I want to clear up a few things about my blog. It occurs to me that many of my readers get an awfully negative view of me, my school, and this district. It is true that there are many things that are going terribly wrong here, but it is also true that many of the people I work with are incredibly skilled and thoughtful and effective in their jobs.

I had a long talk with a fellow staff member after school who read my last post and identified with the nagging Open Court monster some of us turn to when we attempt to teach a boxed curriculum to kids who are more spherical. We discussed how frustrating it is to feel like we never get the time to share ideas or plan together because of other constraints.

Let me list off those constraints:

• Our school had the lowest test scores in the district last year.
• Our administration is new to their positions
• We are a brand new school (new small school)
• We have 11 brand new teachers at our school (K-3) and 2 brand new teachers in the 4th and 5th grades... are you sensing a trend?
• We have ONE reading coach.
• We have ONE prep teacher who meets with each class to teach them writing ONE time per week.
• We have a computer lab that is not functional because as far as I can tell it's piled with boxes.
• We do not have a reading intervention teacher, but I have 4 kids who read more than 2 grade levels behind and 10 that read one grade level behind (yes, that's 14 just in my class).
• Our copiers are always broken whether because they're old and worn or because they're old and we wear them out!
• There just aren't enough experienced staff members to go around helping all of us newbies figure out how to make the best use of our time!

We also discussed how sad it is that we don't spend time giving ourselves credit for the things we are doing well. So much of our staff time is spent looking at our failing test scores and breaking down whose class has more or less red than last time (for those of you who don't get a chance to look at OUSD's standardized test score print-outs, they are color-coded to make it easier to see what's what: red is far below basic, orange is below basic, yellow is approaching, green is at standard and blue is above standard.)

So here are some of the positive things going on at my site:

• We have teachers spending their personal time before and after school tutoring kids so they can learn to read and meet grade-level math standards
• We have a cracker-jack second grade bilingual team who is basically writing their own transition plan so that when they get to all-English classes in third grade, they'll be prepared.
• We have a terrific custodian who will get us anything we need, including furniture and good advice but also royal barbeque luncheon the week before our holiday break.
• We have amazing first grade teachers who go out of their way to create celebrations for the 100th day of school and teach their kids about Martin Luther King, Jr., even though they really don't have time in the day.
• We have a reading coach who volunteers to make fluency packets for us so our kids can achieve their fluency goals.
• We have a parent liaison who organizes parent meetings, evening celebrations, and awards ceremonies.
• We have an office staff that helps pathetically monolingual people like me translate our papers and interpret during parent meetings.
• We have parents who dedicate their time to come discuss budget issues at Site Council meetings.
• We have teachers who come at 6:30 every morning and teachers that stay until 6:30 every night and some that do both.

So while we are certainly working against incredible odds, we're all doing our best. The negatives are real and need to be addressed seriously (and by someone who has more perspective and know-how than I), but I do hope that we can also appreciate the things we're doing to make the best of this difficult situation.

I didn't realize that I had been clicking the wrong button, so I've had a couple posts just sitting in a cyber-pile on my e-desk. If you think that's bad, you should see my real desk!

I am definitely going in circles. Just when I think I've got a new pattern, a new level of success, it blows up or flops and I lose confidence. I end up going back to being a screeching, nasty, frustrated, rapid-fire Open Court sheep. I feel like I'm swimming in a whirlpool, around and around and around again, with a distinct sinking sensation.

But we're not at the bottom yet and I'm going to do my best to swim toward the sun.

My partner is a veteran teacher, a product of Teach for America, and a believer in progressive, culturally responsive, high-standards teaching and learning. I sat down with him this weekend to get some help making sense of my Open Court routines. After five minutes of explaining to him what I do each day and how it's so different from day to day, he told me to stop and close my book. He dismantled the various parts of the Open Court routine and developed a routine that is predictable and manageable. And also managed to build back my confidence.

I'm going to transition to doing more in small groups so that I can be more focused and targeted with the kids' needs. I'm going to try to stop doing so much teacher-centered, whole-group stuff because the kids don't benefit from it, and I feel like a big meanie. I actually told my kids a week ago that I feel like I'm playing Whack-a-Mole during whole-group instruction because I'm constantly asking them to sit down, criss-cross, hands in their laps, lips zipped, eyes on me. (For those of you outside the sphere of children's games, Whack-a-Mole is a game where each player gets a mallet and they have to whack little moles on the head when they pop out of their holes.) I'm going to stick to the same schedule every day with the hopes that the kids will finally stop guessing at what's coming next so we can all focus on the little steps that build to big success.

A week into the new routine and I already notice a huge difference. I've devoted clear-cut and substantial time to writing and I already see that they are writing more interesting and richer texts. I've devoted a short time to teaching grammar and mechanics with a clear expectation of the evidence they must produce to show they "get it," which is uplifting for them and actually giving them the time they need to think and try it on their own. I have high hopes that this will pull me out of the whirlpool.