Sometimes Good Things Happen

On Tuesday, there were two good teaching moments:

1. E., one of my geometry students stopped by after school to get work that she was missing. I can't remember what led to her comment, but out of nowhere she said, "Ms. L., you're my kind of teacher."

2. I., an algebra student, was sick on Friday when we took our first test. She took it on Monday after school and I made her stay until she'd answered every single question. When I gave it back to her on Tuesday, she broke into a huge smile--she got a 74/75. Unfortunately I wouldn't let her take it home, but she took a picture with her phone to send to her dad. So cute. Even better, as she was walking out, another teacher overheard her saying, "That's the highest grade I've ever gotten on a test!"

Of course this all happened on the same day that kids were stuffing each other into a giant backpack and screaming about cockroaches, but I'll take what I can get.

Four-Week Reflection

On Friday, I had my two algebra classes reflect (individually) on how the first month of class has gone. The feedback was interesting and surprisingly different between the two classes.

From my sheltered class (all English language learners):
"I like it when we learn by working as a group because every one knows something what someone might not. It's hard for me when we learn by individual because we don't know everything."
"One new thing Ive learned is 2 be more loud, graph, not to be shy :) Thanx u"
"One new thing I've learned is to work the rest of the people of the group without being shy."
"I like it when we learn by groups because we get more ideas of how to solve something. It's hard for me when we learn by individuals because I can't get ideas from others."
"One new thing I've learned is working with a team"
"One new thing I've learned is that i noe algebra bruh"
"I like it when we learn by presenting things because we get to learn people's ideas."
"One new thing I've learned is how not to be shy to do preseteations"

From my mainstream algebra class (not English Language Learners):
"It's hard for me when we learn by talking in groups about homework because we don't always agree on answers and it creates arguments."
"I like it when we learn by whole class discussions because we all have different ideas and when we hear everyone thought it helps us all in a way."
"One new thing I've learned is nothing! I already knew everything."
"I like it when we learn by ourselfs because it's light weight challenging"
"I like it when we learn by working in groups because it feels like I am not by myself."
"I like it when we learn by presenting projects because it's cool to see different ways to do stuff."
"It's hard for me when we learn by working all together because people are talking very loud and I can't understand some of the stuff."
"I like it when we learn by individual work because I learn my way so I learn faster and better."
"I'm unclear about why we only work at our groups. I need help understanding why you don't give lessons."
"One thing I've learned is that we all have to work as a group. One thing I already knew but I've gotten better at is getting along with others."
"It's hard for me when we learn by group projects because I've always been an independent worker."
On the reflection I put a list of "ways we've learned together" so far and asked students to put smiley faces next to things that helped then and sad faces by things that make it difficult for them. One student put frowns by everything.

Thanks for the feedback. Maybe a good teaching would take this feedback and interpret that I need to be giving more direct instruction to my mainstream students. They want a teacher who lectures with example problems and sends them on their way? I can do that. But I'm not going to. I feel my challenge is not how to adapt to being the kind of teacher they think they need, but how to adapt them to my being the kind of teacher I think they need.

Week 2

Day 1

About 20 minutes before the end of my first block, Y. called me over:
"Ms. L. do you like me?"
Me: "Yeah!"
Y: "Really?"

At least I know they're not afraid to ask questions or speak their minds.


(Block 2 (Geometry): Nobody threw a chair at the wall. Success.)

A Room of One's Own

Here's a cute story:
Last year I came to visit the school where I'm working (the one with the bad interview, if anyone was wondering (it wasn't actually as bad as I made it out to be, but it made for a funnier story when it sounded that bad)), I was observing in an algebra classroom and talking to some of the kids. One boy asked if I was a teacher there and I told him no, but I hoped to be. He asked me if I'd seen all the construction they were doing, and suggested that maybe I could have one of those rooms. Awwww, see how sweet the kids are at my school?

Fast forward to last week; our department chair informed me that I would in fact be in one of the new rooms, F-4. Unfortunately, there was a small downside: they wouldn't be ready until Friday morning. That's Friday as in three days before the first day of school. That was fine, though, because I was busy with so much other training and orientation stuff. And then we actually were able to get in late Thursday afternoon.

My room was beautiful. Windows all along the back wall, cabinets and bookshelves lining another, and whiteboards covering the remaining two. Or at least there would be whiteboards at some point. There was even a place to hang a projector from the ceiling and plugs all over the floor. There was also a lot of STUFF. I got passed down all the stuff from a teacher who had left, and since he'd been in a portable with no built-in storage, I had three large cabinets, a decent-sized bookshelf, and about four filing cabinets along with all the tables, chairs, etc. I could barely walk around. Still, this was all okay because the school had hired movers to finish the furniture situations, so it would be removed. I started to separate the furniture I wanted from what I didn't, and discovered that none of the filing cabinets--or even some of the big storage cabinets had been cleaned out. As a result, I now have a hot dog cooker, a chess set, and some prayer candles in my backseat waiting for a trip to Goodwill. I learned a lot about this departed teacher that I had never been curious about. By the time I left on Friday, I had separated, unpacked, and stored pretty much everything I wanted to keep. The excess furniture was still in the room and there were no whiteboards or bulletin boards, but I went home, fell asleep, and was pumped to really get everything settled on Saturday.

I got to school, envisioning a classroom I could start arranging and mentally decorating the walls. As I was getting out of my car, my phone rang. "Hi, this is Sarah from the English department? So... I was in F-6, but since my journalism class needs to use the laptops everyday, I was actually supposed to be in the room with all the plugs. So we need to switch rooms." Luckily, my colleagues are all fantastic, and all the other teachers who were there pitched in to get the rooms switched. Four hours later, I was at the point where I'd been when I left on Friday. And I still had no bulletin boards, and somewhere in all of this I needed to do some curriculum planning with other people.

By the time I left school at 8pm on Sunday night, my room was to the place where students could come (thank god, since they were showing up in less than 12 hours), and I was ready as I'd ever be to start the year completely exhausted.

All my fun borders and posters will go up someday, I swear.

Let the Anxiety Begin

All summer long, my friends have been busy doing things like planning curriculum, shopping for their classrooms, and generally getting ready for the upcoming year. Me? Not so much. It worked out well for my procrastination that I didn't know what classes I was teaching or even if I'd have a classroom. However, it turns out there's a downside to shirking responsibility for two months. All the freaking out that my friends have been experiencing all summer long has been condensed for me into two short weeks (this is not to imply that all freak outs will cease as of August 25, but that the nature of said freak outs will change after my first day of teaching).

Last week was "Algebra Week," when my department spends five straight days tweaking the algebra 1 sequence. As soon as the department chair told me on Monday morning what I'd be teaching, the anxiety surged through me to the the point of psychosomatic reactions. At one point on Monday, I looked down at my hand to find it shaking uncontrollably.

On Wednesday, I met with the Geometry team and one thing the veteran teachers mentioned was to be explicit with the students that this will be a more intense course than algebra was, with a faster-paced curriculum that includes nightly homework. On Wednesday night, I had my first teaching dream of the new school year. It was the first day of school, near the end of my geometry class. I was trying really hard to use positive classroom management techniques (even though in real life they'd told me that classroom management would be much less of a concern in Geometry), but there were a few boy who were being obnoxious. I passed out the first homework assignment, and when I told the kids that about the increased homework load, one boy threw a chair at the wall. I snapped and yelled at him to get out, complete with a grand sweep of my arm and a finger pointing to the door. So much for positive classroom management.

In case that dream wasn't haunting enough, on Friday a conversation came up about when teachers had had to break up fights at school. One of my colleagues mentioned a teacher who had to break up a fight on the very first day of school--because a student threw a chair at the wall. Good lord. I do not like the precedent/premonition that this is setting.

Border Crossing

Bjorn and my plan was simple: there was a bus direct from San Jose to Managua that would leave early Wednesday morning. We'd get in around two or three, find a hostel, and bum around for the next few days. We had passports, credit cards, and a Lonely Planet, which long ago I decided is all you really need. Upon reflection, it's clear that this conclusion was made while traveling in a first-world nation.

We hit our first obstacle upon arrival at the TicaBus station where we informed that not only had we missed the bus we were planning on taking, but that all buses for the rest of the day were booked. No matter; we walked over to the TransNica station. There we were informed that all buses were booked until Saturday. Another bus station with had Nicaraguan flags and a sign that said "Managua" informed us that they only go to Panama. I wondered if we'd somehow ended up on a new reality TV combination of the Amazing Race and Candid Camera. Fortunately, it turned out we were right next door to the bus terminal for Penas Blancas, the Costa Rican town on the main Costa Rica-Nicaragua border crossing. If we couldn't get to Nicaragua, we'd at least get as close as we could.

The bus ride itself was fairly painless and involved fewer chickens than we'd expected. Lonely Planet promised that the border crossing would be easy as well and that we might even be able to take a golf cart from one side to the other. I fell asleep for most of the ride, so I was only half awake when we stopped at a cement building surrounded by lines of people and were told to get off the bus. Welcome to the border.

There were no signs indicating what any of the lines were for, but there were hordes of "coyotes" carrying wads of cash and promising they could help us across the border. Being cheap, poor teachers, we politely declined by pretending we didn't speak Spanish (not so much pretending for me) and got in a line that some other people from our bus had joined. I don't know what the other lines were for, but eventually we ended up with stamped passports and found ourselves back outside the building.

Now what? Where were these golf carts that would take us to the Nicaraguan side? Where were the buses we could catch from here to Managua? Partly because we were being bombarded by coyotes and partly because we didn't know what else to do, Bjorn and I walked the 1km through the weird DMZ-ish area to Nicaragua.

I like to consider myself at least a somewhat seasoned traveler and feel like I know what to expect at passport control, customs, etc. Again, this is a conclusion that I clearly came to under more posh conditions. The only other time I have entered a country not by air is going into Canada, so I would now like to make a list of things that the Canadian border has the the Nicaraguan border does not:
1. Friendly Canucks
2. Any semblance of order.

On the other hand, Nicaragua did have many things that Canada does not: a small group of unmarked cement buildings, a lot of children begging for money, and a creepily persistent cab driver who was clearly excited about the prospect of swindling some Americans. Despite his creepiness (or perhaps in service of it), he gave us the immigration forms and took us to the cement building where we paid US$5 for a passport stamp. There were no customs whatsoever; if only I had known ahead of time so I could have smuggled something in.

In an attempt to get away the persistent cabbie, Bjorn went in search of a less creepy cabbie and found a very nice one who said he would take us and a Dutch family to Granada for only $40 total. Seemed like a good deal, he swore that he could fit us all into his car, and he had a limp so I figured we could take him if he tried to kidnap us. Outside what I guess would be considered passport control, some people told us we had to pay another $2 in exchange for a "tourist card" to keep with our passports. It definitely didn't look legit (another small concrete building) but it also didn't look any less legit than the people who had stamped our passports. Two dollars seemed a small price to pay for avoiding a hassle and getting a bonus piece of paper for my scrapbook.

Our non-scary cabbie loaded Bjorn, me, the Dutch couple, and their nine-year old son into his car. As he peered through the view-impairing crack in the windshield and rubbed two wires together to start the car, we headed off into the sunset. Our Nicaraguan adventure could finally begin.