The End

Here you are, staring at the seemingly insurmountable summit that is the conclusion of your undergraduate career. Take a deep breath (or ten), center yourself, and commence the climb. You want to impact lives, but your greatest fear is that the things you do won’t matter; get rid of that negativity and do all of the things anyway. Don’t take yourself so seriously! All of the energy you put into looking like you have it all together is getting you nowhere, and, to let you in on a little secret, NOBODY has it all together, so you’re in good company. 

The above are things that I wish I would’ve let sink in before I started my internship in the fall. This past year has certainly been one of the most challenging, but rewarding times in my life, and I had the opportunity to learn from some knowledgable educators who were more than happy to share their resources with me to help me be successful. I spent a lot of time not breathing and thinking my heart was going to fall out of my chest, but I made it! 

My biggest worry was that I wouldn’t be perfect. I wouldn’t craft the perfect lesson plan that would engage my students. I wouldn’t know the perfect way to deal with classroom management issues. I wouldn’t have a perfectly articulate and honest conversation with my MT when I was having trouble. Sure, I know perfection is impossible, but as a teacher-in-training I wanted to dazzle everyone that walked into the room and I wanted to make myself distinguishable from my peers (other than the hair, hehe). I’m sure you know where this is going, but you know what? My students, MT, and administrators never expected me to be flawless. In fact, they embraced me even harder because I wasn’t. The most valuable lesson I learned is that perfection doesn’t matter, but connections sure do. My students didn’t know when my lessons didn’t go exactly as planned or that I was having a rough day (most of the time), but they valued my attempts at trying to connect with each one of them every single day. Their appreciation of that also let me know that the things I do do matter, so I must keep pushing forward.

As I  move forward and prepare to take over my own classroom this fall, I’m excited. There are still a lot of days that I feel like an imposter, not a real teacher, but I know that the imposter feeling will dissipate as I continue to transition from student/intern to big kid.

In closing, I want to leave you all with a few words that I wrote my seniors on our last day together. I’m holding on to a few of these for myself: 

As you go onward to pursue your own endeavors, I will you the courage to conquer each new obstacle you’ll face, a sense of wonder that reminds you to stop and enjoy the little things, perspective to know when it’s time to do something different, adventure to go out there and seize opportunities for travel/experiences, people and places that nourish your soul, especially when you’re running low, and the ability to always be so beautifully, weirdly, and authentically you.

Go bravely onward,

-McD

Warrior

Full disclosure: the beginning of this post may be unappealing to some, but I need some time to process before I get to the good stuff.

The past few weeks have left my head spinning. Like, if my neck had the elasticity my cranium would be doing 808s, which would probably make this whole process of transition a little more entertaining, at the very least. In the midst of all the hubbub of job applications, interview after interview, purchasing regalia for graduation, lying in bed at night stressing about the close of my undergraduate career, languishing in the ambiguity of the future, papers that have yet to be graded, lessons that need planning, and wondering when I’ll see my spouse more than just in passing, I’ve been asking myself one question on loop every day—am I good enough? Am I capable of making it through this final stretch of my internship without imploding? If all of this internal struggle and pain is what it takes for success to come to fruition, do I even want it?

One thing that I don’t share with many people is that I deal with debilitating anxiety. I have a tendency to make mundane tasks seem like the most insurmountable challenges, so when the going really gets tough (like right now) I have loads of fun mucking through what actually needs to be worried about and what can be put on the back burner for later (read: everything is pressing and needs to be done right now, don't listen to rationale, what you’re already doing is rational!). I never use my anxiety as an excuse not to achieve, but it has been a very real, daunting presence looming over me this semester. I’ve spent many days as of late weeping and frozen because my anxiety is so high and I want everything to be so perfect that I don’t even know where to begin. Again, I ask myself am I capable? Will I implode? Do I want this?

YES. The answer is a resounding yes. 

My mentor teacher and I challenged our seniors to write graduation speeches. We prepped them by having them think of speakers and speeches that inspire them and showing clips of different commencement addresses to help them get a feel for it. Part of the process also involved a day where they crafted pieces of writing about an experience they’ve had in an attempt to reach their potential audience without explicitly stating what that experience was. The writing that materialized from this assignment was beautiful, gut-wrenching, awkwardly hilarious, and hopeful. Yesterday and today these wonderful young adults that I’ve had the honor to get to know stood behind the podium at the front of the room. With so much poise, maturity, and bravery, they shared their aspirations, secrets, and fears for the future with their peers and with me. In spite of those worries and fears, almost every one of them was optimistic about overcoming their obstacles and achieving their own measures of success. These young people have persevered through so many impossibilities. They are warriors and face every challenge with the few resources they have. They give me strength. They remind me that there is good in the world and that I help cultivate that good. They remind me that I am a warrior that can face down my own personal struggles in order to move on and become the best version of myself for me and for them. So, am I capable? Yes. Will I implode? No. Do I want this? Yes, yes, a million times yes. I owe education everything for reminding me how mighty I am.

Serving Parents to Foster Community

Often, I think we underestimate parental and community interest in education. Because parents don’t show up to conferences or answer emails and phone calls, it is automatically assumed that they don’t want to be involved; we assume that they don’t want any responsibility over their children’s academic progress. During my years as a para at a middle school, I was exposed to home visits and their impact on student education. For example, I worked with a student my first year who really struggled academically and socially. Their teachers were frustrated because the student showed up to school late every morning, slept during class, and didn’t always have their homework completed. As direct support for the student, I was unbelievably frazzled as well because I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere with the student (and in hindsight focused way too much on how the student wasn’t serving ME instead of focusing on how I could be better serving THEM). Eventually the principal suggested that a couple of the student’s teachers attempt a home visit. During the home visit, the teachers learned that the student was living with almost a dozen other family members, so they didn’t have their own room and it made it difficult for them to sleep restfully. Also, the student’s mom didn’t have reliable transportation, so they had to walk a distance to get to school if no one was able to pick them up, which was often. Mom was deeply troubled by her inability to provide a peaceful environment or transportation for her children and didn’t know how to reach out. Fortunately, as a result of the home visit, Mom felt like (rightfully) the school was on her side as we were more accommodating of her sleepy child and did our best to facilitate her child’s timely arrival to school, which had a positive impact on their grades. In the time following, the mother also felt comfortable being more actively involved in what her child was doing, getting to know the teachers, what they were teaching, and their expectations better.

My experience proved that it’s not that parents don’t want to be involved in their children’s school lives; parents can easily feel excluded because schools and educators could do a little more work to ensure all types of families feel welcome in that space, especially English language learners. In their research, Samway and McKeon mention that for English language learners in particular, schools have implemented interactive parent-teacher conferences with mini-workshops for parents to participate in with their children, which provide demonstrations of the types of things their children are doing in class (167). Similar to our daily lives outside of school, as educators, it seems so easy to get into a pattern of frustration and complaining about things that aren’t working rather than trying to find solutions to those problems. Sure, it can be difficult to feel a lack of parental or community engagement, especially when we desperately want that participation and feel like resources aren’t readily available to make what we dream a reality. I guess what I have to remind myself is that I have to make do with what I do have. If there aren’t translators available to help me communicate with a parent, could I have the child or another family member serve as an intermediary? What about learning some conversational Spanish in order to bridge the gap myself?

Samway, Katharine Davies and Denise McKeon. Myths and Realities: Best Practices for English Language Learners. 2nd ed. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2007.

Genre Reflection #2: "How To"

How (Not) To Be An Exemplary Student

1. Tire of the routine of the semester a third of the way through.
2. Put off assignments and readings until the last possible minute.
3. Complain about not having enough time to complete previously mentioned assignments and readings.
4. Realize your predicament is no one’s fault but your own and promptly shut up.
5. Come to class unprepared to listen or learn.
6. Daydream while your professor is giving instruction, only catching part of what she says.
7. Sit with a puzzled look on your face when asked to participate in an activity you missed the directions for.
8. Leave campus and immediately forget about your academic responsibilities until you step foot back on said campus.
9. Continue with your disorganized habits because they have gotten you this far, right?
10. Get the mediocre grade that you so deserve at the conclusion of finals.
11. Commence complaining, AGAIN, but not vow to change any of your habits that put you in this predicament.

How To Be An Exemplary Student (from an over, then underachiever)

1. Face every day with a fresh perspective to break up the monotony of each week.
2. Be proactive about starting assignments early to alleviate frustration and panic later.
3. Cease complaining about behaviors you refuse to change.
4. Vow to not put yourself in precarious situations with your grades; start strong and finish strong.
5. Utilize those beautiful lists of tasks that you so painstakingly compile in order to stay on track and come to class prepared to listen and learn.
6. Approach every class meeting with intention, as you wouldn’t be there if there wasn’t anything valuable to learn.
7. Listen attentively as your knowledgable professor imparts her wisdom onto you.
8. Rely on your school and home families for support when you need it and engage in self care to maintain your mental faculties.
9. Engage in regular reflection regarding performance and adherence to your personal goals you’ve set for yourself.
10. Strive to be better than you were yesterday EVERY DAMN DAY.
11. When everything is said and done, look back at your achievements and say “Hey, I did good.”

Some Stuff About Language

Coming from my fishbowl in small-town, USA, observing and teaching in such a large, diverse district has been quite the learning experience each day. One of the most noticeable things about my students are the multifarious manners in which they communicate with each other. Maybe it’s too much time in linguistics classes that has made me so sensitive to these nuances, but I love walking through the hallways every morning and listening to the murmurings occurring before the first bell rings and between classes. Listening to students communicate with each other is kind of like music; the way their voices rise and fall melodically, sentences sometimes overlapping. Now, it’s not always pleasant, as I’m not the hugest fan of shrill laughter or screaming, but I never realized how different and wonderful language really is before I came here. What is so intriguing about language, you ask? There is much to be learned about language, and our students based on how they speak and write. But, I wonder, how do we teach language/grammar to students without forcing them to abandon their own?

I remember being a kid and abhorring anything language or grammar related at school because I grew up in a household where African American Vernacular English (AAVE) was spoken, so any time we discussed the “right” and “wrong way to say or write something in class, I was constantly told the way I communicated was incorrect and needed to be fixed. For anyone who is not familiar with African American Vernacular English, it is a social dialect that is typically viewed as an inferior mode of communication because it utilizes double negation (ex: couldn’t nobody) and loss of verb inflection (ex: ‘he go’ instead of ‘he goes’) among other properties that proponents of Standard English frown upon. In Randy Bomer’s Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms, he states, “As citizens in a democracy, students need to learn ways of thinking about language variation that will allow them to respect other citizens across differences. They need to learn to think about language variation in order to understand the intelligence and value of linguistic patterns different from their own” (267). In my own experience, the language variation that I brought to class was not respected and I was forced to abandon it, and the same thing happens often to the students we serve now. I don’t know what it is about English teachers as a collective, but we have to let go of that superiority complex when it comes to language to let our students know that their language differences are valid, which in turn could encourage them to learn how to utilize registers that are appropriate in particular conditions. 

Teaching language does not have to be the same boring, predictable exercises that we suffered through as students. There is no one way to interact. Language is exciting and should be celebrated as such. There should never be a “right” or “wrong” way to use language, but there are certainly “wrong” ways to teach it; silencing students for not using Standard English, invalidating their ideas because they are not spoken or written in a manner that you expect, and making it clear that their language differences are to be abandoned when they cross your threshold are examples. I want to explore the dynamics of language with my students and help them understand that the ways in which they communicate are beautiful. If they have something they want to share with me, their peers, or the world, I never want to silence that just because they use a double negative.

KATE Conference 2K16

This past week I had the privilege to attend the Kansas Association of Teachers of English (KATE) Conference, and it was an experience that made my heart so full. I spent the two days listening to personal testimonies and presentations about inclusiveness, diversity, and awareness, which are all topics that highly interest me. I will admit that I was closed off to the idea of other educators being willing to learn more about the students they are serving in order to create spaces in which they can flourish, but I was quite moved by everyone’s curiosity and attention to different topics discussed such as ethnic/racial diversity, gender identity/expression, and sexual orientation.

I suppose their care was stunning to me because I was not surrounded by educators brave enough to stand up for me or others like me in order to provide me with the best education possible when I was a kid. Remembering how isolated I felt in my school environment, especially in my teens, I am doing my best to learn how to be a supportive and inclusive educator. There’s some quote along the lines of “be the person you needed when you were younger” and I hear that on loop in the back of my head every day. Bill Konigsberg’s keynote amplified the little voice in my head to be better; he even put some pressure on me to implore other people around me to be better. Konigsberg reminded us that we may be the only figures in a student’s life that validates them in their identity and supports them as a whole person, so the things we say and do must be calculated. Although I’m sure we all knew this, sobering reminders are needed at times so we can re-evaluate our behavior.

Addressing diversity in the classroom takes truckloads of bravery, especially in environments where it may not be encouraged, but it is NECESSARY. The KATE conference reinforced my ideas about the type of educator I want to be, but it also challenged me to examine areas in which I need to be more intrepid; I need to be more brave about standing up for things I don’t feel okay with because the safety and wellbeing of my students count on it. I cannot stand by and let comments a young person says ride because they assume no one heard them. I have to hold my colleagues accountable for damaging comments or silence as well. Most importantly, I have to check myself when I am in the wrong. 

Here I am rambling again, but my whole KATE conference experience was quite introspective. I’m still ruminating on some of the subject matter, so I expect this post to expand.

Here’s to growth,

Ms. McDaniel

Monday

The familiar, drawn out ding sounds
A hushed shuffle of feet, shh, shh, shh
make their way down the corridor
Carrying exhausted bodies, baggage
Raspy voices mutter about the weekend
and assignments fallen by the wayside
Eyes like lasers cut every which way
Skirting contact as minds
race to gather their things and
Thoughts
The final countdown occurs
as some are still clearing the sleep
from their eyes
They pour through the threshold, water
Sink into their seats
Papers rustle, crunch, bags ziiip
A hand shoots up, "Miss, what'd I miss?"
A collective audible groan resounds
as colleagues shoot daggers at their
inquisitive peer
Hello, Monday