spring break!

I've been abandoning this blog more than usual lately. I guess I've felt like I had nothing (or maybe nothing good) to say. But it's spring break, and I have loads of free time for once, so it seems like I should be updating.

Instead of relaxing and sleeping in like I promised myself, I've spent my first two days off getting stuff done. Doing laundry, going to doctors appointments, paying bills, picking up stamps, dropping off dry-cleaning, painting my room, hanging up pictures... I've probably accomplished more in the last two days than I have in the last two months. It reminded me of what appealed to me about this job in the first place--I'm bored if I'm not getting things done. But then again, it also reminded me of the luxury of free time, and how nice it is to be able to do something like blog at 1:20 in the morning without worrying that I have to get up for work in less than 4 hours.

I get to Atlanta in a little less than 39 hours (not that there's a countdown on my dashboard or anything). I think it'll be strange going back, but I still can't wait. As much as I love Chicago, I think I just need to get away for a while. Depending how much planning I get done tomorrow, I'd like to just leave my computer here and forget about everything related to teaching until I come back. I always find myself dwelling on school, talking about teaching, telling stories about my students. Maybe a few days around some non-teachers will do me good... or else everyone will be really tired of me talking about TFA by the time I leave Atlanta.

I spoke too soon about the weather...

So it's been snowing since Monday and today the high was -2 with the wind chill. So much for a heat wave.

This has been a very long and very stressful week. I tried to be good about sleeping and getting work done ahead of time, but then I failed miserably. Monday I had grad school class that I felt unprepared for, but luckily no one in my class (literally, no one) had done the homework or any of the reading or had any idea what was going on. Teachers apparently make the worst students.

Tuesday I helped Andrea grade until 8:00 at night, which was exhausting and made me very glad to be caught up on grading. Then Wednesday somehow flew by and all of a sudden it's Thursday and I have a 4 page paper for grad school that I haven't started, 3 chapters to read, a department meeting, an observation by the Illinois Board of Education... I'm tired just thinking about it.

I've made it through (most of) Thursday... now all that's left is staff development tomorrow. That means no students, but it also means I have to present my (ridiculously awful) semester exam results in front of the whole school. Woo.

Thank goodness for weekends and new semesters.

Obligatory New Year's Post

So I've abandoned the blog a bit, which is kind of sad cause I had resolved to do a better job keeping up with it. Oh well, at least my other resolutions (reading more and taking less work home) have been going well so far.

Christmas break was a nice getaway from freezing and teaching and stressing, but it wasn't nearly as relaxing as I had hoped. Coming back was still hard, and I feel like the new year is going even worse with my students than last year.

But on a happier note, Chicago is lovely. It's been in the high 30's-low 40's all weekend (heat wave!) and I for once managed to enjoy the weekend. North side bar-hopping, turtle races, random limo rides... it made me miss actually having a social life outside of watching Sex & the City with the roomies and occasional TFA gatherings. And, as a nice bonus, my planning is done up through Presidents' Day weekend. In just 17 days I'll be on a plane to Utah for a nice 5 day weekend of snowboarding and not thinking about teaching. In the meantime, I'm going to try to make it through another week without the stress and the students and the grad school and the work kill me.

backtracking

Once again, I got sidetracked by work and school and life and forgot to update. I'm currently stuck in the Tampa airport on my way home for Christmas, but I think I'll go ahead make this post about the beginning of December instead.

I spent the first weekend of December at a conference at a resort in the suburbs. It was kind of surreal and the entire time I felt that someone was about to realize that I clearly had no business being there. The retreat was for school leadership to learn about how to implement interim assessments, analyze the results, and use them to inform teaching, and to train other teachers at their schools in data- driven instruction. How exactly did I end up at this conference? Someone (apparently with very poor judgment) decided I would be a good person to represent the science department on the Instructional Leadership Team. This basically means that I help make school-wide decisions about things like target instructional areas and professional development, and then I'm somehow supposed to communicate these things to my department without any practical power like being able to call a meeting.

I keep ending up with all these semi-important responsibilities (teaching AP chem next year, member of the science department curriculum planning committee, possible AVID certification, ILT science rep...) mostly because other members of my department never step up and volunteer for anything. On the one hand, this is frustrating because they're probably way better qualified and it should be their responsibility as veteran teachers to work for the good of the department and the school. But on the other hand, it means I get to do interesting things as a first year teacher that I wouldn't have an opportunity to do if I worked anywhere else. So for right now, I'm generally enjoying the added responsibilities... even if I'm dreading the thought of managing all that plus masters classes next semester.

Thanksgiving

It's been an absurdly long time since I posted, but this one's going to be on the short side since I only have a few more minutes to get to breakfast. Last week (was is really only last week?) Pilar and I had our first Chicago Thanksgiving. Kathy came, plus a few TFA friends, and it went surprisingly well. We almost burned the house down when the turkey pan broke and leaked turkey juices all over the oven, and then we almost flooded the house when the pipes under the sink came apart and spilled water everywhere, but somehow it all came together and all the food turned out delicious. It was a little weird being away from home, but being with friends was just as good. And I can't even explain how much I needed those four days of rest.

More updates later when I get back to somewhere with free internet.

Long day.

Things had been going pretty well lately. Yes, my students drive me crazy, and yes, getting remediation plans together for the 85% of my students who were failing was a giant disaster, but even so, things seemed to be running a little more smoothly. I've had a string of good weekends (Caitlin visited from New York, then my cousin visited, then this past weekend I went to a coworker's birthday party Saturday and somehow managed to get two weeks ahead in planning on Sunday). And my classes have been generally manageable and my students reasonably nice.

But today that kind of went to shit when one of my students stole my purse out of my locked classroom. Now, I say one of my students because it certainly wasn't a crime of stealing valuable things, seeing as my laptop, car keys, and cell phone were all with me, and the only thing that actually stayed missing was the $7 cash I had and some pens. No, this was most certainly an issue of someone really hating me--enough to shove all my belongings (wallet, laptop charger, headphones) into the sanitary napkin disposal in the girl's bathroom and ditch my purse on the floor, where one of my other students found it and brought it back to me.

Now, this pisses me off. I'm not really mad about the purse. I got everything back, and the only slight hassle will be waiting for my new credit card to come in the mail. What pisses me off is that one of my students, all of whom I had trusted, was actually lacking in integrity enough to risk going to jail for the sake of minorly inconveniencing me for an hour or two. I know my class may piss students off, but does that really seem worth it?

Anyway, I've since lost motivation to do anything productive like grades tests or plan for tomorrow's lesson. And it doesn't help that I can't make tomorrow's overhead transparencies because, of course, someone stole my overhead markers. So my students will be subjected to a crappy, hastily put together lesson tomorrow, and honestly, I just don't feel guilty about that right now.

Brrr

So school's been going pretty well lately. My last two periods are severely pissing me off, but other than that people are behaving relatively well (or I've just stopped caring about their misbehavior). Still not sure anyone is actually learning though, and still haven't actually figured out how to give interesting lessons. But whatever, there's still time.

As my students have gotten more used to me, they seem to have gotten more comfortable asking me tons of off-topic questions in the middle of class. Some of these are less appropriate--"Can I have your phone number?" "Are you an atheist?" "Are you a lesbian?" "Will you be my date to homecoming?"-- but every once in a while I'll get something that I actually feel compelled to answer. One kid asked if I was mixed, and when I said no responded "oh, so you must be Polish." Not sure how that's the logical follow-up, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with how few white people they've actually talked to in their lives.  I also occasionally get vaguely science-related questions, from how Gatorade works to why pot makes you hungry. I walked out of college feeling like I had forgotten everything my classes ever taught me about science, so it's somewhat reassuring that I can actually answer all their questions.

Mostly though, talking to my students about random stuff makes me realize how intelligent and funny and interesting they are, which makes it all the more depressing when they can't do things like basic multiplication. (I can't tell you how many people answered on the first test that 11 x 10 was 121.) I feel like I'm losing some of my students by rushing through all the basic stuff, but on the other hand I don't have the time to slow down and fill in all the gaps in their basic math skills when we've got nine units of actual science content left to get to. It's difficult striking a balance between teaching them chemistry like I'm supposed to and teaching them all the pre-requisite skills they need to actually do chemistry problems, and I'm starting to see why the senior chemistry teacher only makes it through half of the course material each year.


But even though I feel like a disaster as a teacher most of the time, my department seems to think I'm extremely competent. They keep asking me to send them my TFA materials, or help them with Gradebook, or write the 5-week plans. At the last department meeting, they actually tried to ambush me into teaching AP Chemistry next year. That seems like a really absurd class for a second-year teacher to take on, especially considering its one I've never taken, but at the same time I think it'd be nice to teach students who are actually engaged and motivated. And it would make my job a little more secure when we get to the 20th day of school next year, which is always something to think about. We'll see.


I've been hanging out with my coworkers a lot lately. They're pretty much the only social contact I get these days, since god knows I don't have the energy to go out during the week (or even most weekends).  It's unbelievably nice to talk to other people who understand what's going on at our school and can commiserate about what I'm going through. My roommates, the other people I see most often and talk to most about teaching, are awesome and understand somewhat cause they're both TFA, but since one teaches in a private school and one in a charter school, it's sometimes hard for them to relate when it comes to ridiculous inefficiencies, and low expectations, and shitty teachers, and unsupportive administration, and unmotivated kids, and the list goes on... So as a result, talking to my coworkers ends up being a pretty big factor in keeping me (relatively) sane.

I think I mentioned in here that one of my good friends got laid off last week. As it turns out, she's been subbing every day, and we actually have more planning periods in common now than we did when she had a job. She also has an interview next week with an awesome school nearby, so with any luck she'll get hired there and will still be able to come out with us on Fridays. Hopefully that works out (*fingers crossed*) cause it'd suck to lose her just as I feel like I'm really becoming part of the group.

Speaking of which, I got invited to a coworker's German-themed birthday party next weekend... any costume suggestions?

And on a final unrelated note, it's cold here. Not super-cold, but cold enough that they predicted snow last weekend, and that I've been wearing the coat I wore all semester in St. Andrews on a pretty regular basis. I've been drinking a lot of warm beverages, stocking up on long-sleeved shirts, and today my roommate and I are going on an adventure to the North Face outlet in Wisconsin to hopefully buy a winter coat. Wish me luck.

Bittersweet

As nice as it was to keep my job, yesterday actually turned out to be a pretty crappy day. One of my coworkers that I'm friends with got laid off, even though she's been working there for 4 years, which I feel really bad about. My students were being bigger jerks than usual. In fact, two kids got in a fight in my 4th period class--shirts off, clothes ripped, people slammed into desks--fun stuff. One of the people in my department gave me the shared 5 week assessment that every chemistry teacher is supposed to give, only for me to realize that a) it covers none of the objectives on the 5 week plan, and b) it covers none of the objectives I've taught. I ended up spending the day frantically trying to cram vocabulary down my students' throats so they'd be ready while futilely attempting to find my department chair and ask her what the heck I was supposed to do. I briefly thought I had trapped myself in the planning room when I somehow managed to pull the door handle out of the door. And I spent the whole day bombarded with kids asking about their grades since progress reports come out this week. Then after school I had to go to the TFA office to pick up all my PLAN and EXPLORE tests, where I couldn't get on the internet to do work and accidentally left one of my favorite sweaters. By the time I got from there to National Louis, I was left with about 25 minutes to write a 4 page philosophy of education paper before going to a 5 hour grad class that ensures I never get to bed before 11:30 on Monday nights.

Needless to say, it was kind of a long and painful day. Today was a little better on the student front. I also feel a little more organized, even though I'm behind on getting make-up work for my suspended students (who were in the fight yesterday), I have 4 progress reports to write on students I barely know that I can't even find the forms for, my grades are due tomorrow at 3 and are far from finished, my room looks like a bomb of standardized tests and make-up work exploded all over it, and I have no idea what I'm doing with my biology class tomorrow. Blerg.

In cool random news though, they're filming the sequel to Meet the Fockers outside my house. I passed Ben Stiller on the way home from work today. I guess that's sort of a fair trade for making me park 2 blocks away and blocking off the street with police cars.

NOT FIRED!

whew.

20th Day

The 20th day of school is an oddly important one for CPS. The central office allocate money for teaching positions based on the projected number of students each school is going to have and a student/teacher ratio of 28:1. On the 20th day of school, they count how many students actually have been attending each school and rearrange funding. Schools with low enrollment get teacher positions cut; schools with high enrollment are given money to hire extra teachers.

In theory, this isn't a bad idea. In practice, displacing teachers on the 20th day of school means 5 classes of 20-30 kids will be temporarily teacherless until they can find some other classroom to put them in or find a sub to take over. Since we all know subs don't actually command any respect, especially in inner-city schools, these kids end up running wild and not learning anything until all everything gets sorted out. I've heard people claim this is a political move on CPS's part: cut teachers at low-income schools that are already struggling and then use the resulting chaos as further evidence that they need to be shut down. I don't think that's necessarily true, but I will say that 20th day displacement does tend to disproportionately affect schools in low-income areas.

In previous years, my school has hired some displaced teachers back to sub for their own classes. This is kind of a shitty deal, but it's definitely better than nothing, and at least you know your classes are still learning. But this year they seem to have thought it through a little more and the plan is to have extended homeroom Monday morning so that the programming office will have time to switch the schedules of all the kids who are affected and get them into other teachers' classes that day. Good news for the kids; less promising for the 5 teachers that get cut.

So as of Monday, there's probably a 90% chance I won't have a job. I'm not exactly excited about having to start my job search from scratch again, but at least this time I have a little more experience and probably a few references from my old school. I also can't imagine walking into a classroom five or six weeks into the year and still managing to get things done, but I guess it's not worth stressing over the inevitable.

I know HR is supposed to send you a packet in the mail about your displacement, but unless that comes today I'll be finding out Monday morning during homeroom whether or not I get to hang on to my job. Wish me luck.