Throughout the past year I've posted some of my worst and funniest stories from teaching. I figured it's appropriate for me to give the year some kind of closure. Granted, this post is long overdue. I left Mississippi a month and a half ago and in less than a month I should already have new teacher stories to post for the new school year.

Here first are some pictures I snapped from graduation night. I'm not a fan of calling it 'graduation' night, because I think the word 'graduation' should be reserved for high school and college. It leaves the importance of graduating high school and college where it should be instead of diluting it. Nonetheless, we had a graduation-like ceremony at Carrie Stern Elementary. Some type of ceremony is appropriate because these kids are going on to middle school and entering a new phase of life.

Just a note: The auditorium at our school doesn't have air conditioning, which I completely forgot about and wore a full suit. By the time I broke down and decided I couldn't bear it, I took off my coat and my assistant principal pointed out all the splotches of sweat on my shirt. I looked like Al Gore giving one of his angry speeches where he sweats profusely. So I had to keep the jacket on and literally sweat it out.

A lot of people have read my teaching stories over the year and say to me, "I was thinking about Teach For America, but now I'm hesitant. Would you do it all over again if you knew what you know now?"

The answer to that question is, "Of course!" The question in my head still remains: If not me, then who? Qualified teachers don't want to go down to the Mississippi Delta and the Delta loses as a result. If I, or you, don't go, then who will? Furthermore, I knew before applying that if I did TFA, it was going to be one of the hardest things I ever did. If you don't expect that, you shouldn't apply. I got exactly what I expected, but I also got what I expected in that the experience yielded its rewards, too.

A lot of TFA teachers have one grand story about a single child to explain to others why they "Teach For America". I don't have one of those stories, at least not yet. What I do have is a slew of small stories that compose my first year of teaching, which I think would be an appropriate closer for the year.

One of my female students came to my class this past year with the idea that math was a subject for boys. Girls weren't good at math, she told me. As soon as I pushed her a little bit and got her to believe in herself, she championed the subject. She ended the year with one of the most competitive math grades.

My kids rated Animal Farm as their #2 favorite book at the end of the year, second only to The Outsiders. By the end of the book, they were extremely interested because they could see the parallel between it and Soviet history, on which I gave them a quick, but substantial, primer. Some of them even made inferences on their own about George Orwell's broader message on totalitarianism and despotism. The most heartening thing about it was on the last day of school when we were watching the Animal Farm movie from the 1990s. The kids were engaged because they'd all read it. During the movie, one of my lower-level readers says to her friends, "Man I woulda thought this movie was just a booty movie about some dumb animals, but now it's interesting!" A couple students liked Orwell so much that they voluntarily began reading 1984 at the end of the year. One student liked it so much that she finished it in a weekend.

A student who had been hostile to me invited me to one of his basketball games, which I happily attended. After I showed him that I was more than an aloof teacher, he trusted me and became a leader in the class. His sister also invited me to her games and they were always happy to see me come.

By the end of the year students started reading without my asking. When they had down time, opened a book and started reading for pleasure. It took all year, but it happened.

All through the year students would notoriously mess up my name. Another sixth grade teacher at Stern was named Ms. Heard. Students would start saying her name, abruptly realize their mistake, and finish with the end of my last name. The result was that I became known as "Mr. Hurrrs". I also got, "Hi, Mr. Huge!" a lot. Students (and one teacher) would always confuse me and Mr. Gardner all the time because we were two white, male teachers of comparable height.

It took literally the entire year, but by the end I finally had one particular student's trust. By about November, I think I can accurately say that I had zero credit with the child. He threatened to "stick me in the eye" once when he was angry and I was having to write referrals on nearly a daily basis. Months after changing my approach and trying to get him to trust me and show him that I cared about him, he was finally on my side. More than anything, reaching him on a behavioral level was the biggest gain we made, but I think that has the potential for a huge positive consequence later on. This is the same student that said he would sell drugs instead of stay in school to the security guard. One of the ways I did this was by throwing him a surprise birthday party, which I highly doubt anybody had ever done for him. I had my class and other school personnel close to the student waiting in the library while I scolded him over something minor and got him mad and worked up. I brought him in the library to "see the assistant principal" and everybody yelled, "Surprise!" After cooling down for a minute, he was extremely humbled, which I rarely saw with him.

Another girl in my class struggled with math all year, but made her way up to a B after a ton of hard work. She was ecstatic when she found out that she earned a B. I don't think I had ever seen her so happy about something.

At one of my kids' birthday parties I brought in a Playstation 2 and told them that I'd give them a load of "academic points" if they could beat me at Tony Hawk, knowing full well that they couldn't possibly beat me. The kids talked for days about how they were all going to school me. They didn't think I played video games because of how serious a teacher I always am. The birthday party came, I hooked it up, and one by one they struck out. The very closest any of them came was 10,000 points to my 80,000.

Most of my kids had a firm grasp on basic Newtonian mechanics after we did the physics section of science. Pretty decent, for sixth graders.

I adapted the public speaking course that I took in college for my classroom. Although it was rushed at the end of the year, kids came out of their shells and became comfortable with speaking in front of the crowd. They also learned quickly how to show respect for a person speaking in front of a crowd and how to behave when someone is speaking to them. Perhaps it's because they would now have to be one of the people in front of the class and they can empathize when someone else -- like a teacher -- is speaking. I plan on doing a lot of that next year.

Perhaps the most important thing of all was seeing my student gains. On average, my class gained 2.1 grade levels in language, 1.6 grade levels in math, and 1.1 grade levels in reading. Despite my efforts to improve reading in a huge way, I fell a little short. Not that I did poorly (i.e. less than 1.0 years of growth), but I really wanted to see at least 1.5 levels of growth in reading.

There's also of course 6th grade rap lyrics, dealing with corporal punishment, racial politics on the playground, promoting religious tolerance, local colloquialisms, writing to colleges, being made-over, and being a booty teacher.

Most of the students involved in all these stories are pictured above.

All of these things are why I'm teaching for America.