Emerging from the waves

I recently spent a week with some friends on the beach in Mexico. As with most beach visitors, one of our favorite pastimes was body surfing on the waves. Waiting for just the right moment, we'd catch the wave as it crested and let it push us to shore. Sometimes, though, the waves were too strong or we caught them at they wrong time. Then, they would catch us underneath them, and we'd tumble along the bottom of the ocean, the foaming mass above beating us against the sand.

This past year has treated me like one of those latter waves. Instead of riding on top of it, I found myself spinning and whirling as the year slammed me repeatedly into the ground. Now that I have been washed up on shore, I find that I am slightly scraped up and disoriented.

I seem to have landed in Mexico. I will be taking a job at the American School of Puebla, an international baccalaureate school in a town in which I have long hoped to live. I will be teaching third grade for another year down there.

We'll see what this next year holds.

A year finished

I had lofty visions of my last minutes with my students. After a joyous end-of-the-year party with parents thanking me and students eating cake and playing Bingo, I would give a short speech and then announce that the bell would soon be ringing and we must bid goodbye. Tears would stream down the students' cheeks as they hugged me and walked to their buses.

Unfortunately, I didn't calculate in clock failure. The party started at noon, with early release scheduled for 1:25. Ending the party at 1:15 would give me enough time to send the kids out the door calmly.

I started the games at around 12:45. I figured that would give us enough time to play, eat cake, and clean up without people beginning to get bored. Strangely, though, the minutes just dragged past. Each time I looked at the clock, it read 12:45. The kids were losing interests in the games, and the parents looked ready to leave. Still, time refused to pass.

The bus announcements on the intercom and the increased frequency in which the students asked to pack up should have alerted me, but my mind was still zoned in on how I would fill up those never-ending thirty minutes.

When my sister finally whispered across the room that it was really 1:15, I managed to sigh with relief and gasp with panic in one breath. I pushed the kids out the door in one last frantic scramble, and my first year of teaching was finished.

Vegetarians

After school today, a student and I were discussing reptiles. He said, "My dog sometimes ate frogs."

"Nasty," I replied. "Did he get sick?"

"Yeah. We took him to the vegetarian, but the vegetarian couldn't help him, so he died."

Man, those vegetarians need to work on their dog-saving skills.

Critters

After an eternally long day on Monday, I collapsed into my desk chair and found myself staring into a Tupperware container full of wriggling crawfish and snails.

What on earth is our district thinking? I can't keep animals alive! Animals and my family just don't mix too well. There were those two cats who gave up on us and lived at neighbors' houses, or the turtle who escaped, or the four fish who died mysteriously within five minutes of each other, or the hamster even the vet couldn't save, or the dog we had to sell, or the neighbor's fish we killed, or the other neighbor's rabbit we killed, and a whole host of other pet calamities.

If they're gonna give us animals, they should at least give us low-maintenance pets, like bettas or something. I once managed to keep a betta alive for two years. Granted, he was a sickly little guy due to infrequent feedings, but he lived. These crawfish, though, command gentle and observant care. The creatures require aged water. Aged! What animal is too delicate to withstand fresh water? And we shouldn't dream of putting a protein-based food into the aged water. It could kill the darlings. Instead, we transfer the hostile animals to individual bowls filled with aged water and wait patiently for them to individually eat their one piece of cat food. Transferring them is no small feat, either. Any animal that strains itself bending over backward trying to pinch its benefactor is not a good pet, in my opinion.

The snails aren't so difficult, but they are nasty, and they're liable to escape. Last year, a teacher arrived one morning to find them all over her walls. My coworker this year found that hers had pushed the lid off of their cage and had scattered themselves across her table.

Our time with these pets may be short-lived, though. My bad pet karma seems to have followed me into the classroom. Three crawdaddies have died in the four days we've had them, and my students keep asking to take the other ones home for supper. I haven't allowed them to eat their pets yet, but who knows what I'll say when these crayfish become too difficult ...

To quote myself

A few of the things I've caught myself saying over the past month ...

-"Please don't cover your ears when I am talking to you."
-"Doing math is not sitting there making animal noises."
-"If you want to stand somewhere, say 'May I please stand there?' Don't just kick her."
-"What's 1 plus 1?" "No, it's not 1."
-(to a little boy) "Batting your eyelashes is not going to get me to change my mind."
-"Four take away 4 is 2? Think a little more."
-"Stop rolling on the floor; do your math."
-"You need to stop playing with fuzz and do your math."
-"Don't say 'na na' while I am talking to you."
-"You will use a pencil that does not have an eraser if you cannot stop spitting them around the room."
-"Just because your hand is in front of your mouth doesn't mean I can't hear you or see you."
-"I didn't give you that paper to chew on."

Back to real life

My break has come and gone, taking me from Tulsa to Arkansas and all the way up to Chicago. I slept on three different couches and drove numerous miles across the country. I even had a flat along the way, making it an official road trip. The trip was just what I needed. I got to be someone other than the teacher of 22 eight-year-olds for a week. I got to visit friends and see new places. I got to sleep in, read, and sit around in the sun drinking milkshakes. Can't get much better than that.

My TAKS scores also came in during the break. Although they were not as good as I would have liked, they were much better than I expected them to be. I flew into Dallas at 10 last night. My kids and I have been yawning an awful lot today.

One down

After weeks of stress and illness, I made it through my first TAKS test. My last student finished yesterday at 5 p.m. I went home exhausted, feeling as if I'd sat for their exam 22 times. I guess I kind of did.

The children were tired and emotional and uncooperative today. I couldn't blame them much; we ought to have the day off after one like yesterday.

One quick story:

Last week we studied geography. When looking at a map of the United States, one little boy asked, "Why is Hannah Montana on here?" I tried to explain that the original Montana was a state, not a teen singer; I'm not sure he understood, though. Thanks a lot, pop culture.

TAKS

Growing up, I pitied my parents for their job choice. During the most beautiful months of the year, they buried themselves in receipts and W2's. The spring months were lost to the stress of tax season.

Now, I am facing my own TAKS season. In just three weeks, my students will take their reading TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) test. My life has been reduced to nothing but preparations. I am tutoring students four afternoons on weekdays and three hours on Saturdays. Any planning time I have during the day I fill with extra tutoring sessions. After school each day, my team and I create battle plans, divvying up students and targeting specific skills they must develop in the next three weeks. Planning for the actual teaching I am supposed to do must happen magically during the day, which means it waits till 5 or 5:30.

The stress is impacting everyone. Teachers are fighting hard to avoid taking sick days. Students are stressed and ill. Yesterday, I had trouble teaching because the students' coughing overpowered my own voice. By noon, 15 students at the school had left with fevers. Between illness and stress, I lie in bed tossing for most of the night. Last night I resorted to NyQuil.

And after this test is over, we start preparing for the math TAKS. So, like my parents, I sacrifice my spring to the all-consuming god of TAKS season. Alas.

Profiling

On this election day, my classroom was abuzz with political opinions as students touted support for their candidates. "Which one did you vote for?" they asked me numerously. I told them that the presidential election was a secret vote.

"I bet you're for McCain," one student finally guessed. A roomful of little Mexican democrats turned its horrified eyes on me.

"Why do you think that?" I asked.

"I don't know," said the little boy. "You just look kind of ... American."

Goodbyes

Today, my bilingual coworker, Mr. P, lost a student to a non-bilingual class down the hall. Just after the little girl changed classrooms, I taught Mr. P's students English math. All of the little girls were sobbing and wiping their eyes as they walked into my classroom. The overall mood was hectic, and I worked several minutes to settle them all down. When the students had finally quieted, the little girl appeared in the doorway to say "hi" to her old classmates. I shooed her off after a few minutes, and fierce sobs broke out again from the girls. "She's just next door," I tried to console. But to no avail. I suppose goodbyes are just hard, regardless of the distance.

Testing

My students are being tested within an inch of their lives. Reading tests, math tests, cognitive ability tests -- the tests never seem to end. I sometimes feel that my job title should be "proctor" instead of "teacher." Because they are bilingual, my kids must take each test twice, first in English and then in Spanish. While undergoing a difficult and long reading test, one little girl said, "We have to do all of this? We are going to be so old!"

The past month: a synopsis

According to Educator Harry Wong, there are four stages of teaching: neophyte, survival, mastery, and impact. I had hoped to bypass the survival mode (probably neophyte mode thinking), but in the past month, I've found that I was not immune it it.

Several weeks ago, I had to administer a reading test individually to each of my students in Spanish. Non-bilingual teachers had other teachers pull students out to administer the test, but as my kids test in Spanish, I had to administer the test myself. This meant that for an entire week, my students worked on nothing but worksheets for math while I crammed testing into the afternoon.

I finished the testing on the day it was due, squeezing eight tests into the last day. The week following, I came down with bronchitis and a 103 degree fever. I drugged up and continued going to school, but survival mode was certainly in effect.

Last week my kids took a district math test and did poorly on it. I was pretty discouraged, but now at least I know some of their weaker areas and can focus on them.

This job certainly presents a host of obstacles. Of course, the language is one of them. While I can communicate with my students, my academic language is still very low. I've started spending my evenings building it up, learning words like "hundreds thousands place" or "dividend." Strangely, I never learned those words in Spanish 4.

Another obstacle is my particular group of students. Of the two third-grade bilingual classes, my class is certainly the lower one. In their diagnostic math test administered at the beginning of the year, my class scored about 60 percent lower than my coworker's class. I've had some of the second-grade teachers talk to me, wondering how I ended up with their lowest students. Some of the students were even passed onto third grade expected to fail and to be retained.

Yet another obstacle is the system itself. Bilingual children are unable to be considered for special education services until third grade, due to their language difficulties. I have had numerous teachers from the earlier grades suggest that I get this or that student tested for a particular disability. While this means a lot of paperwork for me, it also means that some of my students have gone for years in school without receiving services for things like dyslexia and other learning problems.

Honestly, in this past month, I have had moments when I've wanted to quit. I wonder why I thought I could do this, and I especially wonder why teaching still has the reputation of being the career for people who cannot do anything else. But as always, there are those moments, albeit few and far between, when I see clearly why I am doing what I am doing.

So, for now, I guess I'll add a few hours to my already 10-hour days, buckle down, and work a bit harder.

Encouragement

Mrs. T is a reading-teacher expert and was transfered to our school to assist with reading instruction. After I taught an English reading lesson in my bilingual coworker's classroom, I saw Mrs. T peering into his classroom and reading my lesson from the board. I walked by and heard her say, "Wow, good." Then she turned to me: "I was just reading his lesson. That's good."

Later, I lined my students up to go to the library and gave them a brief lecture, hoping to avoid last-week's embarrassing library outing. Mrs. T was in the hallway tutoring a student, and when my students filed out, she whispered, "That was the best piece of discipline I have ever heard. The way you talk to them is excellent."

I desperately needed that encouragement this week.

Unwanted spontinaity

I came into work this morning feeling fairly prepared. I had my lessons ready, and I had a vague idea of what I would have my substitute teach tomorrow while I attended a bilingual meeting. All of my plans were nullified, however, when my bilingual coworker told me we had the wrong date; our meeting was today, and the substitute was waiting in the office.

The morning was a frantic scramble as I tried to prepare my class and modify my lesson plans. Somehow, though, I managed to teach a decent reading lesson and leave my substitute with detailed math instructions for the afternoon. The bilingual meeting was very helpful, too.

3rd-week fears

Spanglish was the language of the day. I need a way to keep my Spanish up over the weekend.

Just when I was losing control of my class during a game of numeric order, a coworker knocked on my door with three of my boys. She'd caught them, she said, when they crashed into her table while running back from the bathroom. I glared down at them, and all three broke out in frantic streams of unintelligible Spanish.

Although not really a bad day, today was kind of discouraging. My kids are so low, and I'm falling behind in my lesson plans trying to get them caught up. I've started using restroom breaks to review addition and subtraction; we have so much to cover and very few hours in our days.

I haven't felt like this in a while, like I've a task before me that I may be unable to accomplish. College presented some challenges, but nothing that a few late nights couldn't overcome, really. Now I've been given 22 students, some of whom still cannot read, and I'm told to get them caught up enough to pass a challenging test in 6 months. Gah.

And what about the language problem? I'm not doing my job when I resort to Spanglish. How long will it take for all those verb conjugations to come naturally and for my academic vocabulary to be sufficient for what I'm teaching? Also, this week I begin administering a diagnostic reading test to my students. Do I really speak enough of their language to accurately assess their abilities?

And now I come to the part of the post where I say, "but it's not as bad as I'm making it sound." And no, it isn't as bad. I'm quite sure I'll figure it all out; I haven't a choice. I'll get classroom management under control, I'll learn how to teach around the language struggles, and I'll find a way to bring my lower students where they need to be. Still, the possibility of failure is an unpleasant sensation.