Thoughts on Education

A new teacher at my school quit this week. At the staff meeting last Friday, we REJOICED because he was actually fully certified to teach AND had years of experience...then this week, he quit.

I'm sure we could all speculate as to why he left (maybe he was already burned out, maybe he held unrealistic expectations, maybe he was dealing with extraneous issues that bled into his work life...) but this teacher's departure is just ONE symptom of a much larger issue.

Teachers are exiting the profession in droves, leaving students in classrooms with a different sub every day, under-qualified long term substitutes ill equipped to teach algebra or biology, or emergency or intern certified teachers trying to find their footing while balancing graduate school or certification courses.

Granted, I have very few reserves against throwing an emergency certified teacher or intern certified teacher in a classroom when the only other option is a substitute teacher. (Full disclosure, I am an intern certified teacher.) However, in the long run, putting untrained and in-training teachers in the classroom is a band-aid solution for the gaping wound that is the teacher shortage faced in America, let alone Arizona.


Alternate preparation programs like Teach for America, New York City Teaching Fellows and TNTP Teaching Fellows are great, but teachers don't always stay in the classroom after their commitment expires. Many find the pay unacceptable and leave. Many see bigger and brighter things in their future (like med or law school) and leave. Many face burnout within two years due to a lack of school support--and they leave.

So what is the answer? That's a trick question.

There isn't one answer. There is a slew of answers. The real question is "Which solutions work best together and get at the true root of the issue?

For starters...

Pay us. Pay public school teachers more. We shouldn't have to find a second or summer job to help us pay a $1200/month mortgage payment when school isn't in session.

Support us. Have our backs when it comes to finicky parents. Do what it takes to sustain a positive workplace environment--be that monthly potlucks, staff spirit weeks, or exciting professional developments. Better yet, allow public school teachers to grow by sending us to intriguing professional developments and providing subs for our classes.

Stock our classrooms. Make sure the Senior English teachers don't have to arm wrestle over who gets to borrow and read the class set of The Bell Jar with their kids. Make sure there are enough textbooks to go around. Better yet, stock public schools with textbooks that are up to date and include Obama's presidency--not the textbooks I used in high school.

Granted, a lot of this goes back to money. In fact, all of this--teacher pay, professional development, classroom supplies--is linked to money. So perhaps the issue truly stems back to, you guessed it, politics.

In Arizona, I'm sure teachers would be elated to receive the same pay raise Governor Doug Ducey gave to many of his staff in 2017, while teachers received approximately a 1% raise.

I am so blessed to say that my district is supportive. We have an education association representative who relentlessly requests raises for teachers. Through my district, I have received training, room and board for the Advanced Placement class I teach, and we have more than a modest amount of books available to read with our students, either on campus or via inter-district loan system. I'm not saying my district is perfect, but I am certainly grateful Teach for America placed me here. I intend to stay much longer than my two year commitment--but what about all of the teachers who don't feel as blessed as I do?

I am one teacher who plans to stay in the classroom for a long time. What can be done to replicate me?

Mental Health Day

Today is a day of rest.

I started crying in grad school last night, and I was not the only one.

It's the time of the year when everything is in full swing--progress reports came out on Monday, the longest day of professional development was on Wednesday, and too many grad school projects were due Thursday.

On top of that, all my freshmen met with their counselors during class Monday to plan out their next four years of high school (which is awesome), but it took away from teaching time. Same goes for this coming week--picture day will occur during all English classes, taking away from teaching time.

I'm doing my best. My teaching feels more organized than last year, and students seem to be grasping concepts with more fervor than they did last year--but I still feel like there is too much to cover in the short amount of time I'm being given between now and the end of the quarter.

So, I'm taking the day off. It may seem counterintuitive--leaving my kids with a sub and "read these chapters and answer these questions" lesson plans, but I need to get creative to figure out how they're going to learn what they need to in the next four weeks.

I also seriously need to recharge, and do some grad school homework. If my brain is fried, I don't function well. So here I am, today--taking a mental health day. Letting my brain rest and heal.

It is lovely.

Sabbath

Roadside on the Million Dollar Highway, from Ouray to Silverton, CO.

Long time no post, #amirite?

As you've potentially gathered, I'm a full time teacher and full time graduate student, which means I spend about 80 hours a week doing something English and/or education related.

And, as you hopefully realize, it's exhausting.

The biggest upside of teaching is having summers off, which has given me plenty of opportunities to rest, rejuvenate, and [finally] log back on to this blog.

This post, titled "Sabbath," is a draft lying around from March 2017, and I finally have a moment to sit down and write about that. now is the moment I'm choosing to finally sit and write about this.

If you're unfamiliar with Christianity or Judaism, the concept of "Sabbath" may be slightly foreign to you. It shares a root with "sabbatical," and comes from šāḇaṯ, which means ‘to rest.’ in Hebrew (thanks, Google, for that history.)

Sometime in March, I went on a Saturday climbing trip with a few friends (one of whom is a teacher, the other of whom practices Judaism) and the discussion rotated around to the idea of rest.

All three of us are familiar with the idea of Sabbath as a day of rest, and I started considering when the practice of taking a day of rest went by the wayside.

Initially, the Sabbath was created as a day of rest to reflect how God rested on the seventh day of creation, which is a pretty cool idea. Taking a day to rest, pause and reflect sounds like a great idea in the hustle and bustle world of 2017.

Which is why, in March, I started observing Saturday as my Sabbath. I would wake up, go to yoga, then go home and do everything or anything except grad school homework or grading papers. And, magically, it didn't make it any more difficult to get my work done by the times I needed to have it done.

I pushed all my essay grading to one weekend day, and it made me focus better. I held on to weekday nights for my grad school homework, which wasn't much of an issue when I was able to sit down and do it while eating dinner.

By prioritizing rest and carving out a full day of my week FOR rest, I was able to manage my time and work more efficiently. 

I'm not sure what my Sabbath is going to look like this school year. For one thing, I want to prioritize travel and getting into nature. It's my goal to spend at least two weekends of every month somewhere outside of Phoenix, but in all reality--I'll be happy if I make it out of the city at least one weekend every month.

This year is also different because I now have a boyfriend, and while I want to say that won't affect my Sabbath, it probably will. He's a teacher, and we're going to have to discuss our working habits so we can plan time to work, grade, and do everything else while also finding time to spend together.

Thankfully, he loves Jesus and also seems to be on board with the idea of observing Sabbath as a day of rest, so this should be a great thing for both of us in our busy schedules.

Parallels

Ask anyone I know--I recently got super into rock climbing. 

A month ago, I got back up on a rock wall for the first time since my fall, and I've craved to return ever since.

On a whim, I invested in a pair of shoes, a chalk bag, a bouldering gym membership, and a roll of tape. It's pretty rare for me to jump head-on into something so quickly, but I'm so glad I've invested in this hobby because it's starting to pay off.

When I hit the rock gym, my mind is instantly cleared. I'm no longer focused on student essays, lesson plans for the next week, or how my lesson may have crashed and burned that day. Instead, I'm faced by different issues--how to climb a particular route, how to best bandage a blister, how to catapult myself over a ledge--the list goes on. Rock climbing gives me a physical activity that embodies problem solving, and helps me process along the way.

Granted, not all problems are solved in a quick and clean fashion. Some problems take a few falls or a few fails before being solved, and I've learned to grow comfortable in those times.

I'm learning to grow comfortable when I fail at teaching as well.

Don't get me wrong--I hold myself to a very high standard, but teaching is a try-and-fail setup. If you try an activity and you fail, you try again or you move on to something that may work. If you fail at getting a point across, you stand up, brush yourself off, and come back the next day to try again.

I'm so thankful I found rock climbing in my first year of teaching so I could learn to fall, learn to fail, and practice getting back up time and time again.

Homeward Bound

My sweet time in Tulsa is coming to an end. I'm ready to go home, but I've met a lot of lovely people here and made new friends.

The students I have--my first group of students, aside from the incoming freshmen I taught at ASU's Early Start program two years ago--are amazing. They're humorous, curious, and all doing relatively well in class. My Tulsa kiddos have taught me how to interact and teach many different types of students, and I'm excited to meet my 150 Phoenix kiddos with these 4 weeks of teaching experience under my belt.

My co-teacher (or "collab" in Teach for America terms) is a blessing. His name is Elliott, he has teaching experience, and he's such a calm and loving person. He spent the last 3 years living in Iceland (I know, right?) and has classroom experience as a teacher.

In the past 4 weeks, we've experienced actual tornado warnings where we had to go down to the basement and stay "calm" while our students had to stay "calm" while we were all late for lunch and hungry. We've shared deodorant (I forgot mine one day and our classroom is at least 80 degrees and humid every day), shared life stories, and grown to know each other well.

There's nobody else I would rather share a classroom with, and knowing that Elliott is going to Miami when I go back to Phoenix is rough--but I'm stoked because it means I have someone to go and stay with in Miami!

In addition to my students and Elliott, I was privileged to work with an entire group of fabulous humanities teachers (pictured at the top of this post.)

This was my CTE group, and we're all English, history or geography teachers. We bonded over our tough work and stuck through many hours of lesson planning, classes, and preparation for returning to our corps cities. I feel well equipped thanks to these awesome humans, and led by our fearless Sasha.

I've enjoyed Tulsa, for what it's been, and I'm ready to jump in to teaching in Phoenix.