Ms. Teacher Lady

So, as you may gather from the day's posts, it's been a busy month. As usual, the more I have to write about, the worse the writing, but I'm thinking of this as a functional diary - more who-what-when-how than prose.

Speaking of which, apparently some people think I do have a bit of a knack with the prose. This winter, a gentleman working with thegreathimalayatrail.org e-mailed me with a bunch of questions regarding our travels on the Tamang Heritage Trail. Just last week, he wrote me another e-mail with the link to my responses. You can also see my profile on the list of contributors.

Anyway, I've clearly fallen off the wagon when it comes to the blog and writing, despite all my resolutions while we were traveling. I tried my hand at some submissions and fiction during the Spring, but to be honest, my heart wasn't in it. What I really love writing about is traveling.

Speaking of which, I've got the itch again, bad. I'm trying to convince Joshua that we should live in Mexico for a couple of years in a few years' time, and I think I've got him hooked. I think we may never be able to buy a house, because I'll just want to keep traveling (and why have a house?).

Enough rambling! I began this post with the intention to talk about teaching, and here I am talking about writing and traveling instead! I swear this is not some Freudian slip :)

And it isn't, because for the past three weeks, I've been teaching summer school at my new school. It's been demanding and I've had a lot of prep time for two 100 minute periods, but after a couple of weeks, I really started to feel like I was getting the hang of it. I became more efficient, and already, I felt like I had good relationships with the kids. They're fab, and I love the age. 6th graders are a little doofy, a little squirrelly, and a lot adorable. I love them.

For my students, summer school means that they didn't pass their classes during the year. In order to get into 7th grade, they need to pass a cumulative test at the end of summer school. It's very high stakes.

And I'll be honest with you: although we worked very hard, I gave both of my classes a quiz mid-way through. It wasn't good. The no one got more than a third of the questions right, and I was basing all of my lesson plans upon the content of these quizzes. I had no idea what I was doing wrong.

On Friday, my principal came in to ask me how I thought my students would do, and I told him my fears: they had done terribly on the quiz last week, and although they were doing better on their Exit Slips this week, I was still concerned that many of them may not pass. Their reading levels are still significantly behind, and many of them had poor attendance. To top it off, I still feel as though I'm climbing my own learning curve. I wanted to maintain high expectations, but to be perfectly honest, I'm so accustomed to my students' and my own failure when it comes to teaching that I really do have low expectations.

Well. They all passed. Every single one of them. Even the three kids that I was almost positive would fail. It was a network-wide test with a fairly standard grading system, and I had a couple of students in the 90 percent range, a number of them in the 80 percent range, and all of them above a 65 percent. In average, they passed with a 81 percent average. I was ecstatic, and it felt like the most rewarding, meaningful thing in the world to hand them their tests with their grades and tell them they passed. They were so proud of themselves, and I was so proud of them.

So my introduction to teaching in Denver was a success. I feel good about the basic skills that I already have and was able to hone just a little bit, and I feel confident that I can become even better this year. I adore the students, and I'm convinced that I'm working for good, hard-working, and compassionate people who have extremely high expectations and have already begun doing amazing things. It's going to be hard work, but I think it's going to be good work.

That's all for now, folks. Lots of love, and happy summertime.