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Laura Sack's Teaching Bulletins

June 17, 2006

I was asked to speak last night at the Brooklyn Museum, at a year-end celebration for the 600 new teachers who joined Region 8 of the NYC Department of Education this year.  The event was sponsored by the Region 8 mentors, one of whom is assigned to each new teacher at the beginning of the school year.  I was asked to speak about my experiences this year, and to comment on the mentor program.  My remarks follow.   

Good evening. My 5th Grade Special Ed class is only days away from graduating and moving on to middle school. And I am only days away from completing my first year of teaching. I'm not sure which of those two milestones is more worthy of celebration. They both feel like monumental accomplishments from my vantage point.

So what has my first year of teaching been like? Well, a mere seven days into it, I went slinking into my principal's office with hot tears of shame and disappointment streaming down my face. I told her I thought I had to resign because I didn't have what it takes to succeed as a teacher. I felt utterly lost - I didn't know the curriculum or how to teach it. I didn't have the vaguest idea of how to create a classroom environment or a classroom community in which my students would thrive. I felt overwhelmed and hideously under-prepared. I felt utterly incompetent to do the job at hand - to teach.

I contemplated quitting more than once in the first half of the year. But luckily, with the encouragement and support of a few good friends and colleagues, I stuck it out. I still have so much to learn, but I did more than survive the year: I succeeded. I taught, and I learned, and I reflected (reflecting, by the way, is something I never did before becoming a teacher, and something I can't do enough of now). I adjusted, and readjusted, and I grew to care about each one of my students more than I'd ever imagined I would. Together, we have accomplished so much. My students won the school penny harvest drive by collecting far more pennies than classes double their size; my students earned more than two hundred dollars selling plants that they potted; most of my students passed both the 5th grade math and ELA exams; nearly all of my students went up at least a grade level in reading; my students wrote and performed a three-scene skit about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott; my students developed a love of literature by Jerry Spinelli and Walter Dean Myers; and my students wrote truly beautiful, heartfelt, and sometimes hilarious poetry. In the process, they became my heroes.

I will forever be grateful to those who helped me survive the dark early days of this year so that I can watch, proud as any parent could be, as my wonderful students graduate next Friday.

First year teachers need support. We need help navigating the system, finding our way, keeping our cool, and maintaining our sanity. Having a mentor can make the difference between sticking it out and throwing in the towel. I'm so glad the mentor program exists so that more new teachers stick it out and fewer throw in the towel. For me, it would have been a great personal tragedy had I quit part-way through the year. Thank you to the mentor program; to my mentor, Gairre Henry; and to the other friends and colleagues who walked beside me through the most challenging parts of this journey. And congratulations to all of you for completing your first year of teaching!

 May 13, 2006

It has been two months since my last update.  When I think about how to succinctly describe my experience as a teacher at this point, one idea keeps circling through my mind: “this is the really, really good part.”

It’s not that my students have suddenly conquered their disabilities.  Manifestations of their emotional disturbance, learning disabilities, speech/language/hearing impairments, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorders still abound, continuing to pose daily challenges.  My newest student still can’t read or write; E. still picks fights with nearly everyone; and N. has been continuously absent for two weeks following an incident in which he spewed a hateful stream of obscenities and threats at the principal in front of my entire class.  Nor is it that I have matured into a full-fledged veteran teacher -- for the most part, I continue to feel like a pretend teacher, trying my hardest to maintain the illusion that teaching and learning is taking place in Room 330.  Yet, it’s undeniably true that some teaching and learning has taken place and continues to take place in my classroom.  And even more significantly, my students and I have created a classroom environment that makes us look forward to returning day after day.  One of my students recently lamented the fact that school ends at 3 pm on Fridays; she wished we were staying until 3:37 pm as we do Monday through Thursday.  And I thought: what a long, long way we’ve come together.

If you were to visit our classroom today, you’d find a bright, inviting, active room filled with books, plants and flowers (including our latest horticultural addition, a kumquat tree that absolutely fascinates my students), an ant farm, two tadpoles, and bulletin boards covered with student writing.  Looking back at photographs from the early weeks of school and seeing how barren and lifeless the room seemed then, I can hardly believe the transformation – in the physical space, and even more so, in the intangible essence of the room.  The warm and welcoming atmosphere we have created is especially gratifying given my early struggles to create a suitable classroom atmosphere (as documented by the numerous critical memos I received last fall from my principal and assistant principal).  Like so many other things, I don’t know quite how (or even when) the transformation occurred; I am just glad it did.

April was National Poetry Month, and we spent a lot of time reading and writing poetry.  I am in the process of creating 11 individualized poetry anthologies, so that each student will have a permanent record of the promising poet he or she has become.  Bearing in mind that most of my students read and write at a 2nd or 3rd grade level, I want to share with you one example of their poetry:

Ode to my Mother

Why does my mother cry?
Because she is sad.
Why does she cry?
Because she is upset.
Why does she cry?
Because her feelings are hurt.
Sometimes there is no way to explain
Why she cries
With her cute little eyes.
Why does my mother cry?
Because life isn’t always the same.

*      *      *

With standardized testing out of the way, we’re now permitted to venture beyond the school’s front door.  Already, we’ve participated in a track and field competition, and we’ve visited the Coney Island Aquarium and to the Museum of Natural History.  We also took a walking trip to the Brooklyn Bridge and, judging from the essays my students wrote for homework that night, the highlight of that trip (and possibly of the year!) was the very brief pit stop we made at my home.  We sold flowering plants at school to raise money for these trips and for the numerous additional trips I’ve planned for June.  Charging between $3 and $5 per plant, my students raised more than $200, a feat that surprised and delighted all of us.  Second to their Penny Harvest success, I don’t think I’ve ever seen my students looking prouder of themselves.

Our graduation ceremonies take place on June 23, a mere six weeks from now.  Early on in the school year, when I felt overwhelmed by my students’ needs and even more so, by my own inadequacy as a teacher, I wanted desperately to put this year behind me as quickly as possible.  Now, I want nothing more than for these final weeks to go slowly, so I can savor every minute with my class and burn it into my memory without missing a detail.  One of the songs we are working on for graduation is called “Seasons of Love,” and it includes these poignant lyrics:

How do you measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee,
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife….

There couldn’t possibly be any single measure of this year for me.  Instead, there will have been 525,600 minutes, each uniquely filled with something worthy of remembering and cherishing.

I have been asked to identify which of my students has made the most progress this year, as there apparently is some sort of formal award given to the graduating special ed student who fits that bill.  Trouble is, I can’t choose one.  Nearly all of my students have made great strides this year, and I don’t know how to single out one of them without denigrating the progress the others have made.  Should the award go to the student who has made the greatest strides academically, or to the one who has most successfully managed to circumvent the negative behavioral manifestations of his or her disability?  Choosing one over the others goes against everything I have learned about my students this year: they are individuals, each with their own capabilities, shortcomings, fears, dreams, and personal hardships.  And I really do see that virtually to a person, they have given the best and the most they have to offer this year.  They have also given their worst, but even this strikes me as a sign that they have learned to trust me: they know that I’m in their corner and I’m not going anywhere, no matter what they dish out.

Case in point: you may recall that not so many weeks ago, I reported that one of my students had cursed loudly in my face in front of the class.  Yesterday, that same student surprised me with a handmade and beautifully decorated Mothers Day card, which she shyly tucked into her homework notebook for me to find.  It reads as follows, complete with errors:

Happy mother’s Day Ms. Sack you are like a mother to me and you alway’s stick with us like when you was going to leav the school but you didn’t because you never give up on us I love you Ms. Sack.

This is the really, really good part.

March 11, 2006

Teaching certainly hasn’t been boring. Because of the volatility of my students, anything can happen on any given day.  Sometimes, the chemistry in the room is just right, medications are working, my lesson plans are on target, and we have a great day.  Those days are magical.  And then, there are days when it is difficult for me to imagine that anything positive can take place in my classroom.  Take, for example, the days when I spend more time breaking up fist fights than actually teaching… or the recent occasion when one of my students spent the better part of the day repeating loudly and frequently the following phrase: “I’m going to rupture your motherf*ck*ing spleen.”  Or yesterday afternoon, when that same student loudly and graphically invited an entire class of second graders to perform oral sex on him.  I have learned to contain the damage on such days, and to keep what happens in my classroom largely to myself.  Special education students, I’ve been told by my administrators, are already being punished by the disabilities that prevent them from acting appropriately.  To discipline them for their misbehavior would be double jeopardy, the theory goes.

Two days ago, E, the largest and most aggressive of my students spent the entire day in my classroom with a large knife hidden in his pants.  I didn’t see it during the school day, and neither did my students.  But there it was, a concealed weapon on his body for the entire day, including on the numerous occasions that day when I had to physically intervene to keep him from punching another student.  (Lacking any actual training in how to stop a fist fight that is already in progress, my tactic is to jump in between the two students and hope they know better than to punch their teacher.  I realize I’m taking my chances, but I can’t just stand there and let them hurt one another.  My classroom is on the 3rd floor and the school’s only security guard is stationed at the school’s entrance on the first floor.  Someone could be seriously hurt before she arrived if I waited for her to haul them off one another.  But add a knife to the equation, and I’m not so sure I’m willing to jump in anymore.)

E showed the knife to another of my students (one who he had been arguing with on and off all day) in the resource room during the “small group instruction” period that was added to the school day effective February 6.  (Following my principal’s instructions, I keep five of my students with me for that period; E and several others are sent to different teachers for small group instruction; and two of my students apparently don’t need extra help (really?) because they are dismissed from school at 3 pm, without the benefit of small group instruction.)

The student who saw the knife reported it to the resource room teacher.  I was informed a few minutes later, as was the principal.  I called E’s father and asked him to come to school immediately.  You might have thought the rest was history.  A large knife in the possession of an aggressive and volatile 12 year old has to be taken very seriously, right?  The knife was discovered at the end of the day on Thursday.  On Friday morning, E was back in school.  Not in my classroom, but right across the hall.  I’m told he “might” be suspended for a week beginning on Monday.  I’m scared, and I’ve said so.  In response to the concerns I’ve expressed for E and for the rest of us in Room 5-330, one administrator laughed and said, “the only thing E would stab is a hamburger.”  I’m not laughing.  E is the same student whose estranged father I called weeks ago because I was so worried about his son’s precipitous downhill slide psychologically.  And now I wonder which of us E wanted to slice with the knife.  And I worry about how I am going to keep the rest of my students safe in my classroom from here on out.

Good things have happened over the past month too.  Last Tuesday and Wednesday, my students took the New York State 5th grade math exam.  All of them completed the exam without incident.  No one ran out of my classroom in the midst of the exam, nor did they fling their test booklets, answer sheets, pencils, rulers and protractors to the floor in disgust, as was their habit last year during standardized testing.  And somewhat miraculously, from what I could see as I walked around the room monitoring their progress, I believe that a number of my students actually did well on the test.  We won’t have the test results for months, but in my book, my students all get high marks for effort and tenacity.  It takes a lot of guts to fight your way through a 5th grade math test when your math skills are at only a 2nd or 3rd grade level.

This past week, I gave each of my students a formal reading assessment to gauge whether their reading skills have improved since their last assessment in September.  I learned from these assessments that every one of my original ten students has jumped at least two levels in reading so far this year.  Don’t ask me how it happened.  I am simply astounded and overjoyed at the progress my kids have made.

On a final and very positive note, my students participated in a 5th grade assembly a few weeks ago to celebrate Black History Month.  Without help from the other 5th grade classes, my students performed a three-scene skit about Rosa Parks, complete with complicated scenery changes and spoken lines for all of them - including the students with serious speech impairments who don’t usually like to be heard.  They were amazing, and I was so incredibly proud of them.  I am sure that no one would have guessed based on their performance that they were the special ed class.  That assembly was unquestionably one of the great triumphs of the school year for my kids, and I will never forget their performance.

Spring is coming, and graduation day won’t be far behind.  I have a couple of students who are in danger of not being promoted, and I will be working hard in the weeks ahead to try to get them where they need to be so they can leave PS 46 this year with the rest of their class.  More news soon.

February 13, 2006

I had promised myself early on that I would not sugar-coat this diary of my teaching experiences in an effort to spare this audience, or to make myself appear more competent than I am.  Thus, tonight’s entry, describing my misadventures these past couple of weeks, will spare no one: not you, the reader; not me; and not the system in which I am currently working.

To begin, my students have responded to the newest member of our class with a mixture of suspicion, contempt, sympathy (read on to learn why), and the kind of shy and uncomfortable interest that 5th grade boys and girls have in a pretty new girl they don’t know and are slightly intimidated by.  I was right to predict that her transfer to my school and my class would not be seamless for any of us.

On top of this, my new student can’t read.  Not a lick.  She’s 11 years old, more than halfway through 5th grade, and she can’t read the word “do.”  She also can’t read numbers – something I discovered when I was teaching a lesson on mean, median and mode last week and I asked her to simply read the series of numbers I had written on the board:  11, 27, 32, 9, 5.  Nothing.  Naturally, she also can’t write.  Today, she took 90 minutes to write a single sentence in response to the assigned one-page essay on this month’s character education theme, “fairness.”  The solitary sentence she did write was dictated to her by a sympathetic classmate.

Of course, when my new student arrived, she did so with no file and no IEP (the Individual Educational Plan each special ed student receives annually which details their current academic and behavioral level/issues, and sets forth their educational goals and promotional criteria for the year ahead).  I received only a computer print-out containing her name, address, telephone number, and father’s name, and with this dearth of information, I received her into my class.  I was taken aback by how far behind she is.  All of my other students can read – some at a 2nd grade level, but still, they all read.  I have absolutely no idea how to teach reading to a non-reader.  And how to accomplish my administration’s dictate of 40 minutes of writing each day with a student who can’t write?

Before I was able to assess the full extent of her academic deficiencies (something I am hardly qualified to do with a student I don’t know and whose file I have not seen), I expected that she would at least attempt to do the homework I assigned.  And when she called me on my cell phone the first weekend after she joined my class to ask me how she was doing, I inquired whether she had done her homework for the weekend.  She told me she had.  When I checked her homework notebook on Monday morning, the blank pages looking back at me told the true story – no homework.  As I do with the several others of my students who have phones that work and parents or guardians who answer them when they ring, I called her house at lunchtime to report that she hadn’t done any homework and to express my concern.  Her mother hesitated, and then asked me if I knew what kind of student her daughter is.  I explained euphemistically that I had observed that she has “great difficulty” reading.  The conversation was pleasant enough, despite that I felt uncomfortable responding to the question with anything even close to a truthful answer.  I gathered from the mom’s question that my new student can’t even take a shot at the homework I typically assign.

That evening, the new student’s father called me and yelled at me for about ten minutes.  He said I don’t care, and he chided me that Jesus Christ did not abandon his flock (or something like that).  Apparently in his eyes, I had committed a grave error by mentioning his daughter’s reading “difficulty” in response to a question from her mother.  When I asked him to lower his voice, he responded, “I’m a man.  This is how I speak.”  Ultimately, I ended the call – but not before he said he was going to complain about me to the Department of Education and my school’s administration.  To say that I was bewildered and shaken by his call, and troubled by his opinion of me, is an understatement.

Sure enough, he called my principal that same evening.  I don’t know what he said, but I haven’t called my new student’s home since then to report that she isn’t doing her homework – and she hasn’t called me to see how she’s doing in school.  Aside from the fact that I am no longer the only adult at my school who knows she can’t read, nothing has come of it.

Another of my students has had me worried for months.  He is the only student in my initial group of ten who I feel I haven’t reached at all.  He comes to school late every day, with no homework, no notebook, and no pencil.  Makes me wonder what’s in the book bag he brings to school every day.  He doesn’t participate in class, he picks fights with nearly everyone, and when I have attempted to speak to him privately about what’s going on, he has told me he doesn’t care.  I have called his home numerous times hoping to get to the bottom of his troubles, or at least to get him to do some homework once in awhile.  It hasn’t worked, and I’ve grown increasingly desperate for help with him during the last month or two.  So a couple of weeks ago, when I was approaching my bus stop after school, I saw him waiting there as well, with his older sister.  She’s in high school; she picks him up from school every day and has served as a conduit for messages from me to his mother (and vice versa) in the past.  This time, I begged her to have her mom call me, and I explained that her brother’s attitude and lack of engagement in school had me really worried.  She suggested I call his father.  Surprised, since I hadn’t known that contacting his father was an option, I asked her if that would be okay (his parents are divorced).  She assured me that it was both permissible and likely to be effective.  She gave me the number and I called his father on the spot, right there at the bus stop.  I had several additional conversations with his father that same night, and I was incredibly relieved to find that his father seemed genuinely concerned and prepared to roll up his sleeves and help.  In fact, he asked to meet with me the next day after school, with his son.  During the meeting, the father was loving and firm with his son, and I became hopeful that I had finally found a way to nudge this student back on track.

The mother came to school looking for me the very next morning, apparently livid that I had called the dad.  Seems they don’t much like each other, to put it mildly.  (My student, on the other hand, has serious issues with his stepfather and wants nothing more than for his parents to reconcile.)  I did manage ultimately to convince the mother not to kill me, her daughter, or her ex-husband, and I now give the father almost daily progress reports with the mother’s knowledge and consent.  It’s too soon to tell what effect, if any, this will have on my student’s educational or general wellbeing, but the events I’ve just described were definitely not good for my own wellbeing.  The phrase “no good deed goes unpunished” has been reverberating in my head since these events unfolded.

Today, one of my students walked right up to me, stood an inch or two from me, and loudly and angrily announced to me and the entire class, “I don’t give a sh*t.”  This was precipitated by her complaint to me moments earlier that another of my students had pushed her on the stairs on the way back to class after lunch.  I responded that I hadn’t seen it, and asked her what she wanted me to do.  She didn’t answer, but became belligerent when I tried to begin teaching a math lesson.  I asked her to calm down and take her seat, which was met with the colorful language quoted above.  I tapped her on the shoulder with the two-page lesson plan I was holding, and asked her again to calm down and return to her seat.  This time, she screamed that I had “hit” her, and that I wasn’t her mother.  And thus, I was treated this evening to yet another angry parent call on my cell phone (“did you lay a hand on my daughter?”), and tomorrow morning, I anticipate that my principal will field yet another parent complaint directed at me.

Tonight, I am really doubting my capacity to complete the school year.  I wonder whether I have already done whatever good I can possibly do for my students, and I wonder whether I have the fortitude to carry on, given the recent spate of of criticism from parents, and given how lonely I feel trying singlehandedly and blindly to incorporate into my class a student who I feel virtually helpless to assist.  With winter vacation only a few days away, I will welcome the opportunity to reflect on whether I have more to give, or whether I have outlived my usefulness as the teacher of Class 5-330.

February 1, 2006

It’s 4:00 a.m. and I’ve been awake for hours.  I should be feeling jubilant: you see, today is my 90th day as the teacher of Class 5-330 at P.S. 46.  At the end of this particular day, my students and I will have survived the first half of the school year.

Instead, I am filled with trepidation and, to some extent at least, I am feeling sorry for myself.  This morning, the extremely fragile community we have built in my classroom will be tested as never before.  This morning, a student new to my class and new to my school will be joining us.  I never imagined that halfway through the school year, and only weeks before the New York State math exam, a new student who I know nothing about might be transferred into my class.

I learned in recent days that the No Child Left Behind Act requires my school to accept any child from certain “failing” schools whose parents choose to transfer that child.  And by law, my classroom technically has room for two students more than the ten I have had since the first day of school (each of my students has an Individual Educational Plan mandating that their classroom have no more than 12 students).  So, despite that mine is the largest special education class in my school, and despite that my students are the oldest, and toughest, and have been together the longest, today we will begin the process of incorporating a complete stranger into our community.  School starts in a few hours, and I don’t even have a desk or chair for my new student.

This may well turn out for the best – maybe a change will be good for my class.  My students certainly do need to learn to be more resilient, and more accepting of others and of change.  Perhaps the addition of a new girl will have a positive effect on our classroom dynamics.  Still, as a struggling new teacher, this particular mid-year challenge is not one I relish.  It’s hard enough for me to differentiate instruction for each of the ten students I know so well – today, I will have to assess and begin teaching to someone whose test scores I don’t have, whose classwork I have never seen, and whose file is housed at another school.  Oh, and by the way, she’s transferring out of a classroom taught by a veteran special education teacher, where she was one of only four students.  Her parents elected to uproot her to send her to my class without so much as meeting or speaking to me.  They have no idea that I am a new teacher with an “alternative” teaching certification (i.e., I do not have years of education coursework and student teaching under my belt); they have no idea that their daughter will be the 11th child in my class; they have no idea that all but one or two of my students have significant emotional and psychological conditions that negatively affect their behavior and their interactions with classmates.

In other news, my students survived the New York State English Language Arts (“ELA”) exam, which they took in early January.  It will be months before we know whether or not they passed the exam, but I was extremely proud that they all sat/suffered through it.  After all, they might have been absent, or they might have thrown their pencils across the room and bolted into the hallway in the middle of the exam (as some of them have in years past).  Our classroom looks great: there are charts everywhere showing how much material we have been covering, and student work blankets every one of our bulletin boards.  Still, the memos keep coming.  For example, in the middle of the two-day ELA exam, I received a memo in which my principal chided me for not having charts in my classroom demonstrating the reading strategies I had taught.  In reality, those dozen or so charts were covered with newspaper -- as I was told they had to be for the duration of the exam so that students wouldn’t “cheat” by looking at them.  Already I have learned not to respond to these memos, but I continue to find them infuriating and demoralizing.

A couple of weeks ago, in the context of asking them how they think the school year is going, I confessed to my students that I am a new teacher.  I instantly thought to myself, “that was a mistake.  I’ll never hear the end of it from them.  I’ve shown my achilles heel, and they are going to go after it.”  They proved me wrong.  They don’t care that I am inexperienced, or even that my lessons don’t always work.  They care that I care.  They care that I choose to have lunch with them every day, and they care that I have trusted them with my cell phone number, and they care that I take them on excursions on the weekends and bring them to my home afterward.  They care that I celebrate their birthdays and their academic successes.  And I think more than anything, they care that I forgive them when they “forget” to take their medication and when they go ballistic and scribble violently on the wall with pencil, or viciously kick the door, or curse at a classmate or at me, or refuse to follow an instruction.  And I forgive them because I love them.  And because, like me, they are not perfect, and like me, they are doing the absolute best that they can.

I wouldn’t have guessed that I belong in a special education classroom.  But at this moment, I belong with these children.  Here’s hoping I belong with student #11 as well.

December 19, 2005

“Do you believe all of NYC’s students deserve a quality education?  Prove it.”  Over the past several years, I frequently read and reflected silently on this ad, and others like it that seemingly blanketed the subway cars I rode back and forth to the office.  Every time I saw one of those ads, it took my breath away, as it seemed to be yelling at me, “Laura, I’m talking to you!  This is for you!  What are you waiting for?”  In fact, the Teaching Fellows program was launched in order to fill vacancies in “high need” NYC public schools with professionals who, like me, have no prior training, education or experience as teachers.  In April 2005, I applied to the program.  And in a mere blink of eye, and with the somewhat incredulous support of my friends, family, and colleagues at the firm, I now find myself commuting every day (by bus, not subway) to a 5th grade special education classroom at P.S. 46 in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where ten emotionally, physically, and academically challenged students call me their teacher.

It’s virtually impossible for me to find the words to describe my experience thus far.  Every day is a study in contrasts – at moments, I feel supremely proud and privileged to be able to do something so gratifying and fulfilling … and five minutes later (or so it seems), I’m wondering if I have the mettle to stick it out until June.

I suspect most readers will not be surprised to learn that my school’s resources are extremely limited.  For example, the school has no library this year: the room that used to be the library is still there, with books on the shelves.  But there was no funding for a librarian in this year’s school budget, so the librarian has returned to the classroom to teach 1st grade, and the students are essentially banned from using the library.  Similarly, teachers at my school have been prohibited from making copies since September, because the school doesn’t have enough copy paper.

Nor do I expect readers to be surprised that my students have already been left back 1, 2 or even 3 times each, and yet most of them read at a 3rd grade level or lower, and write like 1st or 2nd graders.  Most do not know their multiplication tables; all still count using their fingers.  Several do so inaccurately.

Rather than rehash the shortcomings and deficiencies in the system, however, I want to focus attention on the positives – which, in my case, are known to me as my students.  MY kids.  I love them.  I adore them.  I admire them.  I dream about them at night.  I miss them on the weekends.  When they call me at home or on my cell phone for no apparent reason, as they often do, I feel honored and humbled and thrilled.  Several of them have slipped and called me “mom.”  They routinely beg me to have lunch with them, and I usually comply (despite the deafening sound level of a lunchroom crowded with hungry and hyper 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders).  I shoot hoops with them in the school gym.  I see them playing in the school yard hours after school lets out, and they race over to the fence like eager puppies to say hi to me.  One of my students (the one whose infamous misdeeds last year included throwing a chair at his teacher, throwing books out a 3rd floor window, and cutting school more often than he attended) has had near-perfect attendance this year.  He has even opted to stay in the classroom with me for hours after school, I think just because it is a safe place and because he has come to trust that I am not “out to get him,” as he perceives most adults in his life are.

What makes my ten students so lovable?  Perhaps it is because they are underdogs, and yet they carry on without flinching under the weight of that heavy burden.  They are the academic “failures” of the school.  They are the oldest kids in the school (one of my students turns 13 this month), and several of them have disciplinary records that would get them fired from any job.  They have home lives that are far from enviable, and they are responsible for the care and feeding of younger siblings as well as for their own upkeep.  Yet, they come to school every day full of bravado.  And even as they call one another names and occasionally even fight, I have seen them extend uncommon generosity, kindness, and forgiveness toward one another.  What little they have, they share, whether it’s that awful blue candy they love to eat, or a cool new pencil, or a turn admiring some new trinket someone brought in from home or the street.  When one of them is having an especially rough day (and on any given day, at least one of them is having a very tough time of it), the rest of them instinctively know to give that person some much-needed space.  One of my students recently suffered a bout of Bell’s Palsy, which partially paralyzed her face.  Instead of making fun of her as I feared they might, my class rallied around her and showed great compassion.

Their kindness and generosity and sense of comraderie has extended to me as well.  On the day I was formally observed by my Assistant Principal, my class tried so hard to be brilliant and insightful and inquisitive, in order that I might look like a good teacher.  One of my students whispered conspiratorially in the middle of the lesson, “We’re doing good, Ms. Sack, aren’t we?”  I think that by now, my students may have figured out that I’m a first year teacher, but they have never said so out loud, as if it’s a secret they don’t want to divulge for fear of embarrassing me.

My students’ academic needs are vast, and as a new teacher with virtually no training and literally no experience, I am ill equipped to meet those needs.  But the needs that I can fill seem even more urgent – the need to feel safe, secure, noticed, cared for, cared about, listened to, and loved.  My students wear their emotional needs on their sleeves, and I have found it very easy and very, very gratifying to meet those needs.  And it is my goal to continue doing so until they graduate in June, with the hope that they will be more receptive and responsive to experienced teachers when they go to junior high school in September.  And it is my wish to remain a source of comfort, confidence and support for my students for so long as they keep my phone number.

Remarkably, the best part of the school day for my students and for me is not dismissal, but the “read aloud.”  (Every single officially sanctioned activity in school has a similarly officious sounding name.)  The read aloud is the first thing we do in the morning after getting settled in.  We sit together on the rug and I read out loud to them for 15-20 minutes, stopping often to ask questions and talk to them about the book we’re reading.  I’ve gotten great pleasure from choosing books for our read aloud sessions, and so far, my kids have been riveted by my selections.  I choose challenging books with big themes like racism, tolerance and illiteracy, and in which the protagonist is around the age of my students.  When I finish a chapter and close the book each morning, they groan and beg for more.  To my delight, they can retell the story in vivid – and largely accurate – detail.  Because most of my students are such struggling readers that they view books as their enemy, I relish the opportunity the daily read aloud provides to show them that reading can be a great source of enjoyment.

Notwithstanding the success of my read alouds, I think I serve my students mainly as a surrogate parent or a social worker and not so much as a teacher.  But that’s okay with me, and it seems to suit them fine, too.  Just don’t tell Chancellor Klein.  He might “snuff” me, as my students would say….

September 16, 2005

Today is Friday, September 16, and I have survived my first seven days of teaching.  It has been a challenging, rewarding, emotional and exhausting seven days, to put it mildly.   The truth is that I have already seriously contemplated (and have come perilously close to) slinking away forever from the school that hired me, making me yet another of so many early casualties of the Department of Education.  But each day, something has happened that has compelled me to return for at least another day.  And so it was today, and this is why I will be in my classroom again on Monday.

As of now, my 5th grade special ed class consists of ten students: four girls and six boys.  Already, I have come to love most of them, and I feel a sense of commitment to every one of them, even as I feel shocked, saddened and frustrated by the extent of their fragility and volatility.  As I expected, these children suffer serious academic deficits.  More significantly, nearly every one of them has great difficulty sitting still, paying attention, being quiet, and keeping their tempers in check.  Already in my classroom, tears, profanity, and threats of physical violence have been commonplace.  A few days ago, I threw myself directly between two of my students to keep them from punching one another.

As I slowly get to know my students’ life stories, I am beginning to understand why they are so fragile and volatile.  Last year, for example, one of my students witnessed her mother’s brutal, repeated stabbing by a boyfriend.  Verbal and physical abuse and neglect are all too familiar to some of my students.  Certainly, parental interest in school is lacking for almost all of them, and more than one or two live in overcrowded and unstable home environments.

Several of my students have been prescribed medication for the conditions that interfere with their ability to succeed in school.  In just the first few days of school, I have become incredibly adept at determining in a split second whether they have actually taken their medication that day.  And the answer to that question is absolutely determinative of how that child’s day will go, and of what the overall atmosphere in my classroom will be like that day.

Then there is L., a quiet, incredibly sweet, loving girl who couldn’t be more cooperative or well behaved, and who I imagine goes home every night wondering what she’s done wrong to deserve being in class with this same group of troublesome, disruptive classmates year after year.  Unlike her classmates, L. is picked up at school every afternoon by her father, and every afternoon I make it a point to shake his hand and tell him what a pleasure it is for me to be his daughter’s teacher.

In addition to the learning disabilities and emotional/behavioral issues that make it difficult to teach my students, there is the simple fact that I have essentially no training as a teacher.  As diligently as I worked this summer to prepare for the start of school, I hardly see the connection between what I’ve learned thus far in graduate school and in the Teaching Fellows’ training program and what I am now beginning to understand is needed to effectively teach NYC’s rigorous and demanding fifth grade curriculum to students who can’t read at a 2nd grade level.  Nor have I felt adequately supported in my first week of teaching: in fact, I barely saw a school administrator (i.e., my new bosses) at all until I sought them out yesterday with the intention of announcing my resignation at the end of an incredibly lonely and exhausting week in which I felt I had failed my students, my school, and myself.  But, now that I have insisted that I can’t do this job successfully without help, I have begun to hear from people like the school’s math coach, literacy coach, and intervention specialist (whose job it is to somehow turn seriously disruptive students into docile lambs).  Perhaps next week, I will finally get the social studies and science textbooks that I have not seen thus far.  And I’m hopeful that chalk will find its way to my classroom some day soon, because I’m running out of the chalk I pilfered from my son’s art supplies to carry me through the first few days of school. 

Today (undoubtedly in an effort to ensure that I don’t quit), my Assistant Principal offered me the opportunity to “trade in” my class for the 3rd grade special ed class.  I immediately declined the offer: my ten students are MY children.  Already I feel fiercely loyal to them, and I told my AP that I’d leave the school before I’d swap them for another class.  And, with it all, I have already seen positive signs that motivate me to return for another day of teaching this particular group of kids.  For example, one of my boys had repeatedly been described to me as very angry, hostile, and violent; he’s infamous throughout the entire school for his extremely violent past behavior.  Some had even suggested that I ignore him entirely, since (they assumed) I would be unable to deal with him.  I decided instead to shower him with positive attention, to give him many opportunities to do well, and to show him that he was getting an entirely fresh start in my classroom.  To my amazement and everyone else’s, my strategy appears to be working, at least for now: N. has shown himself to be a hard-working, intelligent and well-behaved student who has been playful but not disrespectful, and whose most violent act thus far has been to throw a pen across the room.  On the couple of occasions when I have seen flashes of his infamous temper, I’ve been able to talk him back down to a state of relative calmness.   I am absolutely thrilled watching N. and I develop a positive relationship with one another, and I think the other students are pleasantly surprised that he and I are not at each other’s throats constantly, as he was with the last few teachers he had.  Thus far, he has been among the biggest reasons I have returned to the classroom each day.

There is so much more to say, but I’ll wait until I have some more teaching under my belt.  Until then, I miss you all and I look forward to seeing you soon.

August 5, 2005

This seems like a good time for update #2 from this New York City Teaching Fellow since, as of today, the New York City Department of Education considers me trained and ready to command a fifth grade special education class in September. Yesterday's session with my Fellow Advisor was the last one until October, when we will meet one more time to debrief on how things are going in my classroom.

Earlier this week, I completed a survey for the Teaching Fellows office which asked, among other things, "do you feel prepared to teach in September?" I wanted to say yes, because I desperately want to feel prepared (isn't that what the summer was for??), but I could not honestly say that I feel prepared. I am very excited, but I am also more than a little bit apprehensive. It's one thing to "assist" a veteran teacher for four hours a day in summer school; it's quite another to be solely responsible for a class of 12 students whose educational resume includes labels like "speech and language impaired," "learning disabled," and "emotionally disturbed."

While others in my 23-person FA Group clearly felt like celebrating when training came to an end yesterday, I feel a bit lost, and more than a bit afraid. While the training was certainly intense, it was also incomplete, and I hardly feel prepared for the task that lies ahead. Ask me how to react when one of my students throws a chair at another student ... I don't know. Ask me what the fifth grade curriculum looks like ... I don't know. Ask me about the social studies, math, and English language arts tests my students will have to pass on my watch to be promoted to middle school ... I haven't seen them. All of this will come in time, I know, but I would have welcomed more training so I might feel more prepared for September 8, the first day of school.

After meeting with my FA (everything is referred to by acronyms at the DOE!) for two or more hours nearly every day for the past seven weeks, saying goodbye to him yesterday felt a bit like watching my only raft float away while I bob helplessly in deep, dark ocean water. I find my FA's competence and confidence as a teacher very inspiring. If, after only two years as a teacher, he is good enough at his job to train new Teaching Fellows, maybe there is hope that I will survive, and maybe even flourish.

My apprenticeship in a summer school classroom (actually, two of them) also officially came to an end yesterday. However, my affection for the students and my desire to continue soaking up knowledge from one particular teacher who I've met at summer school have compelled me to return to the summer school classroom again on Monday, when some students will be retaking their standardized reading test, and others will be preparing to take their math test on Tuesday.

My summer school experience was a study in contrasts. While I will not dwell on the negatives, I will say that I witnessed some appalling behavior and attitudes ... and I'm not referring to the behavior and attitudes of the students. Suffice it to say that there are some teachers in the NYC school system who I do not wish to emulate, as their teaching practices are both ineffective and cold-hearted.

I feel incredibly lucky to have found at my summer school one of NYC's teaching treasures: John Rondon, who attended the same public elementary school in Fort Greene where he now teaches 5th grade. Mr. Rondon is not a young man -- he has seven grandchildren. He also has a pronounced limp which makes it difficult for him to walk. Nonetheless, this dedicated teacher hasn't missed a day of school in 14 years, and he teaches after school, on Saturdays, and in summer school in addition to his regular classroom duties. Mr. Rondon has been teaching for decades, and while he holds a doctoral degree in education, he did not elect (like so many others) to leave the classroom to become a school administrator. His classroom is an absolute joy to observe: he treats his students with respect, courtesy, and obvious affection, and they respond (usually) by working hard in order to earn his praise. He is a creative teacher who enlivens his lessons with hands-on artistic projects that the students really enjoy. He holds his students to very high standards. Every morning, each of his students receives a two-page, single-spaced "contract," including a very detailed schedule for the day, a "daily affirmation," that night's homework assignments, previews of upcoming special activities, and a section directed to the student's parent or guardian. The students are required to have each day's contract signed by a parent.

Mr. Rondon does not hesitate to offer tangible rewards to students for good work, despite the fact that he absorbs the cost of these tangible rewards. Each day, the "student of the day" receives some kind of goody from him, like a stuffed animal or a toy, and once a week, he subsidizes lunch for his students, when they order lunch in and eat together in his classroom "like a real family."

Yesterday, a girl I didn't recognize walked in to Mr. Rondon's summer school classroom and sat down. He greeted her warmly, and invited her to stay as long as she liked. Curious, I later asked him who she was. Turns out she was in 5th grade this past year, and was disappointed to pass both standardized tests because she really wanted to be in Mr. Rondon's summer school class. So from time to time, she simply drops by and sits in. Can you imagine any 5th grader choosing voluntarily to spend time in summer school?? In Mr. Rondon's room, it's easy to imagine.

Mr. Rondon has been very generous with me as well, bringing in books on teaching for me to read, and offering me advice and moral support. Yesterday, he brought to school an enormous teddy bear for my son. By far, the best thing about my summer training has been meeting Mr. Rondon. I expect I'll be calling him frequently during the school year for advice. If I were teaching at his school in September, I would be filled with confidence, as he takes great pleasure in mentoring and assisting less experienced teachers.

I have a couple more days of training later this month, sponsored not by the Teaching Fellows but by the region where I will be teaching. Perhaps some of my unanswered questions will be resolved then. If not, there are the two days before school begins when I am expected to be at PS 46, "setting up" my classroom. Perhaps then, the veteran teachers at my school will give me a quickie education on being an educator.

My next semester of graduate school begins on September 6, when I will be taking another two classes, both at night. Beginning with the fall semester, I will no longer be taking classes exclusively with other new Teaching Fellows; instead, we will be split up and will take classes with other LIU graduate students. Our days of being (relatively) privileged and protected are now over, as we become but a few among the 80,000 teachers in the NYC school system, and but a few among the many students in LIU's graduate education school. Come September, we will sink or swim like everyone else.

Look for my next update in a month or so. Enjoy the rest of the summer!

July 1, 2005

I promised to stay in touch and give you all a glimpse into the life of an "instant teacher." So here's bulletin #1, not even two weeks into the program:

That's right, in barely more than a week, I've already completed more than 30 hours of graduate school classroom time, and countless additional hours doing homework. My graduate course work at Long Island University (which is required in order to participate in the Teaching Fellows program) has proved more demanding - time-wise, anyway - than I had anticipated. The classes are very interesting (Issues in Urban Education and Perspectives on Disability), but not terribly practical for a neophyte teacher. With September looming ever closer, I feel the need to learn how to prepare lesson plans and things like that, no matter how intellectually stimulating it might be to debate whether standardized testing and retention of students who fail are sound educational policies....

In addition to the graduate classes, I spend two hours a day with my Fellow Advisor, a veteran Teaching Fellow who has been teaching for two years. What he has to say is very practical and useful, and if I have a fraction of the humor, optimism, cheerfulness, caring and thoughtfulness that he brings to his classroom, I'll be okay.

There are 22 other Teaching Fellows in my group at LIU, with whom I spend all day, every day. All of us will be teaching elementary special ed in Region 8 (in Brooklyn). While all but two of us are female, we are a racially diverse group. My peers are smart, committed and incredibly kind - exactly the kind of folks you'd want teaching your children in school. This, too, gives me optimism that this Teaching Fellows program is worthwhile, and that on some level it is clearly working.

On Tuesday, I will begin summer school training - I will be assisting in a summer school classroom at PS 67 in Fort Greene. This is where my own students (the ones from PS 46, where I will be teaching in the fall) will be attending summer school. So you can visualize my days this summer as follows: all morning in summer school, followed by all afternoon in graduate school classes, followed by a two-hour evening session with my Fellow Advisor, followed by homework for the next day of classes. Not a lot of time to "goof off"!

I am learning so much, I have been working alongside fabulous people, and I am eager to begin teaching in the fall (if more than a little bit daunted by the whole thing). That said, I also miss all of you very much. I look forward to seeing you soon. Have a wonderful Fourth of July weekend!