It seems like I’m always looking for an excuse to get into the habit of writing. My latest excuse will be the 2nd anniversary upcoming. What I should think is I don’t need an excuse– I need to obey the Nike mantra and JUST DO IT. So enough of the writing about how I don’t write and need to write and other circular thoughts…

So I survived Year 2. There were times, especially during the first semester, when I wasn’t sure I would. It wasn’t for the reasons most new teachers would cite. Many rookies get thrown into school buildings that are hostile or even dangerous environments, with many students who could care less about being there, who not only don’t listen but actively resist direction and authority, who are involved in gang activity, who bring weapons to school, etc. I’m extremely lucky that I don’t deal with any of that.

I work in a middle school that’s not only in a predominately white and fairly affluent suburban community, but is also an options school which has historically attracted an academically-focused, high-achieving student population. It’s the kind of school where, for example, some substitute teachers in the district say it’s the only middle school they’d work at. How I managed to land in a place like this as a newly-licensed, first-year teacher is beyond me and I do consider myself fortunate every day. There are drawbacks, though. Number one, I have almost 30-mile commute there, one way, here in the age of $4 gas. Number two, because more is expected of these students, academically speaking, and consequently, they tend to actually do their work and turn it in more than average, there is a lot… lot… lot of grading.

Grading screwed me up in Year 1 and got me placed in a full Social Studies schedule for Year 2 (see story in previous post). I couldn’t help but feel like it was some sort of punishment. Also, I feel like there was some idea that this schedule would be a lighter workload for me: SS classes don’t involve so much writing. What I discovered is I’d rather grade an essay over a worksheet any day. The dreaded worksheet is the bane of SS, because it’s so much about learning facts and dates. You try to focus on concepts and ask the “why?” questions to foster critical thinking, but the fact remains that the students can’t answer “why?” until they’ve answered “what,”"who,” and “when.”

I’d taught Geography the 1st year and so I was OK with that, although now we had a new textbook/curriculum for it. I could deal with that because I thought the previous textbook sucked anyway, but it meant having to scrap much of the lessons and materials I’d developed from the year before. On the plus side, we Geography teachers got to attend a conference in San Diego last July, hosted by the publisher (Teachers’ Curriculum Institute), on how to implement their materials in the classroom. Not only was it informative, but I got to visit California and see the Pacific for the first time in my life. But that’s a different story (which I should share soon…)

But on top of three Geography classes, I got two sections of the 8th grade class, American History. At first, I was kind of excited about that. I like history. And, I got to attend the Teaching American History summer institute, a week-long class hosted by our district through a federal grant. Between the institute and the conference, I easily got all the professional development hours I needed to complete my second year of new teacher induction.

But once I started actually teaching this class, I quickly discovered a couple of things:
1) 8th graders are quite a different kind of beast than 7th graders (I’d only had 7th in Year 1)
2) Remember how boring your history classes were in school? Yeah? So were mine.

It didn’t help that one of my colleagues was gone during the first semester. She was one of the two others teaching History, and the one who was on my hall, and the one I generally got along with better. I had really looked forward to working with her. She developed health issues which kept her out that semester. So I hoped to form a good working relationship with the long-term sub, but it didn’t pan out so much. This gets into issues of how I see some teachers as being territorial with their materials, which I feel is antithetical to the purpose of our profession, but I’m not going to delve into that… now.

The point is, I had the worst of feelings for a teacher: loneliness and isolation. My department head, the other History teacher, made it clear the first day of school that I wasn’t new anymore, so she couldn’t “plan all my classes for me.” That was never my expectation, but I did want help, because even if I was no longer a brand-new teacher, this was my first year teaching this class. I’m sure that fact showed; middle school students aren’t completely oblivious. Speaking of the students…

As I said, 8th graders are different. They’re middle school veterans now, and are rapidly approaching high school. They’re much more into the boy/girl thing (although that seems to skew younger every year). They’re more likely to have started experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Generally, they’re just less into school now… or at least, they see themselves as just playing out the string until they get to “real” (re: high) school. They’ve figured out that their grades and test scores right now aren’t anything colleges will see. They’re more likely to show attitude and twinges of defiance towards authority, especially teachers. And by May, they’re done; they’ve checked out. On to parties in the summer and starting high school in August; you’re seriously going to assign us a project with three weeks left?

I had two 8th grade classes. One was… a pain. The other was fine. They got chatty at times but I could always get them back on track. The class before them, though… hmm. I’m sure they thought I hated them– they expressed as much at times. I made one cardinal mistake: I talked to the “good” class about the “bad” class. Dumb move. Kids talk to their friends, of course, and word travels nowhere faster than in a middle school. With any class, even difficult ones, there’s a certain unspoken code of respect between the teacher and students as a whole. If we’re bad and you get mad and yell at us, fine, but it what happens in this class stays in the class. You go blabbing to the next period and you’ve lost that last standard of trust that you had to wield with Bad Class. Now instead of simply being annoying, they won’t cooperate with you. You broke our trust, so we’re not going to do what you want us to. You ask questions, we’re not going to answer. You want us to discuss, we’re going to sit here and stare at the wall. You give us homework, we’ll continue to whine about it as much as ever, but fewer of us are going to actually do it and turn it in. It’s a form of collective passive-aggression, and it’s incredibly effective in instilling a sense of helplessness in a still-newish teacher.

It was the social dynamics in that class that made them what they were. Among the few pieces of advice I have to give any new teachers is this: know how you’re taught about how all students are individuals, with unique learning styles you should differentiate your instruction to, etc.? The same is true of classes. Each class is a unique organism comprised of 25-30 cells who each have a different function and create an original, interdependent dynamic among themselves. You have to assess the nature of that dynamic early on and adapt as reasonably as you can to it. But don’t let the kids know. If they sniff that you’re stricter with their class than another one, they’re going to turn on you, as the aforementioned story shows.

I just wasn’t a great history teacher. It was hard work. It didn’t help that despite what I thought I knew, I’m no expert on that content. I found myself reading the textbook chapters, trying to stay one step ahead of them. I tried. I used PowerPoints. I had them write and perform skits. We analyzed primary sources. We wrote from historical characters’ perspectives. They made newspaper front pages about early battles of the Civil War. They designed protest signs against labor injustices. Basically, I tried to bring in the tricks I knew as an English teacher and use them to teach history. There were some good moments, but overall I still feel the year was a failure.

Second semester, teacher down the hall came back. That helped. I didn’t have any more episodes of breaking down in tears in the staff restroom before class, because I had reached a point of feeling I just can’t do this. We collaborated, not as much as I thought we might, but enough to make me feel better. I fought for her to get a full slate of History classes next year, because her doctor had told her she should only have one class to prepare for. They scheduled me for two History classes and her for Geography classes the same periods. I managed to simply get those switched. I didn’t want History again anyway! But somehow, they (administrators who make the schedule) thought I did, or so they told me. I loved how my supposed desires became the scapegoat for their inability to meet her accommodations.

Toward the end of the year, the other teacher– department head– got a TOSA (Teacher on Special Assignment) position for next year. She’ll be working in the district administration building, not our school, though only for next year. The long-term sub who was here in fall will likely cover her position next year. I’m OK with that; she’s a must better history teacher than me. My best friend among my colleagues there is leaving to go to a nearby high school. Another math teacher is retiring and must be placed. Our Spanish teacher is taking another year off for maternity leave and may or may not be replaced by the same long-term sub who worked for her this past semester. And, most of all, we have a new principal. Our outgoing principal was the only one the school had ever had since it opened in August 2001.

I was glad to see Year 2 end. I called it “my year in Purgatory.” Apparently, there were sins of my first year I had to atone for. While I can teach social studies, I am not a social studies teacher. I am an English language arts teacher. Next year, I return to two Language Arts classes, two Geography class, and, once again, a new class for me– an elective called Academic Focus. I did search for other jobs, and had four interviews (in four different districts! one of them being my current district, but at a school less than one-third the distance of my current one)… and from the feedback I got, I came close on a couple of them, but no cigar. Changes notwithstanding, I’m content to stay put one more year. It’s going to be a good third year.

Now, I will leave you with a photo of probably the most egregious prank I endured this year:

See the gum at about 12:00 on the bottom of the cup? Yeah, so I found that… more than once… only after drinking the previous contents, of course. The fortunate news is that on each occasion, I had microwaved the coffee before the last drinking to reheat it, so that should have killed any germs, but still… aren’t middle schoolers cute?

Aren’t middle schoolers cute?

Details– and photo– to follow.