Week One: Part Deux

With the first week of school already gone, it's beyond my comprehension how it went so well. Of course, since my memories from last year's first month are suppressed and blacked out, I have nothing to compare it to - but something tells me this year is starting off way better. With all of TFA's drilling of teacher tactics over the first summer, and just given the fact that you have no idea what the hell you are getting yourself into, you begin your first year of teaching with a teacher personality that is not 100% you. Last year it took a few months for me to get past that and start actually acting like myself, and it's amazing how your students respond to it. Maybe being in this community makes them more aware of it, but these kids are incredibly good at weeding through the bullshit and always know which adults are being genuine to them. I've never been so comfortable in front of my class as I was this week, because what my students saw was my 100% real personality, and I think they could tell. For instance, my bathroom pass this year is a toilet seat I bought at Home Depot for $7 - to which my friends respond when I tell them: "Wow, you're THAT teacher?" Yes, I am, and I enjoy it.

Overall things couldn't be going better; I'm even remembering student names way faster this year. In some ways it's going TOO well though, like how already I've been asked by new students to be the girls' volleyball coach, the cross-country coach, and the advisor for a student service club. I still haven't officially said no to any of them, because I recently learned that I'm incapable of saying the word No. I'm already this year on the coaching staff for our boys' soccer team, so hopefully I'll have my act together by November. It may take that long for me to figure out how to plan for three classes and still have a normal bedtime. If my Precalculus class weren't so awesome, I would complain and ask the math department to redistribute the curriculum assignments. Why, after all, does nearly every teacher have to teach three different classes? Doesn't it make more sense if we divided the classes so that nearly everybody only has one class curriculum? I dare not bring that up in the department meetings though, because I would rather not have a long conversation about what is and isn't fair - as it turns out, we distribute the Algebra classes so that every teacher gets an equal "experience" with it, and no one is spared the joy of having at least one class that pushes you to your breaking point. It's funny how after only two days of school it was clear that that class would be my 3rd period Algebra. The optimist in me doubts that it will be that bad though. After all, I'm an amazing second year teacher now! Ha.

All of our new TFA teachers at Richmond - two of them math teachers - are just like little self-esteem boosters for returning TFAers. I'm sure they are told, just like we were, to reach out to older staff, and they make even me feel like the smartest, most experienced teacher they've ever met. This of course, is supported by the image I have been creating for myself in department meetings. My one goal this year was to try to get our math teachers more aligned in what they teach so that the movement of students from one math teacher to another wouldn't be so drastic a change for them. Plus, we could compare results from tests and discuss things that work and didn't work in class - actually work as a team, I mean. So all these two first-year TFAers have seen of me is my standing in front of our veteran math department teachers explaining how I think we should all align our teaching plan to something that looks like mine. I presented my year-long unit plan, and to my surprise, everybody jumped on board, even saying that mine makes way more sense than the one our district tries to make us do. Or maybe I've just been fostering such good relationships for a year that they feel like they can't argue with me. Either way, the job gets done! So, in the familiar theme of making more work for myself, I am now responsible for sending out all my materials to our Algebra and Geometry teachers, and our plan is to all make common assessments together so that we will essentially all be teaching the same math class (what a concept) and then we can actually compare student results between teachers. Talking one-on-one with one of our new teachers, he said that it looks like I'm pretty much the department head without the title. I laughed pretty hard, but I think I'm going to just let him think that I'm amazing. What he doesn't know won't hurt him, right?