Letter to the First Years

First Year Letter 1
May 27, 2011 Written in my classroom while my students took their final exam

Dear First Years,

You have a wild ride ahead of you. Before I started the Teacher Corps, I talked to teachers in the program who told me, "There's really no way for you to understand what this will be like until you experience it for yourself." Virginia Woolf's character Clarissa Dalloway says that "Love makes you solitary." I have found that teaching makes you solitary. It is an intense experience that you can describe to others all you want (and more than they want), but there is no way to infuse in them the feelings you have experienced in your classroom. It's a lonely journey. No matter how many supportive people you have in your life and at your school, you are the one who has to walk into that classroom alone every morning.

You spend your day talking more than you probably ever have in your life and repeating yourself over and over again. You are constantly surrounded by beings--oodles of kids, teachers, administrators--each one with a different kind of "talk."

You get used to a constant hum of noise and movement. Your eyes scan the room constantly like a predator's. Knees tapping, pencils balancing, hands rifling through bags, heads turning, papers falling, backpacks zipping, chip bags rustling. CAN I HAVE AN ERASER HE TAPPED ME ON THE BACK CAN YOU TELL HIM TO GET HIS FEET OFF MY DESK CAN I GO TO THE BATHROOM DO WE HAVE TO WRITE THE QUESTION WHAT TIME DO WE GET OUT OF HERE UGHHHH SOMEONE FARTED WHAT PAGE IS IT ON CAN I GO TO THE BATHROOM IT'S HOT IN HERE I DON'T HAVE ANY PAPER YOU FEELIN' IT TOMORROW'S MY BIRTHDAY HE JUST SAID THE B WORD ARE YOU AND MR. GIOIA COUSINS MY LEAD BROKE CAN I GO ASK MR. WILLIAMS A QUESTION WHAT'S THIS WHITE STUFF ON MY DESK CAN YOU TELL HIM TO STOP LOOKING AT ME KEYANA'S TALKING ARE YOU ON FACEBOOK CAN I GO TO THE BATHROOM IT'S COLD IN HERE THAT WASN'T ME SOMEONE WROTE IN YOUR BOOK CAN YOU SPRAY SOME FRESHENER DO YOU BELIEVE IN A BLACK JESUS CAN I STEP OUT CAN I THROW THIS AWAY I NEED SOME TISSUE THEY KEEP CALLING MY NAME CAN I EMPTY MY SHARPENER CAN YOU STAPLE THIS I'M ABOUT TO USE IT ON MYSELF HE MADE ME RIP MY PAPER HOW OLD ARE YOU JAMES HAS FOOD IT'S HOT IN HERE CAN I GO TO THE BATHROOM.

You become robotic. sit down. put that away. no you may not. warning. sit down. raise your hand. stop talking. that's off-topic. yes. face the front. get to work. copy assignment. no. sit down. no. no. put that on my desk. no. talk to me after class. read the directions. stop talking. go quickly. sit down. no. step outside. warning. raise your hand. you have after-school behavior training. no. sit down. i will be calling your house tonight. sit down. yes. do that after class. sit up. that's off-topic. wait ten minutes. open your book. no bathroom. put your feet on the floor. read the directions. no. seriously? you're late. sit down. you know better. who has my sharpener? turn around. it's just a roach; calm down. that's off-topic. sit down. read the directions. get back to work. pick up your head. no. yes. take your hood off. is that appropriate school language? take the yellow vest. no bathroom. Yet at the end of the day you feel like you haven't communicated anything. You're overtalked and undercommunicated.

You will yell even if you're not the type to yell. You will become irrationally angry at children. You will say mean, true, snarky things to kids at times just to have some sort of power and victory. You will be happy when certain kids don't come to school. You will become detached and not care if you find a note on your floor at the end of the day that says, "ms gray is a bitch. she can suck my dick."

I'm not sure if this is the letter you need to read, but it's the letter I needed to write.

First Year Letter 2
June 6, 2011

Dear First Years,

I'm not retracting my first letter, but my head is much quieter at this point, and I wanted to write you a letter from where I'm sitting now.
I look out at a room full of empty desks pushed together against the wall. It felt like this day would never come. Kids have left for the summer, my lights are off, the hall is quiet, and only Bob Dylan entreats me to listen.
I'm not sure if my students will come back next year remembering anything I taught them. I don't know if I made any difference in a child's life. I don't miss my students. I don't know if my school is a better place because I'm here, and I don't think my absence after my second year will be deeply felt in the grand scheme of things. I'm just a blip in the history of this school and my community. I'm just passing through.
The one most changed here is me. I'm not even sure if I like the changes. My kids' voices will not leave my head.
Forgive me. This letter is not going much better than the last... I'm still sorting through everything I experienced this year. I don't want to be cynical. I don't want to discourage you. You need your enthusiasm, hope, and freshness. You know it will be difficult and heartbreaking. You've heard it countless times in the past week. You know you will fail on many occasions. They've told you that, too. You'll receive more advice this summer than you will be able to process.
Just know that I am here for you and want to give you as much support as I can. Don't worry; the affirming voices of your students sneak in, too. One keeps flowing in and out of my thoughts as I write this. At the end of the year, a girl came up to me and smiled. "Mrs. Gray, you know you my teacher, right? You my teacher."
I don't know if I've changed any kid's life, but I do know that for a few, I've made at least one year of their life a little better.

A fine time for improvements

Most of the teacher skills I want to work on during summer school involve the implementation of procedures. I let many of my procedures slip over the school year, and I want them to become so routine for my students next year that they don't even have to think about them after the first few weeks. Really this is a list for improvements I want to make in my classroom next year but might as well start at summer school.

1. Class dismissal - I will not dismiss your row until EVERYONE is seated and silent. If you get up before I dismiss your row, you really will be the last one to leave.

2. Lunch line - I fantasize about having a silent, single-file lunch line with no gaps. Ahh…it will happen.

3. Consequence documentation - I want to have a better system for tracking why a student gets a consequence. So much happens during the day that by the time I sit down to call a parent, I often can't remember why that child got behavior training or copy assignments three days in a row.

4. Posture - No sideways seating in my room. Your knees will be under your desk. Why does it have to be this way? For several reasons but primarily because I like looking out at a room of students sitting the proper way in their desks. If I like it, that's how it will be in my room.

5. No you may not go to the bathroom. Ever. End of story.

6. I will accept no disrespect.

7. I won't let students get away with doing the minimum amount of work possible. Push them. Don't overlook laziness.

I basically want to nail them for everything. I want to allow zero exceptions to my rules. I have a year's worth of frustrations and failings behind me. I'm coming back to Holly High with a vengeance. The teacher entering Holly High this summer is very different than the one that taught 11th/12th grade English last summer.

Instructional skills to work on:

1. Leave time for a closure.

2. The kids should be doing much more work than I am during class. I tend to expend too much energy and to talk way too much.

All this is great in theory, but I know I'm going to be really exhausted by the time summer school rolls around. I'll leave my school and start summer school the next day. It's difficult to make myself care about summer school. The only thing that motivates me is wanting to set a good example for the first years.