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.

Welcome to the future

Dear Second-Years, 

You have arrived. I must say that I am a bit jealous of you. How many times have I fast-forwarded in my mind to next year when I will be standing in your shoes? By that time, I think I will be able to call my experience "rewarding." A little bit into the school year, I began to think of a "rewarding experience" as one that can be downright miserable when you're going through it, but after it's done you can look back on it and feel like you did right in some way. 

I’ve had many countdowns this year. The number of days before Fall Break, Christmas Break, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Spring Break, Easter, SUMMER. The weekly count to Friday. The hourly count to the end of the school day. I’m greedy for hours and days out of school, and I find myself wishing away time. This is a strange feeling for someone like me who is a moment savorer. I’m not accustomed to pushing, hauling, cajoling, charging myself through the present so I can just make it to the next evening at home or the next weekend. I’m not used to living for the future. In the past nine weeks, however, I've somehow lived myself back into the present. These things have struck me recently: the joy of being on my back porch in the afternoons with blooming roses, the small pleasure in driving to school when it is light outside, the relief in surrendering to my bed at the end of the day, the acceptance (finally) of keeping a regular bedtime, my ability to leave stressful days with little emotional wear, the moments when I am able to let down my guard and laugh with my students. These things keep me in the present.

I remember meeting some of you for the first time last summer at Northgate. We were gathering for an Old Venice excursion. Something about all of you made me feel very young, and it had nothing to do with age. I was a bit awestruck by your classroom stories and the mental image of you in command of a classroom. Even if you did it poorly, it didn’t matter to me; you were there, and you had those battles. You had kids verbally spit in your face, and you dealt with it. You found your way through a curriculum. You knew the names and faces of, say, 130 children, and you knew how to talk like them. How well you knew how to talk like them impressed me the most. It seemed like so much stood between what you were and what I needed to become. 

This weekend you graduate, and I become a second-year. So much stands between who I was last summer and who I am now. 

It’s funny how our lives have converged briefly in this strange place for a common purpose. Most of us will probably never talk again, but we share this intense and intimate experience.

Elise, one thing that really stands in my mind from last summer is hearing you and Annah talk about your students. As a newcomer to teacher talk, I was amazed by how much they drove your conversations. But it was more than mere teacher talk. I saw your genuine investment in your students. I admired how much you cared for them and how well you seemed to know their interests and motivations. I wonder which students I will obsess over once the school year ends. Of course I was also wowed by your ideas for engaging kids in the classroom and your helpful, specific advice. Thank you.

Second years, I respect the work you have done, and I wish you well on whatever adventure grips you next. 

Peace, 

Catherine

"In Christ's name, we play"

I'm taking a few of my students to summer camp in July.  Yes, I'm voluntarily choosing to spend six out of about thirty free summer days with my students. Currently three are on board for a full or partial scholarship, and I'm working on a fourth. This isn't an academic camp. It is a messy, sweaty, paint-covered, oar-rowing, rope-swinging, lunch song singing, fire-building, prayerful, mosquito-bitten camp. That's exactly where I want to take four of my creative, outgoing students who are generally under appreciated by their peers. I've spent all year insisting that they stay on topic and sit quietly in their seats unless I call on them or give them permission to stand. Now I want to see them smear food on each others' faces and march on tables. I want to see them rolling around in a mud pit playing tug-of-war. I really want to see them dancing and being as loud and WEIRD as their hearts desire. I want to see them talking to other kids who also speculate whether the skunk ape is really real.

My camp students are so excited. Pretty much daily all of them will ask me a question about camp or just exclaim knowingly, "I'm so excited about this summer!" They are excited by the prospect of staying in real camp cabins with bunk beds "like in the movies." They are especially interested in and excited about the ropes course. They open their eyes widely when I tell them that, no, they won't be able to use a phone or mp3 player for six days. The respite from technology is a sacrifice they will share with other campers.

Camp Bratton-Green is a place very dear to my husband's heart and, more recently, to mine. Lloyd has attended the camp since he was a third grader and has worked there since high school, spending two college summers on the Permanent Staff as the head of Nature programming. I went there on several middle school retreats and still remember dancing to "Leaving on a Jet Plane" in the rec hall with my sixth-grade crush at a school dance. Eleven years later I mailed weekly or bi-weekly letters to Lloyd there as he worked on the Permanent Staff. A year after that Lloyd asked me to marry him there during a talent show while we were staffing a high school winter session. Seven months after that we got married there in a chapel that shares grounds and ties with the camp. Lloyd cites Camp Bratton-Green as his favorite place on earth.

Staring contests, catching carpenter ants for ant fondue, sixth grade boys dressing in drag, eating ice cream off the table with no hands or utensils, night hikes with people dressed up as monsters and jumping out at kids, lunchtime speed singing competitions--these are all things I want my kids to see and participate in. They need to. Their lives depend on it. I must do this for their future.

Here are some engagement shot glimpses of camp (in a much more serene state than when campers are present):

CHANGE -- YES WE CAN

What will I change next year? It seems like every day I think of a way I could be just a bit better at what I do. The challenge is finding the time, energy, and most efficient method to do so. 

Discipline can be a big headache for me to consider, the thing that really gets me down. I spend many planning period hours troubleshooting or venting about discipline. While my classroom is under better control for the most part than it was last semester, there is still much to be desired. I plan on using much of the same system I use now but just being able to enforce consequences more effectively, firmly, and with greater confidence from the very start and through the long fall stretch. This plan may sound ambiguous, and it's perhaps a bit unlikely that I'll just suddenly be a more effective disciplinarian. However, I do think that starting out at the beginning of the year used to the sheer NOISE of sixth graders--all their grunts and complaints and crazed paranoia that every person around them is out to get them--will make me more capable to actually anticipate and deal swiftly with their issues. They are quite a needy group. How many times in a day do I hear "Can you tell him to stop looking at me?" "Can you tell him to stop tapping his foot?" "Can you tell her to stop blowing her nose?" I live in a world of "can you tell her" and "can you tell him" squealing eruptions, and it has changed the rhythm of my heart. Seriously. Medically. Emotionally. I hope that some day the rhythm of my heart corrects itself, but I don't  count on it happening in the next year. 

Key student behaviors to absolutely positively shoot down from the beginning include: talking back when getting a consequence, commenting on other students' consequences, calling out a response for another student who is taking too long to answer, ATTITUDE. Those are a few that immediately come to mind. 

I didn't start this post wanting to talk about discipline, however. Two paragraphs ago I planned to say, "Discipline can be a big headache for me to consider, and I hate it. But when I think of ideas for planning a rigorous, stream-lined, structured, meaningful curriculum for next year, I get excited. Discipline sucks energy from my soul. Imagining students workshopping their writing replenishes." That's how the discipline conversation works, though. Once it starts, it's hard to kill the beast. What I really want to change, what makes me glow and skip is imagining being able to implement a weekly routine next year. 

Monday: Focused freewrite. We preview and read an excellent passage together and discuss it for about 10 minutes before they do a focused freewrite on a specific topic from the passage. We've done this this semester with "Hair," "Where I Buy Candy," "Bullying," and "Sunday Mornings," just to name a few. Most of the students love it and actually write non-stop with little break for a solid 10 minutes. 

Tuesday: Grammar and Mechanics Lesson. We'll do guided notes, guided, and independent practice. Pretty standard stuff. End with an MCT2 practice question on the topic we're covering.

Wednesday: Differentiated instruction day. Most of the time this will manifest as pair work based on Tuesday's lesson. I do really want to try out a class blog, however, where students can post assignment responses and read and respond on each others' work. I envision this happening on Wednesdays. 

Thursday: Workshop of Monday's writing. We'll apply whatever grammar or mechanics concepts we learned that week to the freewrite they did on Monday. 

Friday: Glorious assessments day. Show me what 'ya got. Hallelujah. This is school-wide. 

I've started implementing this schedule somewhat this semester, and I'm starting to get in a real groove. I love being able to have a template for my week and not feeling like I'm starting from scratch with a new plan every week. I think the students like it, too. 

Why should I join MTC? (Ramblings)

OK, I've been sitting here for about 15 minutes staring at the words "You should join MTC because:" with a neat "1." awaiting a reason. I think the neatness is the problem. It's not a clean, easy thing for me to box and categorize. Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m not used to watching TV, and I’m currently being drawn in by “Storage Wars” on A&E while at my brother’s house. 

Either way, I’ll try to be more casual and reckless with my musings. 

You should join MTC because:

...you like adventure and want to do something that will challenge you and alter you in possibly unpredictable ways. Sounds pretty fluffy and heartwarming. 

...you are interested in the field of education or are considering being a teacher. On the other hand, it’s a pretty brutal way to be introduced to the world of teaching. On your third hand, once you’ve taught in one of these schools, you can probably teach anywhere, right? On the fourth hand, do I feel qualified to teach anywhere else?

...you want to dig down deep into your self-resources and see whatchya got. You’ll have some pretty stern conversations with yourself at some times, and other times you’ll be your own consoler. You’ll need to pull out the best of yourself, redefine what the best of yourself is, and be able to see the worst. 

...you love Mississippi. This probably is not your reason. But for me, I felt the unending need of my  home state and did not want to just move on to my bigger, better life outside of Mississippi. I wanted to feel like I was giving back to a place that has given me much and shaped who I am. 

...you feel passionate about public education. You’re committed to demanding something more for our children. The catch is, you won’t know many times if you’re helping or if the fact that you’re there even matters. It might not. You know the drill, though; there are at least a few kids who will look up to you, who will learn from you, who will show their appreciation. 

...you want to realize your smallness and insignificance in the grand scheme of things. This sounds bad, but it’s actually comforting to realize that while you may not be helping in a grand way, you can’t really mess things up that much. 

These are all pretty emotional reasons, all about a certain personal pull or larger mission. They’re not necessarily practical reasons to join, but you know the poster book draw: Join the Mississippi Teacher Corps. Get a Master’s degree and a free laptop. Teach  kids. 

A few of my favorite things in Holly Springs

I consider myself a Mississippian. I've been in the Magnolia State since sixth grade, and I've had struggles with this place, but it is undeniably home. I'm married to someone steeped in Mississippi by about 10 more layers. We like to joke, however, that Holly Springs is "more Mississippi than we've ever known." We've come to relish in our life in Holly Springs. Of course, it doesn't hurt that it's our first year of marriage. Here are a few of our favorite Holly Springs comforts and adventures:

1. Thursday nights at Michael's Country & Creole
Michael's is the Holly Springs MTC crowd watering hole on Thursday nights. It is food for the Corps and the core. We are regaled with Louisiana-country cuisine and talk of weekend plans.
There is really no going wrong when ordering from their menu. My staple is the shrimp and crawfish etouffée, but the gumbo comes close behind. The sandwiches are delicious, especially the salmon with red onion relish and the pork tenderloin, and the fries on the side are more than plentiful. As far as appetizers go, the spinach and artichoke dip and the salmon flatbread are our favorites. They are easily reheated at home without compromising quality. The wine and cheese dressing complements both salads and onion rings. The portions at Michael's are almost twice as large as a single meal, and pretty much everything is under $10, much of the menu under $8.

2. Afternoon ice cream cones at Tyson's Drug Company
The Holly Springs square is not bustling. It's no Oxford. A regular stop on the square, however, is Tyson's Drugs, which was established in 18-something. On a school day afternoon, there is nothing more delight-inducing than walking up to the old-fashioned pharmacy counter and ordering a cone of black walnut ice cream for about $1.75. Well, maybe a strawberry cone or butter pecan may be better depending on the day and your mood. We then sit outside on a bench and watch passerby or take a little stroll around the square.

3. Walks at Hillcrest Cemetery

There are some pretty impressive graves at Hillcrest and a section of Confederate soldier graves. Several Confederate generals, congressmen, and senators were buried there, including the first black citizen to be elected to the U.S. Senate. It's quite a beautiful place and features the most popular sledding hill in days of snow. 

4. Playing in the fields at Marshall Academy

We like to rub shoulders with our private school neighbors by playing with our dog in their practice fields and playground.

5. Scoping out antebellum homes for sale

We've made a sport of house hunting. We usually take a Sunday drive after church, and this often turns into peeking in the windows and backyards of vacant old homes for sale.

6. Sunday dinners at Annie's Restaurant
Fried chicken. Tender baked chicken. Sweet potatoes, greens, dressing, butter beans, gravy, corn bread, pecan pie, peach cobbler. Enough said.

Other favorites: Victor's Pizza, Philips Grocery
No-no's: Graceland Too