On August 6, 2007, the principal of S.V. Marshall High School stood in the middle of the gymnasium and introduced the new teachers -- as usual, about 1/3 of the faculty -- to the assembled students. Four new math teachers were introduced, and the school year started with the following line-up:
7th grade - Ms. Gordon
8th grade - Mr. Arandt
9th grade - Mr. Ray
10th grade - Mr. Nastrom
11th grade - Mr. Naklicke
When the year ended the staffing pattern of those positions looked like this:
7th grade - Ms. Gordon / Long-term Sub / Ms. Clark
8th grade - Mr. Arandt / Long-term Sub / Mr. Collins / Long-term Sub / Ms. Walker
9th grade - Mr. Ray
10th grade - Mr. Nastrom
11th grade - Mr. Naklicke / Long-term Sub / Mr. Chisholm / Long-term Sub
Those are facts. It's also a fact that in August 2007, 26 MTC members started as 1st-year teachers and 24 were still there on the last day of school. To us in MTC, those numbers (92%) suck; anyone who quits in the middle of the school year is a tremendous disappointment. But in comparison to my department last year, which had only 40% of its original teachers at the end of the year and had lost 2 mid-year hires on top of that, 24 out of 26 isn't so bad.
In light of these numbers, I marvel at the internal worry in MTC over whether we're qualified to be there or whether we have good motives or whether we do any good at all. Now, after a year of teaching, the answers are so obvious the questions are barely worth asking. And a year ago, when I agreed to join MTC, I really checked at the door all reason to gaze at my own navel about these things. I signed up to do a job and that was that.
But that's just me, and I've been wrong before. Maybe I still should be looking deeper. Or maybe -- probably -- almost certainly, I really believe that I can do some good in a critical needs school, and self-doubt has no place in this theater of operations.
If the history books are right, Mississippi has always been a place for people willing to make big decisions in a big hurry and back them up with whatever it takes. I suppose that's still true.
The children of Humphreys County Junior and Senior High Schools always get an extra smile the day after Mr. Amutah takes time to partake of fried catfish at The Varsity.
Here is the article with video:
Article about the Mississippi Teacher Corps:
Back in the summer of '99 I had my first legal job at the Federal Public Defender in Detroit. In contrast to popular perception, I noticed that the best lawyers tended to be the most humble and asked the most questions. When I started working in private practice I saw the same thing: the lawyers with the corner offices and the seats on the executive board that ran the firm were the lawyers who were constantly asking questions. They would listen to anyone, even a summer intern or a lowly first-year associate who came to them with a carefully reasoned suggestion. They were the best because they didn't act like they were the best.
Being a second-year MTC member and ex officio coach I am thinking about those great women and men I worked for because the example they set is that no one ever stops learning. With a year of teaching under my belt, I have experience to share with the first-years. Not much, but more than them. They, in turn, have no years of teaching under their belts and thus are well equipped to take the edge off my cynicism. They are excited about teaching and trying things that I tried a year ago but gave up during the year because I was too tired or too cranky or too whatever-it-was. I didn't realize how much bah-humbug had crept into my thinking until the first-years arrived and started walking the halls of Holly High with excitement falling out of their pockets. It's persuaded me that the ideas I had last summer and early in the fall were good ideas even if I didn't quite know how to implement them at the time.
As for specific coaching techniques, I believe all situations are covered by these three principles:
1. Praise as much as possible. Everyone likes to have evidence of their goodness.
2. If criticism is necessary, get to the point. No one should have to speculate about what they can improve.
3. Encourage second opinions. Even when I know I'm right, there's a chance I might be wrong.
I played around with many things during the year when it came to assessments. I started off loose, writing tests the morning I planned to give them so I could take into account how things had developed as I taught the lessons. That had benefits but also the major drawback that virtually none of the questions were multiple choice. The students disliked open-response questions, and the various evaluators from the state department and consulting firms told me in so many words that, because the state test is all multiple choice, I did my students a huge disservice by giving them anything other than multiple choice tests.
I think the state test does my students and my school district a huge disservice by existing but that's not my decision to make and it's irresponsible of me to disadvantage my students because of my personal opinions.
So I adapted, but not all the way right away because I'm stubborn like that. In the second nine weeks I started mixing in multiple choice questions. That worked OK. In the third nine weeks I implemented a plan straight from the state department's playbook: 100% multiple choice tests written before planning any of the unit's lessons. Easy to score, tough on the students as their grades dropped. In the fourth nine weeks, with the instruction out of the way and review for the state test as the main topic, I dispensed with tests altogether. That worked best because the students relaxed.
All along I never really had a plan. Since I'll be teaching Algebra I again next year, I want to be more systematic about everything, now that I have a better idea what to expect. Here are some things I'll take into account:
1. The window for teaching new material closes on the Friday before Presidents Day. After that the sports tournaments start, then spring break, then Easter break, then . . .
2. Class attendance is a form of assessment. This past year I had exactly 33% of my Algebra I students miss at least 20% of the class days in the first semester. Not surprisingly, all but two of them failed my class, and those two needed a lot of luck, hard work, and good will on my part to pass. This year I think I'll tell kids who fall in that frequent-absentee category to start saving their pennies for Summer School 2009.
3. 5 x 20 ≠ 20 x 5. Last year I skimped on quizzes and relied on a few long tests to assess my students. I now believe it's better to give several short assessments because the material is fresher and the students don't freak about a quiz like they do about a test.
Sandra Knispel, a journalist for Mississippi Public Broadcasting, recently won the Mississippi AP Award for Best Documentary (Radio) for the following piece, featuring two Mississippi Teacher Corps teachers, Ashley Johnson and Elizabeth Savage:
At the end of last year's summer school, I hoped that my students and I could just get along. I had listened all summer to the horror stories and really wanted to be different. So I went in with rules, but they were rather general -- more like goals than objectives to borrow the terminology of curriculum development. At the same time, I was adamantly opposed to rewards on the theory that I should not have to give a student a prize for doing what she should have been doing all along.
After three weeks of trying the gentler approach I was at the end of my rope. I over-corrected and became oppressive. My students behaved better but they did not like me at all. Eventually I realized something would have to give or I wouldn't have any fun at all. I still didn't have a reward system.
The single most important change in my classroom management plan came the day we returned from Thanksgiving break, when I finally caved. I unveiled streamlined, succinct rules. I added a consequence of putting names on the board and, more importantly, I created a reward system with tickets. To this day I am amazed how powerful it is to put a kid's name on the board. It seemed to work especially well for boys. The candy worked well with everyone.
Through all of this there were a handful of students that I never got along with. By Christmas our relationships had become so hardened that I could tell within a minute or two if I would have to put them out of class. Looking back, I probably could have avoided a lot of the entrenched conflict early in the year but I was overwhelmed and didn't know what to do. Next year I hope to have better luck intervening gently with the repeat offenders at an earlier stage, before every day becomes a high-noon stand-off.
In closing I would warn first years that developing a classroom management plan before teaching a day in your school is like trying to draw a detailed map of a place you've never visited. Naturally things will have to change so the question becomes what changes to make. I found that the feedback I got from people who observed me teaching in my classroom at my school was invaluable in deciding what adjustments to make. It's not that other people don't have sound advice to offer, but I placed more stock in the words of people who had seen with their own eyes the crap I had to put up with. Maybe that's just me...
