Classroom Formation, Prep Academy, Returning Scholars

So, yeah. A lot has happened since I wrote last.

Life out here is crazy busy, to say the least. I really did want to write before now, but it has been much harder to find the time to do so than I previously anticipated. Between waking up at 6:00 AM every day and going to bed around 10 every night, I am at APA (Achievement Preparatory Academy - my new school) every day by 6:45 and do not leave any earlier than 5:30 at night. In the past few weeks, I've also had to find a new apartment, furnish it (still in progress), pack, unpack, decorate and take care of all other daily tasks (eating, showering, falling on my bed in exasperation, etc.). So, it's been a pretty big adjustment moving out here.

Here's a very brief overview of everything that has happened since my first week of PD at APA

Week of 8/13-8/17

Build, lift, organize, decorate, sweat -- rinse, lather, repeat. This whole week was dedicated to getting classrooms ready for our "Prep Academy" week, in which all new scholars to the school are given an additional week before the returning scholars come back to become "initiated" into the school culture. But I will discuss that later.

This week was actually kind of ridiculous. I never knew how much time, effort and energy went into preparing a classroom. And especially at APA, where deatil and cohesion is everything, I did not know what I was getting into. We had to build all new binder racks, chairs and tables from IKEA, organize materials tables in every class, and get binders together for every scholar in every class with name tags. Then we had to check to make sure those name tags were right, double check to make sure every scholar had a binder and TRIPLE check to make sure every classroom had every binder that it needed. Even with all of that, it wasn't 100% right on the first day. In addition to all of that, the "Platinum Teachers" at this school (everyone is a Platinum teacher) pitched in to create teacher work stations with new desks, make bulletin boards, and throw together everything else that goes into making a school work successfully. My brain hurts just from thinking about it.

Week of 8/20-8/24

Prep Academy.

This was amazing. As I described before, Prep Academy is an entire week that is devoted to new scholars at the school to learn exactly what it is like to be an Achievement Prep scholar. APA only accepts new 4th, 5th and 6th graders as a 4-8 school, so these were the only scholars we were working with. Every day, scholars wore plain red t-shirts and jeans. The idea was that scholars had to "earn" their uniforms that would be presented to them at the end of the week, because at the beginning of Prep Academy, they did not really know what it was like to be an APA scholar. The daily schedule looked (roughly) like this:

7:15 - Greeted by Mrs. Wright (Head of School) in front of school on staircase
7:20 - Enter doors, greeted with a handshake and a "good morning" from a member of Oxygen (APA support staff)
7:20-:45 - Breakfast in cafeteria (about 90% of scholars are on free/reduced lunch)
7:40-8 - Breakfast clean-up and restrooms
8-8:45 - Culture of APA, led by Mrs. Wright. Every day, Mrs. Wright would lead a session about different things that are different about APA, reiterating to the scholars that "THIS IS NOT YOUR OLD SCHOOL!" Topics included: how to walk in the halls (ninja feet/straight lines/edge of the blue [right side, hugging the wall], 100% involvement, Paychecks [Reward/Punishment system], DREAM values [Determination, Respect, Enthusiasm, Accountability, Mastery] and their accompanying motions, and APA's unique way to spell college [future blog post teaser!])
8:45-12:15; 1:35-2:35 - Class. Scholars learned about the different procedures of APA classrooms, including:

• how teachers get the class' attention
• how students are supposed to sit --> "scholar position" with hands locked, all feet on the floor, legs under the desk, sitting up, facing forward, elbows out, head up, and tracking the speaker
• bathroom procedures --> APA has designated bathroom times every day to eliminate scholars continually asking to go to the restroom in all of their classes
• Noise Meters, with levels of
• Silent
• Library Level
• Soft Voices
• Productive and Professional
• Daily Schedule
• classes --> APA scholars take twice as much math and ELA as other schools
• lateness
• expectations -- every scholar is expected to turn in cell phones in their "AM Prep for Prep" session (it works) which also checks for homework, pencils and proper uniform. Again, it works. Scholars that do not comply receive deductions on their Paychecks (described above).
• Homework collection/expectations with examples and student work to show what is and is not acceptable
• DREAM Blocks - Checked at the end of every class, which go towards a scholar's paycheck (collected weekly).
• Grading and Promotion
• Academic Integrity
• I'm getting tired.

12:35-1:25 - Lunch. Even in lunch, everything is so thought out. Every platinum teacher has a role he/she has to fill. Scholars enter the cafeteria and sit down until instructed to receive their lunch. When they get their lunch, they do it quietly. After they get their lunch, they stand behind their lunch until every member of their table has something to eat. Then they sit down, but everyone stays silent until all members of the cafeteria has a lunch. The idea behind this is that at APA we not only teach academic skills, but life skills as well -- such as not to eat at a meal before everyone else receives their food. This could be the difference between a scholar getting a high-achieving high school and a "typical" SE DC school (read: bad).

2:45-3:30 - Most fun part of the day. APA stresses "Joy Factor" -- the desire to want to be in school. At APA, we devote time to having fun, because for how hard we push our scholars, we believe they deserve to be rewarded. Also, it's important for them not only to see school as a place of work, but also as a place where they can have some fun. So, every day, we learned different APA songs at the end of the day. There isn't a really good way to describe these songs unless you actually experience them, but they work. I even find myself singing them when I go home every day. The songs promote scholar spirit and also, teach math lessons (we "roll"/count our numbers) while creating remixes of a lot of popular songs that scholars know.

3:30-4:00 - Daily awards and close out. At this time, we give daily awards (complete with certificate and APA wrist band) for a variety of categories to scholars who embrace the ideas we throw on them fully. When scholars are called, there are not cheers, but instead "SILENT ENTHUSIASM." Another life skill we teach is that scholars do not have to yell in order to get someone's attention, contrary to what they might be experiencing at home. Instead, when they are happy or really want to answer a question, we tell them to shoot all their energy through their arms, hands and fingertips. Following awards, we let scholars go, either through pick-up, walking home or taking public transportation - no school buses.

In addition to all of this, at the beginning and end of every day, platinum teachers gather for a meeting at 7:00 AM and then from 4-5, with teachers staying an extra half hour (or more) to prepare for the next day. I always knew teachers worked hard, but the hours that are required to do what we're doing are far more than I ever imagined. It's working though.

At the end of the week, we had the uniform ceremony. I want to write more about it, but honestly, there is so much to say that it deserves its own post. That will come (hopefully) soon, with an accompanying video that someone did when they came in. Stay tuned.

Yesterday and Today

Returning scholars are back. I'm working with 7th and 8th graders - the "Legacy" group. They are called "Legacy" and 4th-6th grades are called "Foundation" -- building a "Foundation" to leave a "Legacy" at APA. The 7th and 8th graders have been at APA longer, so they know what's going on, but they also don't have the same enthusiasm as the new scholars do, as it isn't new to them. So it's been different.

My host teacher for this year is amazing at what he does. Last year 100% of his scholars scored proficient or advanced on the DC-CAS (standardized test) to help make APA into the best school into the city. This is pretty much unheard of. Although it's going to be frustrating not being completely in control of a class, I know I'm going to learn so much from him.

Again, there's so much more to this place than what I described above. But that's a lot of it.

I'd like to give a shout out to YOU, the reader, for making it this far. (You got a shout-out [1!] You got a shout-out [2!] You got a shout-out [3!]....)
It's an APA thing.

BD

Edit: Just realized that I probably need to clarify why I'm not in complete control of a class. The first year of UTC is a "residency" year where we are placed with a master teacher at a school. The idea behind this model comes from a medical model, where brain surgeons do not learn how to do what they do whilst in the midst of surgery. Instead, they observe what's going on from a distance, while also being right on top of everything, to get a better feel of what's going on. UTC also believes that we are performing brain surgery in a way, although not in the traditional mindset. So, we also have to learn how to do brain surgery properly, as opposed to simply jumping into it and learning on the fly.

First Week at APA

Wow. OK, so, lots to talk about here. I started out with Achievement Preparatory Academy in Southeast DC, which for my sanity’s sake, I will hereon refer to as APA. I talked a little bit about APA in a previous post (Placement Day) so if you want more info on the school, you can find it there, mostly because I’m too lazy to type it all out again. I’m not really sure how this post is going to come out, because there is so much to cover, so I’m just going to type and see where this goes.

It’s only been a week that I have been there with three other UTC Fellows, but it’s amazing how much we already feel like a part of the community. This was really cool especially considering that we came into the teacher’s training two weeks later than everyone else, but were still not only welcomed, but embraced. I can’t count the number of times teachers went out of their way to make myself and my fellow UTC residents feel like we belonged. The community at the school among the adults feels infectious, and I could even feel myself buying into it fully by the end of the week when a new teacher joined us.

To give an idea about how the school works – we got in at 8 AM on Monday and found ourselves in the middle of a circle of 50 “Platinum Teachers” (plug: APA’s teachers are better than gold, they’re “Platinum”!), leading school spirit songs by lunch time. At APA, we learned a lot about the “Joy Factor” that students and teachers alike must carry with them everywhere they go. A big part of the reason “J-Factor” is so heavily emphasized at this school is because it is an extended school day, with every day starting promptly at 7:00 AM and concluding at 5:00 PM. It’s kind of amazing though how this past week, we put in a 40 hour week of professional development (PD), but it felt so much shorter than pretty much every week of my previous jobs, which were usually at or around 30 hour weeks.

The jist of our first week of PD was: its about you, but its not about you. Let me explain. Everything at APA begins with adult culture. So, for example, every teacher uses the same non-verbal cues in their classes for restrooms, pencils, etc. Every teacher uses and implements the same reward and deduction system. Every teacher begins and end class in the same way (for the most part – you’re still allowed to put your own personal spin on it). There is literally a system in place for EVERYTHING at APA. I mean, everything. This includes:

• closing binders as a class
• rounding corners at the end of a hallway
• responding to teachers
• responding to each other
• how to line up at the door
• a lot of other stuff I can't remember right now

The thing about it, is that APA does all this without a) signs on the wall saying what to do, and b) having a "military" feel. It's honestly just kind of something you have to experience.

The idea behind this is consistency. Many of the kids that we are going to be working with do not have a model of consistency in their lives, so our job as teachers is not only to prepare them academically for the real world, but also with general life skills. In the same vein, teachers are expected to have rigid dress standards, to set a standard of professionalism for the scholars (not students and DEFINITELY not kids at APA) because many do not know what someone working in a professional environment looks like, unfortunately. That means I’ll be spiffing it up in shirt and tie all day, every week day (and some Saturdays) from the end of the month until next June. Now if only I knew an affordable shirt and tie place….

So, it's about you. It's about making sure you're accountable and on top of your business. It's about knowing that if you mess up, you not only mess up for you, but you mess up for a system of 50 other adults who are all leaning on each other. But, at the end of the day, it's not about you at all. It's all about the scholars, and getting them where they need to be: the best high schools in the city and colleges in the country. APA is about every adult being accountable and responsible, but at the end of the day knowing exactly why we are doing what we do. We do what we do not to feel good about ourselves, but to empower our scholars and prepare them for life outside of APA.

That felt good.

(Realized I needed to clarify that statement. In DC, after middle school, scholars apply to high schools around the city not only from APA but from every school. It's actually really similar to the college application process.)

In addition to all that, we also learned about a variety of different classroom management techniques, many of which we learned about in the summer at UTC. (Plug #2: This book is a must for any educator, in any context.) The big difference is that at APA, with every technique, we practice it, either in small group (5-7 people) or medium group (~15 people) instruction. I really like this, because it's one thing to learn about a strategy, but it is a completely different thing to actually practice it. I think that this is a really important idea not only for us to remember, but for our scholars as well.

There's so much more that I would love to talk about but I guess that will come in later posts. This year I'll be working in a seventh grade math classroom, primarily in a support role. I wish we were playing a bigger role, but this is how it's going to be. Hopefully, I will look back on this year as providing me with great support to be the best teacher I possibly can be. Not going to lie, though, I already know I'm going to be frustrated a bit with not being in full control at times.

And now, some pictures of Achievement Prep! By the way, this school is literally surrounded by housing projects. And still produces some of the highest test scores in the city. Incredible.

BD