City School Stories

Teacher Stories

Submitted by Teacher Man on October 20, 2011

During my first year of teaching, a coworker did an incredibly kind and helpful thing for me. I was gathering myself at the end of very long day when this individual walked into my classroom and handed me a post-it note. It read, “On 10/12/2008 Sharae said ‘Mr. A. You are my favorite teacher”.

My colleague told me to stick this message to the bottom of my desk drawer and after (or during) tough days, sneak a quick peak at it whenever I needed to create some positive thoughts and feelings for myself. That note stayed in my desk drawer for the rest of that school year.  I looked at it countless times since then as it helped me to get through some difficult times.

On the eve of this year’s initial Academic Division’s school walkthrough I found myself in need of some positive energy. It has been almost 4 years to the day since I received that post-it  note. So I went back to it at the bottom of a very familiar desk drawer in order to find the energy I needed.

The sole administrative focus at my school for the past two and a half weeks has been on this first walkthrough of the year. There has been much talk in my school of what could happen if the walkthrough does not go well. We are already an empowerment school and threats of becoming a Promise Academy or a charter school have already been thrown at us. There have been countless memos, announcements, and emails directed at us by our administrator detailing all of the different “must haves” that the walkthrough team will be looking for in our classrooms. Everything from the rubrics that must be on the walls, the green/yellow/red color system the teams will use to assess teacher classrooms, and the specific order in which papers should be placed in teacher’s data binders.

What has not been the focus of my school for the past two and a half weeks is actual learning.

I find it particularly frustrating that no one seems interested in the fact that during this time my students have been working hard to become better readers, writers, and thinkers.

…or that no one seems to be interested in the fact that my students spent a productive week learning about early North American civilizations and that they created informational displays that communicated their acquired knowledge.

…or that no one seems interested in the fact that it is only October and my kids are reading novels, short stories, poems, non-fiction texts, and a variety of news articles.  My students are writing informational essays, text reviews, poems, and fictional stories. Why doesn’t anyone seem interested in the fact that my students are better readers, writers, and thinkers than they were a month ago?

What my administration is most interested in is that I have my desks in a “U-shape.” and that there are Corrective Reading objectives on the board.

When I looked into the bottom of that familiar desk drawer today, I found myself reading a new post-it note.   It says, “On 9/21/2011 Joey said ‘Oh yea! Mr. A. has The River!” This is one of the books I recently added to my classroom library.  Reading this message helped me to realize that the results of this walkthrough or the opinions of the administration at my school don’t really matter.

What is more important to me is that my kids are excited about reading and writing when they are in my classroom.  I know that sounds kind of simple but isn’t that how they should feel about school?  Isn’t that what they should be doing in school?

I may receive a classroom color rating of red after this the walkthrough, because I don’t have every rubric I am supposed to have on the wall.

But I can live with that as long as I am able to continue to help kids to be excited about reading and learning.