Yesterday was my first last day of school in the New York City Department of Education. I finished packing up my room, finalized grades, met with my assistant principal, and then helped stuff envelopes to send to students with their final transcripts. As I thought back to what I'd accomplished this year I realized there was so much there that I have yet to unpack. It is likely I won't get to really dig deep until a few weeks have gone by but I wanted to begin here.

1. I successfully integrated into a new school. AGAIN.

This is not the hardest thing for me to do at this point. Unfortunately, I have been in four schools in the past five years, so getting to know new staff, administrators, and students comes easier to me than most. Still, it is nice to know that you can begin anew, learn, connect, and feel a sense of belonging at some point when in new situations. I certainly felt a bit out of place in September when I was teaching alongside an 8-year veteran of the school. But now that I know and understand my coworkers quirks more, I can understand why they do what they do and how I should help. It was truly a pleasure yesterday joking around with them as we played kickball for hours after school. 

2. A learned a new curriculum that incorporates most of the ideals of what I have been trying to do for years.

College Prep Math is a program I've written about a lot over the past few months. It involves investigation, exploration, forging connections, and forcing a lot of the learning process back on the student. While I wasn't skeptical of the curriculum when I began using it, I was concerned that I wouldn't learn to do it very well. Yet, under the guidance of some very intelligent people, I am on my way to understanding what word choice I should use, what lessons I should skip, and how to use my own judgment. It's been great.

3. I can still make new technology connections even if I have to start from scratch.

Moving from one city to another certainly reset my ability to connect with local educational technology resources. Yet, in my first two months at this new school I became the webmaster; a few months later I had been awarded a grant through DonorsChoose to have a Makerbot Replicator 2 3D Printer in my classroom; and my laptop cart has been a great boon to the school community. I knew it would be a hard transition but I now have some ground to stand on when I talk about tech in NYC. I hope to only build on that in the future.

While it is hard to move from one place to another I know that I can continue on this path in a welcomed way in my school community and look forward to learning even more in the future about them and how I fit in. I look forward to blogging more about that next year.

California has been in the news a lot in the past week due to a controversial decision by their court system smacking down so-called "teacher tenure." It is interesting that a case like this can come to pass and that the rules regarding dismissal of teachers comes under such scrutiny of the mass media and public. The idea that this "tenure" provides teachers a job for life is not really true and many are portraying it that way. In essence, it provides a more stringent set of procedures that must be followed in the case a teacher needs to be investigated to determine his or her quality. 

Additionally, Pedro Noguera - professor at NYU -  explains in the Wall Street Journal that these protections allow teachers to bring up issues concerning them and their students. Low-income schools generally are underfunded and have fewer materials to support learning - teachers with these protections can share their experiences freely and get the resources their students really need.

One of the main issues discussed in this decision has to do with using test scores of students to evaluate teachers so that the "last in-first out" rule will not longer apply. It is interesting how California is getting on board with this idea even though New York State just postponed its use of tests for evaluation; as did Rhode Island and Washington, DC (a city that spearheaded its use under Michelle Rhee). It would seem that many states are backing away from these tests for evaluation, especially as the Gates Foundation itself suggested doing so.

There are many powers at play here and it seems there is a small shift in the tide for now.

The end of a school year can be like a roller coaster ride in that so many exciting things are happening yet at the same time students are acting crazier than ever. As much as they don't want to admit it, they are used to the routines - the ebbs and flows of a daily or weekly schedule - and when those routines stop many do not have the capability to craft some for themselves. 

This past week has been a perfect example of that: our last day of academic classes is on Monday, June 16 so the last five days have been a mad scramble for help, tutoring, questions, reviewing, presenting, and administering final exams. Students who have consistently been demonstrating a lack of progress are sometimes aggressive in how they ask (read: demand) help from teachers and our time is more limited than normal due to our own end-of-year requirements. 

Last week I sat on five Algebra 2 Performance Based Assessment Task panels (PBAT panels) - presentations my students have crafted (along with papers) to solve some real-life math problem using exponential functions. This is supposed to demonstrate what they have learned this year in lieu of the New York Regents exam (we are one of 31 schools with a waiver from a group called the The Consortium). They are very impressive and have proven to me the depth of knowledge our students really have. On the other hand, there are a number of students who will not be ready to share this knowledge with us and will fall behind. It is truly unfortunate that we try to emphasize time management and meeting deadlines yet a minority of our students are unable to reach them.

In my Algebra 1 classes my students sat down to a two-day final - a rigorous test asking them to explain, justify, and prove a variety of different statements about the content. For those students who have been focused, taking notes, asking questions, and ignoring distraction - they will prove to understand the material and do well. The others are the set of students that have not come for extra help or were distracted during class and unable to learn the material for their own reasons.

It is at this time of year when I always feel these mixed emotions: a sense of pride and joy for those who can demonstrate their knowledge and explain concepts they did not know the year before; as well as disappointment at those who I know would be able to understand if only they would act a certain way. Perhaps sometimes I could have said would have changed things; or one more phone call home (or one fewer phone call home!) could have gotten them organized. In reality, however, it comes down to them and them alone: certain choices lead to certain outcomes and I can't always control them.

This past year has been an amazing experience for me. I've started learning a new city's guidelines/policies, practiced a new curriculum, transitioned to a new community. I hope that I can come back after the summer with a deeper understanding of all these things and be stronger and better for my new students next year.