today and the future

today was our first day of "practice teaching." they keep calling it "PT," which i constantly think is "physical training" after my ROTC friends' nightmare 6am daily routine.  but we didn't really practice teach---and it doesn't look like i'll be doing much of that for the summer.  i'm working, over summer, at an elementary school. it's right outside of the metro line, a stop away from my (amazing) subletted apartment.. very convenient. my population is eight 3-5 year olds with autism, but only 3 of them showed up today.  there were about 6 adults in the classroom (including classroom and dedicated aids), so about a 2:1 teacher:student ratio. which is a bit crazy.  it's hard to know where to place myself, the space to navigate without stepping on anyone's toes.

one of the most heartbreaking things to see is the differences in these kids' abilities: how tuned in to the world they are.  the 3-year-old girl has been receiving services for over a year. she started out completely nonverbal (and violent. a biter.) a year ago, and now is able to count (although, admittedly, she adds just random "8"'s in there sometimes) and to really do well with the alphabet, as well as communicating, playing with other kids, dancing, and spelling her name.  she has an amazing one-on-one aid and has had an amazing classroom teacher.  this is what EVERY kid should have!!!!! 

and then. the 5-year-old boy.  he exhibits every single trait that i can identify as being on the autism spectrum.  he is so in his own world.  it takes about 20 trials and heavy bribing with fruit snacks to entice him to even imitate the aid saying one word or the other.  and it seems like even the teacher had given up on him, sort of: it's so difficult to know where to start.  because he didn't receive early early intervention services, it'll take so much more of a spectacularly devoted and knowledge personality to do things that we normatively label as basic. 

anyway, in the fall, i won't be working in a self-contained classroom like this one. last friday, i received a job offer from a great school located in columbia heights, NW.  i clicked with the principal over the phone, and then, even though i showed up to my interview late and drenched (i mean it. try dc in summer time with over 80% humidity. then try running to an interview during a lunch break in nice shoes...) in sweat, we still clicked in person, and they offered me the job on the spot. i told them i was honored to accept, and i am.  i'll be working with about 15 students, probably, taking them out of the class for services, or working with them one-on-one in their classroom.  but that depends on their IEP.  but more on IEP on another post. 

and since my school for next year is 65% hispanic, i have to brush up on/actually learn  spanish. so if some of the next posts are in espanol, you'll know why. hasta. 

aforementioned harrowing facts

the aforementioned harrowing facts about education in DC and in the nation include:

--On the District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS) in 2007, which tests students' skills in reading and math:

•  only 46% of the elementary students scored at or above proficiency in reading and only 40% were at or above proficiency in math
•  among secondary students, 39% scored at or above proficiency in reading and 36% scored at or above proficiency in math.

 -- 57% of students in DCPS qualify for free and reduced lunch programs. (DCteachingfellows.org)

--In terms of race and class:

• Even when parents' income and wealth is comparable, African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and immigrants for whom English is not a first language lag behind English-speaking, native-born, white students.  (http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/15_04/Race154.shtml)
• The wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. school districts spend nearly 10 times more than the poorest 10 percent, and spending ratios of 3 to 1 are common within states. (http://www.pbs.org/weta/twoschools/thechallenge/gap/)
• Jonathan Kozol, in works such as Savage Inequalities and Amazing Grace, has meticulously and heart-wrenchingly documented the differences between schools such as Paterson, NJ and Princeton, NJ; Mott Haven in the Bronx and Stuyvesant High School.
• Even within schools, as UCLA professor Jeannie Oakes described in the 1980s and Harvard professor Gary Orfield's research has recently confirmed, most minority students are segregated in lower-track classes with larger class sizes, less qualified teachers, and lower-quality curriculum.

--A Teacher's Mandate:

• Minority students are about half as likely to be assigned to the most effective teachers and twice as likely to be assigned to the least effective.
  
• After controlling for socioeconomic status, the large disparities in achievement between black and white students were almost entirely due to differences in the qualifications of their teachers.
  

All this means that we, as beginning teachers without many of the experiences that more experienced teachers have, have quite the job in front of us.  The stakes of teaching in these conditions--in a country that claims to be founded on principles of equality for all--are nothing short of life-or-death. 

let's start at the very beginning...

i decided to start this blog because while i've gone through many challenging experiences in my life, i don't remember the last time that each day felt like a year---how many different emotions i go through daily, how much is crammed into one day, and bluntly how exhausted i am at the end of it.   

after the second day of institute, i felt already a bit isolated from the immediate world(s) i've left to be here---from cornell, where all i would have to do is run down the street or across the hall to vent after an exhausting situation; from great neck, where i would have the yankees and my family and friends and lots of ice cream to distract from any stress.. but here, you're surrounded every day by people who feel the same stressors as you do, and while that's a beautiful thing for cohort bonding, it's also hard to describe to someone on the outside.

hence the blog. 

okay, some housekeeping: for anybody reading this who might not know, i'm enrolled in a program called dcteachingfellows. while this blog might highlight some frustrations with what we're learning from the program, it overall is a great organization that hooks up career changers (about 50%) and recent college grads (about 50%....percentages are based on my own probably-wrong approximations in an activity where said demographics had to stand up and wave to rest of group) with the washington dc public schools.  

we are there to work in high need schools in critical areas--i will be teaching special education in elementary school along with 20 others; scott, my partner, will be teaching math in a middle or high school, etc.  "high need" is defined by how many students are receiving free or reduced lunches, among other things.  maybe i'll write a post with dc's harrowing statistics about the achievement gap there, this research-corroborated gap which is the most frightening, unreal and unjust part of the united states in this day and age. really. 

when it comes down to it, we should not have jobs.  i wish dcteachingfellows did not exist.  i wish there wasn't a need for it. but the facts on the ground---what an education looks like for a child in anacostia (a poor area of dc) as opposed to a suburb---are terrifying. and, as all things terrifying, motivating as well..

more later.