Mississippi Teacher Corps’ Neighborhood

Summer training was a fast-paced learning and friend-making adventure.  I would compare it to diving into a pool. I knew exactly what was coming, and it felt even more refreshing and invigorating than I expected. Also, like a dive, I felt queasy and nervous at first. Looking down into the waters below, I was apprehensive in the beginning weeks. Formal evaluation days and befriending new people and getting up in front of a class for the first time were inevitable growing pains of training. Any training requires pushes into un-comfortable zones. That is how I would describe summer training: a series of pushes into that zone of discomfort, which got gradually more and more do-able. The encouragement and support along that route was more than sufficient to keep me willing to step into each new day and each new experience. Soon enough, each day became a thrill.

Summer training also entailed bonding with my second years and fellow first years. I learned so much from these five people (plus my team teacher).  Through my daily interaction with them, I gained strength, a sense of know-how, a direction to my professional growth, and most of all, a love for the job. My questions, fears, concerns, ideas, dreams and hopes: they were all in safe territory with these “teaching kin” in place.

This brings me to the most helpful aspect of summer training: the social interaction that is built into it. I love being roommates and neighbors with the people I work alongside. I love growing as a teacher, not on my own, but as part of a group of people who share the same journey and desires in their future vocation. I love the fact that benefitting from peers’ ideas is so effortless in this environment, and that sharing resources is made so natural and easy over the course of the summer training. This is hands-down the absolute strength of summer training: centrality of social exchange between, and proximity to, first- and second-years -- and then, the magical transition to an intensified bonding between first-years in July. I feel like this enables us to survive. When I refer to this strength of ‘social interaction,’ I refer not only to the vocation-related advice the second-years and team teachers gave (and continue to give!) us, but also to our own closeness to each other – in terms of age, energy levels, idea flow, etc. – made summer training very productive and satisfying.

What needs improvement about summer training? I say, keep the rigorous pace, the early mornings  of school and lesson prep, and late nights of LP-ing. Keep the afternoon class, the inclusion of the more seasoned team teachers and all the evaluations and assignments to blog, to do projects and to read books. All I’d like to add is, more books (one or two to give us even more classroom management food for thought), and somehow making our class time a time when we can start thinking about planning for our year ahead. Perhaps some end-of-summer re-boosting from the second years would be good, like a jump-start to mentoring before the first day of school hits. I definitely feel compelled to read all of Wong & Wong now. I can’t suggest much for summer training improvement at this point; perhaps being in my own classroom within the next two weeks will show me where summer training left me unprepared. From where I stand now, though, I feel well-prepared and ready (though still nervous as I imagine what lies ahead- but no amount of preparation could take that away. A little edge is good in order to function anyway, isn’t it?).

So, I get to write what I like in this.  I shall tell you of my marvelous time at By High.  Listen my children, and you shall hear.

I did not take any pictures, as my camera had no batteries, but I shall rectify that tomorrow.

I walked into my classroom, to which the janitor, Mr. Woods, was kind enough to show me.  He was, by the way, wonderful to me and very on top of things.  He found me almost anything I asked for, and if he couldn't get it, it wasn't for lack of trying.  I think he's a bit enamored of me.

I walked into a huge pile of books and papers and desks and boards.  It was awful.  I stared at this piled junk in the corner and I felt my mother's genes kick in.  I breathed in (not too deeply, for fear of dust) and set to work clearing the stuff away.  In another hour or two I had the place set up to my specs (As Mr. Woods says) and began to sort through all of the ginormous stack of papers and notebooks that my last teacher had just left in her classroom when she cleared out.  I then began to hang posters and to decide where I want to hang maps, etc. 

I left my classroom for one reason or another and found Elizabeth Walton and Julia Keith.  Both of whom have the potential to be one of my favorite people.  We went to lunch, once I stopped thinking about my classroom and realized I was hungry.  We had sushi coupled with sarcasm and followed by a stupid amount of laugher.

Then I returned to By High, where I met Mr. Jackson.  I like him.  I really do.  I realize he might be a little too exuberent for some teachers, but I like him.  I think he's going to be a good principal to work under as long as I strive to work with him and ensure that I can keep a handle on my students.

My aunt Melissa came up after she had finished her class for the day and she looked around a bit and helped me to visualize my classroom and to decide what to put where and what procedures I would put in place.  She was fabulous, and I thank God that I have such great people helping me.  I now have a much better idea of what would be a good and what a bad system and all about procedures that I need to put in place.

We tried to get out of there about 6:30, but Mr. Jackson kept us there until about 7:15.  The man sure can talk.  I like him a lot, and my aunt said that she thinks he seems a very good principal (she's definitely seen them come and go in her time), but he could talk the legs off a donkey and leave it spinning.  All the things about which he talked had a great deal of import, though, so I appreciate it, and I appreciate him telling me about the school.

I have so many things left to do in my classroom in order to be prepared for the year, but I made some good progress and I'm very happy with my classroom.

One thing I wanted to mention is how talking with Aunt Lissa about teaching just suddenly made things slide into place.  She talked about the need to impress upon your students that what you're doing is important, and just how important it is.  I felt so much better, suddenly.  It was like, all of a sudden, the world made sense.  I knew why I needed to stress classroom management.  What I'm doing is important, and those kids need me.  Wasting their time is unacceptable, and that goes for me and them.  I cannot give them shoddy lessons and a shoddy performance because that wastes their time.  They cannot act a fool and give me shoddy work because that wastes my time.

It was like the sunrise.  All of a sudden, I could see.  It was the dark hours before the dawn, maybe a few rays of light through the clouds, but suddenly over the horizon comes a red rubber ball.

I want to keep it bright.

Well, the summer has come to a close.  I have had a long and satisfying day, a day in which I felt like I had so much more purpose, so much more vision for the year to come.  Going to my school yesterday and setting my classroom in place gave me so much more of a tangible thing to think about.  We've been talking all summer about "your classroom in the fall."  Now I have an actual classroom to put to that vague statement. 

I will talk more about my classroom in my freewrite blog that I have coming up, but right now I am struggling not to spin off on tangential thoughts.  I suppose the best thing to do would be to label these things good and bad and explain them. 

The Good: 

I loved getting teaching experience in.  I feel like I've missed out on so much that so many other people haven't missed out on because they have taught in one forum or another.  I think it went fast, though, my transition from Kate to Ms. Jarvis.  I like this Miss. Jarvis character, but she's not someone I would ever have become without it being necessary.  I appreciate that MTC pushed me quickly into that necessity and helped me to find my inner teacher.

The older teachers, second-years and TEAM, were all very very helpful  They seemed to genuinely want me to succeed, and to be interested in helping me as much as possible with anything they could help me with.

The group is great.  I'm so glad that I am in this program. I feel like we all have such similar experiences in the program that even though we all come from different backgrounds and cultures and regions of the country we are really close.  There is nobody in the group that I do not like.  After having been in groups like this one my entire life, I really appreciate the lack of cliqueiness and snipeyness.

The Bad: 

Everyone's thinking it.  But I'm going to say it.  I really dislike the del.ici.ous posts.  I would love to have it just if I happened to be on the online and I find a really good article that I want to share.  That's a really good way to use it, and that's a great idea.  But for the required posts, I just find myself going to education.com and skimming articles to post, because I have to post something.  I don't feel that I really read or enjoy anything and I feel like it's one more stressful thing to add to an already stressful schedule.

The Ugly:

     After my "new teacher orientation" and them playing "I believe I can Fly" and telling us that we are the hawks at Holly Springs and need to get the kids to soar I am thinking this should be an interesting experience. My Principal is very nice and says a scripture verse as an introduction to everything she says so this is a great placement for a Seminary drop-out. I will be right at home. Despite all the horror stories about Holly Springs and all the blogs that were very scary from second-years, I am somewhat optimistic going into this thing. I may be naive, but I hope to have my own experience and I think that I am happy with my placement. Tomorrow I am going to decorate my room and August seven when the kids arrive is just around the corner. We shall see.
      I have already been making phone call logs, and other worksheets to help with my organization. I hope that by arriving with as much organization as I can that I can help smooth out some possible wrinkles. I know that this will be one of the most challenging things that I have done to date, but I also know that I can handle it. I really am passionate about what I am embarking on and I hope to stay as positive as possible and try and enjoy the experience and reach as many kids as possible. Seventh graders are insane, but I hope to relate to them and try and reach them on some level. Improving their reading skills is something I am really aiming for so I hope to come up with some creative angles to get them to read. I appreciate the advice from the second years and veterans and am going to try some of their techniques this Fall. I am cautiously optimistic and excited to begin.

   I found Summer School to be a great on the job training program. It will hopefully provide for a smoother transition into the Fall. I am lucky in that our training was held in the same school district that I will be teaching in. Also, by having the largest class of seventeen, I felt that we were able to experience some good classroom management techniques.
    The best thing about the summer school was the kids. I must admit that I really began to enjoy their company. When Cody and Xzavien came into my "new teacher district meeting" wearing their gear from the grammar rap they performed just to shake hand and tell say goodbye it felt great and embarrassing at the same time. Dehendre told me to come watch him score some touchdowns and said that he would come and visit me in the seventh grade hall. They make you want to pull your hair out and then you really get attached. We really were fortunate to have such a great group, even with the attitude queen of HSJHS.
     I really thought both sets of evaluations were really helpful. They offered constructive criticism and gave me some tools to use in the Fall.
     The only thing I felt was really lacking was content-area specific workshops. I thought Carmen did a great job in this department and we were lucky to have her, but it would be nice to have more of that as a part of Summer School.
The one day we met as subject-area groups I found it to be really helpful.
      Overall it was a great experience.

The summer school training was a crash course in lesson planning and classroom management, coupled with practical experience through the Holly Spring's summer school.  Unfortunately the Social Studies group had only one student.

Summer training is now over.  It is now time to enter the "real" teaching world, and I will start in a few short weeks.  I'm excited and oddly enough not nervous about starting at Murrah.  I feel somewhat prepared, although I know I am not.  

Summer training helped me become a better teacher.  Most importantly, it gave me valuable feedback thanks to my "team" teachers, and gave me experience at running a classroom, albeit one much smaller than my future class.  

Summer training is now over.  Its time to teach, and although I am not ready, I am excited.

You wake up, call in sick to your school, and then have breakfast. A letter arrives. It is pushed underneath the door by someone who is not your regular mail deliverer. Though intrigued, you are also somewhat confused, afraid to open it. You set in on the table.  You begin circling around it. Then you pick it up, hold it against the kitchen light. You think it is safe. Though the type is small, it isn't very long.

You decide to read it.

In contact with a sharp surface phenomenon, white pages with words on them, a non-erasable reality that evokes images of a body in communication with another body, you remember an amorous affair, an exhaustive tactile sensory encounter, that now serves as the yardstick by which you judge all real or imagined sensory experience. It ends with a colon: a silent and tragic dissolution of the relationship you were imagining.

Now you are into the third paragraph. You find that the words flow, create story out of nothing: solid shapes and vibrant colors, a formless soft voice that leads but does not command. Presence, an invisibly visible force before you, so present you can feel it moving, moving in and through you, around you, while also existing as something not you. The words, one after another, over and over: the presence inside them gives you life, shapes you, twists and turns you until meaning appears. Then it disappears. Re-emerging, it playfully teases you out of a shell, releases you from the constraints of a textual economy situating you as passive consumer. And there is something else, something not in, but around, a floating. But you don't know what it is. It is silent, something to move through, something that allows for movement. It is warm and strong and good. It fits tight, and you like it.

Because it reminded you of a story from your childhood, the one about the geese or rabbits or funny cat, you feel safe. The story from your childhood is precise and quantifiable, a story whose minute details you already know, a story you tell yourself when you are hurt or in despair. You begin telling yourself this story. But then the dialogue changes: a new character, one that wasn't there before, an alien, an anomic force, tears up your story. Mocking you, it pretends to be the story you were remembering. A deeper memory rises to the surface: you received a letter in the mail today and now you are reading it. You become lost, withdraw in confusion, into confusion, into something you can't quite describe.

Thankfully, a new paragraph begins: you come forward, annex yourself to it. The very distance between surface and structure, form and content, sign and referent, interpretation and fact, keeps it together. It begins to surround you on all sides, slowly at first, naturally, as if it knows you. It is understanding personified in the form and shape of paper with black markings capable of, but not limited to, telling a story.

Or: inciting riots and overthrowing governments; acting as a communicative technology representative of the so-called intellectually, spiritually and ethically superior instruments of the universal advancement of humanity; and mediating to you through a broad range of institutions and organizations, including think tanks, business schools, management consultancy firms, business media and political parties, that it is capable of, and willing to, construct a world of shared, common human lineaments.

Or: relaying multiple and purely contingent different realities altogether; producing alternate spaces and times; and building dissimilar worlds of multiple forms of apprehension where formerly you thought there was only one conceptual and material plane of understanding, such as: forms and ideas, energy and space, or books and yogurt.

Or: inventing objects of knowledge; techniques of discerning what those objects of knowledge are; and how those objects should be used, classified, categorized, and conceptually mapped and integrated alongside other forms of understanding.

Insinuation: these are methods of seeing that actively manufacture reality from the unorganized phenomena you lack access to outside of the conceptual systems you are embedded in, are unable to step outside of, separate yourself from, such as: hidden assumptions and presuppositions; intra-psychic mechanisms; cultural biases and superstitions mediated through metaphors, similes, metonymies and meta-languages; various interpenetrating ethico-politico and socio-economic structures; daily practices grounded in habit, conformity, and tradition; and subtle but increasingly destructive disciplinary techniques you actively consent to because they disguise themselves as forms of pleasure and freedom, as socially acceptable work and leisure activities.

These methods, and many others the letter itself cannot describe or see, constitute discourse and power imprecisely defined: the ruling system of assumptions, meanings and values that shapes the way things look, what they mean, and, therefore, what social reality `is.'

With grace and skill, a soft interface, it first concealed and contained, yet now you know the letter releases and reveals. You start to look up to it, begin asking it for advice, what books it thinks you should read.

But it remains focused. Though invisible, it refuses to let you look away, refuses to let you pretend you do not understand what is going on. And then it grows angry, starts indexing and adumbrating smells and places, things and memories, events and names: park benches and long-term involuntary unemployment, gas stations and OPEC, household appliances and contaminated bodies of water, street lights and military spending, bars of soap and napalm, ideologies and paper clips, political pamphlets and sports equipment, dictators and random pieces of clothing, remote areas of countries you've never been to, symbols you are afraid of. Cutting back because it senses your fear, it realizes it has run aground, slammed into a wall of confusion and sensory overload.

It erases the map and starts fresh, from the ground up.

Problem: you were not ready for the division of territory, for a midnight positional reconnaissance with no obvious strategic or tactical purpose, a undeclared guerilla war on your psyche, a war of hegemony in which you had not yet delineated clearly a moral geometry allowing you to speak "for" or "against" whatever is being referenced. All you wanted to do was read your mail.

Suggestion: adopt a philosophy or set of principles that could serve as resources, ammunitions and foodstuffs, in a protracted, intellectualized war of either negative or positive maneuvers between you, the author, and whatever is being fought with or against.

Changing topics, it decides to open a new path for you.

It separates into two sentences: one sentence beneath you, giving you somewhere to stand, a solid foundation, a sidewalk with cracks and grass spreading out in all directions, and a second sentence slightly above you, coyly smiling, showing you its fibers and threads as if it wants to impress you.

No longer wanting to stand still, anxious, self-conscious and uncomfortable, you realize you were tricked: it was one sentence, not two. You look back: one colon and five commas, no period. Now striving for clarity, true clearness of mind, you cut through the rest of the paragraph, immerse yourself in concentration, your attention now completely fixed on the words appearing before you. You want to know, gradually so that it does not blind you, how it works, what makes it tick.

Finding new words and feelings, the setting seems to change. But the geography of the text, its breath, its body language, its modus operandi, moves forward too fast. You begin to feel as if there is no plot. A void fills you, makes you cold, gives you sensations without sense, a biting hardness and lack of receptivity, a broken mirror of backwards, fragmented images brings pain, suffering, and disease.

And then there is a dull yet burning sense of existential dullness. Perhaps you are you letting the experience you wish to have manipulate the experience you are having.

Question: is the self that experiences in conflict with the self that interprets experience? You imagine them fighting it out in a hotel room.

Or: another self watches both of them from the window that is consciousness, the window you are now looking at from a new, higher window you created while you were reading this sentence. Ad infinitum.

Disarticulated, confused, afraid of being hurt, still annexed to something you neither know nor understand, you see that the two selves you temporarily forgot about, the bony "surface" phenomenon and the "deep" self of consciousness, the self that interprets and the self best likened to an invisible and unphotographable camera, have now stopped fighting. You are whole, unitary, at one with the world. Your journey is complete. But the letter you received in the mail keeps going.

No longer feeling disconnected, like a bottomless multiplicity, you are inside your home, alone in your bedroom, safe and comfortable. It makes a promise: a new sentence is on the way. It is close by. A great hunt begins shortly. And you are invited. You look forward to it. Coming up from behind, you didn't see it. It had its own key.

Now it is in your bedroom, behind you, running its hands up your backside, beginning to undress you. One of its hands moves to your front, runs its fingers along your stomach, then downward to a warm spot, moving in soft circles with little laughs. Tiny waves of pleasure ripple throughout your body. Feeling warm breath on your neck, you like your body next to this body. It feels good. Muscles tighten and breath shortens. Turning you around, slowly, in anticipation, it offers up wetness, reaches out in longing. You close your eyes and lean forward, aggressively push back, and then take in. In your bed, it begins to happen. It is brand new, at first careful; but now, thoroughly oiled, working you over, on top, it is more than your equal. Closer and closer, in shared symmetric movements, wanting you to finish, whispering over and over in your ear, it silently screams: climax. In preparation for your release, you pull in close, and then let out a low sound of pleasure where before there was only the silent and intimate movements of two intertwined and interlaced bodies.

Putting the letter down, you realize you are content. If you weren't so full, yet peacefully empty, you would feel used and betrayed.

So, my final required post of the summer.  This is a free write, so you might think that would promise a good post, but I'll be honest: I dont' have it in me today.  I'm driving up to Memphis in a couple hours to pick up Sarah, which is exciting, I'm beginning real school in a week, which is frightening, I finished doing my classroom management presentation effectively concluding the program for the summer, which is relieving, but all of these things combine to make me dead inside, trudging towards an approximation of the necessary length of a blog post.  All of these words, one after the other, in succession, combining to form some kind of mean, serve only to extend a post that deserves to die now.

With that behind us, I have elected to write about the attitude I am gong to force myself to maintain as events intensify, loyalties waver, and long-held beliefs are cast aside.  More than anything else, I'm going to eschew martyrdom.  I tire of the negativity that accompanies teaching, even if most of it is justified by the sad state of certain districts.  I said this at the beginning and I still hold to it, now that I'm a real teacher or at least somebody with a teaching license, but this is not a sacrifice, this is a job and, in the grand scheme of things, a very good job.  I will not be paid more than 34,000 dollars a year, but neither are 99 percent of people in the world and most people in the country (or at least most people my age).   I will be disrespected routinely, will likely have to follow procedures that do not seem to make sense, and may be underneath people who do not seem to deserve their position, just like almost everyone at almost every single job in the country.  I will not be undergoing unbearable physical stress.  I am in no way entitled to anything that pays better or has more prestige or power.  I will have plenty of time off.  I will be working a white-collar job, one that would be considered a great success for almost all of the students that I will be teaching. I will be getting a free education and certificate.  I will have the support of an organization and a group of peers.  I will be receiving loan reimbursement.  I will continue to type away on this free laptop.  So, please, if you hear me complaining about how my life is hard, tell me to shut up.  Likewise, if you notice me becoming self-congratulatory on my selflessness, chastise me as well for that.  I don't' know what the hell I'd be doing if I wasn't here.  I was told today that a lot of us might be giving up six-figure incomes to come here.  I am not in that category.  I am much closer to giving up 6 dollars an hour to come here.  All that said, I acknowledge that it is going to be difficult and I empathize with some of the struggles that people have had, but I would rather be having a headache every day teaching than go back to some of the jobs I was working at before I came here.  I am going to do everything I can to dedicate that energy that I might spend complaining to being optimistic, efficient, and achieving some degree of success and happiness.  That is all for now because the social is in a matter of minutes, but I will write more later, possibily with a more liberal use of paragraphs.

Anne Monroe's class rocked and helped me keep sanity and have fun while many other people were simply playing up the desperate nature of our charge and how hard our hearts must be when implementing classroom management. I felt the despair of the situation was played up, partially to shock us and be sure we payed attention to the classroom management aspect of class. I am not saying this was completely unnecessary, I was not firm enough at all with classroom management, but I recall at the beginning of the summer thinking about nothing but classroom management and stifling my ideas for fun and creative instructional techniques. I see now that perhaps the base was necessary, but I still wish their was some focus on instructional techniques this summer. I think my students could tell when I was excited about teaching a lesson, and at least some got involved without much management beyond genuine interest in the topic. It is naive to think this will work all the time. In retrospect, I know all the focus on management was probably necessary and it exposed my weaknesses which is probably why I wasn't exactly stoked about it. I've been used to lecturing college chemistry, which students are compelled to pay attention to because they are there of their own accord. Switching my philosophy into a method that will make low-income black students able to learn algebra 2 and biology 2 was a metamorphosis that was challenging, but I enjoyed many aspects of it. I think all the constructive criticism we received was taken well by me, but the fact that we were graded so harshly so quickly is something I struggled with. I shouldn't care about grades anymore, I graduated college, screw it right? But it is engrained in my psyche and I guess I just didn't appreciate we had a grade that was worth a large percentage of our grade for a class the first week we were attempting to do something. Once again, thank god for Anne Monroe's class. If she had not been the teacher for our afternoon class, I don't think my attitude would have remained upbeat for the whole summer. I would have eventually burnt out with constantly being evaluated. I did like the multiple sources of criticism though, it allowed you to depersonalize it and if you heard the same thing from multiple people, chances are you have to work on that aspect. I think if something could be improved I would try to make it imperative that 1st year teachers plan their overall management strategies more cooperatively. Now I think its basically up to the teachers in individual classes their level of cooperation, and when they have differing styles and don't communicate it can be very ineffective. I would have 2 classroom management presentations for grades throughout the year, one joint one in the middle for your summer school and then one you get to modify for your own classroom. Also, I think the summer school expulsion policy cuts the balls off your consequence ladder. I don't want to kick kids out, but sometimes they should get detention. These two consequences shouldn't be related. I'd be remiss if i didn't mention Anne Monroe's construction paper lesson for note-taking and project making. I will be utilizing this lesson nearly weekly in my class.