Prepping for YEAR #3!

We're back from our little "Tour USA" roommate-bonding-vacation experience! 

Back just in time for the start of the new school year! Apparently, I've forgotten how much work it takes the month of August to prepare for the new school year starting in September. 

On my to-do list this past week and this weekend: 

• move in all my supplies to my room in the Bronx (shout out to my roomie for letting me borrow his car for this... he's the only one that owns a car out of the four of us in the house) 
• buy classroom and school supplies (aka deal hunting across four boroughs)
• get lesson plans finalized, units finalized, IEP's read and discussed, push-in teacher support discussed, Common Core integrated into my lessons, new classroom policies and procedures, class Facebook account updated, student surveys made... 
• get my first day of school outfit ready!! 
• meet with my in-school mentor and Teachers College, Columbia University mentor
• get grad school course schedule prepared and finalized
• write a letter to parents
• meet with my principal to discuss goals for this year
• co-plan lessons with the other teachers
• meet our school's new teachers for this year
• hang out with old friends from high school (ahhh they were freshmen when I was a senior! yeah we go back way far!) 
• analyze scores of my incoming students on their NYS exams and prepare lessons to remedy common errors and weaknesses 
• rewrite my Integrated Algebra syllabus to update it with changes I've came up with over the summer 

That all being said, I am SO EXCITED TO MEET MY NEW STUDENTS. Unlike last year's students, this incoming group is commended by their 7th grade teachers as well-behaved and eager to learn meaning my job will be significantly easier. Now that I'm entering my third year with 8th graders, third year teaching 8th grade NYS math and second year teaching Integrated Algebra, I no longer have that "first year teacher" feel. The students know me and I already know some of them. And most of all, I feel completely confident in front of the class.

I remember student teaching up until this point in my career now. Each year brings new faces, new challenges and new rewards. 

To supplement my income this year, I am still tutoring GED with the City but also privately tutoring middle/high school math (including AP and SAT/ACT) and middle/high school Spanish (including AP and SATII)... on top of finishing up at Teachers College, Columbia University. 

I'm REALLY going to keep my readers on track this year with my teaching adventures... so consider this the before-school year post:) 

now, time for a nap. i am exhausted. #teacherproblems 

Tour USA con los ROOMIES!!!

AHHH! It's the ultimate teacher summer dream! With some lesson planning and preparing for the school year already underway, some summer classes towards my M.Ed. in Curriculum & Teaching from Columbia University (it was Summer Session A if you were wondering...more on that later) completed, my roomies and I are officially planning a trip across the United States! 

If you are new to my blog, I live in a four bedroom house that is shared between three other 20-something professionals and I. There are two males, including me, and two females. Our vacation together will begin this Thursday and will last until Sunday, August 25th. 

Here are our sites: 

-from NYC to the Jersey Shore! 
-from NJ to Boston
-from Boston back to NY (we're playing "tourist") to Washington, D.C./N. Virginia/S. Maryland
-from D.C. to Nashville (country concerts galore!)
-from Nashville to Cincinnati, Ohio (my roomate's boyfriend lives there) 
-from Cincinnati to Chicago!
-from Chicago to Albuquerque (lots of Spanish for a Spanish minor who LOVES Spanish!) 
-from Albuquerque to LA and San Francisco!! 
-from Cali back home :) 

As for my previous mention about grad school... yes, I am going back to school. I'm enrolled in Teachers College, Columbia University. However, no worries, I AM still teaching and plan to keep teaching for at least a few more years after graduating from my M.Ed. program. 

See you soon! I'll try to update on my vacay with the roomies but I'll be too busy having fun. Oh and not too much computer access. 

Teachers being moved around

One of the perks of our union contract is that our principal must notify us of our schedule, the classes we will be teaching, sp-ed/ELL population and push-in/pull-out teacher information on or before the last day of school. 

I am remaining in 8th grade next year (three years in a row), with 4 classes of 8th grade math and 1 section of Integrated Algebra. (I had two sections this year but with the low state exam scores due to the implementation of the Common Core, some students had their IA recommendation rescinded since they have to get a level 3 or level 4 for 8th grade IA.) 

2013-2014 school year schedule: 
0- Advisory/Homeroom
1- 8th Grade Accelerated Integrated Algebra
2- planning period
3- 8th Grade Mathematics
4- 8th Grade Mathematics*
5- lunch
6- duty period (TBD)
7- 8th Grade Mathematics
8- 8th Grade Mathematics

*4th period has 6 special ed students and 5 ELL's. There will be push-in support on Tuesdays and Thursdays for sp-ed and on Wednesdays for ELL. 

My amazing colleague of two years now, Miss Gonzalez -- soon to be Mrs. Gonzalez-Fernandez (name changed as usual on this blog) is being moved to 7th grade. Mr. Carter is being moved to a 6th/7th grade split. Mr. Gorbett is staying in 8th grade. Mr. Buchell has been transferred to a different school (FINALLY). A new teacher, Miss Davidson, a first year teacher from Upstate NY and a graduate of my alma mater, NYU, has been hired to teach an 8th grade math/6th grade math split. Surprisingly, my principal even moved my mentor, a rising ninth year teacher from 6th grade to 7th grade in her last year of teaching. What goes on in a principal's mind about moving a teacher's schedule is foreign to me, but somehow, I don't understand why my schedule hasn't been altered severely yet. Maybe I want to ask for new grades during my fourth year of teaching? I wonder what 6th and 7th grades are like... but what if I miss the familiarity that I have developed over the past few years with 13 & 14 year olds? 

2nd year of teaching & how Room 203 fared in New York's Common Core state test!

Ahhh... it feels good to be back to my blog! After a particularly EXHAUSTING school year (which, unfortunately, I have not nearly been able to tell my readers about AT ALL), this summer has been nothing but relaxing, welcome and rejuvenating. 

While some of my classes this year were pleasant and well behaved, two of my five class periods were absolutely horrendous. As in straight-from-the-bottom-of-hell terrible. As any teacher will tell you, in a class of 30 students, only about 10 students are the real troublemakers. In the case of my two classes, a total of FIVE students in each class caused the trouble that I, and my 25 well-behaved, eager to learn students had to deal with. Frequent trips to the discipline AP, who has been nothing but supportive, were necessitated. I even set up meetings with my professors at NYU to discuss their tips for classroom management. My amazing mentor, entering her ninth (and final :( :( ) year of teaching come September has saved my life countless times in my unruly classes.

Both of my unruly classes were the standard 8th grade math class. However, it would not be fair to those classes if I didn't acknowledge all the positive aspects of my students. For the most part, they were bright, funny, eager to learn, perseverant and EAGER TO PLEASE. Never would my friends, colleagues or my family guess how eager to please some of my 14 year old students were! They were always completing their homework (most of the time SHOWING THEIR WORK!!) and even put aside personal differences to work together with their "enemies" during group and partner activities. We had a lot of fun this year and I know I will definitely remember so many of my students - 8th grade math and Integrated Algebra students. (I had one 8th grade math class that was literally ANGELIC. I wish I could loop with them next year in high school. Of course, I wished I could loop with my students from my first year in high school as well.) 

On top of some difficult classes, I had two new big things to worry about this year: New York State's adoption of the Common Core (which all states are adopting next year) and my taking over the school's first 8th grade accelerated Integrated Algebra program. 

GREAT NEWS! Integrated Algebra was a success! Despite hours of planning, conference calls, late nights, early mornings and yes.. some tears as to why I was naive enough as a second year teacher to take over a pilot program at our school -- Integrated Algebra Regents exam scores were absolutely AMAZING. Over 85% of my students will be earning high school credit (some at schools like Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, Townsend Harris...)!!! 

The Common Core -- I had a lot of support with. My mentor, principal, AP, department chair, co-teachers, NYU professors and of course, THE INTERNET all helped me get through the tough transition to the Common Core. NYT/Chancellor Walcott & Mayor Bloomberg and Michelle Rhee have all commented earlier this week about NYC's miraculous state score improvement. We are almost caught up with the rest of the state :) Sad news - I believe the state proficient/advanced rate is 31%. NYT says that NYC's is 29.6%. Our school's rate for ELA dropped significantly to 19% and math dropped to 25%. My students' scores - across the board in all 5 classes- were 40% proficient/advanced, 41% level II and 19% level I. Huge drop from last year... but then again, Common Core's standards are exponentially higher. 

I wonder how this is going to affect my value added/my tenure portfolio... 

I'm really going to go out of my way to blog more next year - I promise! Thanks for reading my newest update :) Check back for more soon!

Re-Blog: How to Save our Educators

This infographic was first published by University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education and is entitled "How to Save our Educators". Here's the link to the original infographic and the School's website: http://rossieronline.usc.edu/how-to-save-our-educators-infographic 

How race plays a factor when you are teaching in the Bronx

I am an Asian male, 100% Chinese. In elementary school, my family (well, just my parents and I) immigrated to NYC from Shanghai so my parents could each take a job in cancer research at Columbia. I was taught that it didn't matter what race I was in America. I was taught that in America, people valued who I was on the inside, not the color of my skin.

Fast forward to junior year in high school - specifically "Career Day" - I announced to my friends, teachers and guidance counselor that I wanted to be a math teacher in the inner city. I spent a few minutes discussing the achievement gap, the crisis in public education, the disparity of educational inequity... without a single regard to the fact that I am an Asian immigrant from a middle/upper middle class neighborhood in Queens looking to teach a majority African-American population in a lower/lower middle class neighborhood. My announcement drew warnings and concern from my peers and the adults at my high school:

• "Dude, you are so smart. Why do you want to reduce yourself to teaching in some poor area?"
• "The kids will never listen to you. You are Asian and they are... black. You think they will respect you?"
• "Trust me. It sounds like something worthwile but you will come to hate it once you realize the realities in those schools. This isn't like [insert Queens neighborhood here]."
• "Are you kidding? It's dangerous there!"

And then there were my parents, who wanted me to enter some pre-med program and become "a doctahr". My grades and test scores were good enough to get me into Columbia's pre-med program. They were even willing to support my minor in Spanish if I just went into pre-med.

Six years later, I came into contact with the first of my racial discomforts while student teaching at a similar middle school in the South Bronx. The students, just like my students now, were mostly (aka 97%) Hispanic and African-American. It took a while to adjust to me being the only Asian in the room. Even their teachers and the principal were of the same race as the kids. The custodians, secretaries, teacher assistants, school psychologist and nurse were of the same race as the students. It's difficult to command respect and be taken seriously when you are the minority - the misfit - in your own classroom. Eventually, I was able to earn the respect and following of my students. Both last year and this year, the beginning of the year started off rocky when the students were just beginning to adjust to the fact that their teacher wasn't "one of them". I got comments from students saying that "I [don't] understand what it's like to be them... what they have to go through...". And the truth was, I didn't. I'm not from the same neighborhood as my students. I have never experienced poverty, family breakups, etc. My neighborhood didn't have gang activity, drugs or a prostitution problem.

How could I expect to be taken seriously by my students? When I'm telling them that college is in their reach and they have everything it takes to make it in the world, break the cycle of poverty and close the achievement gap, was that message really getting through to them? I know that last year, these motivational words broke some of the barriers separating me from my students. I formed a close relationship with my students and that definitely eased A LOT of the difficulty of my first year of teaching. A couple months ago, the same thing happened to this year's group of students. They took longer, but the bonds are stronger.

Yes, race will always be an issue. It's inevitable for me. There are still parents who don't value what I have to say. I still have some students who don't like me or believe that I don't understand them. Race is a sensitive topic and an intangible challenge. But it's one we have to fight as teachers.

SO MUCH TO DO. SO LITTLE TIME TO DO IT.

I swear, for a moment in the past two months, I forgot that I actually had a teaching blog.

So much has gone on in my five classes since I last wrote in January that I couldn't possibly fill you guys all in. This year has definitely been my busiest.

However, I can say that my students are demonstrating tremendous growth. I have seen grades rise from as low as 64% first quarter to B's this quarter. My classroom has became the sanctuary of learning and confidence that I have always dreamed of. I am closer to my students than I was before break and my students are coming to me to talk and get advice on school, relationships, family matters and their futures.

As a side bonus, with looming NYS exams and Regents exams, I have done something different this year with my classroom. Towards the end of each big unit in both Pre-Algebra and Integrated Algebra, the students break into groups to create a poster of each of the major concepts covered during the unit. The poster includes a summary of the concept and all the crucial points that go under it, any formulas to use, possible shortcuts and example problems with worked solutions. I have many pretty colors and (new this year: glitter!!!) for the posters -bought out of pocket-, so I expect them to be aesthetically appealing. I hang the posters up around the room for the students (Pre-Alg has the left and front sides and Integrated Algebra has the right and back sides) to see. It definitely demonstrates the breadth of material they have been learning and serves as kind of a "visual fossil" of their learning and progress throughout the year. Here's where the side bonus comes in: half of my review planning that begins in... oh just a 3 weeks or so... is halfway complete!!!

We've made it through so much of the year already. I do love my students. Even though we started off shaky, by the time mid-February rolled around (just in time for my 23rd birthday!), the magic sparked and everything fell into place. Now, we just have to make it through the test prep month of April, testing weeks in May and we're set! The month of June, judging from last year, is stress-free and easy breezy :)