walk last night. The brightness of the flower against the incoming storm sums up how I'm feeling right now.

Knitting and Goals

Or How I Don't Work

I’m a knitter and, when I get the chance, I like to hang out with other knitters. Overall, knitters have two ways we approach our work.

There are the knitters who are project oriented. The ones who ask, “When are you going to finish that?” or “How long did that take you?” These are the people who know the techniques to speed up their knitting so they can finish one project and move on to the next. And they always seem to know what they’re going to work on next.

Then there are the process knitters. The people who will work on something for a while, just enjoying the process of creation. They experiment with techniques for the effects they have. They have more works-in-progress than planned projects, because if something looks interesting then they should try it out now.

I’m a process knitter. Currently there are two major projects I’ve almost completed, but finishing--joining pieces, weaving in loose ends of yarn, blocking a project to define it’s final shape--bores me. Completing the project isn’t enough motivation for me. I want to be able to really experience it. When winter comes and I’m ready to wear that wool sweater, I’ll find the time to finish it. I’ll block my shawl soon, but there’s no way I’m wearing it mid-summer.

As such, I hate being pushed to give an end-date for a project. My senior year of high school, I worked on a sweater jacket.* As the bag carrying the sweater became fuller, the question, “When will you be done?” came more and more frequently.

My answer? “By the time I graduate...
...from college.” **

I have a similar attitude toward goals outside of knitting. I understand that some people need them. I hear that they help you more if you define them specifically. But they feel more constraining to me.

It’s a bit of a lie to say I don’t have goals. I do.***

I just don’t like spelling them out. (Despite my tendency to plan ahead. And my apparent tendency to make other people spell out their goals.) I don’t like sharing them. (Despite my frequent conversations with friends.) I don’t respond well to people asking me how I’m doing with them. (Though it doesn’t stop me from inquiring on how other people are doing.)

I don’t know. Maybe my GPA would have been .15 points higher, if I had more explicit goals and found some extra drive during my worst college classes, but I still wouldn’t have graduated summa. Maybe that sweater jacket would have finished 8 months earlier, but I wouldn’t have worn it any more. The fact is, I’m perfectly happy being a process person.

But, I face a dilemma at school. The beginning of the school year is ripe with goalsetting. I’m told I should do it, but it just seems so forced. I believe in the end-product, but the process fails at motivating me. Student goal-sheets never did anything for me as a student. How do I convince students of their benefits when they’re not something I get genuinely excited about?

Because most people aren’t process knitters, I understand that setting goals is a useful skill for most people. In a region where kindergardeners give you a blank stare when asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and high schoolers think it’s okay to tell their teacher that they’ll sell drugs, I do believe it’s crucial to create visions, to repeatedly go through the process of defining action plans and following them to an endpoint.

But I haven’t found an overall method that’s comfortable for me. I didn’t have much buy-in with my pep talks and personal conversations last year, perhaps because they felt trite even to me. I’m realizing I need to try something else.

How do you bring goals to the classroom? What do you set for students? What do you have students define for themselves? How do you motivate anyone to set honest goals, and not follow my habit of filling in the answers I expect people want to hear?

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*I was, and often still am, that girl who knit during class. It helps me concentrate.

**I had the pieces completed and pinned together by the time I graduated high school. A friend convinced me to sew them together in the fall of my first year at college.

*** A personal goal for this school year is to take the pictures necessary to create a calendar of hay--because my phrase last year was that I was living in said calendar. But I classify it as a project rather than a goal.

Building My Motivation

There are moments where I find it difficult to believe that I am going back to a second year. When the stress of school is overwhelming, even in the midst of summer.

In an effort to improve my outlook, some things I'm looking forward to this year.

• Being more prepared than last year.
• Already having established favorite resources while planning. (If you want more, look at my del.icio.us account--it's listed over to the side.)
• New math teacher.
• Greater motivation to collaborate with new math teacher. (We'll be living together, so my guess is it will be hard to avoid.)
• Introducing class blogs. (Planning to be a teacher-centered list of resources. I can't count on students having a constant phone, never mind internet access. But I can publish websites where you can practice and set students to work on them when they come in for tutoring.)
  
• Hope that as a returning teacher, I'll have better relationships with students.
• This year's precalculus class--I already know most of the students who will be in it and they know me.
  
• Word-problem warm-up journals.
• Teaching organization skills through notebooks.
• More groupwork for discovery lessons.
• Having actual discovery lessons.
• Knowing more about how different manipulatives work.
• Hearing back from last year's seniors. (Though I'm afraid they'll be like campers and not really keep me updated as much as I'd like.)
• Creating studentwork that can decorate our classroom.
• Being more of a stickler about teaching what the class should be, not falling back to where students were left behind. Running with them to catch up.

I've got some of my motivation back for the moment. At least, I'm feeling positive enough to make it through the rest of the night.

I'll be out of town celebrating my grandmother's 80th birthday for the next week. After that, I'll drive back across the country to start in-service. Here's to savoring the break of summer so that there's energy enough come fall.

A Month’s Worth of Reflections in One Post

Excerpt from Conversation Type A

Setting local cafe (or library. This time it’s the cafe). I’m sitting at a table with my computer and a textbook.

RANDOM GUY: What school do you go to?
ME: Oh, I’m a teacher in South Dakota.
RG: Wha? You never…
ME: Yessir, just finished my first year. Working on planning some lessons right now. Holds up textbook to read cover. Algebra, teacher’s edition.
RG: South Dakota? What are you doing down here then?
ME: Visiting family over summer vacation.
RG: Okay...When do you go back?
ME: Well, I’ve just got a few more days in town before I go on a trip with my family.
Awkward silence
ME: I’m working on writing my “Welcome to Algebra” letter to students. What would you have wanted to hear from you teacher on the first day of school?

I hear other people talk about how little time they took to write and reflect during their first year teaching. The end-of-year comments on blogs that started enthusiastically in the fall only to be pushed aside by October. Compared to some of the people who are dedicated bloggers, I’m an irregular presence here. But between my writings here and elsewhere online and my actual journal, I wrote more details about last year than I remember at given moment.

Then summer came and I stopped.

Few entries here. Fewer there.

During my writing sabbatical, I’ve been talking more.

Excerpt from Conversation Type B

Setting Stitch and Bitch at a yarn store (or book club at the library or local church. This time it’s the S&B). I recently joined the conversation and made everyone else introduce themselves.

CONVERSATION LEADER: So what school do you go to Sarah?
ME: I just finished my first year teaching.
CL: What do you teach?
ME: High school math.
CL: And where do you teach?
ME: I’m teaching on a reservation in South Dakota.
CL: Wow. How’d you get here?
ME: I’m visiting family in town for a few weeks. My parents moved here after I left home, so I don’t really have connections in the area. I found your website and came here tonight.
CL: And what’s it like in South Dakota?

I’ve been telling stories. Trying to convey my experience truthfully, but hopefully. Trying to separate my experience of the place from my experience as a teacher. Trying to keep teaching separate from first year teaching.

I don’t know how to do it.

Instead, I talk about students. I talk about the weather. I talk about teacher housing. I talk about the drive to the grocery store. I talk about the insanity of not knowing whether a student has dropped out or just isn’t in school for a month. I talk about the student who threatened to get me kicked off the reservation in the fall and invited me to his confirmation in the spring. I talk about how far behind they are. I talk about how much progress we made. And sometimes, sometimes, I talk about how uncertain I am.

Excerpt from Conversation Type C, Part I

Setting local farmer’s market (or book club at the park or wherever I find people closer to my age. This time it’s the farmer’s market).

CUTE GUY: How’d you end up in South Dakota?
ME: Well, I joined Teach for America and wanted to go someplace rural and not in the South, so there I was.
CG: I’ve been thinking about doing a similar program. What’s it like?
brief pause
ME: South Dakota’s pretty different than other regions, so I can’t say what it’s like elsewhere, but... lots of the aforementioned rambling...

The thing is, my identity this year has been framed by being a math teacher on a reservation in South Dakota, not by being TFA. The program is very much present, but it’s not what I name first. For this year at least, I think it’s claimed me more than I’ve claimed it.

It has shaped how I teach. But so have the education courses I took in college and the people I’ve found online.

Excerpt from Conversation Type C, Part II

Farmer's market. The conversation draws to end. I scribble on a piece of paper and hand it to CG.

ME: Here’s my e-mail address if you have any more questions. I’ve also included the address for my teacher blog. You can find some links to other people in my area there. Get a larger sense of things. I haven’t updated for a while, but I will once school starts again.


This blog has suffered for lack of definition. Any guidelines I tried to impose on myself here disappeared pretty quickly. I’m going into the next year with a different approach--an approach that I think I’ve already taken, so I don’t think anything will change. I’m stating the guidelines more for my benefit than yours, but writing them here so you know what we’re getting into.

I’m going to let this be my space to share what I feel comfortable about my life. About being a math teacher on a reservation in South Dakota. It will have stories from the classroom, both student anecdotes and reflections on teaching. It will almost certainly will have requests for help (which may well be accompanied by comments on others’ blogs so you know I’m asking). Posting will probably be irregular, so if you have a feed reader go ahead and subscribe. We’ll see how much I reflect about my second year.