Yes, I haven’t written since the first month of school. My delay in posting can be explained in a variety of ways but mostly I’ve realized that many people have much to say about education, yet they don’t do anything. I spent my year doing. Quite frankly, as a first year teacher, it’s all I had time for.

I wish I could have better chronicled my experiences, but I felt a strange maternal desire to keep them private. I’m not sure who I felt I was protecting, but my children are real to me and the blog felt distant and disconnected.

In response to comments about my status: Yes, I’m tired, but yes, I’m still here. In fact, I have not missed a single day of work. And I plan on returning next year.

In response to the comments on sharing a campus with the charter school: Read the rest of this entry »

“In order to live, you must learn… and in order to save, you must serve.” Sometimes a quote can speak so soundly to your thoughts that it can become the very force that guides your actions. After graduating from Stanford University with my BA in Poltical Science and a minor in Human Biology, this quote is the best way that I’ve come across to explain why I decided to enroll in STEP (Stanford Teacher Education Program) to recieve my MA in Education along with my teaching credential. I spent the year student teaching everything from 1st grade to 6th grade in Santa Clara and East Palo Alto. I am now teaching a self-contained 6th grade class at West Oakland Middle School and strangely enough we are currently writing personal narratives, (so I suppose I’ll make sure to include a beginning, middle, and end to this blog.)

Why 6th grade? I wanted to be the one who helped students find ownership in themselves and their actions, especially at a time when they start asking questions, like “why should I care?” As a bi-racial child myself, I thought I would be able to help minority students navigate the cultural, social, and professional worlds that tug on them daily.

Instead I have found that no all-encompassing quote could possibly describe nor speak to the uniqueness of each day that my individually unique students bring to the classroom. In the first three weeks of school, my students and my principal have taught me more than I could have imagined. No classes can prepare you for a classroom of 6th graders — 2/3 of which are boys. No classes can prepare you for the behavior you see in and around a school in West Oakland. No classes can prepare you for the 25 knowing grins who are waiting to see if they can “own you” from day one, nor the 25 minds that have been accostumed to low expecations and are prepared to fight to keep it that way. Read the rest of this entry »