I love teaching middle school students. Sometimes it feels like a vocation and sometimes it feels like a tremendous responsibility, but usually it’s a job…that I happen to enjoy. I began teaching English for several reasons initially: reading and writing are what I do in my spare time, a couple youth leader jobs made me realize I relate well with teens, it seemed like a stable enough position, and I have always been a curious person (just ask my mom). Since then, I have added other reasons: it’s fun to share my interest in a good book or classic song with young people, their enthusiasm for learning amazes me, challenging them with educational uses of technology intrigues me, and sharing my writing with teens has taught me much about the writing process and humility.
A couple decades later, I can say that it has been the right career for me. I have taught mostly English to 6th – 12th graders (American Literature to Creative Writing to Journalism), but I have also ventured into Social Studies, Math, Science (for one crazy semester) and Special Education. Earlier this year, I wrote about how grateful I am to be teaching and, as Wally Juall used to say, teaching continues to be just “another day in paradise.”
This year, I have felt blest with some of the most well-behaved, fun, creative, curious 7th and 8th graders I have ever taught. As the year has progressed, however, other factors have come into play. Teaching should really be about the students. And most of these “other factors” do have the students’ best interests at heart. I realize that. People have worked very hard to make many of the “factors” in the list, below, happen. I appreciate their work. However…this list is waaaaaaay too long. And it parallels how our curriculum is a mile wide and an inch thick; we try to do so much and we do it okay/fair/good enough, instead of doing a few things well.
The following list was a collaboration between several MacDonald Middle School teachers and myself. I, as one teacher, have experienced them all, though. They were all on my plate at once. This was part of my reality this year…
Partial list of one MacDonald Middle School teacher’s responsibilities for the 2011-2012 school year:
• Michigan’s Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative (MiBLSi) which focuses on improving school behaviors by implementing strategies like a 3-2-1 school-wide method of getting students’ attention.
• School wide vocabulary (look under “Academic Vocabulary” at the bottom of MMS website) which has Reach teachers sharing definitions of 35 core words, as well as getting students to complete sentences using the words
• Common Core implementation, which is at the heart of what we’re doing lately; The nation is trying to set clear, consistent standards for each grade level and teachers are expected to reach those standards in their daily lessons
• Being evaluated by the new evaluation system, which involves regular visits to classrooms, goals to work on and show “artifacts” of, and a re-vamped (and skewed) rubric for teachers to aspire to
• Reading an anti-bullying book, The Revealers, with our Reach class and other initiatives involved with this
• Promoting the KONY assembly and follow-up activities
• Administering the MAZE/AIMS Web Reading and Math tests three times this year and correcting them in short order so we have feedback soon
• Updating my homework pages online (at least weekly)
• Returning email messages from parents and staff
• Check-in/check-out with some students
• Pressure to attend CHAMPS training which is part of the RtI (Response to Intervention) movement or philosophy
• Pressure to have students give teachers feedback
• Voluntary attendance and participation the Teaching Across Cultural Differences workshops (which I did and enjoyed greatly)
• SWISS tracking of students’ misbehavior and the behavior rubric
• Filling out dailies for some students
• New Reach initiative re: planner checks,organizing on Tuesdays, etc.
• Facilitating the use of Restorative Justice
• Passing out Trojan Tickets (a positive behavior incentive to promote Respect, Responsibility, and Relationships in our building)
• Student of the Month participation (selection, write-up, attendance at ceremony)
• Writing letters of reference for students for ISHALL, etc
• Including Rigor
• Technology implementation in a tech-poor building
• Reading Marshall Memos
• Administering the MEAP
test
• Creating common assessments for each core subject area at each grade ….
aka., creation, implementation, grading, collection and analysis of data, and collaboration with peers to improve pedagogy based on data with no PLCs in existence or half-days (like the high school teachers under the same contract have)
• Department Chairs reading Teach Like a Champion, designed to improve classroom management(though not a department chair, I did fill in for our English chairperson while she was on maternity leave and read the book and attended extra meetings)
• Filling out Progress Reports for students taking sports
• (teaching) Creating daily lesson plans, as well as giving feedback to students and assessing student work
Yes, I will take part of my summer vacation to just relax. But especially after this year, I will feel no guilt. No passing comment by a hard-working, non-school employee about “months off” in the summer will affect me. I’ll spend this summer re-working lesson plans, working at a middle school technology camp, reading some Young Adult literature (Mockingjay and Goliath…both the third book in amazing trilogies), trying some new technologies to help me decide whether I want to use them with my students, writing my chapter of a collaborative book on teaching with technology, traveling so I have some juicy stories to tell next year’s students, and working on some other to-do list, I’m sure.
I may look back over the above list, though. I’m one of those students that needs more time to fully comprehend what’s put in front of me. It may take me until the end of the summer to completely “get” what really happened this year — just in time to see next year’s avalanche.