A Drawer?

A desk drawer? Do teachers have these? I had a hard time figuring out which cabinet or drawer to use. I don't have a teacher's desk, I prefer to roam the room throughout the day to check in with students. I sit at the kidney table when I'm alone - but there are no drawers to that.

No teachers desk!

Well, if I were to have a teacher's drawer, I'd like to think I'd have these items:

Snacks - for me and for students.

School supplies.

Handmade crafty gifts from students.

Bandaids.

Wipes - well, you know.

Cough drops.

Fidgets - tools for students who might need something to keep them focused.

My teacher's drawer will have items that my students could use. My room exists for my students, not for me. I'd imagine the teacher's drawer would very quickly become the student's drawer - just much more organized.

I'm curious to learn more about what other teachers' drawers look like!

Colleagues of Inspiration

Some of my family and friends were not entirely convinced when I decided to pursue education and return to graduate school for my multiple subject teaching credential and my M.Ed. I believe they had good intentions in their hearts - they wanted what was best for me, they wanted me to end up with a job that had a high paying salary, they wanted me to pursue a larger goal, one with more opportunities for leadership, one that held more societal respect and ranking. I excelled in math and science in grade school, they wanted me to pursue a job with management, business, economics, healthcare.

Walking into UCLA and being faced with a very turbulent, inspiring, and challenging experience with Teacher Education Program (TEP), I needed to find a support network of people who would support me. I needed friends, colleagues, and inspirations. I have had the honor of knowing, working, befriending, and loving some sensational individuals. Here are some of them:

Christina

A colleague and friend from TEP

A teacher who thinks critically about education, she inspires me to think thoroughly about my own classroom.  Her organization and planning leads to creative and innovative projects and class trips. She is an amazing friend, who supports me even with the miles we have in between each other now.

Jesse

A colleague and friend from CEG (my first school site)

We were teaching partners, kinder. That was a year I cannot forget - you can learn more about my experience there if you visit my Teacher Leadership paper. I survived my first year of teaching with Jesse by my side. He was resilient and courageous, and never left me hanging. We supported each other in our first year of teaching and in many ways I believe Jesse has shaped the way I treat and care for my students.

Jamie, Laura, Kate, Jeni, Lauren, Jaclyn, Tyna, Aja, Christine, Cynthia

All colleagues and great friends from my current school site, SDGVA.

Jamie, Laura, Kate, Jeni, Lauren, Jaclyn, Tyna, Aja, and Christine collectively saved me in 2012 when I joined the teaching team. Day to day, they demonstrated equity, love, rigor, resilience, and critical thinking for their students, families, and work professionalism. They took me into their teaching team and provided me with room to grow, to make the mistakes I make, and to talk me off ledges. They now support me in my journey to becoming a teacher leader, and they have become my best friends. Cynthia is my rock. We laugh, cry, get frustrated, and grow together at the site. A beautiful friendship with an amazing woman.

Good Mentors and Teacher Leaders

Say this three times fast.

Good teacher mentors mentor other teachers.
Good teacher mentors mentor other teachers.
Good teacher mentors mentor other teachers.

When I think of good mentors, I think of the teacher leaders that exist at my school site. As a successful mentor, they lead out from their classrooms and help support other teacher leaders in the making. This summer, I was supported by my entire school site to complete the San Diego Area Writing Project (SDAWP)'s Summer Institute. The four weeks were packed with opportunities to challenge myself, learn from others, and begin my solid foundation of being a teacher leader. For the Summer Institute, I wrote a position paper on a topic that defines a significant part of the teacher life I pursue - Teacher Leadership.

An excerpt:

Teacher leaders are teachers who take their expertise outside of the classroom. We do not fear change, we invite it. We take steps to improve ourselves, knowing there is an infinite number of ways to be better. Teacher leaders work best together and promote professional development and growth. We plan and collaborate with principals and teachers, not just students. Teacher leader voices are loud and most definitely heard.

Defeated by my experience at CEG, I became skeptical about schools and the role of the teacher. I proceeded with caution through the gates of San Diego Global Vision Academies (SDGVA), where I had accepted a second grade teaching position. This cautious concern would continue to ebb away with each step I take with SDGVA for this is where I discovered what it means to be a teacher leader. Teacher leaders were honored and raised carefully here, their craft improved and cultivated through professional development, teaching community, and whole site support. We were protected and nurtured through our interactions; consider this example.

Our healthy professional development chatter buzzed rapidly through the room; the mentor cuts loudly over us with directions. We are critiquing our progress with Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) in math. I held my breath as the video cued up on screen. The first and third grade teachers huddled in anticipation of seeing my video of Zoey completing a subtraction problem. “Notice your strengths that you’ve been gaining in questioning and pay attention to where you may have interrupted the student’s thinking or closed off their inquiry with a closed ended question,” our mentor chimes. Now this was an environment in which I could learn, share, and flourish.

Excerpt from Teacher Leaders: To Lead and Be Heard

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxELhZ5PaSsvMXVYOFo2R0g2cjQ/edit?usp=sharing

Welcome to Room 30!

First week of school is complete! A rocking one, I'd like to add! Here, one of my students is sharing out her biobag (a bag with three personal items that teach us about the student). Her peers are listening and will soon be jumping out of their seats to ask a question of our presenter. For the next few weeks, all my students will share a biobag. 

I see: students engaged, students feeling empowered, students learning about each other, center spaces of learning, E-desk formation from Fred Jones, school schedule, classroom jobs, a math calendar, a mounted projector (YES!), a projector screen, doc cam, seat sacks.

I'd like to see more of: student created items, student work, more student collaboration, more team building activities, even more rigor in instruction, and more student use of technology.

Here are some more fun photos from my first week of school!

Students went around on the first day of school on a carousel walk.

Students started using Chromebooks on day 1. Logins successful!

Center spaces around the room for literacy and math centers.

A whole lot of LOVE from our admin team throughout this week!

Saved.

why I love.

Teaching
inspires me.
challenges me.
defines me.
betters me.
makes me.
teaches me.
knows me.

I am 11
driven, studious
a monitored attitude,
walking that predetermined path,
sheltered and blinded from all that was left unseen.

I am 17
good head on the shoulders,
ready to jump,
ready to find out what I've been missing

I am 20
this turning point,
faced with questions with no answers
running and falling,
infinite high-walled mazes

I am 22
teaching, teach, teacher
finally breathing fresh,
new waters to swim in,
treading carefully, learning the crash of the waves
then the suffocation,
friends into strangers
a lost soul in the urban landscape
but still, something so new
I hold on
the water carries me away

I am 26
new friends,
new knowledge,
still breathing fresh,
waters turbulent at times, but I know to hold out
teaching saved me
with its buoyant hold,
I ride into all of it
the fog lifts
and I see me
teaching, teach, teacher

Getting Off Task... Guilty!

Day 3 Prompt: "Discuss one “observation” area that you would like to improve on for your teacher evaluation."

This prompt made me uncomfortable. Not completely sure why, but I believe it has to do with the tone I read this statement with. It made me think about teachers everywhere spending time, not with their teaching craft, lessons, or students, but with their worries about the next evaluation results. Be warned: I got off topic from this prompt (I hope this still counts as me staying on this 30-day challenge).

Teacher evaluations - necessary, but often misused or inaccurate. There are a wide variety of teacher evaluations that exist and they act as a significant influence on teacher life/performance/motivation. Three years ago, my teacher evaluation was a spreadsheet of numbers. Not numbers that measure my competence, use of technology, or teaching pedagogy, but numbers of my students' benchmark test scores. I was never seen as a teacher or a human, I was seen as a number generating machine. If you were a good machine with high numbers, you were ignored. If you were a poor machine with low numbers, you were excused. My teaching partner, a new teacher at the time, didn't make it past her first teacher evaluation - it was week 1. By week 2 I had a new partner.

When the CEO of the charter stepped onto campus, a silent alarm was triggered in the form of a group text among the teachers. It always read, "BIG EAGLE HAS LANDED." And it always instilled a fresh coat of fear and anxiety.

Not all teacher evals are created equally. Now I am visited so frequently by my admin that the students and I see it as part of a normal day. I am encouraged to act naturally and I am provided opportunities to create lessons that actually reach and engage my students. The eval comes in the form of a document, but it does not contain any student test scores. It contains a spectrum of development, a focus on progress, and a emphasis on teacher pedagogy and competence in multiple literacies. I feel like I am represented completely in my eval - strengths and areas of growth all included. My biggest goal for the year is to improve with my competence in technological literacies with my second graders. 

What would it be like if all teachers could experience valuable and insightful evaluations? 

September and a 30-Day Challenge

OK.. I may be a day behind, but what the hell. I'm taking on this 30-day challenge!

DAY 1

Goals:
To question the role of curriculum.
To question my role as the educator.
To have students generate questions that interest them.
To pursue those questions.
To tear down the "lady with the answer".
To challenge myself to be more thoughtful.
To challenge my students to be more insightful.
To break limits.
To set goals.
To remember and honor the lights of El Milagro.
To tell my coworkers I love them.
To communicate.
To teach for justice.
To keep my mind on equity and privilege.
To be a role model.
To be a leader.
To be resilient.
To be gritty.
To be tough.
To be new.

DAY 2

I am trying to transform the use of the Chromebooks in my classroom. I got my feet wet with the CBs last year, but played around with google drive and used it as a glorified notebook.

What I need to do is find a way for the Chromebooks to be transformative and innovative. I want to use the CBs in a way that bring students together with collaboration rather than provide them with isolated computer literacy courses. 

Though I have looked through numerous apps or programs, I want to use CBs for research, questions, feedback, creations. Does anybody have any good ideas for using CBs in the classroom?