Random Thoughts

Thoughts in my head:

1. I cannot believe it has been two weeks since I last blogged. A lot has happened, naturally.

2. Work is beginning to stress me out in a very real and annoying way. It's not the kids or the family or the mission of the agency... it's about the management. When a child is dying, you call am ambulance. When you have an incredibly high teacher turnover, you start to look at the common denominator. When you have really unhappy staff members, you make connections between happy teachers and well-served kids. When you have people call in sick, you hire actual subs instead of just pulling teachers out of their own classrooms. I am so incredibly tired of it.

3. I have an interview for a part-time tutoring position on Tuesday. This could be a really great way to supplement income and improve my actual teaching skills. It is with a well known and reputable tutoring company in the city, which is an awesome match and hopefully a good opportunity.

4. I should be finding out sometime this month if I get an interview for the Master's Degree/Residency Program I applied to. It would be so fantastic to finish up this step of the process.

5. My mom came this past weekend. She was, as always, fantastic. She also facilitated my first visit to the Chicago Goodwill :)

6. I got a big mirror. A big beautiful rectangular wooden mirror.

7. Said mirror is causing a problem in my apartment. I want to hang it in the middle of my long wall, but I already have BBB (beautiful black man... a drawing Ean did) hanging next to my bed. Avoid those nasty comments, please. What to do?

8. Speaking of Ean, you should all love him as much as I do.

9. I've recently realized how incredibly important family is to me. I've always felt close to my family, but this is different. I'm starting to look at the future Stephanie more and more, and having my family involved in the life of my future family is becoming a massive priority.

10. It's nearly November. Holy moly.

Sacrifice

As I was leaving my apartment at 6:15 in the morning earlier this week, I was struck by a profound sense of the tranquility of my city home. My feet crunching the dry leaves as I tread, breathing in the crisp autumn air... I felt at peace. It was a different kind of feeling, one I've not experienced in the city for quite some time. Often I allow myself to get so immersed in the "real" things of life... my commute, my job responsibilities, my financial situation and what to cook for dinner... and entire days and weeks pass by without notice. These things are what define the course of our lives, but it is the smaller tastes of comfort that sustain it. Definition is only as good as the sustainability plan keeping it moving, and this moment of peace was my sustenance for this crazy week.

As I thought more about this, I reflected on why I was able to enjoy a moment of calm in the midst of everything... it is because I was out of my apartment early in the morning. I sacrificed my sleep and my comfort and my warm bed, and in return I found a bit of contentment that powered my day. I have sacrificed aspects of my personality, I have given up some specific career plans, and I have surrendered the part of me that had to have everything all worked out. These things were not easy to give up... but they were necessary on the path towards living a sustainable lifestyle. Perhaps true peace requires sacrifice? What in your life have you surrendered in order to gain a sense of "rightness" with the world?

Columbus Day

I despise Columbus Day for one big reason... Columbus was an insufferable, egotistical, maniacal, murderous person. Happy for him that he found the West Indies, really. Not so happy for the entire destruction of a people that was to follow.

So instead of saying a WORD about dear old Chris today, I decided to do a project on Native Americans and the different regions of the United States.

I split my kids up into 5 groups and they went at it, working on the different regions of the US and the Native Americans that (once) called those places home. So often children hear "Indian" and they think "tepee and buffalo..." and so it's nice to give them a broader view.











Plus, my kids ARE incredible. I am in love with my job, even though I clocked in about 10.5 hours before I clocked out today. Long day that went smoothly and quickly... the stuff a "holiday" is made of.

One Big Week

Like everyone who works a full-time and consuming sort of job, I will say it: I cannot believe it is Friday already. I remember saying on TUESDAY of this week that if I could get through Wednesday I could make it to Friday.

Well, I made it in one relatively composed piece.

The beginning of this week was fraught with emotional drama on a scale I've not dealt with in a long time.

The middle of this week was mostly good, included being shouted at by a woman on the street, waiting many combined hours for a one bus, enjoying a lovely dinner and evening with someone who is growing special to me, connecting with a particularly enjoyable work-study student, turning in the two reports I've been slaving over, clocking in and out at normal times, and loving all over my kids.

The end of my week was filled with efficiency in my personal life- making appointments and figuring out financial stuff and making a to-do list for my weekend for the first time in a long time.

I think this means... this is real life.

Classrooms

About six work days ago, I entered my classroom as a teacher. I have entered many classrooms as a teacher, starting in my third semester at Anderson University.

I began entering classrooms as a teacher with my early childhood practicum in the fall of 2007. It was in the kindergarten room at Park Place Church of God, and I was basically a teacher's assistant. Four hours a week I hung out with some little kids and I taught two pretty terrible lessons, but it allowed me to develop some comfort in the classroom as an authority.

In the spring of 2008, I started individual literacy tutoring at Forest Hills Elementary School. I had an adorable little third grade student and I learned about individual student motivation, assessment-based targeted instruction, and writing ridiculously detailed lesson plans.

In the fall of 2008, I spent two hours a week at St. Mary's School teaching a small group in a literacy program to kindergarten and first grade students. I learned about group management, the importance of enunciation with LEP students, and the stress of after-school programming and student attention. I also worked in a fifth grade classroom at Forest Hills Elementary, teaching one math lesson a week. I learned about the ridiculous nature of some curriculum and the school scheduling that can absolutely destroy a lesson plan.

In the spring of 2009, I again worked in two separate practicums. At Robinson Elementary School I worked in a kindergarten classroom with mostly ESL students, and also did some ESL push-in work. I learned about the social-work aspect of teaching, and the difficulties of navigating school politics and what is best for students. I then drove across town to Killbuck Elementary School for a practicum in a fifth grade classroom teaching Language Arts and Social Studies. For some reason, it was in this classroom that I learned to own a room and manage students and be an effective teacher. Those lesson plans ROCKED.

When I started my student teaching placement at Jahn Elementary School in the fall of 2009, I was terrified. It was a first grade classroom filled with babies that I was afraid of, and it took me four months to navigate the stresses of teaching full time and being a student in my other full time, and be an effective teacher at the same time. After the winter break in the 2009-2010 school year, I started my fourth/fifth grade split placement at Jahn Elementary School. By this time I was familiar with the school and the culture I was working in, and looking forward to creating new and engaging lesson plans with older students. Instead I was met with the frustrating system of high-stakes testing that left my 9 year old kids in tears, and left me as a glorified proctor without anything to teach. After the ISAT was over I was finally able to teach, and my two major units brought me confidence in my ability to manage a classroom and develop a plan and execute a unit that students can learn from. I walked away from my student teaching with the ability to teach.

My next classroom was Romania... I had 21 of them. It was at the same time overwhelming, exhilarating, exhausting, amazing, frustrating and empowering. I am absolutely sure that spending a year teaching in that environment brought me classroom management skills that could not have been acquired in this country. Do you know how difficult it is to keep 11 classes of non-English speakers engaged and learning for 40 minute sessions each week? Do you know how hard it is to manage a classroom of 42 students who are developmentally conditioned to resist authority anyway? Do you know how hard it is to motivate eighth grade students who see no reason to learn what you have to teach them? I know all of those things, and I walked away from that opportunity with a handful of new skills and a huge amount of experience and a confidence in my ability to do anything because I did THAT.

And so when I walked into my classroom six days ago, I owned it. I have a lot of work to do, but it is incredibly encouraging and validating to feel perfectly comfortable with my students and my responsibilities. Here are some pictures of my classroom:

Numbers

For the last five work days, I have been working on collecting and analyzing data for the two reports that are due next week. The funding FROM my program is responsible for a large percentage of the child care budget SEAC is working with, and the funding FOR my program is quite reliant on these two reports. So I've been a little stressed.

I could talk about a lot of stuff, including how incredibly disorganized my new office is, how much work I have to do, how desperately I want to get things under control, and how much I am loving this new aspect of my job.

But I want to talk to you about the subject of numbers and integrity.

We had a certain number of clients last quarter. We dropped a certain amount of clients and we added a certain amount of new clients. This comes out to the magic number of 120... and ALL week long I worked to get to that number. It should be more clean cut than that, right? You count up the files and you match it with the database and voila it's golden.

That's not exactly how things have been done at SEAC. We didn't have an accurate database of clients, and we have about 3 client files that are completely missing. As in not anywhere in our office. And because I live in fear of getting audited... this causes complications. We certainly cannot count clients that we don't have evidence of participation for... can we?

I struggled all week to maintain professional integrity. Do you know how easy it would have been to simply "delete" this family and pull their file, or not drop that family and leave their file in the records? Do you KNOW how easy it would have been after HOURS of trying and trying to make the numbers work? It would have been so easy.

But alas, at 12:47 on Friday afternoon... the numbers worked. And all was right with the world. I can't do much, but I can promise that when I am doing this again in preparation for the 4th quarter report... it will NOT be like this.