Parent Interview

I interviewed the grandmother of one of my students in my worst class. “Justin” doesn’t misbehave, but often I’ll come by his desk and he’s done no work since I last came by. Apparently he’s been in trouble for fights in previous years, but that hasn’t been an issue in my class. I’ve called her several times about his grades (not turning in assignments, and not paying attention in class etc) and she has been on him about that.

We met at Western Sizzlin, a buffet restaurant in Batesville after she’d gotten off of her shift at Walgreens. We briefly discussed what Justin should be doing that evening to study for his test. Then I asked her some questions about herself.

She’s lived in Sardis for all of her life, although she’s only lived in the town for about 10 years. She has four children and several grandchildren. Justin is the only grandchild that she is responsible for as a primary caretaker. I did not ask why he does not live with his mother. The other four grandchildren attend school in Memphis, Independence, and South Panola. I asked her what she thought about Sardis. She replied:

It’s not a progressive place. Maybe because it went down a whole lot from when I was growing up in Sardis. Not a booming town.... After 8 o’clock, the grocery store closes. If they don’t have it at the dollar store you have to go to Batesville....It is different now because it’s really nothing there. Children get out of school for the summer. There are no centers to go to. Nothing to occupy their mind. They don’t have anything to if they don’t have a part time job. They need some kind of activity to occupy themselves. They don’t have nothing.

At one part, they had where the school was taking them to Oxford. They really enjoyed going over their - so there’s nothing for them to do. These days you have to keep a teenager, not only a teenager, but children [away from bad activities].

I asked if teenagers faced a different situation from when she was growing up. She replied that it was, and that it was different from when her children were growing up as well:

The children was different. There is so much going on in the world that keeps their mind going different places. More teenagers killing themselves, and gangs. If something interest them in that. They get bored and disgusted. Peer pressure. Like that.

I thought what she said about not having anything to do in the summer was interesting, and I would agree with her. Although teens should be able to relax in the summer, no one really wants to have nothing to do for days on end. Although the school provides extracurriculars during the year, they might not appeal to all of the students, and they do not meet during the summer for the most part.

I asked her about her opinion of the school. She took awhile to answer:

I just feel that... mmmm... I can’t put it into words. Let me think about it for a moment. Since the state turned over, or whatever. I feel like there’s a lot of pressure there. Dropping the kids down to where they can pass with a D, That’s really not. That’s not pushing them to learn more. They’re just getting by with a D. The ones that can, they ain’t gonna do no better.

I thought this was an interesting answer. It’s true that there are many students who are only concerned with passing, and will only rise as high as the bar is set. Maybe the importance of graduation rates has made teachers more likely to want to pass a student. I had expected her to have noticed other changes that have happened over the last couple of years such as increased discipline, or the emphasis on state tests.

I asked her about the state tests. Her student had failed the English II test last year. We talked about what was being done for those students.

I have noticed - I talked to him, and it look like they have more classes. More something. Don’t look like they have enough tutoring.

I mentioned the “Learning Strategies” class he was in to prepare to take the English II Test again.

On Ms. Taylor - I talked to her. They supposed to notify me. They had to go to summer school. So I’m asking - what do you do? Somebody should have been teaching them. Why were they .... They had to come in. He had to go for two weeks from 7 to 12. The bus picked him up in the morning.... When I talked to him, it sounded like they was just on the computer.

They’re just gonna sit their in front of the computer. That was easy money to me.

I asked her what she thought about discipline at the school. Her answer was interesting. She did not seem to be in favor of the increased severity with which infractions were treated.

I know Justin got expelled form School. He got expelled. the boy hit him and they got to fighting. They say Jalen was promoting it. They didn’t pass no licks, I don’t think they should have been expelled. They expelled him for three days.

She said that she thought that he should have been put in ISS instead. I asked about the reputation of North Panola. She responded, "There’s been a lot of stuff going on up there. There’s a lot of ... It starts with the parents too. If they ain’t getting the training at home, what do you expect when they go to school?”

We talked about her own work experience. She’s worked in retail, as an aid in someone’s home, and in factories. She said she had prefer the home help job taking care of an elderly woman:

I worked at the job for about 3 years. It just came a part of family. I could do more her than her daughter. I could go in there and talk to her sometimes and calm her down. She died, so she didn’t need me .... so I found the job at Walgreens. I like my job and I like my hours so I just stay there and work.

My grandfather had MS for several decades before he died, and my grandmother had two women who helped out, and we talked about how those people do really become part of the family and how good it had been for my grandmother to be able to live in the house with my grandfather because of those women.

She didn’t like the idea of an honors class, because she felt that it somehow gave a negative impression of the students in the other classes:

It still seems like - if you have an honors class, and you have a regular class, you are kinda degrading those students.....When I was going to school, we was all in together - and - you don’t know who.... Some of the honors students didn’t go to college - but they were smart, but they was honors students. We was all their together....I didn’t go myself - I dropped out - still, that’s what happened.

It would help if the honors students helped - if I don’t know something -I’m gonna get next to the honors student. It just hit me - looks like you’re putting them up somewhere. You look at me different than you look at them.

I did talk to her about how differences in reading ability made it difficult for everyone to read the same thing. I talked about how I made students read silently to themselves because they would need to read things by themselves in the future, and I was trying to get them better at that. She admitted that she did not like reading herself:

I do not like reading - that is pitiful for me -it’s the worst part of me - I just don’t - I got to the place where I just don’t like reading. If I really don’t understand what I’m reading - I’m going to pick it up, and put it down again.

I see this as part of the problem. No matter how much this woman cares about her grandson doing well in school in the abstract, if no one instills a love of reading early, or is able to help their student with readings, they are at a disadvantage when it comes to reading. Someone the cycle has to be broken.

Desk Tape Experiement

Problem:

The desks in my room are very flimsy. They shift if a student leans, stretches, or stands up. Will tape lines keep desks, even very lightweight desks from moving across the room. I put lines down shortly after the beginning of the year, but it was flimsy

painter tape, and was torn up quickly. I put down the red (GO COUGARS!) duct tape right before fall break.

Hypothesis: The tape will control the migration of desks, although not completely.

If this were a real experiment, my control would be a no tape day. This will not happen.

Pictures from before the students arrived:

Pictures from the end of the day:

Culminating Experience

It seems that Scott and I had the same idea of interviewing someone from the McDonalds in the town the high school is located at, a mainstay in my dining repertoire. I don’t want to know the impact of this experience has been on the opinion of white northerners amongst the staff there.

Anyways, I ended up interviewing the woman who was on break. She seemed to be going along to be polite but wasn’t too enthused about answering my questions. He answers about her childhood and her own education (West High School) were positive but general. She was slightly more talkative about her job, and previous jobs. She said she enjoyed interacting with people there, and that any job, from making and serving fast food to manufacturing parts in a factory required the same skills. The only difference was one involved food and one involved parts.

She only became animated when we got on the subject of East HS. It turns out her daughter is a tenth grader there, and one of the majorettes in the band. The majorettes at EHS are not like any majorettes I ever saw before coming here. They don’t have batons, and if I tried to dance like that, I’d probably hurt myself. Her mother was obviously proud of her daughter, and mostly for her academic ambition. She said that her daughter had told her she was determined to go to a four-year school, not a community college. In particular, MSU and LSU. We then had a conversation that lasted about three times as long as the first part, all about what she should be doing now to help her daughter. Her mother was wondering if she should take her daughter to visit campuses herself and I strongly suggested she should. I said that for a teenager, the future can be pretty abstract, and actually seeing a campus could do a lot to motivate a student. I told her this was true for my Hmong kids, and it was true for me. I also said that she should take the PSAT seriously next year (she’d been chose to take it this year) because she might get mailings from places she wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. Her mother asked how she could prepare for the PSAT, SAT and ACT and I told her about those big prep books. Her mother had never heard of such a thing. Now, they are expensive, but it makes me sad to know that many students aren’t even aware that they are out there, when ever person I knew in high school had at least one. She asked where she could get one and I suggested any large bookstore – knowing that there aren’t any close to Sardis. I told her that if she had me next year, I would try to have a lot of ACT prep and that I would help her with admissions essays.

It really lit a fire under my butt when I saw Yale’s campus for the first time the summer before my sophomore year. I had a tangible goal – a nice gothic revival dorm.* I also had parents who made getting into college a priority AND knew a lot about the process. In my case, the intersection of my biography and my interviewee’s is clear. She is like my own parents in that her priority is her daughter, and her priority for her daughter is college. The difference is a lack of knowledge about the process, but hopefully I can help with that. I will probably have this student next year because she is apparently one of the smartest students in the 10^th grade, and I hopefully will have an honors class next year. This interaction recharged my determination to focus on the path to college, especially amongst my honors students.

* I ended up in a Georgian style residential college instead.

Literacy in my classes

Reflect on literacy (or lack thereof) in your classroom. What have you tried in terms of literature and reading? Were the assignments successful? What are your hopes in terms of literacy instruction? What are the hurdles you are facing?

I probably should have done the entry on Faulkner, mainly because I think one of the quotes on my door is from that essay, but.... time is tight this week. So I didn’t want to spend it hunting down that text.

I’ve found that the level of literacy varies greatly from student to student. Students can be roughly grouped into categories, honors students, non-honors readers, students who can “read” but not read, and non-readers.

All the students in my honors class (about a third of my students), can read. Many of the students in this class will read for pleasure. So far, I hadn’t given them much to read that really stretched them. The biggest difficulty they’ve had was some of the more difficult reading comprehension questions I used for PSAT practice, and that was partially the result of the difficulty of the questions and not the passages themselves. They also had trouble completing the reading section of the PSAT in the time given. They also lack a lot of background knowledge that results in some comprehension difficulties. If the don’t know anything about a topic, then they are less likely to be able to predict what will happen. Authors of passages on tests like the ACT/SAT make assumptions about what their audience already knows about the subject that my students might not know. Unfamiliar place names, person names, or terms seemed to slow them down (even if you don’t have to know them to answer the questions). I hope to incorporate more ACT type reading to get them ready, but I haven’t done this yet.

In my other classes, reading ability is much more limited. Most students can read aloud the majority of the words in the texts we read. Fairly often however, they are tripped up by a word that surprise me. Many of my students didn’t know the words “gigantic” and “foreign” for instance. Even more than the honors students, they are hampered by a lack of background knowledge in whatever we read. Since they will be taking the state test in history, I try to use texts that are from the time periods covered (1877 to the present). The fact that I am exposing them to history that is new, or at least mostly new to them is good I think, BUT it also holds up comprehension. Giving them vocab lists beforehand and relevant historical and cultural information helps somewhat, but there are too many unfamiliar words in each chapter for me to assign all as vocab words for them to learn.

By far the biggest problem is understanding what they’ve just read. Even if they know all the words, they have trouble getting meaning out of it. For instance, a lot students incorrectly answered a chapter question in Night about the conditions of the train with information from a paragraph where some men repeat rumors about the condition of the camps. The have trouble noting what each part of a chapter is talking about, or finding answers in the text, especially if the answer is scattered throughout a page or two. This is a hurdle I’m not sure how to best approach other than giving them more practice with varied and increasingly complex texts. reading with inflection, books on tape, and stopping and getting everyone caught up on what’s going on. I’ve also got them to predict more recently, which seems to help.

There are a sizable number of students who, in addition to having the aforementioned difficulties, that still have trouble with pronouncing words from the page. To their credit, they don’t mind reading out loud to the class from time to time, but it’s painful to listen to. These students generally have not passed their English II test, and so that might account for their motivation to improve their reading ability. For them, the task of reading silently is pretty overwhelming, but since this is the best way for the reading students to get some practice in, I’m torn about what method to rely on most.

I think that some of these problems might be a result of a lack of being made to read in other classes in lower grades. Ideally, students should read and write regularly in every class except math, but I don’t know if this is the case in middle school. Also, having parents who encourage reading and read to/with their children probably makes a huge difference. I can’t do much about those factors now, but I would be interested in research about the factors that influence reading ability development.

(Yesterday there was a kid who looked about 10 sitting by the cashier at the Batesville Dominos reading the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I asked the man working he was his son, and he said no, he was the owner’s kid. I told him to pass along how happy I was to see a child reading).

You could have been a school book

On Friday, I taught a lesson on simile and metaphor using Motown songs because this week was homecoming, and it was a Motown theme. The student got into it, perhaps a little too much. My biggest management issue was curbing out of seat dancing (in seat dancing is technically ok, as is singing). I wanted to get them to answer higher DOK questions like "Why did the songwriter choose a metaphor here." I was tired to getting responses like "to make it more interesting," so I played "Cloud Nine" by the temptations. Ironically, only my honors class couldn't figure out the metaphor. (The answer was "to avoid offending fans and to be radio friendly")

I've got a lot of grading to finish for this week, but tonight I will be trying some new fondue recipes and watching Interview With a Vampire with other MTCers.

"You can draw a four-pronged fork if you want to avoid drawing a gang sign"

I introduced my students to the essay tree organizer thing Aaron showed us last class. I like it better than the other ways of organizing because you can fit a lot of different details on a page, and things won’t get jumbled up as easily. I used it along with some pre-made handouts on how to construct a thesis and find supporting points. The assignment was to prepare to write an essay onCall of the Wild by filling out the chart. They had to select a thesis (One theme in Call of the Wild is ….. which is shown by (issue 1, issue 2, issue 3).

I ran into several problems with this assignment. The first is that I did not have anything concrete due by the end of the period. They were told they should have a thesis selected and their three issues chosen and be started on the evidence. In almost every class I had at least one student refuse to do it. Usually it was a student who was a struggling reader. It took a lot of prompting to get then started – wasting my time and giving them a delayed start. I spoke with Ms. Serkedakis and we agreed that they needed to have something to hand in each period, so the next day I told them it was due at the end of the period, completely filled out and it would be worth a test grade. That really lit a fire under their butts. I also called the parent of the student who was most reluctant. She was not pleased to hear he’d spent an entire class period not working. He was all business the next day.

Another problem was that they had never used a three-pronged thesis before. I had always thought that was standard, but I guess it’s not what the English II test requires and so they are not taught it. Although it does make for a cumbersome thesis sentence, I prefer to think of my main points as being part of my thesis. I think this drives home the idea that those three “issues” must support the “proposition.” The second day I clarified this and they adjusted well.

A third problem was that one class period refused to draw the chart because it looked too much like a gang sign.

One thing I did well was that the day before, I taught a lesson on theme and had the class list themes from Call of the Wild they could come up with on their own. This meant that once the assignment was given, I did not have to also field questions about what was or wasn’t a theme. They could just pick from the list if they wanted. I also made sure to tell them to start writing down page numbers now next to their evidence - they still don't believe me that you need to cite things, but they've started humoring my funny notions at least for the sake of their grades. I was also pleased with some of the quality of ideas that came from my honors class. They had a more difficult prompt - their thesis had to be (One theme in Call of the Wild is ..... and this relates to three of Nietzsche's ideas, (issue 1, 2, 3) OR One idea of Nietzsche that Jack London incorporated into Call of the Wild is ...... which is reflected in the themes ... (issue 1, 2, 3). On the flip side, some students with a solid grasp of the plot ofCall of the Wild had trouble figuring out what details might support a theme.

Alternate Reading of Call of the Wild

I had been planning to write about my next vacation (NYC probably, then The Game in the Have, then Lanc Lanc), but instead I decided at the last minute to write about something that made me happy.
It happened yesterday during my 6th period class, which is normally my best class of the day. Every student is polite and actually pretends to be interested in "Call of the Wild." Yesterday however, they really engaged with the text on a more nuanced level. We'd reached the chapter where Buck lives with John Thornton and falls madly in love with him. No students so far had questioned this turn of events, but one student in 6th period, after reading the one of the many passages that described Buck's "passion", and "adoration" stopped and said "How did this go from being the toughest book ever to a book about some fruity Dog?"
I paused for a moment and answered "Well, [Alan] you're right that the tone of the novel shifts a lot in this passage. It went from being a story about how hard life was and how mean Buck was becoming to one about how much he loves John Thornton. However, Buck is not homosexual. Besides, he's not even a human."
"But he loves John Thornton?"
"People can love people of the same gender and not be homosexual - don't you love your male relatives?"
"But I don't go around saying 'I Love [name of big football-playing friend who's also in the period].'"
Awkward pause. "Anyways, let's keep reading."
They did get back on task, but made sure to emphasize with inflection passages mentioning how they "grappled" with each other, how John Thornton was the "the only one who could hold Buck" or put a pack on his back, and the "naked bedrock."
Now, a perfect teacher would have not found this funny, but if you're me, and you've been teaching all day, anything is funny, and I lost it, hiding my face behind the Everbind edition of Jack London's classic.
On a related note, another period spontaneously decided they would read it like scripture at Church, complete with preacher-like inflections and shouts and exclamations from the class/congregation. Once again, a better teacher would have shut this down with a look, but all of a sudden everyone wanted a turn to read aloud, even the ones who had never read aloud in class before.
I write this all to say that anyone who says are kids are "dumb" is missing the point. They are incredibly clever. The biggest mistake you can make is underestimating their intelligence with regards to classroom management/cheating prevention etc. They can also be very funny when they want to be, and just not with fake farts.

First Baptist Church - Como MS

I went to church with Anda, Dan and Scott, so there might be some overlap between our posts (I purposely didn’t read theirs yet to avoid being influenced).

The church we went to was in a small building. When we arrived, there were probably only ten people there, but eventually it was filled to capacity. Part of this was because it was there 90th anniversary, and there were visitors from another church. Even in the crowd we obviously stuck out, being the only white people there. It was similar to other small churches I’ve been to, in that the minister greeted us before the service started noticing we were new. He referred to the presence of teachers from our district several times, and even called up Dan, as a math teacher, to help him calculate what 10% of ten dollars was. I didn’t see any of my students, but there were some from the high school. The next day a young man came up to me while I was on hall duty and asked how I’d liked it. The atmosphere was definitely welcoming - what you’d hope for in a Christian establishment of course.

The format of the service did not follow what I am used to, (PCUSA usually, sometimes Anglican or generic ecumenical college type services) in a lot of ways. The sociologist in me would say that the line between the ritual and the ordinary was blurred considerably, and that the service was pretty informal. The Calvinist in me was troubled by some big theological differences, most notably the Prosperity Gospel during the collection.

The microphone was passed around to several people prior to the actual sermon. There was an “MC” and any new speaker had to have someone introduce them. At one point a woman went on for a good while about how she was uncomfortable with public speaking but when the minister asked her to introduce another speaker, she had to say yes - it was God’s way of getting her out of her comfort zone. Mind you, this was just the introduction to the next speaker.

The sermon was not performed by the usual minister because they had a visiting preacher from another church. He was incredibly dynamic and entertaining. He conformed pretty closely to the stereotype of a southern black baptist lay preacher - loud in volume, and with the stereotypical delivery. His topic was on how you can only count on Jesus, and everyone else will let you down when times get rough. Pretty depressing stuff actually, but definitely something that got to me spiritually. It’s also the kind of topic uber-liberal Yale divinity school types (the ministers I’ve been primarily hanging out out with for the past couple of years) would probably avoid. There was a good amount of “audience participation” in the form of affirmations from worshipers when the preacher made a good point.

The music was enjoyable. There was a house band of sorts (drums, guitar, keyboard bass) and we got to hear the home church’s choir as well as the visiting church’s choir. The home church had a very young choir. The members looked like they were mostly teens and young adults. It’s nice to see young people people being orderly and smiling after watching the students at my school bound up and down the halls hollering between every class period. Both choirs had very talented soloists, and the second choir was very good. I wish there had been more songs where everyone sang - I was surprised that most were just choir songs. There were also no hymnals so I wouldn’t have known the words anyways I guess.

The mean age in the pews was surprisingly young. There were lots of children and young adults.They called up one of their longest running members to speak since it was the 90th anniversary and she was in her sixties. To give that a bit of perspective, the mean age in my home church in PA is somewhere around 65. While church membership is declining across the country in many denominations because of a lack of interest in the newer generations, that doesn’t seem to be the case here. The attire varied somewhat - some people were dressed up, a few were in jeans, but nothing too out of the ordinary. The ministers were in suits and ties instead of robes.

The most memorable thing about the service was that is was long. At around 2.5 hours, it was hard to not lose focus. I’m not sure if Mr. Hebert was in deep contemplation of the divine or sleeping at one point. The minister made some comments about how visitors should know it isn’t usually that long and kept trying to move things along. He might have been worried we wouldn’t come back on account of the length. Afterwards, the four of us hit up The Windy City Grill in Como, which was nice.

More Reflecting

To begin, I am trying to think of ways in which I've changed or my situation has changed since my last blog post.

The biggest difference is the absence of the second years. Just when I started to feel like I was getting to know them and appreciate their advice and support, they leave. I hope you guys are enjoying your time off and spare a thought for your comrades who are still at summer school.

The next biggest difference is that I'm now teaching middle school for this session. They seem to be more open and interested in the material. There are much fewer of them (14 today). Also, they aren't as big as the high school students. So far this has meant that they have been much easier to control. Here's to hoping this continues.

As for me, it feels like I haven't made much progress. I feel like I am jumping through hoops in terms of following protocol, but I feel like it hasn't helped me in effectively getting my students to learn. I also feel less and less creative when it comes to making lessons interesting or designing engaging sets. I had a decent idea last night, but my execution could have been better this morning during the actual lesson.

I am still struggling with how to relate to students. We watched a movie this evening about two mtcers who'd completed their first year. During a Q & A session afterwards, they said that building relationships with students is key, but you won't see it until the second year, and it helps to do things outside the classroom. I've suspected that following a rigid discipline system could have the unintended consequence of making it hard to get your students to open up to you, and this seems to go with that. I hope my students will eventually behave because they want to, for my sake and their own, not because they don't want a writing assignment. I'm trying to answer the question of how to get to that point.

Intended Audience

Nothing unusual about seeing this clock in a school. I was amused, however, to see it in the faculty room.

I want you to succeed, now pull up your pants!

The MTC summer school experience for me so far has been both disappointing and encouraging. It is discouraging to feel like most of my energy is spent herding, correcting, chastising and silencing disruptive or disrespectful students. I know I can teach, I've done it before, but teaching someone who is defiant seems close to impossible. I don't think it's possible to force someone to learn something. It seems like you need to convince them that they should care, and I'm at a loss as to how to do that. I'm reminded of the senior thesis another sociology student did at Yale. She found that for the poor, male, (urban), black students she interviewed, they were more likely to try hard in a class if they liked a teacher and wanted his or her approval, unlike middle and upper class students who are more likely to see academic achievement as a means to an end. Other researchers have come to similar conclusions when studying poor students. This all sounds nice, except how am I supposed to balance that finding with my mandate to keep all (male) pants up and all (male) shirts tucked in?

It's also discouraging that while there are many students in my class eager to learn and participate, I cannot seem to challenge those students, teach the rest of the class that is struggling with the basics and control the ones that don't seem to care. Once again, the idea of differentiated instruction sounds nice, but what does that mean exactly? From my discussions with mtc second years and others involved with the program, it appears that classes such as the one I am observing/teaching are the norm. Tracking is rare in Mississippi, and I am going to have to get used to trying to reach students at different levels simultaneously instead of in separate classes.

It is encouraging that now, and during the school year, I won't need to look hard for a support systems. MTC is giving us the best shot at success. Although all those feedback forms can be overwhelming, no one can say we weren't given advice. I also am encouraged by the fact that admitting you are struggling or admitting you're not a great teacher is totally OK and expected in MTC.

I don't think I've improved too much yet. Unlike some of my peers, I haven't taught too many times. I have learned a lot about what I need to improve, and what I will need to change to fit into the system my students will be used to. I need to be meaner and more vocal. Proximity and a stern look used to work for me in previous teaching situations. The students I taught last summer, for instance, could be very rowdy and prone to misbehaving, but never openly defiant or hostile. When you caught them about to do something against the rules, they were always subdued. Not here. I also found out you can't expect for students to copy notes as you go over them. Note writing has to be it's own thing, done in silence. I also need to develop the ability to both simultaneously get the projector working AND greet students at the door.

Despite all that, I still retain the (probably naive) dream of getting my students hooked on reading (anything, even Twilight) this year. I think you can teach grammar and literary terms till you're blue in the face, but there's no replacement for actual time reading when it comes to improving a student English skills. I want to know how to get students into books. I want to know how to help struggling readers find something that is at their level but still interesting. I want to know how to generate actual discussions in class about books.

Humble Pie

Prompt: Reflect on your first week with the Mississippi Teacher Corps. How has the experience been so far and what questions do you still have?

I guess I could be cheeky about this prompt and reply that “reflecting” is not an easy objective to assess. How will I know if I’ve reflected? But seriously, open-ended prompts like this have always made me anxious. I guess I will have to get used to it.

The last couple weeks of my life have been amazing and tough and sad and many other things. I graduated one week before the first day of MTC. I miss my college friends a lot. I’ve been sad thinking about how the people I’ve lived with for four years are going to be scattered across the country and the globe, doing cool and exciting things that will surely change them, just as I am doing something that will surely change me. I sincerely hope that the sentimental tropes in Bright College Years turn out to be true, although I suspect that Time and Change often do prevail to break or at least weaken friendships. I am confident though, that I will come out of this experience a better version of myself than when I entered in many ways. I will probably never be intimidated as much by any professional challenge as I am right now.

I am excited to actually live in one manifestation of the “Real World.” I’ve sat in so many sociology, American studies and African American studies classes, and read so many ethnographies, studies and social theories that sometimes it’s hard to get a grasp on what I actually think about anything. I think, however, that my undergraduate years have given me an excellent critical lens with which to evaluate what I see and experience here in Mississippi. I hope that my colleagues at my school and my students are able to “get” me, a white woman dropping in after four years at Yale, as I hope to understand them. I think my best hope for that acceptance is to show that I am willing to learn from them and that I am working hard for my students.

I am aware of how difficult the first year of teaching is for anyone, and I am also aware of how my situation here will be even more difficult. MTC likes to remind you constantly about this, incase anyone arrived here still operating under the delusion that it will be fun or easy. MTC has also bombarded us with resources and tasked designed to make us as prepared as possible, while reminding us that we will never be fully prepared. MTC: Serving humble pie since 1989.

What questions do I still have? Well, I’d really like to know what grades I will be teaching for a start. If I have 9^th or 10^th grade English, I will have the state test (which student must pass in order to graduate and is notoriously difficult) hanging over my head. I am also looking forward to actually meeting some real live students since planning lessons for hypothetical ones is hard.

MTC Class of 2011: Humble Pie

MTC Class of 2011: Humble Pie: "Prompt: Reflect on your first week with the Mississippi Teacher Corps. How has the experience been so far and what questions do you stil..."