This is the beginning of a new segment on my website that I'm calling "Chronicles of a First Year Teacher." To those who don't know, the first year of teaching is supposed to be the hardest year, so I've decided to track my way through it for those who want to read about my anguish or who are thinking about going into teaching. I originally wanted to do a 'First Day' post, but that fell through since I've had little to no free time. Anyhow, here's how the week went.

Leading Up To Day 1

On the Thursday before I started teaching I finalized the subjects that I would be teaching with my team teacher: Reading, Writing, and Language. To those who know me, you know these aren't exactly my strong suits. My strong subjects would be the opposites, which are Math, Science, and Social Studies. My team teacher will be teaching those. This is what me and my team teacher decided on, since she already excels at teaching Math and Science. She's an engineer that decided to go into teaching, so she is very comfortable with the materials -- and her class standardized test scores from last year indicate this fact. So anyhow, I got stuck teaching things I'm not well equipped to start teaching, but I figure that will be fine once I get past the initial learning curve of teaching those subjects.

By this point I had gotten friendly with the staff. Everybody is very friendly and supportive. Many of the veteran teachers have begun affectionately calling me "Trailer Trash," as my official classroom, which is still being built, is a portable classroom. Apparently most of the new teachers who enter the school end up out in the portables and receive the same treatment. Until my 'trailer' is done being fixed up I'm in the Art room.

Regardless of what I would be teaching or where I would be doing it, I knew that as a first year teacher I had to walk into my classroom and set a tone that will work for me the rest of the year. If I went in there with a "let's be friends" attitude, the kids would have walked all over me the first day and everyday thereafter.

The first way I planned to convey a serious attitude was through my personal image. The first thing I did was get some new glasses back in Texas, which make me look marginally older and more official. Also, I planned on wearing a tie for the first two weeks and shaving only every two to three days. On top of this, the school came by to take a picture of me, in which I was smiling. I found out that this picture would be posted outside of my (temporary) classroom. After I found that out I tracked down the guy taking pictures, Mr. Gardner, and made him take a mean looking picture of me. In the picture I'm sporting my new glasses and have a partial version of my stoic "teacher face" going on. I've asked for a copy of the picture but haven't received it yet. I'll post it once I do.

Besides the image thing, I needed to set a tone of seriousness about work. To do this I prepared a fourteen page standardized test to administer the first day. It took me for-e-ver to do on my computer and making copies of it cost a small fortune. Fortunately I saved on my copies because I've become a member of Office Depot's Star Teacher Program. I got 15% off my copies, which was nice. This, coupled with the fact that the cashier charged me for a mere 300 single-sided copies, when in reality I made 450+ double sided copies, saved the day.

Day 1: T-Day

My original game plan for the first day was to meet students at the door, shake their hands, have them sit at their seats, fill out a student questionnaire, and start taking the standardized test. It didn't work out quite this way, however. I had to introduce the rules and consequences system with my team teacher for the first hour. We also did a team building activity, which I didn't want to do because it's too "let's be friends" for me. But I acquiesced, since my team teacher had gone along with a lot of my crazy ideas at this point.

Once that was done I started teaching my first class. I got the large stack of tests in my hand and told everyone that we would be taking a test, to which a student responded, "Are you for real?" In a serious, quintessential white guy tone I responded, "Oh, I'm for real." The test went down without a hitch. Some people disagree with giving this on the first day, but I think it's the best thing I could have done. It set a tone and gave me data that I could work with for tracking. I highly suggest doing it.

When I got home my housemate Chris asked me how the day was, to which I responded, "Well, I'm about to take three ibuprofen with my Corona. How was yours?" After unwinding I was faced with the task of analyzing the test scores to determine the average grade level students are on and calling parents to introduce myself and ask them one question (see Day 2). To make a long story short, I did the test analysis reasonably well and got the calls done, but didn't get to bed until very late.

A Note: Some people are curious about the racial breakdown of my class. I've got about thirty black and five white kids.

WARNING: Skip this paragraph unless you can appreciate math and my anal retentive nature. You've been warned.

I had to see what level students are on because one of the big things that Teach For America advocates is having a strong sense of where each student is academically. Their philosophy entails simple subject assessments. I took their advice to the next level. See, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills returns a grade level equivalent for students taking their tests. I wanted to do the same for my students. So, what I needed first was an old copy of the test. It turns out that it's impossible to get that. However, I did find a sample test from a test-prep company, which I got a free copy of since the company thought I was previewing the material and thinking about ordering for my entire school. What a bunch of suckers. Once I had the sample test I made my mock test, which mirrored their test. I gave the sample test and had scores for each section. The question then was how to translate these raw scores (RS) into standard scores (SS), which are then used to determine grade equivalents (GE). The best that I could do here was take scores from students that took the test last year and do a simple linear correlation here with the scores my students received on my mock test. I realize this is a huge leap of faith, but I'm convinced it isn't that bad for a few reasons. First, there were enough students taking the mock test that randomness wouldn't be a terrible problem. Secondly, it seems like the ITBS does a 1-to-1 point system for correct answers, since 1/3 of questions are considered easy and the rest are harder, which would skew the test enough. Lastly, the average class outcomes were about the same in the official and mock tests. Anyhow, once I correlated my raw scores to standard scores I needed to estimate grade level. I plotted data from last year and found that going from SS to GE was governed by some type of exponential function. Thus, linear regression would not work well. So, I messed around with my good ol' TI-89 and figured out how to an exponential regression. The function I regressed was damn close -- estimates were within .1 grade level. Not bad. From this data I calculated the average class grade level and plotted it on a large piece of butcher paper for the next day.

Day 2: Investing Students

On this second day my goal was to invest students in what we are doing this year. I started by asking them why they thought I gave them a two hour long test the day before. Amazingly, none of them said, "Because you're a mean teacher!" In fact, most of them said, "You wanted to see where we are." I told the students that is exactly why I did it. Afterward I put up a graph I constructed on a large piece of butcher paper with a point plotting where they are now in Reading and Language as a class and where we wanted to go: up two full grade levels in each subject. This excited and scared students. To chart our progress we will be taking a standardized test every single month. I hope this will get them excited about taking tests. After this I got out my second piece of butcher paper magic. It was a list of about 12 quotes I got calling parents the night before. See, I called and asked them, "What are your hopes and dreams for your child? What do you hope s/he achieves in his or her lifetime?" The kids were astonished that I called their parents the first night of school, but excited to see what their parents said. A couple of the good responses were:

• "I want her to have stability, financial freedom, success, and a good educational foundation."
• "Whatever he aspires to do, I want him to be the best at it ... I want him to reach his goals."
• "I want her to reach her potential in whatever she chooses."
• "I want her to be a professional, a responsible citizen, and be responsible for herself."
• "He likes all those long words -- I hope he goes to college!"
• "He talks so much that he could be a lawyer!"

After this I took out my final piece of butcher paper, which had our class goals listed on it. They are:

1. Improve TWO levels in both Reading and Language
2. Learn 900 vocabulary words
3. Read one college level novel

I might add some more goals, but those are good ones to start with. I think this worked out really well. Students were pumped to be working toward them. I hope I can keep that up.

Besides this, my sarcastic side somehow came out too on Day 2. I didn't think it would come out as soon as the second day. I'm not too concerned though, as there is a huge difference between "let's be friends" and being sarcastic. I walked up to one my classes and one student said to me, "Wassup?" I gave him a funny face and said, "Wassup? How about, 'Good morning Mr. Hughes'?" The students around him got a good laugh out of that. Later in the day the same group of students started complaining about the room being too cold. I asked the rest of the class what they thought and the same kid said to me, "Let's have a viz-ote!" In my same quintessential white guy voice I responded, "Yes, let's have a viz-ote." They thought it was hilarious.

Day 3: First Crying and Angry Parents

I didn't think I would have anybody cry in my class or get angry parents so soon, but I managed to do both on my third day. See, we were doing "popcorn reading" in class, whereby one student reads and them "pops" it to another random student. The theory is that they would all have to be following along. It's not the best way of doing it, but I wanted to get an idea where people were and I wasn't super prepared, so I just went with it. Well, three people into the popping one kid popped (on purpose) to a girl who cannot read well. As she was struggling with some words other students were snickering. She was not the first student this happened to, but it was happening considerably more so to her. I stopped the class and told them that was unacceptable and that we were not in class to bring each other down. At this point I looked over and the girl was crying. I took her out in the hall and she said she wanted to go see her mom, who apparently was at the school. So I let her go and as I did I was walking back into the room and a pen flew out the door. I don't know whether it was on purpose or accident, though I'm inclined to say the latter. In any case I picked the pen up, chucked it down the hall, came in, slammed the door, and let the class have it about how that was completely unacceptable. They were dead silent for the rest of the day.

Homework for this day was, among other things, writing a paragraph that uses three of the daily vocabulary words in it. I changed the assignment to writing that same paragraph, except on what happens when you make fun of someone, still using three of the vocab words. Well, after school one parent came in to complain about how her child was being punished for something that was not the fault of her child. She said that if I had a problem with her child I had to tell her and not arbitrarily assign punishments. I had to defuse the situation and let her know that her child was not being punished. After a while she finally understood and left.

Day 4: More Crying

This next day saw even more student sobbing. One child asked how long books had to be for weekly book reports. I said they must be about 200 pages, or at each student's individual level if necessary. Even though I offered a very lower page limit to this student, he said the class was much too hard and that he needed to call home to get out of school. I assured him that he could do it with effort, but he insisted that it would be too hard. We'll see what happens there.

Day 5: Five Strike Fridays

Every Friday we play kickball as part of my classroom management system. See, every day that a student turns in all homework s/he gets a spare, like in bowling [ / ]. If the student has no major behavioral problems by the end of the day, the spare gets upgraded to a strike [ X ]. Conversely, if no homework is turned in, but the student behaves well, s/he receives a spare. If at the end of the week a student has at least four strikes and a spare, s/he can play kickball. Anyhow, it was finally time to play for the first week. Almost everybody got to play. When we were playing my class' team was getting schooled because we had a shortage of players and fielding fell apart. The other team got ahead very quickly. To counter balance this I told my kids to start bunting. We got four base hits and a few runs before the other team started catching on. When it was our turn to field again the other team thought they could get away with the same thing. Wrong. I started fielding, threw one kid out, and pegged two others with the ball. Three up and three out that quick. We ended up losing the game anyway, but that's ok.

My house mate Chris and I come home each day and swap stories about what we said sarcastic to kids today or how each other's weekly kickball game went (we have the same rewards system).

Yesterday I came home and was completely exhausted from the week. Some people wanted to go out. I fell asleep on the couch after watching Thursday night's Daily Show. I woke up an hour later, ate dinner, and started watching Rolling Thunder and The Italian Job later.