Planning the Prom

As advisor to the class of 2015 at CFHS I am responsible for making sure the class is on track with their prom planning and other activities for senior year, graduation, senior trip, senior sweatshirts, yearbooks, etc.  Yesterday after my grad class I went to the place that my class officers picked out for next years prom, the Alpine Country Club in Cranston.  It was the first time I had been there.  I needed to sign the contract and go over the details as well as give the place the final once over.  I was thrilled, as the place is absolutely gorgeous.  It is a bit of a drive from CF but it is well worth it.  I am really attached to this group of kids as they were my freshman students my first year teaching at CFHS and I am very attached to many of them.  They treat me very well.  Looking forward to their senior year!

It's Summer! I'm a teacher which means I'm still working!

It's Tuesday and my last day of school was the Thursday before last.  Since then I took just a few days off.  Last week I spent one day cleaning out papers from last year and putting my home office in order and I spent three days at school working on writing the new science curriculum that needs to be in place for next year.  This Monday (it's Tuesday today) I started taking 3 (that's right 3!) graduate classes towards a master's in teaching English as a second language (TESL).  Since our school has so many students who are immigrants and are English language learners (ELLs), it is becoming a requirement to teach at our school, that you are certified in TESL.  Since certification is only 4 classes short of a Master's degree I decided to take the extra courses and get the M.Ed.  To do this I decided to do 3 courses in a condensed summer session. In other words I am taking 9 graduate credits in 6 weeks.   That translates to 3/4 of a year of graduate school in 6 weeks!

The good news is two of these classes are online so at least I'll be able to stay home with my kids while I work on them.  The other good news is the class that isn't online is done in 7 days spread over  week and a half straight.  The class is on media literacy.  We are learning about how the new media effects our students, how to use it as a teaching tool and how to compete with it to grab our students attention.  The class is utterly fascinating and I am getting a lot of great ideas to use in class with my students.  Today we used an online site to make a comic of a poem.  I am loving every minute of this.  One of the things I like best about teaching is that there are lots of opportunities for creativity.  Using technology in teaching has become one of my niches.

This is the comic I made in class today.  It was made using a fun website called Pixton.  I'm really looking forward to having my students use it.  I think one of their first assignments is going to be to make a comic that outlines the scientific method!  I'm excited about this.

Welcome

This is my new blog about what it is like to teach at an inner city high school.  My high school Central Falls High School (CFHS) gained notoriety in 2010 when it was signaled out as a failing school under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) due to low test scores and low graduation rates.  The school had to enter into a plan to correct the situation.  Because the teacher's union wouldn't agree to the transformation plan selected by the superintendent, which was one of the 4 plans outlined by NCLB, the superintendent had to resort to another plan which called for the firing of all teachers in the school.  This caused a huge stir both in the town and in the media. Our school made the national media and even President Obama commented on the situation.  Eventually the union and the superintendent agreed to follow the transformation model set out in NCLB and the transformation began.

Around the time CFHS was starting transformation I saw the story on the news and decided that I wanted to be a teacher there.  I saw CFHS as a place where there was both great need and great opportunity.  I spent the next year applying to be a Rhode Island Teaching Fellow and going through their intense summer institute in order to get my teaching certificate.  Due to the lucky star I was born under and years of hard work, I was in a position to be picked as one of 32 fellows from an application pool of 1400 that year.  Fall of 2011 found me in my very own classroom teaching physics at CFHS.

You'd think that putting a privileged, academically elite, middle aged woman into a teaching position at an urban high school is a recipe for disaster but actually this is one of the most amazing wonderful journeys that I have even been on.  This blog will outline parts of my journey.