Faith, Hope, and Love

While I was in Nigeria in April, another assignment I left behind for students was for them to read three poems, and then write their own. All three poems had to do with the poets' views on being American:  "I Hear America Singing"  by Walt Whitman,  "I, Too, Sing America"  by Julia Alvarez and  "I, Too"  by Langston Hughes. I got the idea from examples of other student work online, like  this . Most of the kids resonated the most with the two "I, Too" poems and chose to write their own version representing a voice in America they feel is not often heard. Here's a few from kids who gave me theirs to publish... Response to  I, Too  by Isabela F.  I, too, sing America I know it's been said before but not in this voice. Of the Sandia and the guayaba of inglés con español Ay sí it's my turn to Oh say what I see I'm going to sing America inside me from the strellas of casta...

Back in April, I had to miss two weeks of school to go to Nigeria and celebrate my dad's 70th birthday. Because it was National Poetry Month, one of the lessons was a throwback to a project we did during my student teaching days. First, the students read Maya Angelou's poem "Life Doesn't Frighten Me," and then write their own version of it. When we did this with the 4th graders, we had them "publish" their poems and created a class book with all of them in it. While I didn't have the time or resources to do the same thing with my 8th graders, a few of them gave me permission to share their poems here. Enjoy! Original poem by Maya Angelou:  Student Poems: Life Doesn't Frighten Me by Yancy D. Ghosts creeping on the walls Strange things at the mall Life doesn't frighten me at all. Sharks circling around Bad songs in soundcloud Life doesn't frighten me at all. A stylist cutting all my nails A barber cutting off my hai...

When I started teaching in the Fall of 2011, I didn't think I'd still be teaching seven years later. Being a teacher was a job I fell into, and while the choice wasn't made haphazardly, if I am being honest, it was made mostly out of desperation. I started this blog in 2010 after I was fired from my job as an editorial assistant at CURE magazine (I still feel it was somewhat a wrongful termination and that my inexperience was taken advantage of, but not the point of this post). I was lost, I was disillusioned, I felt like a failure and was positive I'd never be able to lift my head up again and take pride in the work I did. I spent the next year applying for jobs and getting very little responses of any kind. I wasn't qualified to receive unemployment, someone called Immigration on me (joke's on them, I'm a citizen), I took a myriad of tests to figure out what color my parachute was  or whatever, I applied to a bunch of MFA programs . I volunteered w...

For work, we recently had to take the StrengthsFinder test. The test gives you your top 5 "talents" and those talents, plus knowledge and skills, become your strengths and can make you better at whatever you do in life (in this case, teaching). Doing this made me think: What if my students were equally aware of who they are and what natural talents they have because of their personality? How might this shape how they work in class? And if I am aware of their talents, how might I better relate to my students? Could it make me a better teacher if I knew both my talents and my students ? Well, we're giving it a shot. And so during the 6th grade Culture/Testing Week, one of the sessions will be about personalities. I'm not actually teaching/leading it, but I helped plan it and during that process we took a variety of tests to figure out the simplest version for 11- and 12-year-olds. We settled on the True Colors test (another version we considered and could be c...

Yesterday was the Houston Public Media Regional Spelling Bee. And since I am my school's spelling bee coordinator and we had a student competitng, I got to be one of the guests. Call me a nerd, but can I just say that it was the coolest experiences ever? Spelling Bees can be pretty intense and suspenseful as you watch a group of kids anywhere from 1st to 8th grade (most kids at the level are usually 4th to 8th) get thrown a series of words and try to spell them. The whole audience is on the edge of their seats each time a kid hesitates and there is a collective sigh of disappointment and pity if they get it wrong. We are all ready to clap and cheer them on as they progress. And even though we hope our kid is the one who comes up on top, in those moments we root for each child and feel for them as if they were our own. Or at least I did. The Bee started at 2pm and I didn't get out of there until it ended around 6:30. I was attached to every one of those 55 kids through the 10...

Our flight landed two hours ago. I'm finally have handed off nine 11- to 14-year-olds off to their parents, paid $45 for parking, and I'm in my bed at home. And I'm happy . We had a blast in Costa Rica--I'm so glad that I decided to do this trip and offer this experience to my students. But, let's face it: being responsible for kids who aren't yours in a foreign country is a lot of stress. How can you not be stressed at learning the day before departure that one of the students signed up for the trip will not be joining you because she never got her passport? How do you not get stressed after discovering one of your students locked in the bathroom and in tears because she occasionally can't hold her bladder, is sure the other girls have been making fun of her, and her skinny jeans are glued to her legs because we had just spent two hours riding horses in the rain? (We had to use a pocket knife to cut her out of those, fyi). How do you not stress out ab...

Whoever said it gets easier in Year 2 is a lair.   My second year of teaching is just as stressful (and occassionally more) than my first year. Granted I haven't broken down into uncontrollable tears yet (well, there was that one time...) and I actually know what I'm teaching the kids each day.   But... that's the problem. Since I know all the horrible mistakes I made the first go around, I'm bending over backwards and practically killing myself to make improvements. I still find myself at school until 9pm and being the last car in the parking lot. I still find myself knocking out while grading and frantically waking up at 4am to finish lesson planning. And I still find myself to close to no personal life.   But I still love what I do. It's a lot of fun. It's fulfilling. I'm more confident. And over the last month, it really has gotten better. So maybe that person wasn't such a big liar after all. In Year 1, things only got better after th...

At the moment, my little sixth graders are in the throes of learning about economy. It's been going amazingly smooth so far... especially since I know very little about economy myself. I scrapped by with a low B in high school, made a 1 on the AP test (or did I even take it?), and completely avoided it in college. But here I am teaching kids about exporting and importing, goods and services, and a whole bunch of other complicated economic terms. The one lesson that was probably the hardest (and which I'm still not sure if the kids really understand) is Factors of Production. You know... land, labor and capital. Except we called them "human resources," "capital resources," and "natural resources." Somehow they don't seem to equate human to literally mean human (I'm still getting kids who think a car is a human resource since it's made by humans--that by the way, would make it a capital resource). And then let's not even get star...