Thursday, September 26, 2013

Train's in Motion Now...

3 weeks already (almost). Wow. Living within the school each day--and it is a second home--I definitely feel the train in motion now. Countless anecdotes from all around the staff and students are soon to come in this forum, but for now here are a couple...

~Mr. Berk, a veteran teacher new to our school, was in amazement yesterday while doing his attendance. He was "shocked" at how every single student was in one of his classes earlier that morning. I had the same reaction this time last year. For both of us, we'd previously been in a place where it was not uncommon to have less than 50% attendance in a given class.
Now we are in a place where 90% would be a low number.

~I walked into the evolving "Student Support" room in our school a few hours ago. Not sure yet what that room will be for, but the Intervention Team seems to be utilizing it (I also had to cart out all my stuff from last year, after I'd transformed part of a back room there into my own little storage space.)
On a white board in the corner I noticed something freshly written about a student's misbehavior post-intervention: "A.P.--'had promised not to put his hands on others.'"

Funny how such a little comment can be funny at the end of a work day but nowhere near funny when one is in the middle of a classroom and a student is chasing another around with a broom (heard that story yesterday) or when said A.P. student was observed by myself today holding a pencil up as though he was going to stab his friend with it. [Thankfully, A.P. is mischievous but not truly violent.]

Saturday, September 21, 2013

First Week Down

 Written on September 13th...

Fellow Teachers!

It's hard to believe that we're already one week into school.  I have waited for this moment - day 1, week 1 - for months now (maybe years), and as I look back on it now, I can't believe how quickly (and also how slowly) it went.  

And it's incredible how many things I felt simultaneously while it was happening (yes, sometimes it felt like it was just happening to me, in the passive tense, haha) - terror, anxiety, stress, connectedness, distance, disbelief, immense overwhelm, but most of all, a tingling anticipation of the days to come.  

And of course, this is just the beginning of the beginning, but I wanted to take a moment to step back and be grateful for the joy and challenges ahead.

I'll leave you with two quotes that I absolutely love, especially for this moment in time:

We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring.

| Henry David Thoreau |

Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers, but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.
| Rachel Naomi Remen |

Here's to good company!
Ms. Sri

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Is This Really 'It' ?

It is true. Students arrive on Monday, September 9th. Summer has been amazing and our staff has had a nice transition back to work over these past couple of weeks. Like last year, we came back in early to receive professional development training at Fordham University. We then pivot back to our school campus a week before most teachers go back in. Heading into this long Rosh Hashanah weekend (happy new year, 5774), it is hard to believe our classrooms will be filled in just a few days.

Upon leaving school around 6:30 p.m. yesterday, I could not help but notice how much work still needs to be done. Granted, our school is way ahead of many in terms of planning, learning formats, and other fundamental structures and support systems in place. But in terms of classroom aesthetics, we have a long row to hoe for the next month or so. For example, we are adding an entire new class of students this year, heading into our school's third year. Therefore, we now have several new classrooms and a whole bunch of new teachers. As of yesterday evening, most of these classrooms are still lacking in furniture and technology equipment. Classroom libraries still need to be organized and new offices set up. Furniture that should have been delivered while we were on campus to receive it came instead with no one around. Helpful. Binders we should have received many weeks ago still have not arrived.

We moved various classrooms around to new spaces, as well as acquiring completely new spaces for our main office and principal's office. We now have a chemistry teacher, which many public high schools in NYC do not have. And I will be teaching two sections of U.S. History, which we are building from the ground up as we welcome juniors in for the first time.

The level of collaboration and interdependence within the High School of Language & Innovation (HSLI) is fiercely unique, so there is no doubt we will pull through trials together. It will be fascinating to witness our evolution over the next few weeks. Refreshed, we march onward into a brighter school year than any of us have ever seen before...