On the Brink

scattered reflections before I start my year

also, ... for Caroline... I'm writing!! I'm writing!! :0)

School begins tomorrow. Classes begin at 7:30a.m., to be precise. And I have never been more excited and fearful in my life. The advantage I have is that I have been a freshman in high school before. None of my students have been in high school yet - I can guarantee that they are every bit as nervous as I am. That works in my favor, because I can set a tone that ensures they view me as the authority figure and as someone they can trust. I've sat in their desks before. I can remember what it felt like and how I looked at my teachers. I can remember wanting someone to lift the fog and promise me that I would be okay - that I would be alright walking the halls of a massive building, and seeing fellow students who had beards! Beards! Facial hair!! As a freshman, I wanted my teachers to let me know what I had to do to succeed, to be valued, and to be accepted. I know my students will want the same. Oh, and I wanted to be cool. But I was scared, and didn't want any adult to know it. They probably feel the same.

I just can't show my nerves. My students need to be the nervous ones. Not me. I have to be solid, firm, and calm. I want to be a consistently stable and organized figure in their lives, because, based on the slice of things I have seen already in my school district, chaos and confusion run rampant through this bureaucracy. It is so difficult to get a straight answer or a clean, understandable set of directions. No wonder students are not motivated. It must be exhausting to try to navigate a veritable thicket of standards, Title I regulations, school boundaries, opt-in, opt-out paperwork, coursework requirements, etc. None of it is systematic or predictable. For some reason, computer systems are not in place to make all of this automatic. Students in this system are not able to be advocates for themselves. However, I will structure my classroom so that there are no questions about how to be empowered, in control of one's learning (and grade), and, hence, how to be successful.

Wow. Who the hell am I writing this entry for?? Probably for myself. I'm writing out a pep talk to myself! Wow. Well, hope you enjoyed reading it nonetheless.

Here's a couple more snippets about how things are here:
- I'm the new conditioning coach for girls' basketball! Strength training! Feel the burn! I am amped about this job!! I bought a poster to hang in the girls' weight room that says "Remember to tell them you were beat by a girl."

- I'm teaching three English I classes, the largest of which will be 35 students (the legal maximum). The smallest, for the moment, is 9. That'll change. There's only two of us teaching English I, so I can't see how I'd be able to have a class that small.

- There were some ridiculous amount of fire drills last year, courtesy of pranksters pulling the alarms. So, they've removed all the alarm pulls except for the ones in view of the security cameras. Come to think of it, I don't even know where to lead my kids during the drill. Hmm...

- Tomorrow morning should be interesting - mandatory metal detector checks at the front doors for all students. That will hold things up so much. I'll probably end up with my homeroom kids for a while tomorrow, and the next day. I've heard stories about other TFA teachers spending in excess of 6 hours with their homeroom kids for multiple days during the first week.

- My students will be instructed to embody these 4 characteristics: Professional, Supportive, Confident, and Accurate. Accurate deals with honesty and clear-sightedness about how much work we need to do. I won't be shy about letting my students know what grade level they are reading at and how much work has to be done. Call a spade a spade, yes?

Always more to write, but hard to put it all in context. The big picture is so BIG. So hard to recreate for someone not here to see it and feel it. But I will continue to try...

Here's to the kids. They deserve better.