You Mad Country Yo!

The place where I grew up has always been an "issue" with me. As a child, I wanted to escape that small town down south where everyone knew your name. The thick southern drawl I had was something I wanted to shed like a chrysalis and transform into a butterfly. Well, my chrysalis is still half on and half off. After living north of the Mason Dixon line for a good decade, my accent has faded some. However, it clings to me to remind me of who I am and where I come from.

Teaching in the Bronx somehow allowed me to come to terms with who I was and the person I've become. One of my toughest classes my first year as a teacher was a special education class in a middle school. This particular set of youngsters was an eight grade class who was notorious throughout the school. People who had coverages with this class would often stand at the door. Maybe this was in case they needed to make a quick get away.

Rumor had it that "the leader" of the class was in a gang. I'll call him Kevin. Perhaps he was. He had all the tell tale signs. I was given the opportunity to "teach" this group once a week--every Friday. Most of the students could barely read their names on a piece of paper.

The class I was charged to teach was a video production class. Yikes! How could I teach these students? In the beginning, I couldn't even understand Kevin. He spoke with such a thick street accent and spoke so quickly. It was nearly impossible to translate his words.

Every week when it was time for these kids to enter fear overtook my highly stressed body. My heart began to race. I had to keep this class under control. They didn't respect me. How could I relate to any of them?

Kevin was the one in charge. He told all the students what to do. Whatever he liked, they liked and would participated in. So, I decided that I had to get this kid and the rest of the class would fall in line.

One day, I was teaching and my accent became even thicker with this group because I lost my guard and went deep into my comfort zone--the cadence and rhythms of my childhood. In the middle of an attempt to educate these kids about the world of video production, Kevin stops all his disruptive comments and screams out with laughter, "She's mad country yo." Little did I know at the time, but this was his way of saying that I was southern. Apparently, the word "country" means southern in the Bronx. Then and there, I realized something for the first time. I was like these kids in many ways. Growing up, my grammar was terrible filled with inappropriate use of word meanings and grammatical tenses. In my environment, I fit in with the crowd. Everybody spoke this way. It was only when I was outside my comfort zone-- meaning out of the south, that I needed to worry about my verb conjugation. This made me feel uncomfortable and gave me a need to question myself and wonder...how could I fit in?

These kids feel the same way as I did when I felt out of my element. They fit into their own worlds. It's school where they feel out of place. They are being told to go against who they are--their culture and their language. Kevin taught me something that day. It's important to remember your roots. He reminded me that I am mad country yo and proud of it.

P.S. After this little epiphany, I managed to get Kevin's attention in class and discovered he made an excellent director. He love the camera. He got every student into that class to participate and enjoy learning about how the camera works. Maybe, just maybe, they learned a little something that year. I know I did.

Question of the Day: When did you first learn something from one of your students?

Adults just don't know how to have fun!!

In my blogging travels, I discovered the video of The Crazy Frog Brothers. As adults we get bogged down with the stress of our lives that often times we forget how much fun it is to play around and create. Working with kids everday, I am often reminded of this whimsy. These kids are hysterical. Sometimes, you just need to laugh. Kids are never afraid to do this. We all need a little more laughter in our lives. Enjoy and don't forget to laugh today.

Tips to the Teacher

Students constantly ask, "how do you spell...?" It is a game that I refuse to play. The most important thing a teacher can stress is independence and curiousity in his or her students. Telling them the answers make kids lazy. In my classroom, I make games out of figuring out unknown answers to questions, spelling mistakes, grammar, etc. These are some of my tips about spelling in the classroom.

• I created a chart of three things that a student must try first before asking how to spell a word. This is posted around the room and used as a reminder for all students throughout the year.

1. Try spelling it yourself first.

2. Look it up.

3. Ask a friend. Then check it in the dictionary.

4. Ask the teacher for help sounding out the word.

• For students who have trouble spelling, it's a good idea to have them keep a notebook of words they misspell a lot or words they encounter that are difficult for them to spell. Have them refer to this list when writing drafts. They could even keep it posted on their desk.
• Keep a word wall of misspelled words you see that the class makes all the time. Include these words as bonus words on spelling tests.
• Play the spelling game SPARKLE with highly misspelled words.
• Have students come up with their own word lists from their independent reading books. Make this a routine.

Question of the Day: What spelling tricks can you pull out of your hat?

Teacher Lounge Conversations

Do you know the expression "if I were a a fly on the wall..."? Well, a teacher's lounge would be a good place to be a fly on the wall. In the inner city, there is a lot of moaning and unloading about an impossible student who will not do any work, a teacher's overloaded schedule, how little they are paid, or some parent asking the impossible. Sometimes there is so much negativity that the air is toxic which makes it hard to breath. Yet, there are those who go in there to get a quiet moment away from the kids and grade papers and relay their experiences to others looking for some insight. I was always the latter description. There were these moments where I just needed some rational adult conversation to keep me grounded and realize that all situations were not like the one I was in at a particular school. Sometimes just talking about the movie I saw over the weekend would suffice.

Well, now I do not live in the city anymore. I am located in a suburban area that is fairly upscale part of Pennsylvania. Presently, I am substitute teaching until I locate a full time position this fall. (Jobs are not so readily available out here. It is quite competative.) So, I get around to visiting many different teacher's lounges in this new environment. What a striking contrast to the conversations going on in the city!! The teachers still complain about students. However, what they complain about always seems like a gift to me. Sometimes their worst trouble is about little Johnny rolling his eyes because he was asked to line up. In my humble opinion, this is not really an incident worth recollecting in the teacher's lounge. It's something that can easily be corrected with a little quiet chat away from the other students. Back in the city, I used to get cursed out on a regular basis and called every name in the book. There was often some creative news ones in the mix. I was just happy if a kid said to me "F*&@ Ms. Bernstein" because at least they called me "Ms." To me, it showed respect among the most hideous comment. These were the things I was always grateful to discuss in the lounge. I would simply turn it into a joke because I knew it came from a student who was troubled and that student would not be disciplined by the school. The issue was not about calling me a name but about that student getting a certain kind of attention.

It's really all about perspective. Out in the burbs, teachers and adults are respected by the administration, parents, and the students. This is the not the case in the city. However, it doesn't mean that the suburban teachers' complaints are not valid. However, everytime I hear about their problems, I am dancing a little jig because I know what problems I used to have in the city. Therefore, I am thankful for each and everyone of my new challenges that I encounter in a school. Nothing, I do meaning nothing, seems so bad anymore. I'll take a little eye rolling any day of the week.

Question of the Day: What are some of your best stories from the teacher's lounge?

My First Post. This is so exciting!

Let me bore you by talking about myself. Becoming a teacher was not my first choice in life, I needed to do something else first. For ten years, I worked in television news and documentaries in Atlanta, Boston, and New York City. One day, I woke up and decided that I was no longer satisfied and did not receive enough immediate gratification from the television industry in terms of feedback and helping others. My husband and I discussed my career change and decided I would make a great teacher. There was one small problem, I needed a degree in education. I applied to the New York City Teaching Fellows Program in January 2004 and was accepted. As a member of Cohort 8, I began my training at Mercy College in the Bronx, NY. They paid for my degree. Wahoo!! There, I was assigned to work in Region 2 of the New York City school system. I worked for two years at a middle school in the Bronx called M.S. 135 Frank D. Whalen. My entrance into teaching was not how I remembered school in my small little town where I grew up in South Carolina. Lots of things had changed. Boy, was I in for a bumpy ride over the next two years!!! Survival of those two years was a necessity because I am not a quitter. There, I learned much from my troubled students and I would not take back a moment of my time with those kids in the Bronx. Life is a journey and that experience was certainly part of mine. Once I had my masters degree in hand, my husband and I packed up and moved to the suburbs where we could afford to own a house and raise children. It saddened me to leave the city and those students but I have to live my own life as well. This is where my blog begins. These are my observations about the differences in education in an urban setting and a suburban setting. Oh, it doesn't stop there. My musings and tips will also be posted. I love nothing more in this world than to help out others who also may be struggling in a similar situation--i.e. an out of control school in the heart of a city with little resources and hardly any support for that raggedly tired new teacher. I feel your pain.

Question of the Day: What turned you on to teaching?