Teaching is the life for me.

I am really happy to report that I love teaching here in NY City. I have an excellent administration, I have good colleagues and I have amazing students. I enjoy my days so much. That isn’t to say that every day is perfect…. HA! Far from it.

I have a student who wouldn’t acknowledge my existence for about four or 5 class days. He would defy any direction I gave him. He was sent out of my room 4 days in a row. It is hard to teach a student who isn’t in the room. His mom was called in, we met with him and his mom. He was honest with the Assistant principal that he wouldn’t respond to me and wouldn’t do what I asked. He has a long back story and has some emotional baggage that he hasn’t worked thru in his 13 short years of life.

So on Thursday, he started to raise his hand in class and when I asked him if I could help him, he asked me to check his work. That one moment where he didn’t ignore me helped me to put my toe in the crack of the door he had just opened. I hope to keep this door open for him and me. I called his mom that afternoon and told her that I was proud of her son and that she deserved to hear that he had had a successful day in math class. Again on Friday, he was kind and courteous to me. I even spoke with him one on one and told him I saw a difference these last two days in his self control. Maybe … Maybe…. He’ll have a good week next week.

I have been accepted by my students in so many ways. One piece of evidence of my acceptance is that the girls want me to do the “Harlem shake.” I see them dance and move their shoulders and won’t even pretend that I would do this, but the simple request that they want me to do it with them, says that they accept me. They like to laugh with me and are very kind with their compliments to me. They frequently tell me I look nice or that they like my shoes. It seems trivial, but in an environment where I’m still learning the rules and language, these moments are assuredly an acceptance of me into their circle of trusted adults.

The math is going well also. I have taught my 7th grade class why multiplying a negative times a negative equals a positive. I did it while teaching some geography of cities or places on our planet that are cold. We demonstrated that each city’s temperature dropped 5 degrees as fall set in. We represented that decrease in temperature with a -5. We did that to 4 cities. Then global warming came along and TOOK AWAY the -5 degrees from each of the cities. It turned out that the temperature went up when we took away -5 degrees and if we took away 4 times then (-4) (-5) = 20. That was a successful lesson. I know because I had many students having that great mathematical moment called the “Ah-Ha Moment.”

So these students can learn and they want to learn. They can be lazy, but if I compliment the hard working students, the rest of the class craves the attention and public praise and try hard to receive it from me. My praise is genuine and warm. The students want to hear good things about themselves. I’m trying to do that more and more each day.