Thankful November: teaching at Options

Today I'm thankful for my job.  This is my seventh year teaching English to at-risk high school students at Options Charter School.  It's definitely really challenging, but also really rewarding.  I have had students I've been working with get arrested or drop out of high school, but I've also had students I've worked with graduate and go on to great things!  

A few of my favorite teaching moments from my time teaching at Options:

• Two years ago, I had a student speak at graduation and tell me I was the reason he graduated.  That made my entire year!!!
• Last year, I had a student who I had been working with since his freshmen year graduate even though all of his friends dropped out along the way.  He's leaving next week to go through basic training for the army.  
• Yesterday, I had a student tell another student that I'm like her second mom.

Not only do I have amazing stories because of the relationships I'm able to develop with students, I am also challenged every single day to teach these students as well as I can.  I've been pushed way out of my comfort zone by dealing with some of these students who are into things I had never even imagined when I was in high school, including drugs, alcohol, abuse of all kinds, probation, and arrests.  I've been challenged by taking charge of the yearbook and the student government.  I've had my patience, my classroom management skills, and my teaching skills challenged time and time again.  I am a much better teacher because of Options.

It's definitely difficult to face these challenges every day and try to remember that it is all worth it (because some days it definitely doesn't feel like it!), but I can't imagine working anywhere else.  I know that teaching at a traditional high school would be easier, but I would miss the relationships that I've formed with the students and staff.  I would miss the ability to be in complete control over my curriculum.  (I get to choose the books I teach, which is a huge blessing because I get to introduce my students to books I love.  A few of my favorites that I've taught in the past or am planning on teaching later this year are: The Catcher in the Rye, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Monster, Split, The Book Thief, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, The Kite Runner, Rooftops of Tehran, Brave New World, and Slaughterhouse Five.)  I have to say that I'm so, so thankful for my job.

Taking students shopping

Image found here

Today I took a few of my students on a quick Halloween supply shopping trip with me during my prep period.  It was the first time in a long time that I've taken any of my students out of the building and I was pleasantly surprised by how great they were.

I have to admit that taking students on field trips is one of my big fears because I never know how they're going to act.  At least if they're in my own classroom and they act up, I'm the only one that has to deal with them!  But our shopping trip today inspired me.  Maybe I'll have to give field trips a chance...  And it sure was fun walking around Meijer with a shopping cart full of pumpkins and four high school students.  It definitely brightened up my day and made me remember what I love about my job.

One more day

I know I've been completely missing from this blog but that's because I've been a bit overwhelmed.  I'm happy to say that I only have one more day of school until fall break (!!!) which I'm hoping will give me enough of a break to get me through to Thanksgiving and then until the end of the semester.

It doesn't help that Halloween, which is the biggest celebration day at my school, is coming up.  I'm in charge of the student government, and they are the ones in charge of the celebration.  Too bad that I only have a few of my student government students who seem to care about what we're trying to do.  At least those few are really helpful, so hopefully we'll manage to make it through...  I know that I can at least make it through until tomorrow afternoon!

Starting the summer with school frustration

Today is officially my first day of summer vacation and, while I'm having a great time, I have to vent about two things that are carrying over from school.

The first is the yearbook.  I have been doing the school yearbook for the past four (possibly five I'm not exactly sure) years.  I receive a stipend for doing it and it really doesn't take that much time so I usually don't mind.  Unless there are problems with the yearbook.  Last year I had a student helping me with it as part of her senior project.  She did a great job of taking pictures at events throughout the year, but then didn't manage to get them to me until the last day of school after I had already finished and submitted the yearbook.  Whoops.

This year, the problem is not with the students, but with the company that takes our school pictures and makes our yearbooks.  I had great students helping me this year who took pictures throughout the year and got them to me so I had plenty of time to finish the yearbook.  I have everything finished and submitted to the company, except the portrait pages.  I haven't been able to finish the portrait pages because the company managed to mix up the portraits from the Carmel and Noblesville schools.  I don't know if Noblesville has our pictures, but we have theirs.

Normally I love the company we work with.  They do a great job of making the yearbook easy to put together and of answering my questions.  I usually call them at least once a year to ask for a reminder on how to do something I should already know how to do and they're always really nice about it.  So I contacted them last week about the mix up with the portraits.  They said they would get their lab working on it.  Now it's a week later and I still haven't heard back from them, which means I'm waiting on them to fix the mix up so I can finish the yearbook.  Frustrating!

The second is a parent who emailed the entire staff today.  I won't go into too much detail here, but her daughter was going to our school for a little less than three weeks before she got into trouble and was sent to the juvenile detention center.  She has been there for the remainder of the school year.  I have been providing her daughter with work so she can earn her English credit, which she didn't because she didn't return enough work to us.  Today, the mom emailed the entire staff to say that we were:

1.     doing a horrible job as a school
2.     had not positively impacted her daughter in any way or given her the opportunity to earn credit
3.     have no idea what goes on with any of our students, especially during lunch when they're allowed to go off campus, and that she had seen Facebook and text messages talking about illegal activities between students during lunch.

The school principal and the social worker both responded really well and basically pointed out that:

1. If she was that concerned about the school then she should have contacted us at some point between when her daughter started going to our school (months and months ago) and the end of school.
2. That we didn't have much time to positively impact her daughter since she was with us for less than three weeks and that we aren't miracle workers.  It's not our fault that her daughter did something stupid and ended up in juvy.  I also know for a fact that we did positively influence her daughter because she would write me notes about how much she liked our school and our staff on the work she sent me from juvy.
3. That we are a charter school that doesn't receive any funding to provide lunch for our students, which means they have to be allowed to go off campus for lunch.  And that if this parent had proof that there were illegal activities going on between students during lunch and knew about them that she should have either informed us or the authorities so that we could deal with it.  Duh!

I know that this parent is simply venting, but how ridiculous to contact us the day after school gets out with accusations about our school and our ability to do our jobs.  We have had several emails going around between staff members venting our frustration with this because these are the worst accusations we've heard from a parent all year and we're all upset about it.  Now I'm going to ignore this for the rest of the day and get back to enjoying my summer vacation.

One of the reasons I teach

Today I had a student who reached the chapter in the book we're reading that contains what I've been referring to as "the twist,"  sometimes also known as "the big twist" depending on how dramatic I'm feeling that day.  It changes the way you look at the book and the characters in it.  I have told my students over and over and over how angry I will be if someone reveals "the twist" to someone who hasn't made it to that chapter in the book.

So today this student was sitting in math class.  He finished his math homework and decided he would read some of the book we're reading.  (If you know anything about my students at all, you know what a huge accomplishment this is that my student would actually read the book by choice.)  He was sitting there reading and then got to "the twist" and he freaked out.  The math teacher told me he started yelling out loud, "No way!  No way!" and then after that immediately said, "I've gotta go talk to Gretchen!"

I'm in the middle of writing questions for the last few chapters of the book while my creative writing students work on an assignment.  I look up and see this student standing in my doorway saying, "I have to talk to you about the book."  I figured from the look on his face that he had gotten to "the twist" so I told him we could talk in the hallway since I had a student in my classroom who hadn't reached that chapter yet.  I went out in the hallway and he started talking to me about what he'd read.  I don't know if I've ever seem one of my students so engaged in what they'd been reading.  He told me all about how he never expected that to happen and how he was "not really that into the book" before that chapter, but how now he's "totally excited to read it."  This made my day.  Seriously.  And I made sure to tell him that.

More heartbreak

Today was the first day we had students at school again.  We had two teacher work days to prepare, but I realized that I wasn't totally prepared.  Remember when I posted about the student who was having the week from hell earlier?  His father died over our winter break.  We have another student whose father died over winter break as well.  These kids are some of the sweetest kids I know and it just breaks my heart.  I know how hard it was for Andrew to lose a parent when he was in college.  I can't imagine how hard that would be in high school.  I didn't even know what to say to them when I saw them today.  I debated whether to say something to them about it or to not say something to them and let them simply pretend like it didn't happen for a few hours, though I know that there's no way to pretend about that...

Prayers for them both would be much appreciated.

A quote

"Kids need to think that you care before they care what you think."

What a fabulous quote.  The mother of the author of The Other Wes Moore said this when she was being interviewed on Oprah.  The truth of her statement completely struck me.  My students (since those are the only kids in my life at the moment) only care what I think because I care about them.  And that's why our school is different than other schools because every single student knows that the staff cares about them.

Devotion to my students

Today was the start of another school year.  Technically, the teachers started school on Monday, but this was the first day with students, which is why I consider it the actual start of the school year.  School isn't school without the students.  Even though I've taught at this school for four years now, I still get nervous about the start of school.  This year I was even more nervous because we had so many changes going on.

We have a new schedule.  The past four years we've been on a block schedule, which meant that I only saw my classes every other day.  But this year I'll have the same classes every day for nine weeks.  That doesn't sound bad until I remember that I used to have a bad day of classes and a good day of classes on block scheduling.  With the same classes meeting every day, what if my nine weeks ends up being on long bad day of classes!?!

We have a new math teacher.  For some reason, our school has a really hard time keeping math teachers for more than a year.  This is our third new math teacher in three years.  Not such a good record.  It's not that I don't like her, it's that I don't know her yet.  And I've always been more comfortable with the known than the unknown.  But I'm definitely excited to see how she works with the students and to help her out along the way since I'm not one of the "oldest" teachers in the building (obviously based on experience at the school, not on age).

We have a bunch of new students.  This comes from the fact that we had a really big graduating class (for our school) last year and from the fact that we raised the number of students we're accepting because we have a new staff member!  We added a Spanish teacher this year who will rotate between the two schools opposite of the PE/Health teacher.  This will be an awesome addition to our program and should (fingers crossed) bring our class sizes down a little bit too.  But again, I've always been more comfortable with the known than the unknown, so new students are always harder for me.  That's one of the things I love about teaching at my school - that I get to teach the same students year after year.  I just have to remember that some of my favorite students (I know, I'm not supposed to have favorites) were new students just a few years ago.

And I apologize for the excessive amount of parentheses I used in that last paragraph.  I'll try not to make it a habit...