First Day of School

Today was the first day of school. I feel like I have so much to say and could probably use a week to think about what went well and what I need to do in my second day to make this a productive year. Alas the second day follows the first meaning I have a lot to do by tomorrow. Right now I am simply feeling overwhelmed. Part of it is just exhaustion. Standing in front of folks and rambling about the importance of Algebra is much more physically exhausting than I anticipated. I'm feeling underprepared and I don't think many of the students cared at all about the activities we did today. I was hoping to build some sort of connection or get them interested in something, but honestly its the first day of school. Nobody wants to be there. On the positive side I got a lot of opportunities to talk to students and I felt like this was good.

First Day of Work Eve

Tomorrow is the first official day of work. I have to be in by 8:30. I can't wait. I say that now, but I keep going from being really excited to being really nervous. I'm not so nervous and excited about tomorrow. Students don't come until Monday, but the anxiety is building. I still have about a million things to do so that I'll be ready for the first day. I've noticed that as the start of the school year approaches I've gotten very good at finding distractions and not preparing guess that could explain some of the anxiety. I'm really happy with my school. I think I am really going to enjoy all the people I am working with and I can't wait to meet the students.

Success

(written at the conclusion of the Baltimore City Teaching Residency summer institute (8/5/06) . It is being posted now because I wrote it at my house before I had internet.)
One of the themes of the last week of framework sessions has been establishing authority in the classroom. The pedagogical framework of the BCTR seems to circle the importance of authority in the classroom. The curriculum that has been used for the summer institute was created by Teaching for Student Achievement(TfSA). The TfSA framework relies on the interconnected nature of high impact lessons and classroom management. Both of these are presented with the teacher being the primary or even sole authority and beholder of knowledge in the classroom.

While these arenot the ideals I wish to bring to education it seems that in the current structure this what is effective in creating successful students. How success is being defined is not made clear. The overall purpose of the TfSA approach is closing the achievement gap. This is a laudable goal the TfSA/BCTR approach cannot be the only successful one out there.

I am grappling with the question of what it means to be a successful student and how the power that exists in my classroom will shape that. I will have power in the classroom, I can attempt to mask that by being polite, but that won't change the fact that I am the one in charge. That is not to say that my class can not be an empowering experience for those who enter it. My vision of a successful student is one who leaves my classroom able to think about math.

My students success will be measured by many people with many different standards. The state will be measuring their success through the Algebra High School Assessment (a passing score is required for graduation). The students families, and likely the students themselves will measure it with the grades they receive. Those are not the only ways I hope to measure my students' success.

Math literacy is what I see as success. Now this isn't concretely quantifiable. In my eyes this means that students will leave my class at the end of the year with the ability to use math in their everyday lives. I want my students to leave school not thinking of math as a burden or a chore, but rather a tool for opening doors. I want math to become an empowering force in these students lives. The skills students learn in my class must prepare them to go on to higher levels of math learning, building a foundation for college. The majority of my students may not go to college, but I don't want this to be because I have failed to provide them an opportunity the math they need to make higher education a possibility.

Power in the Classroom

After reading Lisa Delpit's article "The Silenced Dialogue" I have been contemplating the way I will deal with power in the classroom. The focus of the article is the "culture of power" that exists in classrooms. It is clear that there is very real power in the classroom. Over the summer I have been grappling with the question of how to fairly distribute this power. At the current time I am still a bit of an idealist without any substantial teaching experience. I have told myself that it is important to let students control their own learning and empower students, by letting them control the classroom. As the summer has progressed I've realized the naivity of my ideas.

Delpit's article has led me to question many of the thoughts I've previously held about power in the classroom. In "The Silenced Dialogue" she states,
"Issues of power are enacted in the classroom. There are codes or rules for participating in power; that is, there is a culture of power. The rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the culture of those who have power. If you are not already a participant in the culture of power being told explicitly the rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier."
She goes on to discuss many teachers inability or unwillingness to acknowledge there power in the classroom.

One of my goals as a new teacher is that the experiences that students have in my classroom will empower them to continue on with their education. Delpit makes a fairly convincing argument that the best way I could empower my students is to inform them of the rules for participating in the "culture of power". Ideally I would like to destroy this power, or at least change it substantially so that classrooms become more democratic, but this ideal will likely not be reached in my first year as an Algebra teacher in Baltimore City. I will however do my best to make it clear to my students that their are certain things they need to be able to do to participate fully in our (the school's and society's) "culture of power". My ideas are continually shifting as to how I can best empower my students. As the school year rapidly approaches I hope I can prepare myself adequately to deal with the power I will have.

Highly Qualified

I've been meaning to reflect on the parts of the Baltimore City Teaching Residency(BCTR) I've participated in so far. I'm in the Math Immersion Program, which takes folks who aren't from a math background and trains them to become math teachers. This is done because Baltimore, like most cities has an enormous shortage in the number of qualified math teachers. The question yet to be answered is does this program bring in more qualified math teachers or just more bodies to fill rooms?
Today was the first day of the summer institute and it left me with a lot of questions about my status as a school teacher. A lot of the literature I have received through this program stresses the high need for qualified teachers in inner city schools, particularity in math and science. An article we read today cited a statistic that in schools with greater than 49 percent of the students on free lunch 40% of the math teachers were considered underqualified meaning they did not major or minor in the field they are teaching. In schools with less than 20% free lunch only 25% of math teachers were underqualified.*
BCTR and similar residency programs are designed to lessen the disparity in these statistics. My fear is that bringing me, with my bachelors degree in American History into a classroom to teach math is not helping this. The Maryland Board of Education has determined that after completing the Math Immersion program I will be considered highly qualified. Being highly qualified sounds nice, but ultimately it is a meaningless term that is easily circumvented to fill the real need for math teachers. While this program seems to be a reaction to necessity I am left wondering how the problem of underqualified teachers is going to be solved and if I am part of the problem.
Up until this point I've felt pretty comfortable with the idea of teaching math. In the fall I will most likely be teaching 9th grade algebra. For the most part my anxieties about teaching do not revolve around the content. Statistics about the problems created by underqualified individuals make me wonder if I will be a successful teacher. If I am what will this say about the importance of being highly qualified?

*The article I am citing is "Helping All Students Learn: CLosing the Achievement Gap" By Kati Haycock. The statistics I have cited come from page 16 of this article.

One, Two what is this?

The Baltimore Sun reported that a new study of graduation rates conducted by the journal Education Week found that the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) had a 38.5% graduation rate. The city is disputing the numbers claiming that the graduation rate was around 54% the year of the study. While the numbers are being disputed it seems that the state of Maryland uses a method of measuring graduation rate that will inflate the numbers while the study by Education Week seems to deflate the actual graduation rate.
In all likelihood the graduation rate in 2003 for the City of Baltimore Public Schools was somewhere between 38.5% and 54% . To me it seems that either of these numbers are incredibly low. As a first year teacher entering the public school system with little to no experience in front of a class this seems rather intimidating. I expect the coming year to be challenging day in and day out and it is my intent to use this blog to write about the challenges and experiences I will have.