Finding Balance

Right now I'm sitting on my couch watching 'You've Got Mail' for about the 50th time since I first discovered it when I was 12 or 13. Today we had an unexpected day off due to a snow storm that ended up dusting our area with only about 2 or 3 inches of snow.

We have currently had about 95 days of school (minus a few snow days in January and early February) and have 74 days of school remaining. Over Christmas break I wrote about dealing with anxiety and learning to find balance between my work life and my home life. In January I've been making an attempt to find that balance. I wasn't taking graduate classes so I got to experience what being 'just' a teacher and not also a student would be like. It was lovely.

Two weeks ago my spring semester graduate class (only one this time, thankfully) started up, and I've been doing my best to continue to find balance and not get sucked into the frenzied school vortex that smushed my soul into a quivering mass last semester.

I've made a point to finish my school work by 5:00 every evening so I have the rest of the evening to myself. Mark and I are also trying to take time to get together with friends and family almost every week. In fact, this past weekend, Mark and I went down south to visit Mark's parents and then had an authentic (or close to authentic) tea party with Mark's sister and brother-in-law and their kids. We had a wonderful time sipping tea while snow fell thickly outside. I felt like a human, part of a family, and not just a teacher.

I'm pretty exhausted still, but the school year and my attitude toward it have definitely picked up since December. I had one anxious breakdown in October, November, and December (ugh) but did not have one in January and have yet to have one in February. Altogether, doing better!

Unfortunately, right now my brain is just too tired and I don't have any stories to share. Hopefully soon!

Falling in Love with First Graders: A Case of Love and Hair Loss (Part 2)

So, a few days ago I posted about how I love my students and I shared some stories about students I love. I also talked briefly about how I feel like I fail my students on a daily basis. This post is about the darker side of the last three months.

Mark and I moved into our new apartment about 2 weeks before I was needed for training at my school. It was just over this break that I realized that I think I'm still adjusting to life in St. Paul, Minnesota, compared to life in small-town, Iowa. I no longer walk to work; I brave the icy, steep streets between our apartment and the school. Every day I am confronted with at least 2 homeless men holding signs on exit ramps between home and school and the conflicted emotions seeing those men and doing nothing produce. Mark has created a white noise soundtrack that we play on repeat in our bedroom every night. I'm a light sleeper (even lighter when stressed) and early in the fall we had some trouble with neighbors playing music with a booming bass line late into the evening.

I spend hardly any time in our apartment, even though it's pretty nice (now that the noise issue has been dealt with). Our apartment would allow us to get a dog, but that poor thing. It would be alone in its kennel for at least 10 hours four days per week, if not more. Mark has firmly stated that we do not have the time or the energy for a dog right now. Even though he's right, I still cruise petfinder.com regularly because I know a pet would have a calming effect on me. (A cat would be the most calming, but there is no way Mark will let me get a cat. Poo.)

During these first three months of teaching, I have also been a student myself, taking two graduate classes at one of the local universities. This extra dose of craziness is required by the Minnesota Department of Education. Since we Teach For America teachers don't have our licenses yet, we have to be actively working toward them in order to teach full-time in public schools in Minnesota. This has meant that two evenings a week, besides the 10 hours at school and hour and a half of lesson planning at home, I spent an additional 4 hours in a classroom with other teachers. Though being with other first year teachers was deeply helpful to me, and though I learned a lot of great things in my courses, the additional time commitment and homework was hard on me.

I'm kind of an anxious person as a general rule. Mark can attest that even when we were dating I worried about things while he just shook his head at me, mystified. The stresses of teaching and graduate school has taken my anxiety to new heights (or lows, depending on how you look at it) since September. The anxiety tends to come in waves, and three debilitating waves have swept over me since starting teaching. Each time the waves of anxiety have climaxed with much crying, very little sleep, weight loss, hair loss, and a day off of teaching (usually with more crying and still very little sleep) to recover. Each time I felt like going back into the classroom would be like plunging into an icy black pit of despair and each time I questioned whether I could make myself keep going.

By the middle of December, when anxiety wave #3 hit, receded, and left a very insecure me in its wake, my TFA mentor, Emily, was concerned enough to alert some of the rest of the TFA staff. Mike, the TFA managing director, scheduled a meeting with me. I steeled myself for the meeting, expecting him to caution me against quitting and remind me of how detrimental that would be for my students. What he wanted to talk about, then, came as a complete surprise: anxiety. Based on some of his personal experiences, he had some great insights into dealing with anxiety.

His personal story, as well as his suggestions, gave me some renewed hope that maybe I wasn't a hopeless teacher and that maybe I could find ways to deal with the anxiety and keep teaching. Long story short, I overcame my feeble protests to seeing a doctor, met with a doctor over break, and was prescribed a depression medication that isn't actually used to treat depression but instead is used to treat insomnia. The solid nights of sleep since starting the medication have been so refreshing and have cut down on a lot of the anxiety. I'm also probably going to go see a therapist (although I'm not really sure when I'll have time) to try to come up with some coping mechanisms for anxiety.

In the meantime, though, I'm reading a book that Mike recommended called Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by Martin E. Seligman. Kind of an ostentatious title, but so far I've learned a lot from this book. Seligman has spent over a decade doing research on pessimism and its link to depression and, later, optimism and its link to fending off depression. Maybe sometime I'll do a complete review of the book, but in the meantime, I'll just say that I've learned that some jobs require a more pessimistic mindset (because pessimists have proven to have more accurate and realistic views of the world) and some jobs require a more optimistic mindset. I have a decidedly pessimistic view of pretty much everything, and my job requires an optimistic mindset. Therefore, I need to develop an optimistic mindset. Seligman's book walks the reader through a few 'tools' for developing an optimistic mindset. I'm still reading, but so far the book has been super helpful, and I'm gradually becoming aware of the pessimistic messages I tell myself.

So, my goals for the next five months of teaching: 1) develop a more optimistic view of life and harness the pessimism for use in specific situations and 2) find more balance and take better care of myself. I basically stopped exercising from July on, even though that's a great stress reliever for me, and I all but stopped getting together with friends. I'm going to try to pick up both activities again, as well as warm baths, burning candles, and chamomile lavender tea. I'm going to have to schedule those things in, but it will be worth it. Maybe I'll even get around to blogging more!

So, I'm still a teacher, still struggling with some anxiety, but more ready to face the next phase of teaching. Here we go!

Falling in Love with First Graders: A Case of Love and Hair Loss (Part 1)

Blogging is fairly therapeutic for me. So, the fact that I haven't been blogging much over the last 2 months either suggests that I've been doing so well that I don't need therapy or that I simply haven't been taking care of myself. In this case, the latter is definitely true.

The first three months of teaching have gone by in a blur. I've experienced some successes as a teacher but more often I've felt like a failure (really, not too strong a word for how I've felt) and like I'm letting my students down in so many ways. My students are at vastly different levels, academically and socially. I have one student, A.H., who can read at a 4th grade level and got every single question on my math diagnostic test correct back in September. He's a really good kid, but I haven't been meeting his academic needs. Mostly he's bored, unless I let him read independently. He's one of the reasons I'm terribly happy I stocked my classroom library with books all the way up to a 6th grade reading level.

A.H. Sorry, not sure if I can post pictures of my students on my blog. The eye blocking is my attempt to be legal but also share my darlings.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have students who can still barely read a complete sentence, even a phonetic sentence with kindergarten-level high frequency words. And some of my students just didn't catch on to basic addition and subtraction our first time through it. Those are the kids I lay in bed at night worrying about.

I have two boys (three at the beginning of the year, but one was expelled...) who struggle with dealing with their anger in a constructive way. Interestingly, all three of them are the youngest child in their family and the only boy (in a Muslim home). From what I've heard from people who know their families, and from what I've observed, all three of them are spoiled at home. So, the behavior problems they have come more from spoiling than from abuse or neglect. At the beginning of the year, these three boys threw my class into chaos regularly. Daily. Hourly. Thinking back to that, I realize that they have come a long way in dealing with their anger, and I have come a long way in helping them. Yay for all of us.

A.A.-1 is probably one of my favorite students, despite his anger issues. He loves to learn and is often telling me random facts he knows about animals. ("Teacher, did you know sea cow and manatee are the same?") His anger is a lot more manageable too, which probably helps my opinion of him. When he gets angry (usually from not getting his way in something), he generally shuts down, crouches down by the table that he shares with 3 or 4 other students, and starts pulling on the table legs, making them exclaim angrily. Another time, when I didn't let him write with a pen on one of our assignments, he started ripping up his paper. I left him alone with his temper tantrum, and when I came back to him, he said, "Teacher, when I feel mad, I rip up one paper and then I feel better." He's learning, though, when he starts to feel angry, to ask to go sit in our Spot for Thought or go out and take one walking circuit in the halls with my aid. Those things usually calm him down.

A.A.-1. All my pictures in this blog post are from a field trip. I want to try to take more in-class pictures this semester.

A.A.-2 is my other 'angry child,' and he's been a more difficult case for me. Whereas A.A.-1 seems to get angry and then act without thinking, A.A.-2 is a little more thoughtful in how he creates havoc in the classroom. I find this a little harder to swallow. He's advanced in both reading and math, but unlike A.H., he doesn't passively resign himself to being bored in the classroom. (This is probably a good trait, if we can figure out a way to harness it and use it more productively.) In large group instruction time, if I don't acknowledge A.A.-2 about every 2 minutes, he starts to act up. And when he gets really angry, like really angry, he does things like throw chairs across the room, spit in my face or my aid's face, and emit a high-pitched wail that curdles the blood. He also is making progress toward handling his anger more effectively, but he had a relapse right before break and got suspended. Oh, A.A.-2....

A.A.-2, the little stinker. Doesn't he have an adorable smile?

Even though I feel like I'm failing a lot of my kids academically, I've fall in love with most of them. A.A.-3 (so many A names!) is one little girl who I just couldn't get along with at the beginning of the year. In the last month, though, she and I have wormed our way into each other's affections. She's a tough little girl and walks with a swagger. At the beginning of the year, when most of my little girls would give me hugs at the end of the day, A.A.-3 would cock her head and extend her hand for a high five. Now, most days, she gives me a quick, hard hug before swaggering onto her bus. She has a problem with hitting other students and saying unkind things, but she so badly wants to please. Often I hear from her, "Mrs. Fuhrman, look! I did this all by myself!" For such a rough little girl, she has incredibly neat handwriting and takes pride in it.

Z.M. is tiny and is incredibly concerned with what everyone else is doing, even when she really has no idea what she's supposed to be doing. Sometimes she rubs me the wrong way, with how worked up she can get over what everyone else is doing, even when it has no connection to her or to school. ("Teacher! Her has candy from her's pack-pack!") She's one student that I lay awake at night worrying about. She's one of my lowest in both math and reading. Frankly, she spends a lot of the time looking around the classroom in a daze.

Z.M and A.A.-3 at the museum. Love them!

OK. I promise I'm almost done telling about my students. Just a few more. M.A. is another student who occasionally has behavior problems but who I've grown to love over the past two months. Actually, I think most of his behavior problems in October stemmed from the fact that his glasses were broken and he wasn't able to get a new pair for about 3 weeks. He was downright contrary during those three weeks. I'm not surprised, though. Judging by how bug-eyed his glasses make him look, I'm sure he's quite near-sighted. He has this way of cocking his head to the side, staring at me out of those bug-eyes, and asking me in a squeaky voice, "Mrs. Fuhrman, why are you doing that?" "Mrs. Fuhrman, why are you taking your coat off?" "Mrs. Fuhrman, why are you wearing those shiny shoes?"

A.S. is one of the tiniest kids in my class. He's super well-behaved all the time and is usually one to set a really good example for the rest of the class. His handwriting is atrocious, and I'm pretty sure he should be writing with his left hand. He does everything else left-handed. But I can't get him to stick with his left hand. He just switches back to his right and holds the pencil in a claw-like grip. A.S. is also a good morale booster for me. Whenever I try to be funny or super engaging with my class, I can always count on him to have an ear-to-ear grin on his face, like I've just let him in on the funniest secret of his life. I honestly haven't gotten to know him very well, yet, though. He didn't say a word to me for the first two months of school, and even now he only speaks about 4 words at a time. I think he just doesn't talk much, but I want to try to get to know him better.

A.S. and M.A. on the bus. I wish you could see M.A.'s eyes! Adds so much to his character.

One final student I just want to mention. S.Y. is one of the most loving, happy, friendly children I have ever met. She genuinely wants to make other people happy. When I started a Kindness Heart board, she was practically jumping up and down at the end of the day, when there were 5 hearts up on the board. (Each heart had a student's name on it and represented a time that student had been kind during the day.) "Mrs. Fuhrman!" she said, "This is the best day of my life! Everyone in our class is so nice!" S.Y. is also one of the reasons that A.A.-1 began to deal with his anger in a more effective way. Somehow, despite the fact that A.A.-1 always says, "Teacher! I can't work with girls!" S.Y. managed to become friends with A.A.-1. Now, he loves to work with her and she has kind of become a mediator when he throws a temper tantrum and ends up in a turtle position on the ground. She will kneel down by him, whisper in his ear, put her arm around him, and in general, coax him back into classroom life. When I was telling my dad about her, he murmured to himself, "You are not far from the Kingdom, child." Honestly, those words brought tears to my eyes. S.Y. is one of the most Christlike children I've ever met.

S.Y. at the museum offering me 'something to eat.'

I had meant for this blog post to be about much more than the students that I teach, but this is now going to have to be a two-part post. Stay tuned for 'Falling in Love with First Graders: A Case of Love and Hair Loss Part 2", coming soon!

Things I Would Write About

Hello out there! It's me, the host of this blog! I know you haven't heard from me in a while and have probably stopped believing that I exist.

I probably am still going to be mostly silent for a while, but my two grad school classes are ending within the next two weeks and then I will be down to just-school crazy busy instead of school-plus-grad-school crazy busy until the beginning of February.

There are lots of things I would write about now if I had time:

1. Why I love my students (because it's super important for me to try to find positive right now)

2. Anxiety and how I almost quit teaching (which is what leads up to number 1 being number 1 in this list)

3. How being a teacher made me question my desire to be a parent (which is also what leads up to number 1 being so important)

4. Why rolling yourself up like a burrito in the class rug doesn't help solve your problems

5. How a bruised thumb reminds me I am not a patient person

6. How to get kids to interact in a positive way with the kid who eats his boogers (honestly, I'm looking for ideas here)

7. Finding teacher mentors and why that's been great for me

8. Hey! I love to read, cook, and even do dishes on occasion! I had forgotten.

9. My astonishing list of crochet and sewing projects for Christmas and New Year break

10. Why I'm thankful I'm experiencing my first year of teaching surrounded by friends and family (even if I never see them)

I wish I had time to write all these blogs now. Maybe over Christmas break. Or maybe when my grad school classes are done for the semester. I don't know. I know they would all be good for me to write. Therapeutic or something. Anyway, I am still here, still teaching.

Happy belated Thanksgiving, everyone!

Race: Learning to See

Since Mark and I have moved into an apartment building where the residents are predominantly African-American in a neighborhood of apartment buildings where residents are more likely to be Asian, African-American or Latino than White and since I've been teaching at a school where all of my students are African or African-American, I've been thinking a lot about race and racism. Most of my thoughts about race and racism have been sort of in the back corner of my mind, as the front corners of my mind are taken up right now with questions of whether I'll be able to keep control in my classroom long enough for my students to learn the short /a/ sound.

My thoughts about racism have been a weird jumble. I think about the loud music vibrating our floors and how the picture I got in my head when I felt the first rumble was of African-American people partying in a poorly kept living room. I hate that about myself, that those were my first mental images, and what that says about racism that still lives in me.

It scares me too, especially when I think about my students. Because if the image I get in my head when I hear loud music is African-American people living in a dingy apartment spending all their time rocking out pointlessly to loud music, what does that say about my expectations for what my students are capable of and should accomplish? What they should be like when they grow up? I'm terrified that despite all of my best intentions I'm going to lower my expectations for my students and decide that the work they are producing is 'good enough' even if it's not nearly good enough.

Because, let's face it: in order for my students to succeed and thrive while living in the United States, they are not going to have to score as high as White children. They are going to have to score higher. They are going to have to prove a thousand times more often that they are capable and bright and able to contribute wonderful things to the world. Because the world is not going to believe it on first glance. Especially when they see my darling girls wearing their hijab or my boys wearing their kufi.

And when I start to think about my girls and their hijab and my boys and their kufi, I also find myself thinking about my nephew who was adopted from Ethiopia in 2011. Not because he wears a kufi. I just know that my nephew is a wonderful, brilliant boy who love to read books, has an amazing vocabulary, and loves to entertain people. But so many people will just see black when they see him. Just like people will just see hijab when they see my girl students.

Before I started teaching at this school, when I saw a group of Muslim women in the store I was shopping in, I would just see their long flowing dresses and their hijab. A few days ago, though, when I was out, I saw a girl in hijab, and I found myself searching her face to see if she was a student of mine or a sister of a student of mine. It struck me at that moment that before, I hadn't been seeing the women in hijab as women. I'd just been seeing Muslim. Or maybe even just the clothes. I don't know. But I do know that I hadn't been really seeing them as individuals.

I don't know if this makes any sense, and I know that I'm rambling, but the thing is, I want my students to grow up being seen for who they are, beyond their clothing. I want my nephew to grow up being seen for who he is, beyond his skin color. And I want me to really see people. I want to really see the neighbors who live below us and play obnoxious loud music; if not get to know them, at least acknowledge that their personalities, their joys and disappointments, have depth that I don't know. And I want to really see my students with all their gifts and potential.

This seeing. I can't make the United States at large see my students for the wonderful individuals that they are or see my nephew for who he is. Racism is so hard that way - I can't make anyone not think racist thoughts. And I'm still battling my own sneakily hidden racism. But I truly think that seeing a person is what begins to dissolve some part of the racism barrier. So, maybe the very best thing I can do is tell the stories - tell the stories of my students as individuals so that a few other people will see them as more than a hijab or a kufi. Maybe that's the best start for learning to see.

A Breath in the Midst of Teaching

A stack of student papers is sitting by me, waiting to be graded, but for the first time since I started teaching on September 3, I feel like I might have enough time and enough energy to write a blog before I tackle the school work. I'm finally getting my feet back on the ground after reeling through the first few weeks of teaching. I'm beginning to re-discover that a pot of tea drunk all by myself with a book is an incredible delight, and I'm beginning to think about what book I'm going to read next, also an incredible delight. If I have enough time to think those thoughts, I decided I have enough time to write a blog. It's been a loooooooooong time since I've written anything here, though, to the point where I think to myself, Where to start? Where to start? 

We are adjusting to life in an apartment complex, surrounded by people who like loud music. Maybe not surrounded, exactly, but the neighbors below us vibrate our floors with their music on occasion and the neighbors next to us like their speakers too. I'm a woefully light sleeper, so our bedroom has become a white noise factory of late. The fan on overhead creates a pleasant hum. The white noise track Mark created for me sounds like heavy rain or clapping depending on what I'm dreaming about, and the bass track he added to the heavy rain white noise track makes me feel like a train is running by our window all night long. I'm just that neurotic about noises that I need different tones of white noise to effectively dull the various sounds we hear in our bedroom at night.

Teaching the last three weeks has been a roller coaster. I think the next time I blog, I will write a little bit about the personalities of my kids. That's the fun part of teaching so far: getting to know each of the kids and what makes them excited or frustrated, how to calm the impulsive ones down when they make bad choices, how to make them smile. But I'm only just starting to see their personalities. Up until a few kids were switched out of my classroom on Thursday morning, all it felt like I was doing was managing one large, loud, disobedient group.

Here is what my day looked like before my class was brought down to a more manageable size:

4:45am - Wake up before the alarm, worrying about today.
5:05am - Get up, shower. Get ready. Eat breakfast. Read the Bible. Say desperate prayers.
6:05am - Drive to school. Say more desperate prayers.
7:15am - Students arrive. No time for praying. Crowd control.
8:00am - Start lining students up to go to breakfast. Feelings of frustration.
8:35am - Return from breakfast, frazzled by the difficulty of lining students up who are hyped up on sugar from their 'nutritious' breakfast.
9:00am - Math. Technically. In reality, crowd control. Maybe yell a little. Finish about half of the math lesson.
10:05am - Oops. Missed science time due to crowd control and discipline issues. Line students up for lunch. Even more challenging than lining them up for breakfast.
10:35am - Late for lunch. Defeated, leading loud and energetic children down the hall to the lunch room.
10:50am - Take a deep breath. Begin to line up students who are done eating.
11:05am - Return to classroom. Spend a few minutes doing calendar math activities. Spend many more minutes managing the group, giving out consequences and trying to be heard.
11:30am - Reading lesson. Also, crowd control. Also, trying to get kids to work on reading and not get out of their seats.
12:00pm - Arabic or Gym class. If Arabic, leave classroom so Arabic teacher can come in and teach. If Gym, lead kids to bus. Take deep breaths. Cry, maybe. Try to eat. Fail to eat. Organize materials for the rest of the day.
1:00pm - Arabic or Gym finished. If Arabic, students are mentally 'done' and need an active sort of brain break. Try to finish reading lesson. Attempt 'silent' reading. Ha.
1:45pm - Recess time. Most likely miss most of recess time because students are too excited to line up quietly.
2:00pm - Put on 10 minutes of Magic School Bus video for students to watch while they collect their backpacks, homework, and get ready to go out to the buses.
2:15pm - Frantically try to keep track of 29 children in the crush of bodies. Try to get the right kids on the 13 different buses.
2:30pm - Hand last child off to parents. Take a drink of water. (Have I drunk any water yet today? Can't remember.) Head to one of many staff meetings.
3:30pm - Put classroom back in order. Begin to make plans for tomorrow. Maybe cry a little.
5:30 or 6:00pm - Head home. Cry on Mark's shoulder. Try to eat supper. Succeed slightly.
6:30pm - Work on planning lessons. Try to figure out what will work to get class to relax, stop chattering, and listen.
9:00pm - Go to bed, exhausted.
10:30pm - Fall asleep after tossing and turning. Music starts up through the wall. Wake up. Lie there feeling angry and exhausted.
11:30pm - Music stops. Fall asleep for real.

Thankfully, since Thursday, there has been a lot less crying in my day. And since talking to my neighbors, there hasn't been much in the way of loud music at 10:30 at night. And as I mentioned above, things are looking up for my class now that I don't have quite so many students. In my next blog, whenever that is, I will spend some time talking about my students!

My classroom is ready for action!

So, it may kind of feel like I've fallen off the face of the earth. And that is largely true, except where my classroom and school-related work on my computer at home is concerned. I have never been this busy in my life. Not even during finals week of college. College feels like a walk in the park in comparison to getting ready to teach first graders. And I haven't even started the graduate classes I'll be taking this semester. But I'm not really complaining because, when I can muster up the confidence to imagine that I will be able to manage my first grade classroom, I am actually having a lot of fun. (If I'm having a less confident moment and imagining my students running around the room screaming while I watch powerlessly... then not so much fun.) 

I've spent the last week setting up my classroom and preparing lessons for my first week of school (gasp). School starts on Tuesday. I still can't say that without a few heart palpitations. But I am pretty excited about my classroom. It's nothing spectacular compared to some of the classrooms I've been ogling on other first grade teacher blogs, but for my first year of teaching with virtually no resources provided by the school, I'm pretty proud of it. Let me take you on a tour! 

 
This is the door to my classroom. I'm sorry the picture's blurry. This is on the inside of the door so kids outside can't pick at it. Other teachers recommended that I cover over at least the bottom half of the window on my door so that when other kids are in the halls they aren't distracting my little ones from learning.


This is the big whiteboard inside my classroom. (The door you just saw is to the right, just outside of this picture.) I'm planning on not using the whiteboard for teaching, as you may guess. I just didn't find this summer that when I was up at the whiteboard my students could pay attention as well. There's a lot here. So on the whiteboard I have a spot for Team Points. Students will be divided into teams (their table) and they will earn points for good choices and lose points for poor choices. Underneath is a schedule. Moving counterclockwise, next is the job charts. Students will have jobs and earn 'money' for their jobs. The money they earn is tied to their behavior management system and they will have to pay money for poor choices they make individually. They will get to spend money they make at a class store on Fridays. Above the job chart is the Friday Celebration box. Students will have 15 minutes set aside for a Friday Celebration activity of their choice at the beginning of the week. (Friday Celebrations could be things like more reading time, games, an educational video, a dance party, etc.) If they work efficiently, they will be able to earn more minutes for the Friday Celebration. If they waste time as a class, they will lose minutes. And finally, in the center top of the whiteboard is our Voice-o-Meter. I'm hoping to use this to help the kids know how loud their voices can be when working on a given activity.

To the right of the board is our Behavior Ladder. Students will have clothespins with their names on them that will start at the top of the ladder at the beginning of the day. For each poor choice they make, they will be asked to move their clip down. Each move down has other consequences, such as paying me one Scholar Dollar, spending a few minutes in the Spot for Thought, taking Thinking Laps during recess, and so forth.

Below the board are two posters: "Growing in math together" is where we will track our achievement in math as a class. For each objective we get 80% on (as a class) we will get to put one green leaf on the tree. "We show character" is where we will record the character traits we learn about and that we are trying to show as a class. Pretty much all of my students are Muslim, which is why the little girl is wearing hijab. It may look like the little boy is elbowing the little girl out of the way, but he's not. I drew the little boy first, intending to just have one child on the poster but then I decided I needed a boy and a girl and I didn't want to start over. So my new plan is that the words for the character traits that we learn will go to the left of the little boy on the poster. Students who show those character traits and get nominated by a classmate (or me) will get their name put next to the little girl under the "Look Who" sign. I might take pictures, instead of having their name go up. I'm not sure yet.


Over here is our Class Rules poster. On the first day of school we will brainstorm together as a class what each of these rules looks and sounds like and put those descriptors under the rule. The floating head is the beginning of our tracker for minutes read. For every 200 minutes read as a class we will get to add one length to the caterpillar. Since the students will be required to read at least 20 minutes a night and since I have 28 students, hopefully by the end of the year he will be one loooooong caterpillar winding his way all around the classroom.

This part of the room is also our 'organizational' corner. Students deposit their homework and Home-School folders here when they come in in the morning. The cardboard tray thing is for any mail that needs to go in the student mailboxes. Once the job system is up and running one student will have the job of checking that mailbox at the end of the day and putting mail in student mailboxes before we pack up our backpacks. I'm pretty excited about my student mailboxes too. They're made out of pizza boxes which I purchased from a Papa John's near my parents' house. (I say 'purchased,' but they were really cheap and the Papa John's manager who helped me was so friendly! I honestly left with a smile on my face.)

 Here's a closer look at the mailboxes. Students will each have a number. They will put that number on every worksheet they do. Their cubbies outside the classroom also have those numbers.

 This is our Calendar Time and Morning Meeting corner. I'll also be doing most of my large-group teaching in this area. Up in the left corner is a "Path to College" poster my sister helped me make. We'll talk during the first couple of weeks about how first grade is only the beginning and each grade they go through is a step toward college and what happens after college. I want to really stress the importance of doing your best in every grade so that you're prepared to move on to the next grade. Anyway, there's a lot going on by the Calendar Math Time bulletin board. There's the calendar (which I know is showing July in this picture), a weather graph, a pocket chart for yesterday, today, tomorrow, last month, this month, and next month, a hundred chart, a tooth-lost tally chart, a birthday graph, and a days-of-the-month tally chart. Oh, and the calendar itself and a clock. I'm still working through how I'm going to use each of these things and in what order. I won't start calendar time until the second week of school.

The rolling whiteboard cart is where I'll do most of my teaching. The students will be sitting on the carpet (which I know is a boring brown, but since I didn't have much to spend on carpets, I had to take what I could get). I'm not sure if I'll sit in the rocking chair all the time or reserve that for the read-aloud at the end of the day.

Oh, and the 80% Club is peeking through under the cart. Every time we have a test as a class, students who get 80% or more will get to put their names up on the chart. We'll see how this goes. I want this to be a motivational tool and not a source of discouragement. If I'm not a good teacher and am not giving my students what they need to succeed, then it probably won't be helping and will probably disappear.

This is in the back of our classroom and is our science tracker. Every time we master a science objective as a class at 80% we will add an animal or plant to this picture, so hopefully by the end of the year it will be a vibrant ecosystem.

Over here is my small group table and where students will pick up their pencils at the beginning of the day and deposit them at the end of the day. My teacher desk, file cabinet, and other organizational tools are back here. I love that open file box on the counter that I found at Goodwill. I'm using five of the spaces for each day of the week. So I can make my copies for the next week at the end of  the week and put them in the slot for what day we're going to use them. That's all assuming I can stay one week ahead. Ha.

 And over here is our classroom library. I've leveled the books according to DRA levels because that's what I'll be using to measure student progress throughout the year. A dear friend of mine got my church back in Iowa to put on a book drive for me, so I have more books coming today! I'm sooooo excited about that, as I really don't have enough books for 28 kids right now and our school has no library.

I realized now I didn't take pictures of my student tables and their chair pockets or my word wall. Oh well! I'll have to add those pictures later. In any case, despite being frightfully nervous, I'm terribly excited to start teaching on Tuesday!

One Month Count Down

So, you may have thought I was never coming back. I may have thought that too. But when I was sitting here tonight looking at cute first grade classrooms on blogs and feeling like my life would never be complete until I had a Beanie Baby reading display and cute reading chairs and lots and lots of books... I realized I probably was in need of a step back and a healthy dose of perspective.

The last couple of months have been crazy. Absolutely crazy. Part of the reason that I haven't written in a while is that I just haven't known what to write. Our lives were in such crazy suspension that my emotions wandered off into the hazy unknown as well. I was thankful, then peaceful, then raging, then crying... honestly, I don't know what a post during that time would have looked like. (And really, so far, this post is still pretty rambling!)

Mark and I have an apartment now. We move in next Friday. It's not the old-house-converted-into-apartments feel that I was hoping for, but it's big enough for what we need and it will allow us to get a dog (a smallish dog, not my greyhound that I've been fantasizing about). Mark has a job, albeit a temporary job, as a custodian at a school. His job search process has been, for both him and me, a bit discouraging. I mean, I know that he has lots of wonderful skills and creativity to offer in the workforce, but for whatever reason he's just been unable to find that good fit yet. But we have income, and that's something we're both thankful for.

I have a teaching job lined up. My first day of actual teaching is September 3, almost exactly a month from now (gasp). However, tomorrow my application, as well as many other applications, goes before the Board of Teaching in Minnesota to see if we can get permission to be in the classroom this year. If the Board of Teaching votes down my application, well... I guess I will join Mark in the job search.

But I'm honestly not too concerned about it. Not because it's not concerning (because it is), but because I only have enough space in my brain and right now all the space has been devoted to starting to get ready for my classroom this fall. I found out this week that I'll be teaching first grade, and I got the textbooks we'll be using. I have so much planning to do. I can't even believe how many details have to be ironed out before the first kid walks through my door. I'm alternately thrilled (because let's be honest - I love making plans) and terrified (because let's be honest - I've never had to plan so many details at one time before in my LIFE.)

So, anyway, that's where we are right now. Still about 75% in transition. Not where we wanted to be three and a half months after moving up to the Twin Cities. But we're forging ahead and things are getting worked out bit by bit.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go practice some excellent self-care techniques and not look at any more first grade blogs. I think I'm going to read in bed with the covers over my head.

Striving Forward for every little Kaylee

I have never been this intensely busy and stressed in my entire life. There are so many things I wish I could have reflected on in this blog over the last four weeks but haven't been able to just because I am always so. very. tired. But now that it's the 4th of July and we don't have school today or tomorrow, I have a little bit more wiggle room. 

These last few weeks of teaching have not been what I had expected them to be. From Day 1 of having kids in my classroom I have struggled with managing the classroom and behavior, and teaching in a way that engages the students and keeps their interest. (Honestly, I've never been made to feel boring so often as I have in the last three weeks. Engaging 2nd graders in math and even reading apparently does not come naturally to me.)

Anyway, I've really struggled with balancing management and teaching. I honestly don't feel like I've been a good teacher for my summer school kids, and I can honestly say I think I'm one of the people struggling the most getting into teaching, at least out of all the TFA corps members at my school. So that's been pretty hard for me. I thought that with all my experience at the library and in Mozambique I wouldn't struggle so much. And what's worse is that I know my summer school kids need a good teacher. Oh, how they need a good teacher. 

So, I've really been fighting a lot of feelings of self-doubt too over the last few weeks, wondering if I should even be here and wondering if I am really just doing my kids more harm than good by being here in their classroom. I love my kids so much, and I hate to think that I'm letting them down. There's little Kaylee, this tiny little girl who is already so far behind in everything. She's starting 2nd grade this fall and doesn't even recognize most of her numbers and can hardly read a word. (What 1st grade teacher passed her, is my question.) And there's Delana who's aunt forgets to pick her up because she's drunk 'too much kool-aid and has to take a nap' in Delana's words. I could go on. Each of my kiddos has a story that makes me desperate to be a good teacher for them. But Kaylee and Delana for me put a face to why I so want to be a good teacher. I love them and I hate to think I'm failing them.

But yesterday, someone said something to me that really made a difference in my outlook. At the end of the day everyday a couple times a week we have this all-school shout out time, where all the corps members who are teaching and the staff who are supporting them congregate in a room and share 'shout outs,' or encouraging words for someone else on our team. At the end of the day yesterday, Blair, one of the TFA staff people, gave me a shout out for being one of the people who's most committed to improving that he's seen. He said that the difference he's seen between someone who ends up a good teacher and someone who ends up a great teacher is that drivenness to improve and become a better teacher. He said that that is the kind of teacher who will really make a difference in the lives of our kiddos. 

I don't say that all to toot my own horn, but it was kind of an epiphany for me. I realized I need to stop spending so much energy on comparing myself to other teachers and wondering if I measure up and start devoting all of that energy to becoming a better teacher. I may not be a great teacher now (or even a good teacher), but someday I will be and I need to keep striving toward that goal. Because it's not about me and my teacher ego. It's about the little kiddos like Kaylee and Delana who are already, at age 7, sliding through the cracks in the system that is failing them.

So, even though I'm not a good teacher now, and even though I may not be everything my summer school students need me to be (or even hardly anything that they need me to be), I'm going to keep on striving toward becoming a better teacher for Kaylee and Delana and all  of the Kaylees and Delanas I'll be able to love and teach in the years to come.

A Dorm + Little Sleep + Children on Monday

My life has been so drastically different for the last week, I hardly even know where to start.

I'm living in a dorm with 600 other girls and guys who are all committed to the same cause of equality in education for all children but maybe not of the same background or other values or lifestyle.

I've only gotten about four hours of sleep per night since arriving, which makes it feel like I've been here a month instead of a week.

I'm making lots of friends! Yay! But I also miss my husband so much that it hurts, really hurts, every time I have to hang up the phone.

Earplugs are my new best friend at night, living in this dorm.

I've learned so much about teaching that I seriously think my brain has overloaded a couple of times this week, leaving me unable to function for a good fifteen minutes at a time.

But at the same time, I've learned so much about teaching that I've felt empowered and excited and eager to have my own classroom.

I found out that Teach For America is suddenly super controversial in Minnesota, thus jeopardizing my being able to teach this fall. (If you're a praying person, please pray about this!)

College dining center food... oh how I miss cooking. Looking at all of my favorite food blogs right now makes me sad.

I will have a classroom full of 28 little 2nd graders on Monday. I can't believe it. There is still so so much to do before I'm ready for them. And it's Saturday night. But the funny thing (I'm realizing) about teaching compared to other jobs I've had is that all the work will get done because on Monday morning, it won't be just me and a computer screen. There will be 28 little faces counting on me to be ready to help get them ready for 2nd grade in the fall. That is the most effective motivator I've ever found.

So... Many... Changes...

I've been wanting to write a blog post for a couple days now, just to update on what's been happening in the Lives of Mark and Hillary since we moved up to the Twin Cities, but every time I thought I would actually sit down and do it, trying to decide what to write about was simply too overwhelming. So many things have happened, so many things have changed.

So, instead of trying to choose what to write about, I'm just going to make a list of all the changes. Maybe this will be therapeutic for me. I always say I love changes, and I'm always terribly excited for changes up until the day of. Then, the day of the Change that I've been anticipating for months, I feel kind of numb. I don't feel happy or sad that the Change is happening; it just is, and I'm just doing what I have to in order to get through it. Then the day after the Change, when unexpected challenges start to crop up, I turn into an emotionally volatile sniveling lunatic who is absolutely sure that life as she knows it is at an end. Ergo, it may be both informative for you and therapeutic for me to write down all the recent changes that have taken place in our lives.

In the list below, changes are numbered. Sub-changes are listed below each numbered change.

1. Mark and I moved into my parents' basement.
1. We now have to compromise with two middle-aged adults (one of whom is a fairly picky eater) and one teenager (who is definitely a picky eater) on what we eat for dinner. I want vegetarian, more vegetables, and all bread products to be whole wheat. My dad wants ground beef, fewer vegetables, and is actually now okay with most bread products being whole wheat. We haven't talked about other grains yet, like quinoa. My sister wants Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Doritos, and Cheez-Its. Thankfully, it seems so far like we can all be adults about this, except perhaps my sister who insists on being a strong-willed teenager, and heaven help us with that. 
2. We now have Internet all the time. This sounds like a good thing, and in lots of ways it is, but I have to re-learn how to have Internet in my life and not feel the constant need to check my e-mail. I kind of seem to myself like a dog that's been starved regularly. When the dog finally does have food, it gorges itself. It has to re-learn to eat in moderation, trusting that the next meal really will appear. I just realized how very odd and somewhat disturbing those previous two sentences sound. However, since I can't think of another more appropriate simile off the top of my head, I'm not going to delete it. I'm just going to strike it out in deference to how strange it sounds.
3. All of our stuff is in boxes. Except the books that are now airing out after their near miss with gasoline. Even in my parents' basement, the belongings we brought with us that we 'needed' for our time with them are still mostly in bins and boxes, as there's not really place to put them. (Did I really need to bring all those pairs shoes? I'm still not sure.)
2. I went to a Teach For America hiring fair last Friday and Saturday.
1. I got to meet many of the fellow corps members I will be working with over the next two years. That was a lot of fun except that due to a recent ovulation combined with stress, I have had a killer outbreak of acne. So I spent all of Thursday wishing it were socially acceptable to wear a paper bag over my head to meet fellow corps members and the school officials who would be interviewing me.
2. I learned more about the achievement gap, particularly in Minnesota. Did you know that Minnesota ranks dead last in graduation rates for African-American, Native American and Hispanic students? We are failing our kids, and that's really depressing. What's even more depressing is that Minnesota kind of has this reputation of having really great schools. Apparently this is only true if you are wealthy and white. However, on the plus side, I left Friday's discussions feeling completely energized about education and oh-so glad that I'm committing my next two years to combating this totally unfair gap in achievement.
3. I switched from planning on teaching English as a Second Language this fall to teaching general Elementary Education. Yep. I know what you're wondering: So, all those hours studying for the ESL Content MTLE test... do they mean nothing now? Yep, pretty much. Now I have to take a new MTLE test, the Elementary Education Content test. Surprisingly, I didn't start crying when I went online to register. In all honesty, though, the reason that I'm switching is the cost of obtaining the licensure. Over the next two years all the TFA corps members will be taking education classes through a university up here to get our teaching licenses. Because ESL teachers need to take not only general education classes but also linguistics and language acquisition classes, their degree costs more. Twice as much, in fact. After thinking very hard and praying about whether we thought we could/should scrimp and save over the next two years to pay for a $19,000 degree, we decided that it just wasn't worth it. Given our desire to adopt (and soon) combined with other financial obligations, the $19,000 is just plain too much. So, elementary education it is. But I'm not disappointed. I'm still very excited to teach!
3. I gained new compassion for people with medical problems and little to no health insurance. I don't really even want to go into detail on this subject. We're still working things out, so the mere mention makes my blood pressure rise. But combining expensive COBRA insurance with an HSA that is entirely out-of-pocket until the deductible is reached with some PCOS-related medical issues that need attention is definitely teaching me to trust God with each dollar and making me more sympathetic to the plight of people with big medical needs.
4. Mark and I pretty much took over errand-running and grocery shopping for my mom. That has been fun, but the way we use gasoline up here is a rude awakening after being in a small town. However, being near Goodwill, Savers, Plato's Closet, and Half-Price Books definitely will have its perks when we have an income again...
5. We switched phone plans.
1. Now we each have our own cell phone, which is nice. (Those phones were donated to us by Mark's sister and her husband. So we didn't even need to purchase new phones to start our new plan. Thankful, thankful, thankful!)
2. We have some texting now, which is also nice.
3. My phone is turquoise, which I love. 
6. My parents have Netflix and my mom likes the same kind of movies I do. (We're both BBC junkies.) I don't know yet whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I just reviewed this blog and realized it seems a bit long. But I was able to process some of the recent changes, so that's good! And you are now all caught up on our New Life in Minnesota. That's also good! If you leave a comment, I'll consider sending you payment for the therapy.

Wishing for a Snow Day, I Mean, a Sabbath

Our church is going through a church-wide study based on a book called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero. I was really skeptical when we started it. Partly because the title sounded funny and was hard to remember but also because it sounded like another me-centered study, which I’m always suspicious of.

I have, pleasantly, mostly been wrong in my suspicion. Both Mark and I have learned a lot from this study and have had some conversations that probably wouldn’t have been unearthed for a long time if this book hadn’t brought them to the surface.

Last week we read the chapter titled ‘Discovering the Rhythms of the Daily Office and Sabbath.’ The subtitle is ‘Stopping to Breathe the Air of Eternity.’ In my week of test-taking during which I did little other than read textbooks, this chapter was definitely needed.

True, I didn’t read it throughout the week, letting the ideas soak in. I read the whole chapter quickly in the 20 minutes before leaving for church Sunday morning. But even in those 20 minutes of skimming I was convicted.

The chapter has two main premises. One is that we as Christians should be stopping to be with God throughout the day. The ‘devotions’ that most of us U.S. Christians have for about 15 minutes once a day doesn’t cut it. For one, most of us are focused on getting ‘filled up’ for the day, not on who God is. For another, once we snap the Bible closed after those 15 minutes, most of us don’t give God a second thought for the rest of the day except for a quick prayer over our lunch at work. Scazzero calls Christians to task and says that’s wrong. We can’t expect to grow into healthy ‘little Christs’ without an intent focus on being with God, on loving God for who He is and focusing on Him before focusing on our daily lives. That’s what the ‘daily office’ Scazzero describes is all about: stopping periodically, if for no more than a few minutes, to focus on God and be with God.

The second premise of this chapter is that Christians do not treat the Sabbath like God intends us to treat the Sabbath. So many of us long for snow days. (I’ve actually had conversations with coworkers in the past week, wishing for a mammoth snowfall so we would all be required to stay home for a day, so this really hit home.) Scazzero argues that the Sabbath should be like a snow day for us. We should feel obligated to stay home and relax, or go out and relax, whatever makes us relaxed. But, our Sabbath snow days should also have the element of stopping to be with God. Otherwise, the Sabbath is just a secular day off.

Anyway, this chapter was convicting to me for a couple reasons. Number one, I leaned waaaaaaay too far in the direction of studying and found myself drifting into Type-A Study-Til-You-Drop Land during the past month or so. Maybe it was needed; I won’t know my scores beyond pass/fail until early April. But still. Definitely no Sabbaths for me during that time, and definitely no Daily Office. I was too focused on remembering the different theories of ESL education and Kohlberg’s theory on moral development.

Looking ahead to the next two years of teaching, I’m concerned. If that’s how I was for test-taking, what will I be like when I feel like I have the responsibility of educating a class of kids? How can I find balance? How can I take time out for God throughout the day? How can I keep a Sabbath for resting? How can I take care of my marriage and other relationships, for that matter?

I don’t really have an answer to these questions right now. I just wanted to put them out there. And I’m much more likely to mull them over a little bit if I put them up on a blog because I have the accountability (if only in my head) of knowing that other people will be reading my questions too and then watching to see how the answers play out.

I hope I can find a balance. I’ve thought about starting a Sabbath habit this week already. And both Mark and I have committed to taking time out to spend with God at least two times a day. That’s all great, and I’m glad we’re doing it, but the true test, I’m sure, will begin the first day I step into my classroom.

After Test-Taking

I could tell that I was starting to crack under the self-imposed pressures of MTLE testing this week. As I wandered around the library reshelving books, I found myself lingering by J.K. Rowling’s shelf and Roald Dahl, imagining which books I would pick up if I actually had a few hours to devote to reading. I began to feel jealous of coworkers who were authentically sick and had to be sent home. I want a sick day, I thought. I want to lay on the couch all day and watch movies!

Last Monday when I drove over an hour to get to the city where I could take my first test, I only brought my driver’s license as a form of ID to get into the testing room. That was fine; I was able to take my test. But on Saturday morning, as I was getting ready to leave, I begged Mark to take down our fireproof box and pull out my passport. I knew it was crazy, I told him, but I wanted to bring it “just in case” they didn’t accept my driver’s license. Bless his heart, all he did was raise an incredulous eyebrow at me before reaching up into our closet and pulling down the fireproof box.

Needless to say, my driver’s license had not become more skeptical as a form of ID in the five days from Monday to Saturday.

I passed all my tests. (Jubilant, cork-popping, confetti-throwing happy dance!) I just about killed myself with worry and fretting, but I passed all my tests. Well, all except for the basic skills writing test. I won’t get the results of that one back until early April because it was more than just multiple choice. But, frankly, I’m not terribly worried about it. If I could pass the math section of the test, I can probably feel pretty confident that I passed the writing section as well.

When I arrived home yesterday afternoon, I hardly knew what to do with myself. I seem to have ingrained a sense of urgency into my attitude toward daily life since beginning to study for the tests. (How horrible is that, really? I’m fairly horrified and disgusted with the lack of control I seem to have over my tendency to worry.)

I settled down after a while, though, and made supper. I wrote some letters and thank-you notes for birthday cards and gifts I received at the end of January that had been left in an After-Testing pile. I looked gleefully over the mound of textbooks taking over a corner of our house and thought about how good it would feel to return them all to the libraries and friends from whence they came.

Today I’ve further settled down from an ongoing sense of urgency. I made pizza with the sourdough crust Mark and I prepped last night. I started another batch of yogurt incubating on the counter. I read for a while (Harry Potter). And then I spent some time listening to some music and playing with my hair. Yes, I’m shocked too. I didn’t accomplish much, other than reaffirming the fact that I can’t seem to wrap my fingers or my brain around any new ways to fix my hair.

Then I decided it was time to take a celebratory walk over to the local college and return the stack of textbooks I had borrowed from them for studying. I bundled up, scooped the books up, and whistled my way over to the college. I knew that this particular school closed its library on Sundays. What I did not realize, however, was that they also lock the book return on Sundays. I stood in front of it for a while, stubbornly yanking on the slot door. I contemplated leaving the books propped up against the front door of the library, thought better of it, and started my walk home, no longer whistling.

Ah, well, I guess I’ll get to take two celebratory walks over to the college to return my books.

So, what’s next in the continually-transitory lives of Mark and Hillary and on this blog?

1. Downton Abbey, Season 3, as soon as whoever has it out at the library returns it. This will be a Hillary-only activity, as Mark has made sure to remind me.

2. Continuing to read Teach For America books, articles, and other materials, as they send them.

3. Job searching, for Mark. (Please pray for that!)

4. Recording and sharing what I’m reading (because that’s still my favorite activity).

5. Deciding how to make a sugarless diet mostly sugarless and sustainable in the long-term.

6. Preparing to move. Be warned: you will probably be reading about this, as mundane as it is, in the coming months. I’ve already begun to make a mental list of things to do: change of address, move our banking accounts, plan an organized, color-coded system for packing, and so forth.

7. Daydreaming about getting a dog. (More on that definitely coming soon because I would much rather build upon my delusions about being a soon-to-be pet owner than about changing our mailing address.)

Have an excellent rest of your day, ladies and gentlemen. I think I hear another hour of Harry Potter and a cup of tea calling to me…

One Test Down!

First test -- done and passed! 

I won't even tell  you about my crazy nervous neuroticisms during the hour leading up to testing and during testing. I'm too embarrassed. BUT I did pass this first test. So, I'm starting to compile a list of events and ideas I will blog about when I can focus on something other than textbooks again, and a whole day vegging in front of Downton Abbey is already being planned.

Happy Monday!

I'm Here! I'm Just Studying at the Same Time

I was told today that I’ve been ‘silent online’ recently, and that’s definitely true. I’m still here, though! Tonight I’m going to give blog writing an honest-to-goodness fighting try. I’ve begun a few blogs over the past two weeks, and they’ve all fizzled into nothing. They almost all start with some variation on the theme, “I’ve been studying.” Then I realize that pretty much all my attention has been sucked up by that studying, so I don’t have much to write about other than elementary pedagogy and linguistics. (For example, did you know that the reason it’s so hard to learn English grammar is because English has Germanic roots, not Latin roots, and grammar rules were first devised by Latin teachers who tried to fit the English language into the Latin rules they were used to? No wonder learning grammar is the bane of all fifth graders’ existence!)

But really, I have had a life of some kind over the past couple of weeks, although the variety of life experiences has been much reduced. What has happened?

1. I have studied. My tests are coming up on February 18 and February 23. As I keep telling co-workers at the library, I will be a different person when those tests are done: a happier person. The tension frown between my eyebrows will (hopefully) disappear and I’ll have a sense of humor again.

2. We have decided to get a hamster at the library. National Library Week is in the middle of April, and the three of us on the planning committee for this momentous week in the world of librarians decided it would be fun to get a hamster and then allow children to participate in a naming contest for the hamster. My vision for the hamster is that it will live in the office that my fellow children’s librarian and I share and that we will bring it out after school gets out and let kids pet it. Maybe we’ll let it roll around the children’s section of the library in a hamster ball. You may think that we’re crazy for wanting to get a hamster. But really, it’s only the other librarians who are crazy because the hamster is my idea and I will be washing my hands of the little rodent and leaving it and its smelly cage in their care in about 2 ½ months.

3. I have studied more.

4. I had a birthday. Having a birthday in January means that I often receive calendars or winter-related items. I tend to not be terribly excited about calendars after years of calendar birthday presents. Neither Mark, nor his parents, nor my parents gave me a calendar. This year, my parents gave me a coat.

 Pretty, yes? I told Mark that the amount of teal and turquoise in my wardrobe is reaching a critical level. I don’t want to turn into a turquoise Dolores Umbridge.

 For my birthday, Mark and I went to a classy little café in the next town over. We had crepes and good coffee.

 Then we spent some time continuing a discussion on ‘family values’ that we started on our 3^rd anniversary date in August. We’ve wanted for a while to write down a list of values and post them in a visible place in our house.

 The idea is to try to live up to the values. That may seem obvious, but I find, at least for myself, that life gets in the way and I don’t end up really thinking about my values. I only discover later that I’ve passively adopted habits that reflect a rather disappointing value system. So, the hope is that with these values posted in our house, the habits will come as a result of the values, not the other way around.

5. I have taken practice tests and studied the rationales behind the answers on the practice tests.

6. I have gotten a haircut. It was a really not-dramatic haircut. I didn’t have the energy to think of anything exciting to do with my hair.

7. I have found more materials to study and pored over them in an antisocial way at the break room table at the library.

8. I have not read much, other than textbooks and the books that I’m supposed to read in order to lead various book club discussions at the library. For those I’ve read What Alice Forgot  by Liane Moriarty, which I found both fascinating and then disappointing; Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, which taught me more about the French Revolution than any history class I’ve taken; and am currently reading Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol, which I sneakily planned into the book club schedule when I was making it last fall because of my interest in Teach For America. Oh, and I've also plowed through 'The Dark is Rising' series by Susan Cooper. Fun, but, as I said, I had to plow.

The tests have undoubtedly stressed me out on occasion over the last couple of weeks. I’ve had a number of optimistic cheerleaders hooting and hollering for me, even when I have felt like I will never pass the tests, which will render my life pretty much worthless. (Did I mention that stress makes me prone to overreaction?)

I’m feeling pretty optimistic about the tests now. But I still may not be ‘here’ much until they’re over!

Announcement (but not a baby announcement)

So many blog post ideas have come into my brain and then gone out of it again that my brain is starting to feel like airport security. Only my brain is not as effective as airport security because the ideas seem to be coming and going pretty freely.

Mark and I have wanted to move back up to the Twin Cities in Minnesota for a little over a year now. The reason we’ve been so slow to actually make the move, however, is that we only kind of wanted to move. Every time we found ourselves on the verge of making the decision to move back, something would stop us. Friends. A job that I love. An impending and potentially financially stressful mission trip. A church we were excited about being involved in, where we felt that we were seeing God at work in cool ways.

But last August, kind of on a whim (but with Mark’s knowledge and blessing), I applied for a program called Teach For America. If you look at their website for about a minute, you’ll see what they’re all about: giving all children, no matter their socioeconomic background, a good education.

Teach For America (TFA) recruits members (they call them ‘corps members’) and then place the people they recruit in struggling schools around the U.S. The people they place do not need to have teaching licenses at the start of their two-year commitment to TFA but will take classes throughout the two years to get licensed. TFA also provides tons of training and resources before corps members are placed in schools and once they start teaching to help corps members succeed as teachers.

It’s a pretty sweet deal. It’s a sweet deal for the corps members because they get their teaching license and experience at the same time, so they don’t face the same dilemma that recent graduates with a teaching license face. TFA also has a very good reputation, so to be able to put TFA on a resume is pretty nice. It’s also a sweet deal for TFA. Because their reputation is so good and their corps member benefits are so good, they attract a huge crowd of applicants and then they’re free to pick and choose the cream of the crop. It’s a sweet deal for the kids in the schools too. The corps members chosen by TFA are all very driven to see their students excel in school and beat all of the horrible odds that are stacked against them because of the social injustices of our country.

Anyway, you can probably guess where I’m going with this—much to my surprise, when I applied for TFA, I was invited back for a phone interview. I was further surprised to be invited back to a final interview. And I was completely and utterly flabbergasted (how do you like that for a word?) to be offered a position with TFA in the Twin Cities teaching ESL in an elementary classroom starting this fall.

I got this news on January 7, and the next few days were full of conversation and speculation between me and Mark as to what TFA would mean for us, if I were to accept their offer. We came up with a number of effects, both positive and negative, TFA would have on us and our future plans:

1) We would have a good reason to move up to the Twin Cities where

     a. we would be closer to family (see our motivation here)

     b. Mark would hopefully have more opportunities to advance a career in music

     c. we would be closer to college friends

     d. we would be able to cross-country ski in the winter instead of being blown to death by icy gale-force winds

2) I would get my teaching license and be able to teach in a school, which is something I’ve wanted to do pretty much since I graduated from college (yeah, I know, obviously I didn’t think through my college education very clearly when I started).

3) One of our dreams has been to live in the city and minister to the people we by – TFA recommends that you live where your students live and get to know them and their families outside of school. In this case, TFA’s desires were directly in line with desire of our own.

4) I will most likely receive a $4,500 education grant both years that I am a TFA corps member. Since I’ll have to be taking classes to get my teaching license, these grants will probably not help with current loans, but they will also probably prevent us from incurring further education debt.

5) I will be very busy. TFA doesn’t hide the fact that the two years as a TFA corps member are very busy. TFA expects you to give your all to the students you serve. My personality is that of a perfectionist (sigh—not always a good thing for me), so it will be easy for me to fall into giving too much to teaching and too little to Mark. And the other people I love.

6) Because of the reason above and because we’re leaning toward domestic adoption, we will probably not be able to start an adoption until my two years are almost up. That does make me kind of sad. I’ve had my heart set on parenting for two years already and now it will be another two years before we have even the possibility of starting our family. Ouch. Ouchouchouch.

7) However, both Mark and I acknowledge that at the end of my two years with TFA, we will be more financially stable than we are right now. I will have my teaching license and a few years of experience. Mark will hopefully have been able to begin his career in music recording and production. And we will have our school loans almost all paid off, or maybe completely paid off. In my mind, that would be a much healthier environment to start an adoption anyway.

So, all things considered, we came to agreement, and I accepted the position with TFA. I’m so excited about teaching ESL and about moving back up to the Twin Cities.

BUT.

In order for me to participate in all that TFA offers, like teach, I need to take and pass the MTLE tests, the Minnesota Teacher Licensure Examinations. These are tests that those aspiring to teach in Minnesota usually take after having taken certain courses in university. TFA apparently has such a high opinion of its corps members that they assume corps members will be able to study for and pass the exams without having taken the classes.

Usually they’re right, it looks like, with I think around 80-90% of corps members passing the tests on the first try. But that doesn’t assure me, and that’s the reason I was crying over oatmeal on Saturday morning. And that’s the reason I haven’t written any blog posts in the last two weeks. I’ve been tracking down study materials and studying.

I’m sure you’ve all read enough of my blather for one day, so I won’t force you endure descriptions of the tests I need to take or the measures I’m going to studying for them. Maybe another day, but not today.

Suffice it to say, if I can pass these exams in a month, then big changes are coming for me and Mark!