Tired All the Time

I feel like I've been exhausted all weekend. It's Sunday night and I'm just now getting things together for next week. The stress of everything is starting to build. I think part of the hardship I'm having is I don't feel comfortable enough with math to come up with creative activities. Not having a math background is making my life kind of difficult. I feel like I'm not sure what the big ideas I should be stressing or the concepts I should really be aiming for are. If I was teaching history... I've been telling myself that if I was teaching history everything would be easier. I don't think that's true. I would probably be dealing with a lot of the same problems.
A lot of my stress is coming from the classroom management end of things. SO everyone told me not to smile until Christmas. It's too late for that so what do I do now?
The other problem I'm having is a I just can't get excited about math. I thought I would be able to. Maybe its just what I'm teaching now. Maybe when I get out of this box plot crap and move on to introducing variables things will get more interesting. If I was teaching history we would be discussing reconstruction now. Reconstruction is something I can get excited about. I love history its great.
When people sit around and discuss what makes a good teacher people always mention the passion a particular teacher had for the subject matter. Teachers need to be excited about what they're doing. The other Algebra teacher has that. She gets excited when we plan things. Its great. I want to feel that way when I'm planning things.
Really the only class I find myself getting excited for is Freshmen Seminar. We discuss things in that class. Last week we went outside and went on what's called a Sherpa Walk. Tomorrow we are reading an article about Stephon Marbury's new shoes. If you haven't heard he is selling high end basketball shoes for 15 bucks. Check it out.

Testing

It seems that being the third week some of my kids are starting to test me to see how I will react to different things. 7th period is in to throwing things. Some of the kids refuse to listen. I've found that with a lot of them all I can do is consistently tell them to get on task. Two interesting things happened in my freshmen seminar class.
First I had a student tell me he wasn't going to work in a group. When I placed him in a group he muttered something under his breath, I can't remember what, but it was tot eh effect of he should beat me up. I think I handled well I just walked right up to him and said "what was that?" Like I hadn't heard him and was really just curious, he quickly caught on and said something clever.
Even more interesting was the discussion we had in class. The students were in groups and I gave them a scenario. I told them they were stranded on a desert island and they needed to create rules and laws for the society they would live under. At first that was all I said and I figured I'd let them run with it. I hoped that we could get into some discussion about how rules in my class were not arbitrary and in order to accomplish what we needed to we had to have some sort of rules. Instead some of the kids decided to take the chance to see what they could get away with. One group made rules that the island they landed on would be called the United States of Black People (USPB). In the USPB white people would be enslaved and the police force would be the Black KKK. A girl told me that she thought this was inappropriate, but I let it stay up so we could discuss. No one in the group would claim responsibility for writing it I asked them some could questions about what it would mean to have slavery, and what sort of police force you want to have. It was really pretty fun.
We sort of got into a discussion about race, which was not where I was looking to go, but I was ok with it. One thing that struck me though is when one of my students was talking about white racist police officers she looked at me and said "no offense". At that I paused the conversation. I almost wanted to laugh. This was the second time this had happened.
Earlier in the year during a discussion of Martin Luther King a student had said "He got killed by a white person,"looking at me"no offense." I had to stop the conversation I asked them why I would be offended at that. I knew there were racist cops. I stressed the fact that I was not responsible for their actions and that what one white person said or did was not a reflection on any one else. The same way that no one persons actions are a reflection on any race of people. All in all I thought this was an interesting experience.

Classroom Management

So I have survived the first two weeks of school without losing any limbs, or going completely insane. Actually all and all I feel pretty good right now. Tomorrow is the primaries and I have off. I've really never been so excited about the election process. I think this excitement typifies the way I have been feeling. I really feel like teaching is driving me from feeling down and exhausted, to moments of elation where I feel excellent. I think a large part of this has to do with my classroom management.
My management is something I knew would be lacking at the beginning of the year and it's really not much of a surprise that my classes are getting out of hand. Last week was the worst. On weds I lost complete control of one class. It was bad enough that I've been dreading going to school in the morning because while I eat breakfast I just anticipate the problems I will have to deal with.
But I am still excited to be doing this. I came home from school today thinking I've made progress in the management of my Algebra classes. I assigned seats, which I didn't want to do, but I think it is going to be beneficial for me and the students.
At lunch I was talking to an English teacher and she gave me a procedure that she uses to get her classes quiet. It works like this: I raise my hands the kids know this is the symbol to get quiet. I drilled it in one class, and kept my freshmen seminar class after because they failed to do it. I'm going to try and implement this on Weds in all my classes and we'll see how it goes.
Any ideas for other procedures to get students to be quiet and stay quiet are appreciated.
One thing that has helped is talking to other teachers about their problems. It puts things in perspective. It lets me know that my problems are similar to a lot of other first year teachers, and the students I have trouble with also have trouble with other teachers. I'm really just happy that I'm not alone.

Week one

I have been a teacher for one week. I am exhausted. I feel like I have so many thoughts that I need to reflect on that I should probably take about an entire week off so I could think about what I've been doing and come back on that third week of school ready to teach the hell out of this Algebra class. Honestly who thought teaching would be this physically exhausting.

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.