((The tone is different in this one because I initially tried to write it for the CY blog, which I later realized was a terrible idea. Also, I wrote most of it at like 1 a.m. when I wanted to scream.)
City Year Corps Members (aka CMs) use data to see (in a quantitative fashion) what kind of progress they are making with their students. We call the amount of tutoring hours we get with each student dosage. We log it weekly – how much time, the setting, and the type of skills the students are using – and then have it checked over by our Team Leader. At the Boston site, we need to get 15 hours of tutoring for each individual student on our focus lists. For some people, this is quick and easy; for others, it’s slow and rather challenging. It depends on so many factors, including City Year’s role in the specific school, teacher partnerships, student attendance, student academic needs, and so much more. Some of these factors are in an CM’s control, and some aren’t.
I’m someone who’s always been drawn to numbers.
That is an understatement.
In elementary school, I tried to read the most books of anyone at my library over the summer, and I was very competitive about selling Girl Scout cookies. Over time, however, numbers became pretty toxic for me. Maybe they always were, but it didn’t hit me until I reached toward goals that were in some cases literally impossible. (I took the idea that “If you work hard enough, you can achieve ANYTHING” too literally -- and you’ll rarely hear me say it to a kid, either.)
So, more often than not, I used numbers to affirm my inadequacy in different areas of my life – no number was good enough – or to compare myself to my peers. In middle and high school, it was often about grades, down to the specific percentage point. In high school and college, I also became drawn to the numbers about body size, such as clothing size and calories consumed. Over the past two years, I’ve worked super hard to care less about these numbers and see myself and the people around me more holistically, through more complex and genuine means.
It took a few weeks for me to realize that my dosage minutes had crept in to my mind as a new source for comparison and failure. Each week, if I logged fewer tutoring minutes with my students than the other CMs on my team (aka, every week), I would feel a surge of failure. I would allow it to negate the strides my students have made in other areas, the relationships we’ve built together, and the successes I’ve had in other parts of my role at my school. Unsurprisingly, this quickly became draining and discouraging...
This is now a choose your own adventure!! Here is my “right ending”. & Here is my real ending.
After realizing this, I worked with my team leader to set new goals and found creative ways to incorporate dosage into a packed day at school. But I also had to realize that not every week is created equal, and some would always be more successful than others. Sometimes there are snow days, or kids get the flu, or move to Florida, or get switched into a different homeroom. Sometimes I’m too distracted with other things, or my support is needed in a different way in the classroom. I’m learning that, as long as I’m trying my best for my kids, my efforts are valid. Data is vital for effective service, but it’s not the only important way to measure a year in a classroom.
My team leader was incredibly helpful with this stuff, as a human and a leadership-person (...but way more so as an empathetic human!) Yes, I had to realize how much was in my control (...VERY LITTLE.) It was most important to reinforce to myself (as those closest to me reminded me often) that being a part of a large organization that works with a huge public school system with funders and functions in many ways (not like literally of course but in many ways!) as a corporation in my experience needs this data!!! But that doesn’t mean I have very much to do with it -- when it comes to that part I am one tiny tiny part barely keeping the wheels of the behemoth of something as big as CY turning! These numbers don’t have too much to do with me -- red green yellow systems on paper (which I’d made for myself SO many times in the past for personal goal setting) would always be out to get me! I knew better than to let some other system take me down -- me staying afloat and keeping my students and co-worker/pals afloat was a MILLION times more important. I would do what I had to do, and do it well, simultaneously disconnecting myself from the emotion of the numbers and re-connecting myself to the emotion behind the relationships I was forming and growing.
Knowing that working in the ed field in the future will always involve more numbers and comparison is a little scary. Test scores, teacher ratings, observations, enrollment, money... it will continue. It will continue to affect my success and how people see me. But it can only affect how I see myself, holistically, as much as I let it.
art via Christie B on insta
