Faith: Fuel to Persist in the Face of Failure

If I had to pick one thing that has been a consistent theme in this blog it would be failure. Maybe that sounds negative. There are two types of people in this world in regards to failure. There are the people who see failure as a label and those who see failure as an opportunity. This blog has really been about my learning to see failure as an opportunity.

Learning that lesson has changed everything about me as a teacher.

This blog has been about times that I failed. This blog has been about times I thought I was a failure. This blog has been about people who made me feel like a failure. This blog has been about people who believed in me when I didn't believe in myself.

One of my failures is that I haven't always been the teacher who believed in every student. That's changing about me.

I've been boarded up writing a report on reading interventions for struggling readers at my school. In this intervention, we were highly effective. Nineteen of our twenty-four third graders are now on target to be at grade level by the end of the year. I have faith that the others can do it and we can do it. The kids know this and they verbalize it. They've been telling us they are better readers.

All I can say, and this is in a cosmic way because the people I am talking to don't read this blog, is thanks to those who believed in me in failures. It is so hard to keep trying when you wonder if your failure makes you a failure. Thanks to those who believed in me. Because you didn't think I was a failure, I am a better person. Because you didn't think I was a failure, I am a better teacher. Thanks for the lesson, and I promise not to forget.

Read Across America Video

If your school is participating in Read Across America week, you've got to show this video to your class. It is so cute and gets the kids pumped up about reading.

Here's a link.

http://www.schooltube.com/video/e9bd79d29b4d0e6a2345/Gotta-Keep-Reading--Ocoee-Middle-School

Vertex Edge What????

Be warned that I am just going to complain in this post.

I think that vertex edge graphing is the stupidist waste of instructional minutes possible. Really my kids would get more out of me teaching them how to speak in pig Latin or do the Monkey Walk.

Why, you might ask am I wasting Math time like this. Because it is all over the big government mandated test.

Here is a link to some of this.

http://www.mathmaniacs.org/lessons/12-euler/PencilPuzzles.html

Dream

I had a dream last night that Captain got fired and Principal Sadie came back. Her first official act was banishing me to kindergarten. I know I didn't want to go to third grade and it has been okay, but Heaven help me, I could not be a kindergarten teacher. No way. Thank goodness it was only a dream.

Here and Now

We had a staff meeting today, and the Captain (my pseudonym for our principal) was talking about evaluations. He was talking about having conversations about how the year has gone for each of us. Recently, as you know if you have read much of this blog, my reaction to all things having to do with evaluation or administration is to shake in my boots (literally, because I love wearing boots lately).

When he said that, though, I thought about my year. It's been a great year! I love my class. I love my school. I have looked forward to coming to work every day for the first time since I started teaching. The only thing... The only thing that has been raining on my parade this year are memories of my bad experience last year.

I have to stop. I can either choose to keep believing that all the things said to me were true and eventually I will fail miserably at anything I try in education or I can choose to let it go. In life, letting go is almost always the right answer.

Before

In my graduate class, we are learning about teaching Writing. One of our assignments was to write about our first day of teaching, ever. For me, it wasn't that long ago (it's only been two and a half years). The first day of teaching, for someone who is a career teacher is a big moment. Anyway, it does seem like such a long time ago now! This is the piece I wrote about the beginning of my teaching career.

The Flood

At 6pm, the night before I started my first job as a teacher, the first flood came. This one was in my classroom. Looking around a classroom that would soon be filled with fifth graders, I was panicking because I realized that I didn’t have a clue how to handle all this responsibility on my own. I was barely twenty-two. I still lived with my Mom, and I knew that I was definitely in over my head. So, there I sat, in a flood of my own tears, in my classroom. I was just out of sorts.

At 8pm, the night before I started my first day as a teacher, the second flood came. This was a flood that literally seeped in through the bottom of my tiny closet and put two inches of water on my floor! A pipe had busted in the laundry room which backed up to my bedroom. All of my clothes were covered in dirty water. I salvaged whatever I could, packed it all in a suitcase, and went to stay with my grandparents until we could get all that water out of my bedroom. I was a refugee.

At midnight, on my first day as a teacher, my cell phone rang. It was my ex-boyfriend from college “Where are we?” he wanted to know.

“I don’t know where you are, but I am in a flood!” I answered. I hung up shortly, but I couldn’t really sleep in a strange bed when I was distracted by this call. I was tired, but I couldn’t sleep.

At 6am, my alarm clock rang. I was an out of sorts, tired, little refugee; but I was a teacher!

Reasons Not to Be Complacent

When I was first hired by my district, I had to go to trainings over each of the subjects in our curriculum. I forgot most of what they told me, but a fact shared by the literacy facilitator stuck with me. The state of Arizona uses third grade literacy scores as part of the formula to project the number of prison beds that will be needed when these children reach adulthood (http://www.readfaster.com/education_stats.asp). As a third grade teacher in Arizona, that stat brings tears to my eyes.

My roommate is a nurse, and she's described to me the pressure that she faces every day knowing that a screw up could kill someone. I don't know how she handles that, but this statistic reminds me that our screw ups matter too. Statistically, if a child leaves my room with significant Reading problems, he's more likely to need a prison bed. It is sobering to think that they might buy a prison bed for this kid if I don't help him improve his reading.

I can't think about this fact that much because I would drive myself crazy obsessing over the reality that sometimes kids will leave my room without conquering their reading difficulties. It is good to remember it once in a while, though. I just can't take my job too lightly.