[Editor's note: Just Miss is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in a high school in the Bronx.]
There is dirt under my fingernails. Always. I can’t ever seem to get them clean, no matter how many times I use the pink industrial soap in the faculty bathroom, or the school-issued hand sanitizer.
Can I recall the days when I used to have clean fingernails? Regular manicures? Hmm….. nope. I suddenly feel for the art teachers of the world. Their manicures were doomed from Day One. More »
[Editor’s note: Ms. Teach4Life is the pseudonym of a tenth-year teacher currently in her first year at a Manhattan middle school.]
At the end of each school year, I take time to reflect on the year and evaluate which components were successful, and which aspects may need to be tweaked. Over the last few years teaching ELA in a middle school in North Carolina, I have found five points to be among the best practices. Following these guidelines helped to make this year — my first year in a Manhattan middle school — a successful one.
Start with the students in mind, not the curriculum. The beginning of the school year starts with a whir, and it continues in that fast-paced manner for about a month. Then it is time for test prep, because January is right around the corner! It is easy to fall into the trap of teaching the curriculum and not the student. Don’t let yourself fall prey! I often spend the first week of school having the students complete interest inventories and personal interviews. I want to know about their families and cultures and who they are as individuals. Throughout the year I remain focused on building relationships outside of my classroom. I participate in student/staff ball games, sponsor clubs throughout the year, and try to attend any student activities I am invited to. This year I attended a dance recital, a karate championship, and a concert. Don’t underestimate the power of building meaningful relationships with your students. More »
[Teacher Man is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher at an intermediate school in Brooklyn.]
The end of the school year is always a bit chaotic for students and teachers alike. The numerous activities going on at school, from graduation to end of year parties and trips, keep everyone busy and the sunshine outside begins to draw all eyes to the windows as summer makes its grand entrance. It is also a time for reflection on both the year that has passed and that which is yet to come. Eighth graders are gearing up for the new challenges of high school, high school graduates are preparing for higher education and their future careers, and teachers are already beginning to think about their unit and lesson planning for the next year.
For me, this time of year is more reflective than ever. I am just now completing my second year in the New York City school system, which is also the culmination of my training as a New York City Teaching Fellow. I graduated from Hunter College with my MA in Teaching English as a Second Language last week, and I am on my way to becoming a fully certified and appointed teacher. I have learned so much in the last two years that it’s almost difficult to remember how I felt walking into my first classroom two summers ago not really knowing much about my profession. The experience has been life changing, to say the least, but also more enriching and humanizing than I ever could have imagined.
My story really begins in the spring of 2007, when I went from being a dissatisfied corporate employee at a luxury goods company to an aspiring teacher. More »
[Editor's note: Below is a first-year ESL teacher's reflections on his visit to Cuba. The UFT and our national union, the AFT, has been strongly critical of the Castro regime which rules Cuba. In particular, we have opposed its jailing of its citizens who organize free and independent unions and who exercise their right to free expression, as teachers and journalists, to criticize the anti-democratic practices of the state. By the same token, teacher unions are critical of the U.S. government embargo of Cuba, as it has only inhibited the free exchange of people and ideas which are the enemy of authoritarianism. In the spirit of an open exchange, we publish the following post.]
I ambled down the street in downtown Havana, sweating, enjoying the heat and talking to a friend I made in Santiago de Cuba. The crumbling streets and dilapidated buildings betray a 50 year effort to provide housing for all Cuban citizens. I was on my way to realize my intention of visiting schools and learning about the Cuban education system.
I walked into the school with concern about how I would be received. In Cuba it can be hard for Cubans and tourists to interact. Every Cuban I spoke to in my ten days was concerned about speaking to me and being social with a tourist. As I learned from a new friend, Cuban law prohibits Cubans from leaving the country without express permission from the government. Many say that this is because the government needs the people to be able to carry out its social project. Others say that it is because the government does not want people exposed to the material commodities and other lifestyles in other countries. However, the only places I did not feel that people were on their guard were in schools. More »
[Editor’s note: miss brave is the pseudonym for a second-year elementary school teacher in Queens. She blogs at miss brave teaches nyc, where this post originally appeared.]
(Why am I writing this entry at 4:30 am? Because I’m awake battling a fever, sore throat and chills. I’m not saying I have the H1N1 virus…I’m just sayin’.)
It’s running record time again, and I’m pleased to report that I moved my Polish-speaking Lukas from level D to E. He happily rushed off to “move his person” (a little stick figure with his name on it) from the D envelope to the E envelope, and then he went to the classroom library to do what we call “shopping for books.” From the other side of the bookshelf, I could hear him humming busily to himself as he dumped all the D books out of his book baggie and then stashed them back in the D bin with a chirpy, “Bye-bye, D books! See ya later!”
So cute. More »
[Editor’s note: Ms. Teach4Life is the pseudonym of a tenth-year teacher currently in her first year at a Manhattan public school.]
While we may not think about our philosophy until it is time to begin the interview process, I feel that it is important to keep your personal philosophy close at hand. When those days come and go that are very hard, and I wonder to myself, Why am I a teacher?, I take a minute to read my educational philosophy and this small act seems to calm the storm of emotions within me.
Over the years, my personal philosophy has evolved. I remember my first interview, 10 years ago, and when I was asked this question, I basically froze on the spot. I’m sure I looked like a deer caught in headlights — headlights glaring at me waiting for an answer. Finally, I stuttered, “I think all kids can learn.” When I walked out of that interview, I knew that I needed to put some more thought into that one question alone — it does define who we are as teachers, and how we conduct the business of educating our students in our classrooms.
After five years of teaching or so, I adopted the following equation as my personal belief in the education of students: More »
[Editor's note: Bronxteach is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in an elementary school in the Bronx. He blogs at bronxteach.com, where versions of this post first appeared.]
Recently I started reading Jonathan Kozol’s Letters to a Young Teacher. I’d tried to read it last year, but found it hit a little too close to home, especially when he was fawning over the first-year teacher and I was presiding over total chaos. Now, with a bit more confidence in my own abilities and the past in the past, I’m giving the book a second chance. It’s been a really gratifying read so far, as it’s reminded me of some essential ideas I’d forgotten in the course of the past year and a half.
Before I started teaching I read Kozol’s Savage Inequalities. I figured it was an important book for any teacher going into the Bronx, and once I finished I realized how right I was. The book, almost 20 years old, is an impassioned and moving portrait of America’s poorest schools and the children who learn in them. Besides bringing me face to face with some of the challenges I would face, the book also sparked a mixture of passion and outrage as well as a sense of purpose. More »
[Editor's note: Yo Mista is the pseudonym of a fourth-year teacher in a high school in Queens.
Part 1 of this story is here.]
During lunch I went to see my payroll secretary to find out if she knew anything about why I had not received the compensation for coaching that I was supposed to get three months earlier. For weeks and weeks she was telling me to be patient — “It may come in the next pay period,” she kept saying. Well, I kept waiting and it kept not showing up, and by now I was annoyed.
I knocked on her open door. “What do you want,” she asked ever so sweetly. I want my damn money, now where is it already, I imagined myself saying.
Instead I said, shyly and softly, “Oh, just checking to see if you found out anything about where that check is.” I had learned quickly to tread lightly around the payroll secretary and not do anything to get on her bad side.
“Oh yeah, that,” she responded. “It got lost, I stopped payment yesterday. It’ll be six to ten weeks before you get it.” More »
[Editor's note: American-Chick-Lit is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in a high school in the Bronx.]
When I walk into my school building in the morning, there are usually copies of the New York Post piled on the floor near the security desk. I usually resist the temptation to grab a copy of the local tabloid. However, if I’m heading out the door in the afternoon and there happens to be a sensational headline screaming at me, I’ll snatch one up for a light read on the way home. Here are some recent Post headlines that grabbed my attention: “HOG WILD!”; “FATAL FANTASY”; “SCARE FORCE ONE.”
Throughout the school day, I hear students discussing hot news topics like the ones mentioned in these sensational headlines. My students will often interrupt a vocabulary lesson with a very eager: “Miss, did you hear?” More »
[Editor's note: Ms. Mc is the pseudonym of a first-year teacher in an intermediate school in Brooklyn.]
November 5, 2008 was just as monumental for me as the night before, when we elected Barack Obama as our president. Walking into school, a little groggy from celebrating with the rest of NYC the night before, I climbed the three flights of stairs to my classroom, where I was immediately blasted with music from the social studies teacher’s classroom down the hall. Everyone was abuzz with our new found history and leader. I joined in with many of my fellow colleagues and quite a few early arriving students and rapped/sang, “Yes we did! Yes we did!”
A few minutes later, I opened the door to my classroom and realized that I didn’t want to teach a lesson today. No one did. I wanted to use what happened the night before to talk to my kids about how important this election was to them. I wanted to stop and talk about history, about life right now, about the future of this country. I wiped off my chalkboard and wrote a journal: “What were your thoughts/reactions to Obama being elected President? What does this mean for America? What does this mean for you?” More »
[Mr. Eureka is the pseudonym of a fourth-year teacher in an elementary school in the Bronx.]
Fifty some years ago, I used to hurry up to get to Ms. Veen’s English class a half-hour early not because I had the remotest interest in reading Macbeth, but because I knew that she always had a basket of freshly baked cornbread and a jar of sweet red lemonade on her desk to share with us before she began her instruction. I do not recall ever missing her class during a whole academic year, even though reading Shakespeare at eight-thirty in the morning was a herculean task, one that taxed my already overworked brain cells to the maximum.
Ms. Veen — Irish, built like an oak, no-nonsense — was nevertheless a very humane teacher who always began class by inquiring about what went on in our lives the previous night and that morning as a prelude before passing around the basket filled with that delicious honey-baked cornbread. More »
[Editor's note: Yo Mista is the pseudonym of a fourth-year teacher in a high school in Queens.]
Every once in a while a teacher has a day that makes him think: this is why the city loses new teachers. I recently experienced one of those days.
After circling the neighborhood to find a parking spot within six blocks of my school I hurried in to the building and bumped in to my assistant principal. “I have a student I need you to work with: 19 years old, six credits, not attending any of his classes. He’s becoming a problem for the deans, roaming the halls and disrupting classes.” She gave his name and asked, “Do you know him?”
“No, I don’t,” I said.
“Well,” she said, “we need to transition him out, maybe VESID, Co-Op Tech, I don’t know, something.” More »
[Editor’s note: Ms. Teach4Life is the pseudonym of a tenth-year teacher currently in her first year at a Manhattan public school.]
For the first nine years of my teaching career, I taught in the South where there are no teachers’ unions. In fact, I was told upon being hired to not even mention the word. So, as the dutiful, brand-new teacher, I never said “the U word.”
Because I was just starting out in my teaching career, I really could not grasp the concept of what it would be like to work in a district that had a union to support the teachers. I went to work each day and performed the duties that had been set forth by my district and principals. I’d like to share with you the daily work routine of a teacher and those work conditions. More »
[Mr. Eureka is the pseudonym of a fourth-year teacher in an elementary school in the Bronx.]
Fanta was almost seven years old when she walked into our school’s lobby, clinging to her mother’s arm. Her mother, an imposing woman dressed in a flowery African robe with a yellow turban carefully carved over her head walked past our front desk inquiring about where the enrollment activities were taking place. Our security officer pointed her fingers toward the two long tables that were put together to hold the stacks of materials, pens, pencils, and other supplies needed for the registration of new students.
Her steps were secure but slow. It was as if she was counting the tiles that ornate our attendance room. I was brought in to assist in Fanta’s enrollment as a second grade student since both Fanta and her mother could not speak a word of English. As they sat quietly waiting for their turn to speak to a staff member, Fanta played with her fingers with her eyes glued to the large clock hanging a few feet away above the door of Room 109. She certainly did not want to be there. More »
[Editor's note: Señorita in the City is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in a high school in Manhattan.]
I am one of many lucky people who are able to enjoy a summer off each year. The teachers I know and work with spend their summers doing a variety of things. Some teach summer school, while others travel. I haven’t yet taught summer school, but I have participated in two very interesting summer opportunities available to teachers.
The first is a program specifically for Spanish teachers in the United States. Several universities in different parts of Spain offer three week courses through the Ministry of Education in Spain. I attended a program at La Fundación Ortega y Gasset. Our class consisted of about 15 teachers from all over the United States, coming from both public and private schools. Our course actually consisted of five different classes covering grammar, literature, society, history, cinema, music and art. More »
