"You be my favorite."

One of the greatest parts about being a second year teacher is the fact that so many of my students from last year are so happy to talk to me now. I smile a little to myself when I think about how often I had to knock on their desk or tap them on their shoulder to get them to lift up their head in class (or actually wake up and wipe the drool off their face) last year. But this year, I have to literally block the door to keep several of them from sneaking in alongside my current freshmen. Not only do they attempt to sneak in, but many students drop by just to say hi or to chat. Today during the passing time between lunch and 7th period, one of my female students from last year walked in my room looking for me. She just came in to say hello and then left to go to class. I usually stand outside my door between classes to hurry kids along to class and to say hello, but today I was busy and didn't stand by my door. I guess she wanted to say hello anyway.

My all-time favorite story from today... another of my female students was after school for volleyball and stopped by to chat. She asked if I had talked to the Sophomore english teacher recently. After I said no, I asked her why. She said because she was talking to her teacher about me during class. I wasn't totally sure what to expect, but then when I asked why, she said, "You be my favorite Ms. Reimer." I said, "Why is that?" And she said, "Because you never gave up on us. Even though I be kinda slow sometimes, you never quit explaining how to do it. Not all teachers are like you."

It was one of the good days today!

Second Year, New Beginnings

August 15 5 am: Alarm sounds, I jump out of bed and into the shower. Year 2, Day 1.

It was hard to believe walking into my school building that I had been away for 2 months, it felt like two weeks. I am teaching the same courses in the same classroom with the same freshmen team. Thankfully, having a similar setup to my first year made me feel confident and comfortable going into my second year.

7am: 10 minutes before the school day begins and I head downstairs to greet students.

The best part about being a second year teacher is seeing my former fearful freshmen as self-assured and confident sophomores. As I stand in the hall, nearly all my previous students happily tell me good morning and some wave, hug, or offer high-fives. I had not anticipated such a joyful greeting from my old freshmen. Teaching just feels like another job until you are around students and then I am reminded that I love what I do... it is more than a job.  

7:30am: All 75 of the new freshmen are sitting in front of me and the rest of the freshmen teachers.

The second best part of the new year is new faces. This year I am teaching all the freshmen and only freshmen, so staring out at the new set of faces in the cafeteria I am anxious to get to know them and start teaching them. The casually observer would see that the new freshmen look young and nervous. As I stare out at them, I see fresh faces that are excitedly full of potential. They are on the brink of a new and thrilling experience and I have the privilege of working with them at the beginning of their high school career.

5:15: The School Day and Cross Country practice are over... I finally get to go home.

9:00: I'm in bed, praying for reviving rest so that I can wake up and do it all again!

A Student's Dream, A Teacher's Nightmare

It is Field Day to celebrate Homecoming. A few days before the events in this picture, an upperclassman student came in to ask if I would volunteer at the Pie Throwing booth. With some pressure from my students, cheering "Do it. Do it." I told the student that I would. Well, as you can see, volunteering for the booth meant allowing students to throw whip cream pies at us (I did know this was the point when I volunteered). Bonnie, the freshmen science teacher, is the most covered on the left. In the middle is Ashley, my department head and friend, and then there's me on the right. Thankfully, my face did not get creamed, but you can see that some of my students did successfully hit me. The pieing didn't last for long because students started pieing each other and the vice principal (who is unpictured next to me) shut the booth down. The Field Day was three hours of booths and free time out on the football field with all students. After the booth was shut down, a pick up game of soccer between some teachers (including me) and some students commenced. We lost horribly, I accidentally kicked one of my best students, but in the end we had a lot of fun. It was the most beautiful day!

Never Never Land

Of course at the end of each day, my roommates and I all find ourselves sitting on the couch/floor/chair and literally surrounded by work in the form of mounds of paper. The daily conversation starts out as an innocent, "How was your day?" but the answer always consists of hilarious stories, heartbreaking disappointments, an exclamation about how silly or crazy teenagers can be, or a list of frustrations. Trust me, each of us can add something to this list of discussion points. However, one point has become a trend. My roommate Ashley, after a round of sharing stories, often labels my situation as equivalent to teaching in Never Never Land.

The simple translation of this is that I feel like I have power and support in my situation. As most of the comments from the previous blog noted, I can and do make my students do push ups as punishment. Trust me, if you remember any part of being a freshmen, you probably remember the aching desire to fit in or to blend in. Being required to drop and give your Algebra teacher 10 push ups in front of the class is not the ideal way to achieve either of these goals. I always issue a verbal warning before a student is asked to do push ups so that they know if they make another disruptive or disrespectful choice they will do push ups. Especially for the girls, the threat alone is enough. However, these freshmen keep testing the water.

I think the only way to show this, is the case of my fourth period class. In a block schedule, fourth period is the last period of the day on Mondays and Wednesdays. By the last period, these kids are more than ready to be out of school and are definitely not putting up with Algebra. One particular day, the class as a whole was so unruly that they were given a class-wide verbal warning. After giving several directions for the students to work independently and silently on the assignment, I told the class that the next time one of their classmates chooses to talk, the entire class will owe me 10 push ups. Sure enough, not 2 minutes go by and a few students begin to talk. "Drop and give me 10." While half of the class immediately responds, the other half mutter and slowly move to take position. My response, "You have 10 seconds to get in position or the class will do 5 extra push ups." I proceeded to countdown from 10. Of course there was one defiant girl making a show of her rebellion and she earned the class 15 push ups total. They returned to their seats and were told that they would get 10 more if they could not work silently.... This time they made it about 4 minutes before talking began. "Drop and give me 10." While plenty of students muttered, every student got in position and did their 10 this time.

I have yet to enforce class-wide push ups since that day, and little by little I have seen individual students began to take responsibility for their classmates around them. Students are learning that not only do they have the responsibility to behave themselves, but they also have the power to influence those around them in a positive way. At the end of this week, I would say that I have at least 2 or 3 of these exceptionally responsible students in each class, but my goal is that by Christmas, the majority of my students have this attitude towards our class time.

They will either learn to work within the rules or they will gain some serious upper body strength. I say it's a win, win either way.

Introductions

Hello Everyone!

After four weeks of getting into the groove of my new life, I've realized that I need some way to communicate with everyone. I've been getting several emails, texts, and voicemails from friends and family that ask questions like, "Are you alive?" What this tells me is that many of you are interested in what is happening in my life, but I don't have the time right now to respond to everyone in a timely fashion. So, let me respond to all of you at the same time through this blog.

I am teaching freshmen Algebra 1 at Cleveland NJROTC. Cleveland is a magnet school in St Louis Public School District. Magnet schools are still public schools and are publically funded but students apply or opt to go there. There are not kids zoned specifically for magnet schools, instead they come from all over. Magnet schools also tend to be smaller. Our school has under 400 total students and right now in the freshmen class we have about 82. My school is also a naval junior ROTC school, which means that we are big on teaching discipline and teamwork. Both of these two priorities play out in using things like push-ups, standing at attention, or sit ups as discipline. My kids also wear naval ROTC uniforms to school every day. Throws me back to my private school uniform days. Those of you from Country Day can appreciate the way my students feel tortured, especially since almost none of them had to wear strict uniforms like this in their middle schools. The other big deal for my kids is that the girls have to wear their hair up or it must be short and the black shoes all students wear must be shined. Structure is the name of the game at Cleveland.

I teach 3 periods of double dose Algebra which means that I have the same 65 kids every day in a block schedule. So, my kids come to me every day for 90 minutes. Trust me, they did not/do not consider me entertaining enough to see me every day for this long. On Friday's they come to me twice, once before lunch and once after because Fridays all students go to their entire schedule (8 classes) in the day. My school starts at 7:10 am and ends at 2:05. We eat lunch halfway through our day, which is 10:21! Saturday's are weird for me now because I'm ready mentally to eat lunch at 10:30 but I just ate breakfast at 9. Well, every day my alarm goes off at 5am!!! Hello real world!

I live in Shaw, the neighborhood just north of Tower Grove, a park in St Louis. My two roommates, Ashley and Anna, are also teaching in St Louis for TFA. We have a fun three bedroom, one and a half bath house that we love! With one shower, we have perfected our shower schedule. Bedtime in our house is around 9:30-10 because we are all up by 5:30 and all out the door by 6:45. It makes getting up way more fun when you know that two other people in the world are up and going too.

Well there is so much more I could write, but for now I will leave you with this Introduction. Until next time!