I teach math at an alternative high school. It's my dream job. I'm trying to help my students make their lives better, in whatever ways I can. These are those adventures.
After a well-earned week off, the Friday Five is back.
With bundles!
What are bundles? You ask.
The Friday Five is here to explain. A bundle is a collection of activities chosen and sequenced (with love) by the Desmos Teaching Faculty. Let’s say you start your unit on linear functions with a rousing round of Marbleslides. Then you type “linear” in the search box at teacher.desmos.com and you maybe get a bit overwhelmed.
No longer.
Now you’ll see that Marbleslides: Lines is part of the Linear Bundle. You’ll click through to see the other activities we’ve curated, collected, and annotated. You’ll have our best advice for how to proceed for the next week or two. You’ll see what we hope students will learn through engaging with these activities. You’ll fill in the gaps, as teachers always do.
Mostly, you and your students will experience a more powerful, more Desmofied, unit.
And now here are five bundles. Hot off the presses for this week’s Friday Five.
Linear Bundle
Starting with Polygraph and building towards Marbleslides, this bundle is for classrooms where students have plotted points in the coordinate plane, but have not yet mastered any of the various forms for linear equations.
Exponential Bundle
This bundle starts with a Desmos version of a classic application of exponential functions—Would you rather get paid at a linear or exponential rate? After a series of activities—including the appropriate versions of Polygraph and Marbleslides—the bundle wraps up by having students use exponential functions to model and make predictions.
Functions Bundle
Function Carnival is the basis for the Functions Bundle. Over the course of five activities, students develop their informal ideas about functions into more formal ones, including a definition and studying domain and range.
Linear Systems Bundle
From Polygraph to Oreos, this bundle introduces students to the meaning of a solution to a system of linear equations, and gives them some instruction and practice in introductory solution techniques.
Quadratic Bundle
Students begin this bundle with Will It Hit the Hoop?, move through Polygraph and Marbleslides, and end with Penny Circle. Along the way, they work on activities that help them to formulate answers to questions such as:
What are some important features of parabolas?
How can the features of a parabola help me to solve problems?
How are the different representations of quadratic functions useful?
Are parabolas any fun?
There it is—your All-Bundle Friday Five.
Plus one.
Modeling Bundle
Great stuff for precalc students. Trust us and click through.
The Friday Five is thinking big this week, and maybe providing you a little summer curriculum planning assistance as a result. Five activities this week, each connected to other activities. Think of each as a prix fixe menu where the prix is free.
Sketchy Parabolas
Here’s an activity for capturing student thinking, and using it to create conversations about formal properties and vocabulary. This one pairs nicely with Polygraph: Parabolas. If you do Polygraph first, students will notice the important features of parabolas. Then you can hit them with the vocabulary and use that vocabulary here in Sketchy Parabolas.
WNBA Scoring Averages
How many points will Breanna Stewart score in her rookie year in the WNBA? Can the number of points she scored in her senior year in college help us to make a good prediction? The data is a bit messier than in LEGO Prices, but the task is quite similar. Together, LEGO Prices and WNBA Scoring Averages make a nice one-two punch for classroom linear modeling.
Sum and Differences on the Number Line
Here’s a short activity that challenges students to think qualitatively about the relationships between the sums and differences of two numbers. Maybe make a week of it and open class each day with a number line activity. Start with Number Line, Number Sense to challenge students’ assumptions about relative sizes of large numbers. Twist the number line into a spiral with Putting Points on the Line. Quickly introduce fraction with the short, sweet Where’s 2/3? Make fractions a bit more challenging with Fractions on a Number Line. Then finish the week with Sum and Differences on the Number Line. Most of these are short conversation starters that can launch you into that day’s work.
Des-Draw
Cathy Yenca offers up a quick tutorial in domain restrictions, inequality shading, and coloring before turning students loose on drawing a face (which need not be a self portrait, although it may be, if your chin is sufficiently parabolic). The use of domain and range restrictions would be a strong, creative follow up to Marbleslides.
Turning Points
Bryn Humberstone built this calculus activity to draw students’ attention to the importance of the places where a function’s derivative is equal to zero. It goes very nicely with Increasing and Decreasing Functions with Derivatives.
There you have it, a Friday Five with all the fixings. See you next week; the Friday Five assumes you’ll be bringing the dessert.
I found my stack of post-it notes where I jot down the ridiculous, hilarious things students say. It’s summer now and I miss this insanity already.
“Miss M did you see the History video? It killed me.” (all of my students know of my One Direction love)
S: “So if a guy spent his whole life writing that [Graham’s Number], how long would it take?”
me: “I don’t know if they’d make it”
S: “Woah”
“Thug life, I’m so good” (after drawing a picture on the whiteboard)
“I don’t know how to make the window go up. Oh. WOAH. Technology.”
“Cats are better than boyfriends”
“Watch out, she’s gonna punch your watch” (this is loosely based in a story from my student teaching in which a student punched another student’s watch and bled all over, which I share as the reasoning behind my ‘no bleeding in the classroom’ rule)
“You tweakin...don’t forget to put units with it”
“It’s cool, but it’s not SUPER cool” (algebra)
S: “I like how you bolded the three”
Me: “Making sure you know how many you’re supposed to do”
S: “Yeah, I was gonna do one.”
“Throwback to when I had a boyfriend”
“I changed what balloons are called. They’re called air babies.”
Per tradition, I need to write an unedited feelings about the year post, since it’s now officially summer! Here’s last years, if you want.
WOW. It’s absolutely insane to me that I’ve been a teacher for three years now. Some days, it certainly still feels like...not quite the first day again, but maybe like December of year one again. I do think I’m finally past that Day One feeling.
I started off the school year coming from a One Direction concert the literal night before, running on less than 4 hours of sleep. My kids got me through it. In fact, that can pretty much be a summary of everything. My kids got me through it.
I spent the last half of this year trying to push myself to form connections in the wider teacher internet presence and it has been so incredibly rewarding and fun. I have a real deal teacher blog now, if you’re interested you can ask me about it...and a teacher twitter where I interact with INCREDIBLE educators across the country.
They’ve made me brave enough to try some crazy new things in my classroom, and they’ve WORKED. Next year, I’m taking leaps to try even crazier new things. It’s all about trying to get the most math to stay in the students’ heads and I’m super excited in a nerdy way to develop some amazing resources this summer.
Today, as our last staff activity of the year, we watched a documentary called Paper Tigers. If you ever get the opportunity to watch it, DO IT. It’s not about our school, but it could be. It was a great way to end the year - kind of a reminder that what we do is really, really hard, and that we still do it, and that these kids get to graduate because of us, when everyone has always told them that they never would.
We learned in a professional development session this year that teachers who are in phases of burnout actually exhibit all of the physiological symptoms of people who suffer from PTSD - in other words, teachers basically have a form of PTSD from having to be witness to all of the suffering and struggles of their students day in and day out. Alternative high school students are...the best. They’re really the best ever and I love them with all of my heart and soul because there is literally no other choice but to love them with everything you have.
It’s SO HARD to watch them going through the things they go through - abuse, familial drug use, personal drug use as a coping mechanism, mental illness, unstable families, violent homes, family rejection due to sexual orientation, and just in general no one believing in them. We open our doors and we bring them in and there is no way that you can see something one of our students is going through and say, “no, I don’t really have the time to help today.”
You. Just. Can’t. And it’s so hard sometimes. Because you need to still keep yourself healthy and have your own life and be a person yourself, but when you are the ONLY ADULT in that student’s life who CARES. The only one. You cannot say no. I stayed almost 3 hours after I could have left on the last student day of school because a girl had to finish algebra to be able to graduate that night. If she didn’t graduate high school, she would be losing scholarships and momentum and the opportunity to finally escape an atrocious living situation that she’s dealt with her entire life. It wasn’t even a question - I wasn’t going home until she finished algebra.
It’s a lot of pressure. It’s an insane amount of pressure to know that at age 25, I am the most caring and stable adult in the lives of probably over 10 teenagers (some of my students would choose a different member of our staff, but at least that many would probably come to ME first with something). I am the most IMPORTANT adult in their lives. It got really overwhelming at some points this year because you get frustrated with their behavior and you want to take that step back to get more of your own life back and YOU JUST CAN’T. I don’t know how else to describe it until you’re in that situation, but you can’t walk away and you can’t give up and you have to keep loving them unconditionally even when they cuss you out and yell and walk out of your classroom because the behavior is only a symptom of the larger struggles they’re going through.
And when you keep believing. When you keep loving. When you put on that huge smile when they show up again after a week of skipping school. When that student looks up at you from where his 6′5″ heavily tattooed, hoodied and snapbacked exterior is folded into your classroom chair and gives you that uncertain smile of newly discovered potential because you just pushed an algebra test with a 93% at the top across the table to him...there is no other feeling that could match.
When a student asks, “is this real life?” when you give her her Monday grade report and it has a C+ on it when she’s been pulling D-’s all year and you get to tell her “yes, you’ve earned it, and I’m so proud of you”...
When a student comes into your classroom the day of graduation and thanks you for helping her and for teaching her and asks if she can come back to visit, and another student in your room starts crying because SHE feels the emotion of the moment...that’s it.
When you confirm that a student solved a quadratic correctly by completing the square, and they lose all control of their filter and yell FUCK YES! with a fist pump.
When a student you don’t even have drops by every morning to tell you to have a good day.
When your coworkers make you smile and laugh and give you affirmations about your teaching and always make sure to say when they overhear students talking about how much they like your class.
When your students use math to make predictions that win the school March Madness pool.
When your boss has a costume drawer in his office, just in case.
When the lead of the teacher leadership program for the district references other people to your twitter account to see the “magic” of your school, and shows all the principals in the district a video of YOU TEACHING to model positive student interactions.
When every bad day that makes you cry and order pizza is followed by an amazing day that makes you laugh nonstop through 6 classes and your chest swell with pride.
When your staff plays the human version of Hungry Hungry Hippos during an inservice day break.
When you find a place of truce with the staff member that almost broke you last year and actually enjoy interactions with him.
When you get presents and food and love and affection every single day of Teacher Appreciation Week.
When your students ask about your cat, about the Packers, tell you when they hear Harry Potter news.
When they all want to know what you’re teaching next year because they don’t care what math class they take, they just want you at the front of the room.
When the superintendent of your district emails your whole staff the day after graduation to say how much he enjoys attending your school’s events and how proud he is of the work happening there.
When you get to go to your literal dream job every day. When you know you’re making a difference.
When a teenager who has been told they can’t their entire life spends a whole year sitting in your classroom being told that they can and finally, finally believes it...it’s the best feeling in the world.
It’s been two days since graduation. It’s been....7 hours since I hugged my last student in the office as he got help filling out his college housing forms (!!!)
I fucking miss them already. I know that I need summer break, I know that every year. But I miss them so intensely. I need them to stay safe over the summer, and not to regress in all the lessons of self confidence we’ve learned together. I need them to come back to me in the fall because they are the most meaningful part of my life. I can’t wait to hear about all their bizarre adventures that are probably 90% things I would never do - I can’t wait to tell them mine and hear them call me a nerd with love in their voices again.
I can’t wait to open my classroom door for year four and welcome them back to love unconditionally, to push me to the ends of my abilities, and to bring out the best in me.
There’s a teaching saying that if you survive year one, you’ll be okay. If you don’t feel overwhelmed year two, you’re probably on the right track, and if you enjoy year three, you can be a great teacher. Year three was the year I fell so irrevocably in love with teaching that people on the outside started asking about it - time to push myself to become great.
Sometimes the strangest things end up happening in your classroom. A group of kids who always hang put on my room first period coordinated with each other (without telling me) to bring bread, cheese, butter, a George Foreman, and a spatula to school today. They did ask for permission, and I gave a one time only deal. We made grilled cheese. On top of my chrome book cart. I love my crazy weird job and my crazy weird kids.
"I can see her with a rock boyfriend. She has black hair" (my 6th period is suddenly quite invested in my relationship status) My 1st period kids (free/study hall period) decided to bring a George Foreman and make grilled cheese. To be fair, they asked permission and I gave it. "I feel like this is something Niall [Horan] would do" "None of us know how to make grilled cheese! See! We're learning!" Student, googling reference pictures of pixies: "Not pixie CUT! I'm looking for an actual fairy here!" Student upset with her third quarter schedule, leaving my classroom: "I'm gonna leave this chair backwards cause you made me have a new teacher" Discussing one of our science teachers (who looks quite young): "baby man with his rock song"
We have been working hard to increase the feature set in Activity Builder, and there’s lots more to come. We want to make sure everyone knows about two new and super useful features of Activity Builder, each released in the last week.
Hidden Folders
When you—as a teacher—create a graph screen in Activity Builder, it is often the case that you want to have expressions (equations, points, tables, function definitions, etc.) that students cannot see. Previously, you may have tried to hack that feature by putting a whole bunch of empty rows into the expression list in order to push the expressions down off the bottom of the screen. It was the best available option, but not a very good solution. No more.
Now you can check a box and hide the folder and its contents from students. They can still see the results (e.g. the parabola), but they won’t be able to see the expressions that generated them.
Graph Exhibits
If you have ever found yourself typing words such as, Look at this graph, then click to the next screen to answer a question about it, then you will be delighted to know that you can now embed a graph in a page that has text and a student input box on it.
We call these graphs “exhibits”. They are really useful. Students will see only the graph (nothing in the expression list). They’ll be able to interact with these graphs by moving any moveable points you’ve included (as in this modeling activity), or clicking on points of interest of the graph.
For now, you’ll need to know that you do not get overlays in exhibit graphs on the teacher dashboard. That feature is coming, but is not here yet.
In the coming days and weeks, we’ll share more new features as they become available. We’ll also share some examples of activities that make good use of these features.
Desmos is 9000000% the best educational tool I’ve used in my classroom. They are CONSTANTLY updating the product in response to teacher feedback. Just since I found out about it (about 2 years ago) they have gone from a site where you can pretty much graph equations to a site with capabilities to create custom student interactive activities, plus their own pre created mathematics-rich activities you can use. If you send them feedback, they will respond to it within days - with an actual dialogue about your issue or suggestion. I just love them so much, and my students love using Desmos because it is so much more user friendly than a graphing calculator. SORRY FOR THE DESMOS LOVE NOTE but they’re just really great.
One of my students from last year has consistently come to find me every Monday this year to discuss the Seahawks game (he’s a fan) and the Packers game (I’m a fan). It means a lot, not only to know that he thinks of me often and wants to continue our relationship even now that I don’t have him in class anymore, but also because at the start of last year he looked down upon female sports fans. He was also a very reactionary and hot blooded fan who would jump down other people’s throats about their teams with no evidence to back up his own, and we worked all of last year towards a place where he would have to support his opinions and towards a place where we could have a good natured discussion of both our teams where no one got mad.
Today’s discussion started with him walking up and going “Miss M, your team’s still in it!” and included him saying “They looked a lot better than they have recently, do you think they’re gonna win next week?” and about his own team “We lost a big lead to Carolina when we played them earlier this season, but I think if our defense plays well we should win this time” and “I’m not sure why we keep Lynch around because they seem to be fine without him and he just does dumb stuff a lot”. And like...it has nothing to do with math, but I’m really proud of him for opening himself up to critical analysis of his heroes and opening dialogue with people of differing opinions. Even if it’s just sports. And I love knowing that I meant something to him - and evidently still do.
If you’re a teacher, you know that we need our breaks. The outside world doesn’t understand that much - they don’t get the high stress environment that is teaching, and how necessary the time to recharge is in order for us to be able to effectively do our jobs. I’ve gotten so many comments recently when I’ve spoken about anticipating break along the lines of “oh, yes, I’m so excited for my week and a half off of school [sarcasm]”. But you teachers...and you students...you know. We need it.
Yesterday after the 2 hr early dismissal, our staff gathered in our cafeteria and feasted on a potluck of amazing food we made each other. We exchanged Secret Santa presents and teased each other. Then, the group of my best coworker friends went over to one of the case manager’s homes. We played dumb games like Sentence Pictionary, read Mad Libs to each other with water in our mouths trying not to laugh, and relaxed. We hesitantly went to one of my least favorite coworker’s house for the bonfire he’d invited everyone to and had a FANTASTIC time, laughing and sharing stories.
I woke up at noon this morning and have lounged around all day - doing laundry, reading, internetting...
...and I miss my students. Don’t get me wrong, I am still looking so forward to the remaining 11 days of break, and to Christmas celebrations with my friends and family. I’m not wanting school to resume tomorrow or anything. But I miss them, as I always do during breaks. I’ve already encountered several things today that have reminded me of students. I’ve already worried about whether they feel safe on their breaks, whether they have the means to celebrate holidays, if they have people to celebrate with. I’ve thought about my student reading Harry Potter for the first time, who thinks she might have book 4 finished by the end of break - wondered if she’s gotten so wrapped up in the story yet that she’ll blow past that goal.
We’re getting a new math teacher 3rd quarter - an additional one, to help with our increased enrollment. I’m so nervous about how our students will react. I’ve already had a few express thoughts that they won’t do math if I’m not their teacher - something that simultaneously makes them proud that they respect and trust and care for me so much and upset that they have such a distrust of adults/teachers that they won’t do work for someone new. That’s on my mind a lot today, and will be for the remainder of break. I’m starting to think seriously about the March Madness project for Sports Stats this year, and how I can make it more meaningful without putting it above their mathematical reach.
I love the time to relax, but it also helps me appreciate how lucky I am to have a job that I miss so much during time off. I still think it’s the best job in the world, 2.5 years in.
There’s just something about the feeling that conferences invoke. Like, they suck, in one respect, because you have to be at school for like 12 hours and you’re so tired and you want to not be in professional clothes. But, they’re also amazing.
Tonight, I had about 1/5 of my students’ parents or guardians come in. A mom shared her struggles in getting her daughter to come to school. “I’m here, when she’s ready,” I said, and I could see the tears in the mom’s eyes as she thanked me.
A mom proudly showed me her son’s report card, which she said was the first report card with all passing grades that he’d ever gotten and that it was only possible because of what we do at our school. I’d been concerned that he was only getting a D in my class, but now I am so full of pride for him.
A dad beamed at his daughter as I told him all the improvements she’d made over last quarter and handed him a grade report with an A at the top.
I got to give stellar reports on two students who are new to general education math classes to each of their parents.
Just to hear thank you, and talk about these kids that I love so much with people who also love them, and to get to share all the progress they’ve made, it fills my heart with so much joy.
I love this job. I love giving my students all the support I possibly can, even when some days they drive me insane and drain my energy completely. When a parent tells me how impressed they are with all the options I give them for giving their child help, I just tell them it’s my job. Which it is, but I also LOVE IT. And I come home from that 12 hour day of conferences feeling like I’m DOING something, like I’m HELPING these kids, and it’s everything that I need.
I honestly wish everyone could know what it feels like to help these kids and to see the evidence of that on their parents’ faces. Best feeling in the world.
So I think I’ll make this “end of school year word vomit” tumblr post a tradition, because it turns out the end of the school year gives me a lot of feelings. Here’s last year’s post, if you’re interested.
Wow, year two is different than year one. It’s actually incredible. Suddenly, I actually feel like a teacher. I trust my own authority and I feel like I can occasionally give advice to other teachers. Kids know me from last year. I had some kids for the second time. This year started out as a real adventure, though, because we got a new building. On the first day of school, the floors weren’t finished and we had no computers in the entire building, dangling wires in the staircase, and a host of other problems. Now we have a glorious new building that is beautiful and full of light and our personality, but it was a lot to get through those first weeks. We’ll see if our gym addition is ready for the start of next year....
I feel like I put MYSELF into my teaching this year. My students quickly discovered that I love Harry Potter, One Direction, and the Packers. Aaron Rodgers references were made frequently. One of my students started calling me Miss Wizard, short for Miss Evil Math Wizard, because of my Harry Potter love. Not one, not two, but THREE teenage boys came up to me the day after Zayn left One Direction and maturely asked how I was doing and asked for my opinion on the matter. I made a teacher twitter account and made my teaching more of my personality.
And I got to know my students more - let them let me into their lives. I learned all their favorite sports teams. I talked them through abusive relationships. I went LARPing with them one weekend. I know what they want to be and where they are at. They make me laugh EVERY SINGLE DAY. No one is as funny as them. The main thing is, I still can’t imagine ever doing anything else. Being a teacher is so incredibly stressful - it’s not a 9 to 5 job, you’re constantly losing sleep over some issue or another, you are always in the public eye because you are a teacher. A few times this year, I let myself have the thought process of what the possibilities were for me besides teaching. The simple fact is that I absolutely cannot imagine myself not hanging out with these kids every day. I let myself consider transferring to a non-alternative school. I cannot imagine standing in front of my kids and telling them I wasn’t coming back in the fall. I can’t do that to them. They need us. They need stability. They DESERVE love and respect and something constant in their lives and damn it I am going to give them as much of that as I can.
We learned things about the world - we had tough conversations about Ferguson and Ray Rice and women’s rights in sports and war and police shootings and riots. And my students, my “bad kid” labeled, underprivileged, seen by society as good for nothing students, had more honest and open and constructive discussions about these issues than I had with most adults in my life. Their hearts are not yet closed, and it is my mission to never let them be. it is a joy to discuss issues with them because they bring new perspectives and are open to new information. I often acted as a researcher and let them have the discussion on their own - keep in mind this is all WHILE they’re finding zeros of quadratics or making Normal curve calculations. Don’t ever underestimate my alternative school kids.
I got to teach my dream class this year (and it’s going to be even better next year). Just imagine getting to do fantasy leagues with your students. Statistically analyzing different teams. Deciding the NBA MVP with math. Predicting the NCAA tournament. What a joy it is to make them think critically about thins they enjoy. Those kids made me into an NBA fan this year - do you know how many times I’ve tried to get into the NBA before? This time, I kept watching games because I COULDN’T LET MY KIDS DOWN. I had to have relevant information to give them. And then, I got into it. I think I’m a Warriors fan. Because of my students. When you do the math on “how likely was it for Steph Curry to actually make those 70 3′s in a row in pratice?” and a student freaks out after you get the answer because it’s insane - when you make a student fall in love with math for even a second - it’s so amazing. When you get good natured teasing on end of year evals about who’s going to make it to next year’s Super Bowl because that’s the connection you’ve made with that student (that the Seahawks suck, why can’t he get that?)
I made actual friends with my coworkers and it’s the best thing to have friends who really, really understand our kids. I’m excited to hang out with them this summer and have adventures to tell the students about in the fall.
I love making them do end of the year evaluations because there are things happening inside their head that I can’t see at all on the outside. Some highlights: “you’re a good teacher I wish I could have had the opportunity to have you sooner”
“I used to think I couldn’t handle tough math classes, but this class howed me that I was smart enough, just didn’t ahve the motivation or confidence”
Students told counselors this year that I was one of the teachers most willing to help them with their anxiety. I had students come find me after graduation to make sure they got a hug, or I could see their daughter. I got a wonderful gift from a graduate today that made me cry.
These kids are everything to me. They’re there to celebrate with me and they cheer me up when I’m having a bad day, even when they don’t know it. They tell me I have cute outfits, they laugh at my awful math jokes, they tell me to have a good weekend. They think I’m cool, somehow. And they’re my inspiration. Through their depression, anxiety, abusive homes, unsupportive parents, teen parenting, suicide attempts, poverty, and more, they come to school and they do algebra and statistics and geometry. They even like some of it. They haven’t lost their dreams, or their hope. It’s literally been 5 hours since the last one of them left my classroom, and I miss them already. I want to cuddle them all together and keep them safe this summer. I’m worried about them. I can’t wait to have them in my classes in August.
This year, I discovered that I would GO TO WAR for my students. I don’t stay silent when people say negative things that are about or could be about my kids. These kids are worth so much - I don’t care what your specific vision of success or normal is, don’t look down on everyone who doesn’t meet it. I was the farthest world away from my students when I was in high school, and I want to give them the WORLD. The best I can do is to live my adventures that I can have in my privilege and share them with them, and to stand up for them whenever I can.
I feel like I’m making my parents proud. Making my sister proud. Making my friends proud. But I really, really hope I’m making my students proud, because they deserve someone who does. Someone who is there for them. I always will be. And I still feel like I’m doing my dream job every day.
after school i was making copies in the office and a woman came in to ask for an application for her son to transfer to our school. the office secretary started asking her some basic questions and the woman became visibly upset because, i guess, a teacher had recommended her son apply to our school and the mom didn’t want him to “get in with the wrong people” and her son was a “good kid”. basically she has no idea what our school is actually about and thinks it’s a facility of some sort, which unfortunately is a common misconception in the area.
every person in the office was not so subtly listening in at this point, and the office secretary who is my favorite handled it so well, she was like “i’m so sorry that that’s your idea of our school and you might want to consider just coming on a visit to see what it’s actually like before you make a decision.” and the mom just kept repeating over and over that her son was a good kid and she didn’t want him to go to a bad school but she just wanted him to graduate and the secretary was trying to tell this woman that that is, in fact, the whole point of our school’s existence, to keep kids from getting in with bad crowds and encourage them to graduate high school, and then the woman STARTED CRYING because she was so upset that this teacher had recommended that her son come to us and then she finally left and everyone kind of blew up about it.
it just makes me so mad that a community of grown adults looks at a building that has “alternative” in its title and can see nothing but criminals. the other high schools have just as many (maybe more) “bad” kids than us. we aren’t a program. we’re a high school. we prevent kids from dropping out, and we actually take the time to get to know each kid and care for them and provide them with supports they need, from mental health to physical help to allowances for jobs and children, but we teach the same content and our kids aren’t bad or deficient. and this happened like 2 hours ago but i can’t stop thinking about how WRONG this mom was and i’m so upset.
so basically, i’m glad graduation is tonight so i can go cry about how proud i am to teach these kids and how much i love them and celebrate their accomplishments with other people who get it.
...a discussion of gaming systems Me: see, I don't know much about gaming systems cause I'm really awful at video games so I don't really play them much Student A: have you ever played GTA? You don't have to be good to play that Student B: Does Miss M look like she plays Grand Theft Auto? Student C: Man, imagine Miss M playing GTA, like stealing cars and beating up prostitutes Me: I don't look like I'd play GTA? Cause, like, that's what I do on the weekends. But in real life. Student A: You steal cars and beat up prostitutes? That's unexpected. Student B: Just imagine her in her little dresses with a crowbar. Student A: But in all seriousness, you should try GTA. You can make your car whatever color you want. What's your favorite color? Me: green? Student A: Yeah. You can make your car that color. It'll be great.
I went to the Iowa Association for Alternative Education conference with 7 of my coworkers Thursday and Friday. I knew fan conventions were super intense and emotional things that get you super pumped up about life, and I’d been to one math convention before, but this was the first professional convention I’d been to since actually starting teaching. It. Was. Amazing.
First of all, being in a room full of alternative educators was so powerful. It’s crazy how often even other teachers don’t get our students. They’ve been the ones to call them worthless, to tell them they won’t make it. These educators GET IT. The first thing the first keynote speaker did was to have us all go around and thank each other for the job we’re doing and I almost cried, like five minutes into the conference.
It was just so good. Hearing the stories of people who had been at-risk teens and who had made it through because of a teacher, getting ideas for better classroom environments, getting those pump up talks, just everything.
But the Friday keynote speaker was AMAZING. His name is John Paul Derryberry, and I want to be his friend. His story made me cry. We went to his breakout session about how where you put your focus can change everything, and I wanted to like, run out of the room and all the way back to school and teach the CRAP out of my kids. He talked a lot about emotions and how much they matter and how with our kids, our at-risk kids, most of them have really, really good reasons to be angry, and sad, and distracted, because of what’s happening outside of school. And that no one has probably ever told them that it’s okay to feel that way. And that instead of having them try to ignore it to focus on math, we need to find a way to accept their emotions and validate them and work on them AND work on math. He talked about focusing on the positives instead of the negatives, and how if you celebrate every inch your student gains, they’ll think you’re crazy, but they’ll fight to have you celebrating more inches.
And I’m just so PUMPED UP TO TEACH and make a difference and it reminded me how much I freaking love my students and it was the perfect thing to go to at the start of April, when we have 50 days left.
I want to really let it change my teaching, and my general being as a person. At lunch after the conference we were all already trying to correct ourselves when we started complaining about a few teachers in our building and refocus ourselves onto the positives and I’ve been thinking about it all weekend which is why I’m writing this post at 11:17 on a Saturday night but I’m so ready. I’m ready to take on these last 50 days and make them good and see what difference I can make in my students in them.
Last year, I probably would have told you I wanted to work in an alternative school for a few years, then settle back into a traditional school. This year has made me realize that I’m in alternative education for the long haul. These are the kids I want to teach. These are the kids who need me most. And I want them to see me on the street in 20 years and say “Miss M, I remember that you cared. You believed in me”.
I made my 6th period students brownies today because all of them got As on the quiz they took Friday. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. And I was so proud and happy that I thought they deserved a treat!
Today, though, one student was in class who was not here on Friday. So I was passing out brownies, and he was like, "What if I don't get an A? I'd have to like, give you a brownie back or something. I don't feel like I deserve this. I feel bad."
I made him take the brownie anyways, but I appreciated his honesty :)
