In the Swing of Things

The past two and a half weeks have been devoted to figuring out exactly what my role in the classroom is going to be this year. What's different about APA (my current school) compared to Higher Achievement in the summer is that I'm not the lead teacher. This is based off the UTC model that says all first year teachers start off their academic careers not as a lead teacher, but instead as more of a "support" role to start, with increased responsibility as the year goes on.

UTC's cheesy way of selling this idea on us is by saying it's exactly like medicine. In medicine, you wouldn't send a brain surgeon in to do surgery on their first day. Instead, they have to go through residency, learn from other awesome doctors, and then gradually incorporate those effective practices into their own. UTC says that we are also doing brain surgery -- except not in the physical sense, but the psychological sense. We as teachers perform brain surgery every day, by controlling what goes into a child's mind and what they are capable of learning. Because of that, we are simply not ready to go in and perform surgery from day one. Instead, we have to follow this model of being a resident for a year and then, fellows in years two through four. At that point, we'll be ready. But for now, we need to be hands-on learners in our schools.

That's the idea, at least.

And for the most part, that's how things have gone at APA. It's been somewhat awkward, because a situation like this doesn't arise often in a classroom. The past two and a half weeks, I've been doing a bunch of different stuff in classrooms. I started out mainly just observing, leading into walking around and helping with small group instruction. I have gradually come to hold more responsibilities, such as grading homework and tests, doing handshakes at the threshold (every scholar is met with a handshake and a good morning/afternoon [insert scholar name here] at every class they go to) and next week I am going to start doing the Q^2 (Quick Question) portion of class, which is the same thing as the "Do Now" that I described over the summer (Remember: "Good Vibes" Do Now?? Good times.).

However, because this is my blog and I can do whatever I want on it, I am going to vent now. DISCLAIMER: IF YOU ARE ONLY IN THIS FOR THE GOOD VIBES, SKIP OVER THE NEXT THREE PARAGRAPHS.

Things haven't always been great. I've been frustrated with the amount of direct instruction I have been able to do so far. I'm OK with this, though, because I know that this amount of time will increase as the year goes on. This is simply a "growing pain" of the job that doesn't fit my general mentality of wanting to get my hands dirty, mess up and get better as soon as possible. My "secondary" role is, for the most part, understandable and necessary, no matter how frustrating it can be.

Something that is of a bit bigger concern is the school's 5 UTC residents (including myself) in the school. The UTC model stresses hands-on learning at all times from "master" teachers who have proven to be great at what they do. Unfortunately, it's hard to be a hands-on learner when we are often pulled out of classrooms to do, for lack of a better term, busy work. There have been times where the school needs something done, such as stuff envelopes for parent letters home, collect and organize materials, setting up the DREAM store (where scholars can cash in their DREAM dollars every week - see previous post for clarification) etc. where the UTC residents are called upon to do this work - alone.

I understand that the school is busy. I know that they have a lot done and I am willing to help in whatever way that I can. I also understand that there are a lot of new teachers at the school that administration has to focus on developing as full-time teachers first, because they are the ones at the forefront of direct instruction. This all makes sense to me. However, I feel like sometimes we are viewed more as interns than teachers. This might be a case of us having to earn our stripes at the school, or maybe just a really busy time in the school year, but I hope that this changes over the course of the year. I'd really like to get to the point where all teachers are contributing equally in all aspects of maintaining the physical as well as the psychological work of teaching, but so far, I can't really say that this has been the case.

Phew. OK, sorry. Had to get that off my chest. I'm sure that things will change soon, and I knew I was going to be frustrated at times this year, so this is all just part of the process. Good vibes, good vibes...

Luckily, this has been my only real qualm with the school so far. Everything else is great. As the year goes on, we all need to focus on the "Joy Factor" that we as teachers bring to the classroom. If we don't have a little bit of fun with it, this work can and will become overwhelming. I can already tell that if teachers are losing that Joy Factor already, it's going to be a really tough year. Teaching is kind of an unforgiving profession, in that way. There's so much to think about that goes into a classroom, and unfortunately, if you don't get everything right, it'll eat you alive. I think that's why there's such a high rate of teacher turnover in this country. Unfortunately, there aren't enough schools out there like Achievement Prep that provide the structure and resources necessary to help develop teachers into Platinum Teachers. I got really lucky to be placed where I am, regardless of the growing pains that come along with getting acclimated it.

If you guys ever want to hear about anything specific, let me know in the comments. I don't really know what everyone is interested in, so I just kind of type aimlessly. Any constructive criticism or suggestions on how to improve my blog voice (doesn't it feel a little dry?) would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I saw this picture yesterday and it made me happy. It has nothing to do with teaching, but I hope it makes you happy too. Have a great day!

BD