Thank you to all of you for the wonderful comments. Apparently I do know a few of you in the class, which is great.
This weekend is one of my Montessori weekends. I call it that because I was in school 4-7 tonight, tomorrow I’ll go back from 8-5, and then Sunday from 8-2. It’s draining and exhausting having to be a student after teaching. My priority is really in the classroom right now.
Two things are at the forefront of my mind right now. This afternoon I found out from one of my students that she is being sexually abused. When we told her mother, she claimed it couldn’t be true. I won’t relate the story because I don’t know how much of it should be made public, but the whole thing made me ill. I fear for her. I can’t believe that she has go home to this family member this weekend. I have to let it go and trust that the right people will do the right things now, the right forms having been filed and all that. Yet I can’t. Forms don't reassure me.
The second thing I’m thinking about lately is the marked difference between urban and rural schools. My son Drew is almost 8 and is in second grade in Hatfield. When we were at his Open House last night, the differences between his school system and Springfield were very obvious. I’d just been at my Open House the night before. My turnout was very high, by Gerena standards – 6 students were represented, and that constitutes over a third of my class, since I am down to 16 now. (The last student who left had moved schools in the middle of the week without telling Gerena.) In stark contrast, Hatfield's Open House was prefaced by a school assembly in which the students sang the school song and then, when we made our way to Drew’s classroom, it was absolutely mobbed. Almost all of the 21 students had their families there.
On my way out, I encountered the new reading teacher. He has worked with Drew, so I introduced myself. As he and I were talking, the school counselor, Molly – a good friend and neighbor of mine – came by and said to him, “I was thinking we would take a field trip and go observe at Gerena with Johanna!” The new teacher said something like “Oh, yeah right. Gerena….yeah, I’ve been there. They went…Montessori or something this year. ” His tone of voice was very negative. He sort of shook his head and chuckled a bit. I decided to pipe up then and say, “Yeah, so have I – I teach first grade there!” My husband later said he’d never seen anyone change gears so fast. He suddenly started saying how much he loved Springfield, used to work in one of its school systems, and wasn’t it great to work there. And yet his tune was much different before he knew I worked there. (The back story to all this is that I was in the running for a job at Hatfield and called to cancel my second interview because Gerena had hired me.)
It seems like among teachers, there’s a stigma that goes along with teaching in urban schools – especially with the administration in them. I was intensely discouraged from applying in Springfield by the teacher friends I had in Hatfield. What is all of that about? We have few enough teachers willing to work in city schools. Let’s encourage them when we can.
So…not to be discouraging myself, but I have lately been feeling completely unprepared for this job. As Lindsey says, I don’t know if you can be. I did as much with urban ed as I could at Smith – Sam’s course, the Urban Ed Fellowship, even a spring term independent study on the success of the Zanetti students. But I still could not have guessed what it was like to teach this class in this school. I suppose that’s true of all teachers to an extent. Still – I urge all of you to go to a classroom in a city and spend some time, especially if you think you want to teach in an urban area. Observation is great but it’s even better if you can really DO something, even something like a read aloud, where you get that experience of being in the teacher’s role. There is nothing that compares to that in its moments of great success and great challenge.
To the NYC Chalkboard
Friday, September 28, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Hello from Springfield
Hello to all ---
I have a feeling I'm a bit of a latecomer to this blog, so I am going to introduce myself. My name is Johanna Greenough, and I was in the Education in the Cities course last year at Smith. I went through the MEd program there last year, and was very interested in teaching in an urban area, so I begged to be let into the class. I have to say that I'm so glad I was. I am now teaching at the Gerena Elementary School (K-5) in Springfield. I was part of the tutoring program there last fall as part of the course as well.
I am teaching first grade there, in a classroom which will eventually include children ages 6-9. As you may or may not know, Gerena is transitioning to a Montessori school, so I'm also enrolled in a second master's program (don't ask -- it was never in the plans) that will give me Montessori certification. The only grades that are actually implementing Montessori this year are PreK-K (called Children's House in a Montessori setting), and 1st grade. That means me. Gerena is also committed to using Responsive Classroom this year, as well as finding ways to meet all of the state and district frameworks. Marrying all of those things is a bit difficult, particularly as a first-year teacher in a community of children who often don't have their basic needs met.
I will certainly go into more detail about my class and the experience I am having as this blog continues. But for now, since time is of the essence and my own children are almost ready for some bedtime routines, let me just say: this is the hardest job I have ever had. It takes up all of my time, it is often frustrating, and I often feel ineffectual. It is also the best job I've ever had. I am doing what I love the most in a community that needs people like me. I am at the beginning of a ground-up, very difficult transition for these children, their parents, and the entire school -- staff and administration included. And so, when I sit in a circle of first graders and remind children over and over again that no, you should not be pulling up staples from the rug and putting them in your mouth, I try to remind myself that this is what those children need from me. And when I am consoling a child grieving for his sibling who drowned recently, I remember that this, too, is what those children need from me.
While I try to acclimate myself to my many roles as teacher in the classroom, I wonder: how many of you have something very valuable to offer classrooms at Gerena. I know that some students from my class last year volunteered their time at Gerena. If that's something you can fit into a schedule which I know (from experience) often looks completely booked, then I would welcome you. You can't imagine the immense difference a set of hands makes in a classroom. I often struggle for that additional set of hands. I have a paraprofessional in and out of the room, but even two teachers is often not enough for these children. If anyone is interested in volunteering in my room, I'd love that. There are other Smithies here, too -- Lindsey Fernald, in second grade; Emily Breines, in third, and Anne Naughton, in fourth. They are all struggling to do the best they can. They are all overwhelmed from time to time and would welcome you, I'm sure.
I myself am so glad to be on this blog and to get some fresh views and ideas on things.
I have a feeling I'm a bit of a latecomer to this blog, so I am going to introduce myself. My name is Johanna Greenough, and I was in the Education in the Cities course last year at Smith. I went through the MEd program there last year, and was very interested in teaching in an urban area, so I begged to be let into the class. I have to say that I'm so glad I was. I am now teaching at the Gerena Elementary School (K-5) in Springfield. I was part of the tutoring program there last fall as part of the course as well.
I am teaching first grade there, in a classroom which will eventually include children ages 6-9. As you may or may not know, Gerena is transitioning to a Montessori school, so I'm also enrolled in a second master's program (don't ask -- it was never in the plans) that will give me Montessori certification. The only grades that are actually implementing Montessori this year are PreK-K (called Children's House in a Montessori setting), and 1st grade. That means me. Gerena is also committed to using Responsive Classroom this year, as well as finding ways to meet all of the state and district frameworks. Marrying all of those things is a bit difficult, particularly as a first-year teacher in a community of children who often don't have their basic needs met.
I will certainly go into more detail about my class and the experience I am having as this blog continues. But for now, since time is of the essence and my own children are almost ready for some bedtime routines, let me just say: this is the hardest job I have ever had. It takes up all of my time, it is often frustrating, and I often feel ineffectual. It is also the best job I've ever had. I am doing what I love the most in a community that needs people like me. I am at the beginning of a ground-up, very difficult transition for these children, their parents, and the entire school -- staff and administration included. And so, when I sit in a circle of first graders and remind children over and over again that no, you should not be pulling up staples from the rug and putting them in your mouth, I try to remind myself that this is what those children need from me. And when I am consoling a child grieving for his sibling who drowned recently, I remember that this, too, is what those children need from me.
While I try to acclimate myself to my many roles as teacher in the classroom, I wonder: how many of you have something very valuable to offer classrooms at Gerena. I know that some students from my class last year volunteered their time at Gerena. If that's something you can fit into a schedule which I know (from experience) often looks completely booked, then I would welcome you. You can't imagine the immense difference a set of hands makes in a classroom. I often struggle for that additional set of hands. I have a paraprofessional in and out of the room, but even two teachers is often not enough for these children. If anyone is interested in volunteering in my room, I'd love that. There are other Smithies here, too -- Lindsey Fernald, in second grade; Emily Breines, in third, and Anne Naughton, in fourth. They are all struggling to do the best they can. They are all overwhelmed from time to time and would welcome you, I'm sure.
I myself am so glad to be on this blog and to get some fresh views and ideas on things.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Introduction
Hello, and sorry for the delay in my introduction... it has been a hectic first two weeks!
I am in my second year as a Special Education Teaching Fellow at Bronx Expeditionary Learning High School (BELHS). BELHS is part of a national network of Expeditionary Learning Schools supported by the Outward Bound organization. this year we will graduate our first class of seniors, which is very exciting! We are a public school, one of six in the enormous Taft Educational Campus (what used to be Taft High School before the small schools movement), and this is our first year as an Empowerment school - which basically means we work more independently through our principal having more budgetary control, but we have two years to show improvement in test scores or the city will intervene. To be quite honest, I have started to loose touch with what all of this means politically as I am dealing with the reality of this ultimatum of sorts in my school; in order to improve test scores, our students have lost almost all of their electives. Only eleventh and twelfth graders get a technology elective (which counts as art) and some get gym.
Last year, I worked in an inclusion setting as a collaborative team teacher. My class was a mix of general education students and special education students. I worked with the general education teachers to support the special education students. It was a challenge because I was working with three different subjects, Math, English, and Science, and over the course of the year worked with five different teachers as a result of my science co-teacher quitting her alternative certification program to go to Hunter for graduate school. I also was head of the Special Education department - by default ... one day I just started getting stuff in my mailbox and no one seemed to mind that I had zero experience. It was an overwhelming year.
This year, I am teaching my own class of 12 special education students. Most of my students are emotionally disturbed or have learning disabilities. Unlike my students from last year (whom I love and still work with as a co-teacher of tenth grade math), these kids are angels. Their emotional disabilities are evident in their hyper-sensitivity and irrational responses, but they are incredibly eager to please me and feel validated. My students last year were angry all the time, which led them to give up easily and not care if they succeeded academically or not (on the surface). My current students overwhelm me with "oooh pick me miss" and hands waving in my face and hugs. I almost feel like an elementary school teacher!
This year I was hoping to focus on my class rather than any leadership positions. I am teaching both math and science. Now, I have not taken a math class since high school and never did very well in the subject. While I love science, my background is in the humanities. I have more math anxiety than some of my students, so I thought that spending my time in my graduate classes and prepping for two subjects in which i have little to no experience would be enough. As of today though, no one else in the department is stepping up to be Sped. chair ... so it looks like I will be submitting my application. In addition to my Math class, my science class, my department responsibilities, and my graduate work, I also have an advisory group - the same students as last year - who are now tenth graders and think they run the place... a handful to say the least.
With all of this, I can say that I truly love my job. This year seems like it will be even more full than the last, but more satisfying. It is amazing what one year of experience can do for you when your school has just hired 14 new teachers, most of whom are first year teach for america and teaching fellows teachers. I am now a "veteran" teacher, but I hardly feel like I deserve the title! I am looking forward to sharing my experiences with you all and hearing back!
I am in my second year as a Special Education Teaching Fellow at Bronx Expeditionary Learning High School (BELHS). BELHS is part of a national network of Expeditionary Learning Schools supported by the Outward Bound organization. this year we will graduate our first class of seniors, which is very exciting! We are a public school, one of six in the enormous Taft Educational Campus (what used to be Taft High School before the small schools movement), and this is our first year as an Empowerment school - which basically means we work more independently through our principal having more budgetary control, but we have two years to show improvement in test scores or the city will intervene. To be quite honest, I have started to loose touch with what all of this means politically as I am dealing with the reality of this ultimatum of sorts in my school; in order to improve test scores, our students have lost almost all of their electives. Only eleventh and twelfth graders get a technology elective (which counts as art) and some get gym.
Last year, I worked in an inclusion setting as a collaborative team teacher. My class was a mix of general education students and special education students. I worked with the general education teachers to support the special education students. It was a challenge because I was working with three different subjects, Math, English, and Science, and over the course of the year worked with five different teachers as a result of my science co-teacher quitting her alternative certification program to go to Hunter for graduate school. I also was head of the Special Education department - by default ... one day I just started getting stuff in my mailbox and no one seemed to mind that I had zero experience. It was an overwhelming year.
This year, I am teaching my own class of 12 special education students. Most of my students are emotionally disturbed or have learning disabilities. Unlike my students from last year (whom I love and still work with as a co-teacher of tenth grade math), these kids are angels. Their emotional disabilities are evident in their hyper-sensitivity and irrational responses, but they are incredibly eager to please me and feel validated. My students last year were angry all the time, which led them to give up easily and not care if they succeeded academically or not (on the surface). My current students overwhelm me with "oooh pick me miss" and hands waving in my face and hugs. I almost feel like an elementary school teacher!
This year I was hoping to focus on my class rather than any leadership positions. I am teaching both math and science. Now, I have not taken a math class since high school and never did very well in the subject. While I love science, my background is in the humanities. I have more math anxiety than some of my students, so I thought that spending my time in my graduate classes and prepping for two subjects in which i have little to no experience would be enough. As of today though, no one else in the department is stepping up to be Sped. chair ... so it looks like I will be submitting my application. In addition to my Math class, my science class, my department responsibilities, and my graduate work, I also have an advisory group - the same students as last year - who are now tenth graders and think they run the place... a handful to say the least.
With all of this, I can say that I truly love my job. This year seems like it will be even more full than the last, but more satisfying. It is amazing what one year of experience can do for you when your school has just hired 14 new teachers, most of whom are first year teach for america and teaching fellows teachers. I am now a "veteran" teacher, but I hardly feel like I deserve the title! I am looking forward to sharing my experiences with you all and hearing back!
Friday, September 7, 2007
Greetings from Gun Hill Road
Hello all,
I hope that your fall is off to a great start. As always, I feel a pang of nostalgia at this time of the year, wishing I was spending my days as a college student and knowing the privilege of being at a place like Smith. This blog will serve as my connection.
I will make this introduction short and sweet. I grew up in a small town in Ohio, just south of Cleveland, where I attended a run-of-the-mill public school. It served me well, moved on to Smith, where I found a new world and level of education that I had never previously experienced. I graduated with a degree in sociology and joined Teach For America in New York City, teaching third grade for 2 years in Washington Heights. I then became a recruitment director for Teach For America, to inspire and move other outstanding college grads to join me in the mission to eliminate educational inequities. I like to say that my tombstone will say one thing- that is that I used my life to create equal access to educational opportunities for all students.
After working at Teach For America for three years, I moved on to become the Director of College Placement at the Bronx Lab School. We are a small school housed in the Evander Childs Campus, now serving 9-12th grades. This year will be our FIRST graduating class, and my repsonsibility is to ensure that all of the seniors apply and are accepted into college. Piece of cake, right? I used last year to get our "office" up and running and now this year I am leading the way to ensure that our students find the best fit for their post-graduate life. I like to think that I'm in the business of changing lives.
I look forward to your thoughts and questions and hope that you'll see one of my students at Smith next year!
Best,
Amy
I hope that your fall is off to a great start. As always, I feel a pang of nostalgia at this time of the year, wishing I was spending my days as a college student and knowing the privilege of being at a place like Smith. This blog will serve as my connection.
I will make this introduction short and sweet. I grew up in a small town in Ohio, just south of Cleveland, where I attended a run-of-the-mill public school. It served me well, moved on to Smith, where I found a new world and level of education that I had never previously experienced. I graduated with a degree in sociology and joined Teach For America in New York City, teaching third grade for 2 years in Washington Heights. I then became a recruitment director for Teach For America, to inspire and move other outstanding college grads to join me in the mission to eliminate educational inequities. I like to say that my tombstone will say one thing- that is that I used my life to create equal access to educational opportunities for all students.
After working at Teach For America for three years, I moved on to become the Director of College Placement at the Bronx Lab School. We are a small school housed in the Evander Childs Campus, now serving 9-12th grades. This year will be our FIRST graduating class, and my repsonsibility is to ensure that all of the seniors apply and are accepted into college. Piece of cake, right? I used last year to get our "office" up and running and now this year I am leading the way to ensure that our students find the best fit for their post-graduate life. I like to think that I'm in the business of changing lives.
I look forward to your thoughts and questions and hope that you'll see one of my students at Smith next year!
Best,
Amy
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Hello
It's a pleasure to be back in this "space" exchanging thoughts on teaching and learning with another group of Smithies. In the wilderness of my days, where it's demanded that we be alert, resourceful, and not stray too far from the compass, this is a sort of meditation. So thank you for a second year.
My name is Marina Galazidis and while I'm a NYC native, I had scant exposure to public schools while growing up. After getting my BA (English) from Bowdoin I was looking towards an MFA, or magazine writing at the very least, but was instead enlisted to work as a 3rd grade teacher at my alma mater, Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn. My first day of teaching was September 11, 2001. Sometime shortly after that I realized that I had arrived, in a sense. I spent 3 happy years at St. Ann's but really chaffed under some characteristics of both lower school and private school. I was also living just over an income level which would have made me eligible for food stamps. Oh the uncomfortable irony.
I can't even think about Smith without a hundred effusive adjetives, so let's fast forward to the High School of Arts and Technology @ Martin Luther King Jr. where I have been a 10th, 11th, and 12th grade English teacher (etc!) and Adviser for 3 years. As the large, underperforming schools were dissolved largely via a Klein initiative -- and MLK had an awful reputation made worse by a murder -- small, specialized schools like Arts and Tech opened on these "campuses" Because we have remained comparatively small and because I am now, remarkably, senior faculty, my responsiblities extend into quasi-administrative areas such as programing, policy building, and, most significantly, curriculum development. My pet project this year was to start a chapter of the National Honors Society and design an Honors English class. These students are like the fantasy draft picks of the school, balanced by my other senior class aptly called "Recovery" that's populated by all of the special education and ELL students as well as students who either need to make up English credit or did not pass the English Regents. My genuine affection extends to both of these classes and comparison is unreasonable, but for the purposes of this project I think this aspect of my schedule epitomizes the distance that urban teachers must span and I hope there's more opportunity to talk about this type of disparity in skill, motivation, parental involvement, etc. But I won't get ahead of myself.
Talk to you all soon!
My name is Marina Galazidis and while I'm a NYC native, I had scant exposure to public schools while growing up. After getting my BA (English) from Bowdoin I was looking towards an MFA, or magazine writing at the very least, but was instead enlisted to work as a 3rd grade teacher at my alma mater, Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn. My first day of teaching was September 11, 2001. Sometime shortly after that I realized that I had arrived, in a sense. I spent 3 happy years at St. Ann's but really chaffed under some characteristics of both lower school and private school. I was also living just over an income level which would have made me eligible for food stamps. Oh the uncomfortable irony.
I can't even think about Smith without a hundred effusive adjetives, so let's fast forward to the High School of Arts and Technology @ Martin Luther King Jr. where I have been a 10th, 11th, and 12th grade English teacher (etc!) and Adviser for 3 years. As the large, underperforming schools were dissolved largely via a Klein initiative -- and MLK had an awful reputation made worse by a murder -- small, specialized schools like Arts and Tech opened on these "campuses" Because we have remained comparatively small and because I am now, remarkably, senior faculty, my responsiblities extend into quasi-administrative areas such as programing, policy building, and, most significantly, curriculum development. My pet project this year was to start a chapter of the National Honors Society and design an Honors English class. These students are like the fantasy draft picks of the school, balanced by my other senior class aptly called "Recovery" that's populated by all of the special education and ELL students as well as students who either need to make up English credit or did not pass the English Regents. My genuine affection extends to both of these classes and comparison is unreasonable, but for the purposes of this project I think this aspect of my schedule epitomizes the distance that urban teachers must span and I hope there's more opportunity to talk about this type of disparity in skill, motivation, parental involvement, etc. But I won't get ahead of myself.
Talk to you all soon!
Introduction to the blog
Welcome to Grecourt to the NYC Chalkboard. This blog will be written by three magnificent Smith alumnae who are now teaching in NYC public schools. The focus of the blog will be on chronicling about their teaching experiences and reflecting with us on our course's core question: how do teachers, educators, and policy makers strive to provide quality educational experiences for youth when issues associated with a youth's social environment often present significant obstacles to teaching and learning.
In other words, our focus will on understanding how the issues facing urban educators are not merely educational issues but entwined in complex social, economic, and political circumstances.
While the question posed above invites us to analyze, deconstruct, interrogate, theorize and bring to the table all manner of high-minded intellectual analysis-- the world of schools is also fundmentally relational and human. This blog will also provide an opportunity for us to hear and correspond with three courageous and brilliant young teachers who have chosen to devote their efforts to working with youth. This blog will also give us access to the stories that comprise their lives.
Onward....
Sam
In other words, our focus will on understanding how the issues facing urban educators are not merely educational issues but entwined in complex social, economic, and political circumstances.
While the question posed above invites us to analyze, deconstruct, interrogate, theorize and bring to the table all manner of high-minded intellectual analysis-- the world of schools is also fundmentally relational and human. This blog will also provide an opportunity for us to hear and correspond with three courageous and brilliant young teachers who have chosen to devote their efforts to working with youth. This blog will also give us access to the stories that comprise their lives.
Onward....
Sam
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