Step by Step

Sorry to all of you who have keep asking me about my last week of teaching summer school.  Thank you for asking and caring and wanting to know.  That last week was definitely one of the most draining weeks of the summer. All of my steps from day 1 were leading up to this destination, the end of summer assessment and the last day of school.  Far too much happened, so I will just share the one story that has affected me the most. My kids improved a ton throughout those 4 short weeks, but the three students who were supposed to earn a 70% on their end of summer assessment in order to pass on to the 6th grade all got well below that 70% mark.  It broke my heart to grade Kiera's test.  Kiera is the girl who entered my class absolutely hating math.  She was very quiet.  She would not participate.  She would barely pick up her pencil.  Her mom approached me to warn me that math was her worst subject and that she wouldn't do well.  I took a personal interest in Kiera and her growth in ability and confidence this summer.  I kept searching for those secret moments that I could steal with her before school, at lunch, as she was leaving, whenever I could steal an opportunity to ask her a question or remediate a skill she missed from a previous lesson.  I saw her grow the most out of all my students.  During the last 2 weeks of school, she was earning 100% on most of my daily assessments.  Instead of staring at a problem in fear, I saw her approach equivalent fractions and conversions with confidence, pride, and a big smile on her face.  She had learned and grown so much in such a short time.  Her original score on the pre-assessment was a 23% yet in order to go to 6th grade, she needed a 70%.  Her final score was a 54% which is incredible.  That amount of growth is equivalent to the top 25% of students who attend institutes around the country.  But as good as that is, it's not enough.  She will still have to repeat the 5th grade.  My heart broke that day.  She knows this material better than a lot of her classmates now yet she cannot continue upward.  I am afraid that her new confidence will diminish and that she will go back to that place of fear and hopelessness.  I hope and I pray that the lessons she learned and the moments that we had together will have eternal impacts on her life and that this summer did matter and was worth it.  I need to believe that it was.

The last day of school was wonderful.  I had a college talk with my kids and showed them pictures of some of my favorite college memories.  It was especially wonderful to show them pictures of a couple of my favorite kids from Vietnam as I explained my experience there and how it fueled my passion to become a special education teacher.  The whole day was just very affirming.  Some of my students wrote me notes and gave me pictures.  One girl told me that she wanted to be a teacher now because of me!  I just love and adore them and definitely cried when I had to say goodbye to them.

In addition to saying goodbye to my students, I also had to say goodbye to my Corps Member Advisor (CMA) group.  These are the 10 people that I did life with over these past 5 weeks (kind of like a RA staff).  This was the group that we would debrief with, cry with, vent with, and laugh with.  I had a really great group with a fabulous leader whom spent many many hours giving us meticulous feedback on our lesson plans and observing us teach and trying to comfort me as I broke down crying on a daily basis.  I am very thankful for this group, even if they were for just a short season.

                                            CMA group at Hey Joe's (the popular hangout!)

So now institute is over.  We had 2 days of orientation that was supposed to serve as the bridge between institute and our fall placements.  This was the first time that I received any "training" for special education.  There are a total of 5 of us special educators in the delta (out of 290), and we have an amazing learning team leader who taught special education the year before.  These 2 days were definitely overwhelming, but it also allowed me to be really excited about this specific type of work that I am going into.  I don't feel qualified and I am definitely not prepared or deserving of this job.  But this is the job that I was chosen for.  This is my work and I will faithfully respond to its call, step by step.

During institute, we took a lot of really steep steps at a very fast pace.  Now that the structure of the staircase is over, we are still expected to walk.  We will only get to our destination as we go forward step by step.  Sometimes or path is very clearly defined and sometimes we are only given a general direction.  I am slowly learning more and more about what my specif path will look like.  Each step that I take brings me closer and closer to this real adult life I am living as a teacher in Mississippi.  One of the biggest steps so far is that I found a house!

      This is my cutie little house with my 2 incredible roommates, Sarah and Rachel.  I am beyond excited to live with these 2 girls and to make this house into a home!

We will be renting this house for the year, but it is not ready to live in yet, so I have been adventuring and couch surfing!  For the first few nights, I got to hang out with 3 of my favorite women from institute in Jackson where we stayed in a hotel, went shopping, got pampered, and went out to dinner.  It was such a treat after our very long 6 weeks!

                                                        Rachel, me, Becca, and Janie!!!

 I dropped these three beauties off at the airport on wed morning and have been acclimating myself to the Hazlehurst/Jackson world with my other favorite friend from institute, Laura, and 2 of my new neighbors, Dave and Noah.  I was worried about having to stay down here while everyone else went home.  I thought that I would be lonely and miserable, but we've been having so much fun.  I think I'm really going to love life here.  Life outside of school will consist of picnics by Lake Hazlehurst, playing on the swings, making dinner together, having slumber parties, and exploring the great city of Jackson. 

                                                Laura and I at beautiful Lake Hazlehurst

                                      yes, we are teachers and we sometimes act like the kids!

                                                      just enough cooks in the kitchen :)
 I am getting closer and closer to becoming a teacher.  With each step I take, my path is being formed.  I keep hoping that there will come a time when there will be some consistency in my steps.  Lately, every time I take a step, I'm in shock.  Did I really just put a deposit down to rent a house?  Did I really just buy my own refrigerator? How am I supposed to introduce myself as Miss Hood when I barely feel old enough to be the Sunday School Miss Emily?  These steps are a bit crazy, but I think I'm really starting to enjoy the dance!

hoping to get work done tomorrow,
Miss Hood



 

This work

I have a hard time writing here because so many things happen every day.  I want to be able to sit down and write a deep and meaningful post that is well written and that accurately and beautifully describes all of the wonderfully hard things that are happening in my life right now.  But instead, I need to realize that there is power and importance in the act of writing, as raw and grammatically incorrect as it might be. 

I never thought that I would become one of those people whose work becomes their life.  But I also never imagined that I would be partaking in this type of work.  This work that consumes all of who I am.  This work that keeps me awake at night with pictures of the faces of my sweet and struggling students.  This work that pushes me and challenges me in new ways every day. This work that constantly brings me to new breaking points and then allows me to try again.  This work that drives my thoughts, dreams, actions, and conversations.  This work is sacred.  

My work is about to change.  I have been training and teaching summer school for the past 5 weeks, and next week starts a new chapter.  Soon I will be moving down to Hazlehurst where I will be teaching 5th to 8th grade special education for the next 2 years.  The first step in moving somewhere is finding somewhere to move to.  So Saturday I drove down to Hazlehurst to go house hunting.  It was one of the most overwhelming days I have had in a while.  We went down there with the purpose of trying to find a house but wound up getting lots of sneak peaks about what life will be like that I just wasn't ready for yet.  Hazlehurst is the 397th school in Mississippi out of 401 schools.  And Mississippi has the lowest schools in the country.  So, needless to say, there is a lot of work to be done there.  So many things about the school seem both incredibly exciting and entirely terrifying.   Here is a link to an article about my new principal that says a little bit about what I'm going into: http://www.eclassifiedsnetwork.com/v2/content.aspx?module=ContentItem&ID=211679&MemberID=1230

While we were in Hazlehurst, we attempted to find a house.  What a grown-up task.  I'm definitely not ready for it yet.  There are so many things to consider and so many things that I still need to call my parents about.  The good news is that I have roommates.  I know that I will be living with Rachel and this other wonderful girl we met here at institute named Sarah.  I am beyond excited about this situation.  Now all we need to do is find a place.  We found a charming little house that we fell in love with, but there have been a lot of questions and problems we are trying to work through to find the best fit.  Please pray that we would find a house and that we would be able to move in quickly.  We are kicked out of the dorms at 9am on monday morning.  As of now, I have no house, no car, and a room full of things that have nowhere to go and no means of getting nowhere to.  prayers would be much appreciated because I honestly have no time to figure anything out this week. 

This week is my very first last week of school.  Summer school ends on Friday with a celebration day.  Thursday is the day that my students take their end of summer assessment.  Wednesday is the day that I teach my last full math lesson.  I thought that institute and being a teacher would get easier as the weeks went on, but they only continue to get harder.  I am on my 5th week of about 20 hours of sleep during the week.  I am exhausted. and drained.  and so tired of continuously failing. 

My students are each expected to reach these big summer growth goals.  Some of my students are eligible for passing up into the 6th grade if they can earn a 70% on their end of summer assessment.  My students have definitely been improving over these past 4 weeks, but definitely not at the rate they should be.  They are definitely capable of learning these objectives.  They are capable of mastering this test.  They want to learn.  They are smart.  I will learn to be an effective teacher.  But I'm not there yet.  I have been learning and improving, but it has not been enough. I so desperately want my students to learn, improve, gain confidence in their abilities, and to go into 6th grade prepared.  But this work is hard.  At least 9 out of my 17 students have special needs.  I'm not allowed to see their IEPs or to know how they learn differently because the laws do not require it for summer school.  My heart is so broken for them because these are children who have been continuously struggling and at the bottom of the chain, year after year, even with a special education teacher in the classroom, an IEP, and accomodations and modifications.  It frustrates me that these children are expected to excel in my class during the summer when I am a very inexperienced teacher, there is no special educator or someone to work with them one-on-one, and they cannot have the typical accomodations that they do during the school year.  They need so much more that I have not been able to give them.  Nonetheless, each one of my students has one more day to learn one more new objective and to review the past 30 until they take their test on Thursday.

Please pray for miracles.  Pray that my lesson tomorrow is the best one I've taught yet.  Please pray that there will be connections where there has formerly only been gaps.  Pray for student motivation and teacher patience.  Pray for wisdom to know how to teach and review in a way that clicks for each one of my students.  Pray for wisdom to know which students need extra help in these last days.  Please pray that these tests would be true reflections of the hard work that these students have put into this class this summer.  But mostly, pray that I would remember the purpose in all of this.  If even one of my students is able to pass into the next grade or just go into their current grade with more knowledge and confidence, then that is still a big deal.  I pray that the work that has been done this summer will have eternal and everlasting impacts.


This work is the hard work.  But it's also the good work.

prayingprayingpraying,
Em

Just Hold on Tight!

I had this incredibly incorrect expectation that time in the south would be much slower.  I have dreamed about being in this calm and relaxing environment where everyone sits outside on their porches, drinks sweet tea, talks slowly, takes their time to go from place to place, and always makes time for one another.  Needless to say, this is not the life that I have been experiencing here in the Delta.  In fact, it has been the absolute opposite.  And it is draining.  But this past weekend, I finally experienced a bit of that slowness and rest that I had been desiring.

We had a 3 day weekend for 4th of July (PTL!).  We probably should have stayed here in Cleveland and slept and got ahead on lesson plans and all that jazz, but we knew that we needed to escape.  So Janie, Becca, Rachel, Laura, and I went on the best girls' road trip up to eastern Tennessee to see Rachel's cousin get married!

We left friday night at 630pm and arrived in Bristol at about 530am Saturday morning.  It was a very long car ride, but I just adore these girls and we had so much fun simply being together and singing justin bieber and stopping at sonic and having good conversations.  It was also the first time that we went longer than a half an hour without talking about anything related to work, teaching, or our students!

We slept for a few hours, woke up, visited with Rachel's aunt and cousins, and then found out that the wedding had not been set up yet for that evening! So we quickly became the wedding crew and set to decorating with tool and flowers and copper pots and turned an ordinary picnic area into a place for a wedding!  We decided we are going to start our own business called( "I Do," Now).  So let us know if you're getting married and need it put together in a day!

We were busy the whole day preparing for the wedding, but none of it felt busy.  It was fun and enjoyable to be a part of something so special and for someone whom I had never met, but with people I love so dearly.  They also had the best reception ever because we got to ride on the backs of motorcycles at about 130mph on the beautiful Tennessee country roads with fireflies flying all around! 

Riding that fast on a motorcycle is definitely one of my new favorite experiences.  Mostly because I was able to relate it a lot to where I'm at in my life right now.  I think that my life right now, working for TFA in Mississippi at this crazy time of my life is very much like riding on the back of a motorcyle at 130mph.  There is no way that I would ever decide to drive a motorcycle myself, especially that fast.  But thankfully, God does not ask me to drive; He simply asks that I climb on up, hold on tight with both of my hands grasped, and trust Him.  If I were to try and do it on my own, I would fall flat on my face and crash my bike because there is no possible way that I could drive a motorcycle, especially since I have never even been on one.  There is no way that I could be a successful, impacting, and effective teacher if I were to do it on my own because I have never been the instructional leader in a classroom before.  I need to remember that I am not really the driver.  God is the driver of this crazy bike, and I am just along for the ride.  I do not know what the final destination will be, where we'll go in between, or what route we'll take to get there.  But it is not important for me to know those things.  The driver will always tell me what I need to do to be prepared.  The only thing that was really in my control was that I trusted my driver and listed to what he said.  My motorcycle driver would never tell me that we were going to pop a wheely; he would simply ask me if I was holding on extra tight.  When I assured him that I was, he would take off on some fancy trick.  If he would of asked me if I was ready to pop a wheely, I would have been terrified and said no way.  But he made sure that I was ready, and then went for it, knowing that I would be safe and not fall.  As I held on tight and trusted my driver, I was continually amazed by the thrill, enjoyment, beauty, and joy that I experienced on that drive.  These next 2 years will be filled with so many twists and turns and fancy tricks that I am so unprepared for.  If you would have told me 4 years ago that I would graduate college and move to Mississippi to be a special education teacher for junior high students in the lowest income and poverty area in the country, I would have said that there was no way.  But as I continue to hold on tight to the Lord, he is continuing to amaze me and to bring me to places that I never thought I would be able to reach.  I need to continue to trust him and to hold on tight.


There are only 4 more instructional days left in summer school.  Only 4 more days to teach my children the material that they will need to know to pass the test next Thursday to move on to the 6th grade.  I am so attached to my students, and I love them dearly.  But they are crazy.  And teaching here is still the hardest thing I have ever done.  But there are only 4 days left.  These last 4 days need to be the best and most important days that we have had.  I hope and pray that this time left matters.  Please pray for me and my students as we attempt to finish strong.  I have a lot of students with special needs in my class and no time to give them the accommodations or one-on-one time that they need and deserve.  Pray for wisdom that I will know what to say and how to reach them.  Pray that they will be receptive.  Pray that our work here in this last week would have impacts that last so much longer than these 4 weeks. 

Holding on tight,
Em