¡Llora!

When I was student teaching last year in an inner-city first grade classroom, I was working with a boy named Miguel who had a very short attention span. He had forgotten his pencil for an assignment, so I had lent him mine. When it was time to transition to reading, I expected him to return the pencil. When he didn’t, I asked for it back. “No,” he spouted out, melodramatically, with an indignant face; and he made a motion like he was going to run away with it. He teased me a little with a big smile on his face. I asked sweetly, “Please?” And he retorted in Spanish, “¡Llora!” (Cry!) and proceeded to run around the room with my pencil.

...

As the first day of school is approaching, the day in which I will be in charge of my own classroom for the first time, this story comes to mind as a parallel experience. I will be working at another inner-city school with similar demographics and community issues. The only difference is that the kids will be much older: 8th graders.

Thus far, I have had to put in a lot of time, money and energy into preparation. The school is well funded, but poorly organized. I have a new laptop, an LCD projector, new textbooks and enough pencils to get through the year. Unfortunately, every other kind of supply (paper, glue, scissors, notebooks, binders, staplers, pencil sharpeners, whiteboard markers, whiteboard erasers, chart and graph paper, posters, independent reading books, sentence strips, paper clips, sharpies, cleaning supplies, construction paper, transparencies, tape, etc.) I have had to purchase myself. Supposedly the Title I office on campus (that provides free supplies by a government grant) is supposed to supply these items, but does not do so before school starts. Even then the supplies, as I’ve been told by other teachers, are limited.

As a first year teacher, I expected some guidance with the preparation of lesson plans and thematic units. I also expected to receive a training in which I would learn how the school works, what kinds of procedures, forms and individuals I need to familiarize myself with.... Perhaps a campus tour. But, the “training” I received seemed to be at a “need-to-know” basis: rules to discuss on the first day of school, who the discipline administrators were, how to be stern with the students. The small-learning community meeting only had one thing on their agenda: choosing a team color. And in the department meeting? We signed up for notebook supplies. No mention of department or team consistencies or future projects or communications. No lesson planning, little guidance.

Let’s not even talk about the school district and how my information was misplaced, how my employee status was delayed getting into the computer database, and how I was getting bounced around the labyrinth of sub-department phones. That's an entirely separate set of headaches.

Needless to say, I had a few obstacles in my way of getting ready for my class. I had higher expectations… and I’m disappointed.

Sure, I’ve been trained at a top-notch teacher education university, but I don’t feel prepared for what lies ahead of me. The idealistic, social justice, community-building type of classroom environment I’ve been coached to work with doesn’t seem to jive with the culture at this school.

I’ve been told that the kids I’ll be working with need discipline, consistency and a lot of attention. I expect as much-- they ARE kids, after all. But, what I am not sure of, nor prepared for, is the level of which they will need these things and how I should respond to certain situations for the most effective result.

I feel like I’m driving blind. I’m nervous. I’m anxious. I’m stressed. And there’s nothing I can do about it at the time being.

Llora.

Maybe my student teaching experience written above isn’t exactly parallel, but it represents what I feel like. I’m trying my best and giving my all, while others take, don’t return, and present obstacles. It's incredibly frustrating not knowing what to do and having to rely on your instincts to get through it. Crying isn't an option.

When the little first grader ran around the room with my pencil, I was irritated, but not noticeably so. I didn’t give in to his attention seeking. I walked away and joined the rest of the readers in the group circle. Miguel soon figured out that I wouldn’t chase him and gave up. He dropped the pencil and also joined the group for reading. It was a small victory.