Change is the Only Constant

It is difficult to believe that it has been exactly four months since I last posted. It is even more difficult to fathom just how much has happened in the four months about which I did not post. To make up for time lost and stories untold, I will do my best to recap how the end of my first year of teaching – as well as my first summer off of teaching – went.

I would love to say that my Spring Concerts went off without a hitch, but we all know that such a statement would not be plausible. It is probably a blogger’s blessing that I did not get a chance to write during that frenzied stage of my teaching career. I was so full of doubt, anxiety, frustration, even anger about everything that took place; it would have been hard for me to be completely positive about the experience. Despite the feelings of regret for what happened and what did not, I am at least able to look back on it now and feel some sense of pride in what we were able to accomplish. The production was definitely not perfect, but as with any type of performance, the best I can do is to strive to make each time better than the one before. It was this simple yet significant life lesson that helped me through any feelings of regret that may have stemmed from the spring show and pushed me to keep moving forward.

All in all, it’s pretty safe to say that I completed my first year of teaching with my sanity intact (or at least what was left of it when I started the year). There are many situations I would have approached differently and many lessons I ran out of time to teach, yet each new year brings new opportunities to try new techniques and make up for lost time. I have not quite decided if it was incredibly bold or incredibly ludicrous of me to sign on for another year at my school – it was stressful and made me question the small shred of talent I thought I might have, but it was a learning experience far beyond the measure of what I thought I could find in my first year of teaching. Whatever the case may be, this second year will bring new opportunities to grow, be challenged, find stress, question my abilities, and always force me to fight for what I firmly believe: that all students, regardless of culture, opinion, or personal background, have an important musical voice that deserves to be heard.

Part of me regrets that I did not write a detailed account of my life over these last four months, especially since they were some of the most significant ones of the school year. Another part of me, however – an awakened, better rounded me – that now understands that life must sometimes be celebrated in the moment rather than written about detail-by- detail. There were so many important events that have helped change my way of living and my life perspective over these four months. Seeing UD friends graduate and realize how much I’ve already changed in just a year, watching my brother graduate high school and contemplate all that has happened since my own walk as a Decem Decori five years ago, spending my first summer completely on my own and free to find my own adventures, saying one of the hardest goodbyes to someone who I love like family as he goes to start his own new life – all of this and more have made me realize what I can miss by studying or doing work every minute of the day. This summer has shown me the value of taking time for myself and that letting go from my career for a while does not mean I am letting go from my passion. I hope this second year of teaching brings me more opportunities to find the balance between my career and my personal life, for a life without balance I fear is not one that is genuinely fulfilled.

My first entry in this blog began with a checklist of what I had completed in my teaching career at that point. It only seems fitting to complete another checklist of my most current accomplishments:

-- Number of job contracts signed: 2 (1 full time, 1 private lessons)

-- Number of concerts directed: 4

-- Number of individual private student performances: 10

-- Number of discouraging conversations with students: many

-- Number of discouraging conversations with students’ parents: more than many

-- Number of heartening conversations with students and parents: more than enough to negate any other less-than-pleasant encounter

-- Number of times I have doubted myself: how many times would every other day be?

-- Number of people who have constantly restated their faith in me: enough to help me survive the year (and more years to come)

-- Number of Headaches Formed, Arguments with Students (and staff), Tears Cried, etc: still infinity

-- Number of years completed in my career: 1

Not a bad checklist for one year. My original intention had been to stop writing in this blog after my first year of teaching. Yet now, after having reflected on how much I’ve accomplished in this first year against how much more I could experience in the coming years, stopping now does not seem like enough. I honestly don’t know how often I will stop to write here once the school year starts, because as I stated before, living life for all it’s worth has reached a new significance for me. Change is the only true constant in my life – my changing aspirations, goals, opinions, values, friends, loved ones – and I can only take so many pauses in the ever-shifting action to write it all down. But I will try my best to document this year’s events, from the tears cried to the joys celebrated. I can only hope someone can learn from reading these accounts one day…even if that person is me, years (or months) down the road when change has overwhelmed me and I need a reminder that it is a constant to be embraced rather than feared.

A nasty April Fool's joke on my Spring Break

Fate has unfortunately foiled my grand plans to have an awesome Spring Break. Well, they may not have been exactly grand, but they were going to consist of more than me being bedridden all day. Since Saturday, I’ve gone from simple nausea to a stomach virus to the feverish sickie that is myself today. The sun is finally shining, and I have to be here in a dark room trying to sleep off a sickness that was most likely caused by the many stresses of the past few weeks.

So what has had me stressed, you ask? Well, our spring concert rehearsals have finally been up and running for the past few weeks, and I have already run into several challenges I had not anticipated. The students in our cast are working hard, they have already improved immensely, and their enthusiasm is far more infectious to their schoolmates than the last time. However, I am continually reminded of the fact that we have performers in the making on our hands, not students who have vast prior knowledge of performing etiquette. I have had students forget about rehearsals, singers proclaim that they wanted their song changed or that they were quitting entirely because they didn’t know their song, and actors get confused about their assigned role even after I have written it on the cast list AND told them in person. Some days I have been left grumbling to myself, “How can they not KNOW?!” And then I remember where I am and why I’m here, and I feel guilty for forgetting that they do not know because nobody has ever taken the time to teach them. I remember that I must always find the patience to meet them where they are, for only then can we work our way to the level of expertise we want our performers to master.

As we continue to work through our student obstacles, the more painful hurdle for me lately has been the financial side of putting on a how. In college, our classes always focused on concert preparation and music pedagogy, and a small handful of lessons were geared towards the more practical side of building a music program. In these lessons, it was never explained how a teacher in a high-poverty school could fundraise enough money to fund her program, much less convince the administration for some quick cash when it’s needed last-minute. I love that we’re thinking big with our spring show, but it doesn’t help that money to fund our big dreams seems nowhere to be found. Asking the school board for help has not gone anywhere, the SAI fundraiser has been kind of a flop, and people’s suggestions have not been fruitful. I am slowly running out of ideas and options, and it bothers me that it’s coming so close to the show. It’s left me feeling defeated, discouraged, and very alone in my fight, and I’m positive that it’s one of the reasons why I have become so nauseous these past few days.

Does this mean I’ve given up? Hardly. Every day is a new opportunity waiting to be revealed, and once we get back to school I’ll hopefully have some new fight in me and I’ll be up to making some new proposals. And I suppose that a lot of it at this point is sheer faith that the turnout will be positive, even if it isn’t the grand result I was hoping to find.

Oh, and if anyone is reading this and has money to spare, I will gladly take donations for my school’s cause :-)

Traveling Into the Belly of the Beast

Yesterday, I was presented with an opportunity to truly see life from my students’ perspective. As I am thinking about it more and more, the idea is extremely scary and intimidating, but I did not hesitate to accept my principal’s proposal.

Let me backtrack to explain recent events at school. Over the past couple of weeks, I have become increasingly frustrated with teaching. No, I am not frustrated with my kids (though many times I tend to channel my frustrations into SWIP signings and referrals). I am frustrated with the fear that I cannot adequately provide for my students. No matter how much I try to change my methods, alter my materials, and adapt to the culture, at the end of the day I still feel like it’s not enough.

Fortunately, I had an opportunity to talk to my wonderfully supportive principal on the matter yesterday (note to teachers: I have heard and witnessed the fact that available and sympathetic principals are extremely rare. If you have one, take advantage of it!). I presented to her all of my perplexing contemplations – How can I provide for children that aren’t adequately provided for outside of school? How can I make my classroom something that is truly meaningful for my students? How can I relate to my students (or at least prove my empathy to them) when I have never lived the kind of lives they lead? That was when she suggested something that had never crossed my mind: if I want to understand my students better, why not take a first-hand look at their lives outside of school? Our school has recently gained a truancy officer to filter through the students who are consistently late or absent. Those who are officially “truant” get a visit from the officer. By special request of my principal, the officer has agreed to take me with him on several upcoming visits.

On one hand, this proposition is extremely daunting for me. The neighborhoods my children live in are so poverty-stricken, and the people the truancy officer has to visit are likely some of the most impoverished. It would be difficult enough to enter these environments and feel a sense of empathy, sorrow, and guilt. But to go into homes where my own students live – the children I teach, the children I see every day, the children I love – is going to be exponentially more emotional. I’m expecting to come home that day crying and feeling like I want to give every one of my kids my life savings. Every time I start to think about it again, I get more and more scared.

However, like I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I did not hesitate taking my principal up on this offer, no matter how intimidating the scenario. I have been stressing over not being able to connect with my students, and what better way to understand where they come from than to see their world first-hand? Traveling into the belly of the beast will hopefully help me realize why my students come to me every day in the manner that they do.

After talking with my principal, she actually opened the same suggestion to all the teachers during our staff meeting later in the day. I noticed many of the teachers having a very different reaction than I did – squirming in their chairs, avoiding gazes, and looking like they already ruled out the idea before they even considered it. It is a completely understandable reaction, as this kind of endeavor scares me just as much as the next suburban-bred young teacher. But how can I expect to change things if I don’t know the root of the challenges in the first place? Instead of just going in circles and constantly complaining about not getting anything accomplished in the classroom, I want to actually DO something to combat the obstacles I have been facing. Rome was not built in a day, but it also wasn’t built because people were sitting around whining about the scenery not changing.

My “Rome” won’t be built in a day either, but hopefully this excursion will help construction run a little faster.

Be happy, and great things will come

Two major television events occurred last night: the Hope for Haiti Telethon to raise money and awareness for the earthquake victims and their troubled town, and Conan O’Brien’s last run hosting The Tonight Show. Although neither had much of any connection to one another, they both had my heartstrings in a tight stronghold. I knew the telethon would have this effect on me before I even watched it, as the concept of a nationwide rally to openly give money and time to people we don’t even know is truly touching in these often selfish times. Performances of “Let it Be,” “Rivers of Babylon,” and other humbling songs by famous artists brought me to tears several times while watching the event.

However, I was most surprised to also find myself in tears by the end of Conan O’Brien’s show. I started watching the episode still quite annoyed by the whole Tonight Show debacle, and I thought it was silly that Conan had to leave the show after only seven months. But once he started giving his closing monologue, my perspective changed. He kept saying how he thought of himself as one of the most fortunate people for having the opportunity to have such a prosperous career. Even though his Tonight Show run was cut much shorter than expected, he saw it as a fantastic experience and was truly proud of every moment he had there. Just because things panned out not quite as expected – which rarely happens in life anyway – he could not have asked for a better job with better people. Above all, he hoped that if he could teach his audience one thing it would be to not feel cynical about the issue. Negativity is one of Conan’s least favorite traits to embody, for he is sure that if you stay happy, great and wonderful things will inevitably come your way.

It’s often hard to remember not to be cynical or negative when life isn’t going quite how we expected. I feel it’s simply human nature to get bogged down by the bad when we feel at our lowest. And at school, the bad surfaces a lot more often than I could have ever expected. But why should I focus on those moments of weakness? I’m only hurting myself if I immerse my thoughts in all the things that went wrong in a day, and positivity is an infectious feeling that I should try to give my students every day. After all, they could use a little positive energy a lot more than I could.

So to give my salute to one of my favorite television hosts ever, I am going to follow his direction and reflect on the happy and fulfilling moments of my week:

- One of my kindergartners told me that she went home and taught her mom how to read and write rhythms.

- I was able to command the attention and respect of the ISS students (arguably my toughest critics in class) quicker than the teacher running it.

- I was able to gather a group of fourth graders at literally the last minute to rehearse the Star Spangled Banner to sing for an assembly. They trusted me enough to agree to sing for all grades, including the Junior Academy. My “Lil’ 10” is now ready and willing to sing whenever I need them.

- Several of my classes actually sat quietly to listen to and read about Mozart!

- An eighth grader who once proclaimed to my face that she didn’t need to listen to me because I was shorter than her was suddenly sitting by me during the basketball game and telling me who was cute on the other team.

- I also gained a boyfriend at the game. Granted, he’s only five years old, but that’s just a minor detail (literally! Hah!)

Those are only a small handful of the many happy moments I had this week. What happiness can you find in your life?

P.S. – I know that the last time I mentioned a brand name, a representative from said company actually saw my blog and commented on the post. So if any Conan O’Brien reps out there are reading this, tell him that I think he ROCKS!!

All they see is love

Despite my lack of confidence in my teaching abilities the majority of the time, I am quite stubborn when it comes to changing my ways. I feel like I always have to be right, that I always have to know the perfect way to teach a lesson successfully. In reality, however, this is an absolutely pointless notion to have, as I am a first year teacher who cannot possibly know every effective teaching technique. So when I finally remember to let my pride go and listen to my peers and colleagues for advice, it is an extremely enlightening and thought-provoking experience.

This week, my inspiring conversation was with my principal, who also happens to be my mentor for the entry-year teacher program. I’ve been discussing my classroom struggles with her via a reflective journal, and she decided to talk to me in person about my most recent entry. I had written about the fact that I try my best to stay positive no matter what type of teaching day I have, yet there are still some behavior issues that completely frustrate and confuse me. She then went on to calmly explain the perspective that she has experienced with the students at the school and how it can be successfully approached.

If I have not mentioned it before in this blog, the student population at my school is almost entirely African-American. Yet I don’t intend to make this a discussion of race, but rather a discussion of cultures. The culture that I was raised in, the way people interacted with me, and the methods that were used to teach me all throughout grade school are entirely different than those of my students. They have grown up in an environment that is completely foreign to me and that I will never quite be able to fathom. I have known this to be true for a while now, but it wasn’t until I talked to my principal that I considered the possibility that this could be affecting my ability to affectively manage my classroom.

My principal told me how many students have revealed to their intervention teacher that they are frustrated with “too many white teachers” working at the school. However, when the teacher asked them what they thought when they saw the principal, they replied that all they see is love. This is a groundbreaking statement to hear, and it means that those students have been able to look past the color of her skin to see the person she is. She told me that once I can achieve this with all of my students, the classroom environment would change drastically.

I would never say that I was racist – if I were, I highly doubt that I would even be capable of surviving a job like this. But our conversation made me realize that I don’t fully take into consideration the fact that my students are of a different culture than I am. Many frustrations I have towards their lack of organization, rambunctious behavior, and the general way they interact have become so heated because it is a vast contrast from what I experienced in school. My culture is not like theirs, and to expect them to act completely opposite from what they are surrounded by every day is ridiculous. I of course need to keep their behavior in check, but I would never want to change the heart of who they are, and I believe my disciplining has given the impression that I want to do just that. I have never seen my students as simply a color of skin, but I now fear that

The conversation with my principal has now given me many questions that have kept my head spinning. Have I tried to connect with my students in all the wrong ways? How can I utilize effective classroom management without my students feeling attacked? How can I prove my acknowledgement and respect for their perspectives without compromising my own way of being? Have I already started to compromise my personal way of teaching by trying to be too much like the “tougher” teachers in the school? I am incredibly ashamed that I have not contemplated all of this sooner in the school year, especially when I start to think back on all the management methods I had thought were successful may have actually come off as arrogant and snobby. But as I said at the beginning of this post, it is foolish to believe that I know everything about teaching, and I should be grateful that someone was caring enough to help put these thoughts spinning in my head at all.

Hopefully one day I can prove to all my students that I see them as more than just a skin color, and in turn when they see me they see nothing but genuine love.

Resolution #1: Write more blog entries

I really do think that blogging my thoughts will help me focus my energies and reflect on what occurs in the teaching world. A day where something disheartening happens can bring me down so much, but when observed against all of the positive findings it never seems quite so bad. So because it is much more productive and fulfilling to be able to think happy thoughts, I will make the concerted effort to collect my ponderings into more blog entries.

This first week back of teaching was as to be expected in many ways, and was extremely unexpected in others. The kids were unruly in many respects and definitely not ready to back from break (actually, many teachers were not ready to be back from break). And with the prediction of snow coming true but no snow days to be had, the school as a whole was simply unable to get itself back into a steady routine. Inside my own classroom, however, small yet incredibly significant changes were witnessed. Yes, I still had the same kids who could not remember to stay in their seats, got into silly arguments with me, and did not particularly feel like doing work. But their demeanor and perspective seemed different than the students I had before winter break. They seemed legitimately interested in what we were doing in class that day, not just wanting to complain about more work. They acted like they wanted to learn, not like they wanted to butt heads. I was especially surprised and heartened by the behavior of my eighth graders and the look in their eyes – a look of respect and acceptance, not distrust and annoyance. It’s as if seeing the holiday concert and the quality of what we put on stage made them all realize that I wasn’t here just to yell at them for their improper behavior then leave two months later. They have realized that I am here as their teacher, as a music mentor, and as someone who actually wants to give them the opportunity to shine.

So does this mean that all my classroom issues have been solved? No, not in the least. But three extremely important elements have finally been established that are necessary for future success: consistent procedures are setting in, interest in participating has grown much stronger, and respect is settling into the atmosphere of our classroom. This hopefully means that the coming quarter will bring opportunities for deeper and more reflective music lessons. Essentially, I am hoping that I will get to truly teach the way I have wanted to teach. At the beginning of the year, for instance, I would have died if I had incorporated any bit of music theory or the history of classical music into the curriculum. Now I’m having kids ask me if we can learn more about notes and rhythms and discuss composers like Mozart and Beethoven. What had once seemed impossible is now highly probable – my goodness, it’s a miracle!

I believe this is an excellent time to quote a lovely line from Thumbelina, a guilty pleasure movie that I just found this weekend at Target on DVD: “You’re sure to do impossible things, if you follow your heart…”

"Pressure, pushing down on me..."

All I can think of right now is that stupid song by The Police and how it totally describes how I currently feel. Tomorrow is our first day back to school from Winter Break, and I’m having a huge panic attack thinking about how it’s going to go. No matter how much I tried to prepare for it, I have a sinking feeling that I just won’t be able to anticipate just how overwhelming, draining, and discouraging it will be. Yes, I know that all teachers say that all of the students will be off the chain because their malleable minds have been on hiatus and have therefore gone to mush. This of course means that they need to be molded back into a form that knows how to follow class rules and procedures so they can actually learn something. But how do I know if I am capable of molding them? Who am I to say that I have that power? And if I don’t have that power, what’s going to happen to me in these next two weeks or so?

I want to say that I’m a fighter. I want to believe that I will be able to overcome my classes of unruly, judgmental, and hurtful kids and become a music teacher that can actually teach them. But there is a very large part of me tonight that fears I won’t have enough fight in me. I fear that the amount of strength I can muster from this tiny body will be succumbed by the dominating attitudes of my kids. Instead of molding these important minds, I’ll be brought down by their ignorant and defensive behaviors.

But maybe I am just overwhelming myself. Maybe I will get back there, get back into the swing of things, and surprise myself. Maybe I really have grown a lot more than I think I have since I first started this school year.

So maybe I should be focusing on the other song that keeps running through my head:

“You may say I’m a dreamer/But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you will join us/ And the world will be as one.”

I guess we’ll see tomorrow.