Remembering to Remember

I love my job.  I truly, truly do.  But it's HARD.  Really hard.  It's hard in the leave-your-house-when-it's-dark-and-8-hours-later-realize-you-still-haven't-sat-down-all-day kind of way.  It's hard in the way your work is never, never, done.  I could spend the next 4 days at school, working nonstop, not coming home, not eating, not sleeping... and I still wouldn't be caught up.  It's hard in the way I feel depleted of all emotions by the end of the day, like I have literally been drained bone dry and I have nothing left.  It's hard in a physical way, making me want to either cry or lay down and immediately go to sleep at literally any moment.  Several times a day I think, Am I too old for this?  I might be.

But the past 2 months have reminded me that the HARDEST thing about teaching young children is staying true to yourself.  There is so much bullsh*t being thrown at you all day - from the state (i.e. your fundors), from the district, from the administration, from the other teachers (the most frustrating, if you ask me), that sometimes you find your own voice is very hard to hear.  Who am I?  Who are these children?  And what do I know about teaching them?

Well, all of the above bullsh*t-throwers may find this hard to believe, but I actually feel like I know quite a bit about how to teach my students.  I've spent a lot of time getting to know them.  I've taught PreK before and had plenty of chances to do it wrong before I learned to do some things right.  I've taught Kindergarten and I know where they need to be before they leave my PreK classroom.  My problem?  I'm so busy sorting through the above people's requests and requirements, that I'm finding it hard to remember to do what I know how to do.  What book is that from - "I forgot to remember"?  Pippi?  Ramona?  I certainly know how she feels, whoever she is.

The primary culprit is the new curriculum and assessment system, Teaching Strategies Gold from the Creative Curriculum.  Fortunately it's new to the whole program this year, so I'm not the only one at my school who is completely flummoxed by it.  To sum up: I am not a fan.  The curriculum itself was terrible during the first 6 weeks of school, and I caused quite a stir by largely ignoring it while the teachers around me used it as a scripted curriculum, following it to the letter.  They will be equally shocked at the beginning of next year when I COMPLETELY ignore it.  It was awful, ridiculous, inappropriate, confusing, just plain silly.

But now we're in our first study, Balls, and things are better.  I feel like I'm in a bit of a rhythm, pulling some things from the curriculum but adding a lot of my own, and the other 4 teachers on my team have finally strayed from the guidebook enough to collaborate and brainstorm together.  This in itself was a huge relief, and I have moved from a seething resentment of CC to a begrudging acceptance.  I still am the only teacher on my team who refuses to follow the investigation topics in the order suggested - I have webbed my students' comments and observations, and I stand strong in my insistence to pursue this study in the directions that their interests dictate.  The fact that this is considered a "guide to the project approach" is ridiculous and oxymoronic (probably not even a word, but I'm going with it), and I'm aware that it's mostly stubbornness on my part that is guiding my small acts of rebellion.

The part that I'm STILL seethingly resentful about?  The assessment component.  This is where my true internal struggle comes in.  Do I stay true to myself and what I know to be good teaching and learning?  Or do I relent and go along with this requirement, even though it is so time-consuming and inappropriate that it takes away from time I should be spending building relationships and actually using assessment to inform my instruction?  I'm doing both I guess, but I feel like I'm not doing either well. 

The Objectives for Learning and Development in themselves are good - they are an appropriate, well thought out list of what preschool children can and should be learning.  They're not all-encompassing, of course, but they're a good, reasonable start.  The ridiculous part comes in what we're expected to DO with these objectives.  They've been broken down in to 46 different dimensions (more, actually, but my principal is only having us address the dimensions in the areas of Social-Emotional, Language, Literacy, and Math), and for each of these 46 dimensions we are expected to collect 2-3 pieces of evidence (anecdote, artifact, photo, etc) per child in order to level the child on a rubric from 1-7.  Three times a year.  Did you get that?  
46 dimensions
2-3 artifacts per dimension
Levels 1-7
3 times a year
for 40 children
Put it all together and you get THE MOST RIDICULOUS AND UNREASONABLE WASTE OF TIME EVER

The first "Checkpoint" is in 2 weeks, and I am watching teachers work themselves into a tearful, frenzied tizzy.  They walk around with clipboards full of checklists.  They talk about planning less during centers for this upcoming week because they'll be busy "pulling kids to get these assessments done".  I've gone through many stages in my reactions - anger, indignance, disbelief.  I've raised my hand and argued and asked questions and disagreed.  But now I'm tired.  It's October and I'm so tired.  And what I want to do is close my door and teach my kids - learn with them, ask questions, find out answers, notice and look and listen.  I excitedly take anecdotal notes about the coping strategies Rigo used to regulate his feelings of frustration during centers today, and then later I go online to figure how to enter this note into the system... and I shake my head and click Logout.  This is not the kind of teacher I know how to be.

I look with envy at my daughter's preschool teachers, in their church basement program, able to teach WHATEVER THEY WANT.  Imagine.  The irony that the most-educated, highly-trained teachers are the ones who have the least autonomy in designing and implementing curriculum... well, frustrating is not even close to describing how it feels.

This is the hardest part.  Going with the flow as a brand-new employee, making my best-faith effort to complete these things that are required of me, but staying true to my bottom line in the process.  Remembering to remember who I am and what my students really need from me.

Cute

Since I've been out of the classroom for a while, I've forgotten one really annoying fact of being an early childhood teacher: people's reactions.

I was at a Room Mom meeting for my daughter last night, and the conversation turned to what we do / used to do.  I was, of course, the only full-time working mom, but another mom shared that she used to be a middle school science teacher.  Everyone oohed and aahed, declaring how difficult that must have been.

Then came then inevitable:  "What grade do you teach, Megan?"

I internally rolled my eyes, because their response is always the same:  "Preschool? Oh, that's so cute!"

Really?!  Cute?!

Teaching preschool is a lot of things.  It's challenging, it's exhilarating, it's fast-paced, it's ever-evolving, it's interesting, it's AMAZING.  Sometimes it's funny.  Axel entered the classroom today walking like a penguin.  And what was funny about it was not the fact that he was walking like a penguin - what was funny was the earnestness with which he did this penguin walk and how he announced it to me.  He wasn't trying to be funny, he was actually testing out what it was to walk like a penguin.

It's not cute.  It's learning at its most fundamental, core level, and I am priveleged to see it happen every day.  But it's not cute.

Surprise Katydids

This is the 7th week of school, and it is utterly ridiculous that I am just now sitting down and writing my first entry.  I've written a thousand posts in my brain, usually recited in a fit of rage as I drive home from work.  I have had "Start teaching blog" on my to-do list every weekend since mid-August.  Not kidding.  In fact, it would be funny to show those to-do lists, but they are buried somewhere in my disastrous office, where another bullet point on the list also reads "Clean office".  Clearly I'm in survival mode here.

But I've also been in a deliberate separate-home-from-school mode, which is laughable.  I think about my students all day, all night, just like I think about my own children all day, all night.  Teaching is who I am, it's not just what I do, and to think I could separate it out from certain sections of my existence is unrealistic and naive.  I also know, however, that I have to be productive in my thoughts, or I will flounder in a funnel cloud of worry and despair - which I've done more times than I'd like to admit, and frankly it's not pretty.  So here I am.  This is my space to reflect, to celebrate, to complain, to brainstorm, to get some things off my chest so my poor husband can stop getting an earful every night.

I'm determined to start on a good note, which is perhaps the other reason why I'm just now writing this.  It has been rough.  Very, very rough.  I'm so freaking tired I could burst into tears at just about any moment of the day.  But yesterday?  Yesterday was good.

So here I begin.  Yesterday was good.  Angel was absent.  I'm sorry, but if I can't be honest here then what's the point?  Yesterday was good because Angel was absent.  More on him later.  Trust me.

Yesterday was good.  Rigo only got up 4 times during my read-aloud.  A new record. We're making progress, one painful, frustrating step at a time.

Yesterday was good. Avril, the silent mute for all of last year and 7 seven weeks of this year?  She talked today.  It still gives me goosebumps on my arms and tears in my eyes.  More on her later too.

Yesterday was good.  We found a katydid in the leaf box.  It was a complete accident - the children had been bringing in nature items they've found outside to sort in the classroom, and at the bottom of the box where we had dumped everything, there was a bright green, sort-of-alive katydid.  It was just the sort of happy surprise / teaching moment that I needed.  More on that later as well - the teaching moments, not the katydid.  It's dead already.

Because even though it's dead, it leaves me hopeful.  Hopeful for more moments of surprise and delight and learning that temporarily make me forget Angel jumping off his chair and Rigo trying to gag himself and Avril staring silently at me for so long. 

Here's to more not-quite-dead katydids.