My life has always been an incredible balancing act. For as long as I can remember, I have had so many interests and such a devotion to perfection (okay relative perfection) that I have been a workaholic. Whether it was in middle school when I was balancing school, tennis team and dance classes on the side, in high school when I was working, in drill team and taking hard classes or college when I was taking 18 hours, working, interning, and in multiple organizations, I have always been busy. So I figured when I graduated college, I would for the first time in my life, be less stretched. One job, that is it. No clubs, no classes, no internships, just complete and total devotion to one thing, my students. Yet, perhaps ironically, perhaps inevitably (depending on your life experiences) I find myself stretched in way too many directions by just one thing.
To clarify, you must realize that my district is exactly like the nonprofit I am a part of, data driven, data driven, data driven. Even though I teach Pre-K, because of the absolute gaping hole of the achievement gap, I am asked to teach my kids not just Pre-K objectives, but begin to overprepare them for Kindergarten, all for the purpose to not just close the gap, but flip it, having my students start ABOVE grade level instead of below (which is just UNHEARD of in New Orleans public schools these days). So, when given the extremely rigorous task of teaching my kids really tough skills I have to make some tough decisions. I have made executive decisions to cut down on nap time, slim down transitional time to virtually nothing, instruct students during bathroom break, center time and well, every waking second of the day. Even during breakfast and snack, I'm turning on letter or counting videos. Not to say my kids are not having fun, learning is a game at this age and they have LOTS of time to play, but I am expecting a LOT of them and they are meeting my expectations. I am proud of them not just for what they know, but for how hard they work. I know it sounds silly to describe a four year old as a hard worker, but through repetition and careful practice, my students are really hard workers. I do not accept answers I know are not their best and I am constantly pushing them further and further. Criticism me as you may, but this is what I truly believe I have to do to keep them from the future they unfortunately are likely fated to if they fall behind in school.
So when I really break down my day, I give my students direct instruction for over four hours a day (which is a lot for Pre-K). Granted, a lot of it is in the form of small groups and all the lessons are very interactive, but at the end of the day, it is quite rigorous. I send home four page report cards detailing every single skill they know and how their parents can help them with the ones they still struggle with and I hold my students to HIGH behavioral expectations. Honestly, I do not let my kids get away with anything, believe it or not. They came cursing, fighting and biting and to this day, I do not even tolerate bathroom breaks or playing with your shoes during instructional time. While of course, all of this is time consuming and draining in so many ways, I find it worth it for the amount of knowledge my students now possess and demonstrate daily. They are so much more mature, intelligent and self-regulated than they were the first day of school and I like to think that I have helped them find their own potential (although I probably give myself too much credit). But now, things have gotten much more complicated. All in the name of state visits.
Basically, way back when a bunch of pre-k and nursery type schools were, for lack of a better term, the pits. They were unsafe, understaffed, and generally places you would not send your child if you had any control over the situation. So, in the infinite wisdom of the state, a checklist for safety, appropriateness, etc was created to make sure the state's youngest and most vulnerable were in healthy and happy places. Flash forward to today and the checklist is essential the same. A LOT of emphasis is on health, safety, play and happiness and absolutely no emphasis is put on academics. And they still come around once a year and check up on teachers to make sure they are "in compliance", with a particular attention and critical eye to, you guessed it, FIRST YEAR TEACHERS!
Now, I am all for oversight. Really, I am. I want teachers to be held accountable, I want students to be guaranteed a safe, healthy, fun place to learn. I want all of this. But this checklist is outdated and quite frankly, impractical. In fact, I could sit around and teach my kids that the letter J was the number 45 and I would not even lose a point for that, because there is NO absolutely NO indicators regarding academics. However, having my kids do any form of worksheets (i.e. tracing their name), teaching for more than FORTY MINUTES TOTAL a day (oops--I teach for four hours) or breaking the 10 to 1 student to teacher ratio even just to go to the bathroom (allowing my para to watch all 20), and I am shut down. So now, one month before my observation (thank god they are announced), I have to completely redo my schedule, change a lot of my classroom routines deemed unsanitary (like washing hands in the bathroom before lunch instead of in the cafeteria), and completely revive my room with new and expensive supplies, student art work at eye level, safety precautions and more. Oh and as far as behavior, time out is not allowed and kids are allowed to do absolutely anything (unless of course, it is unsanitary).
So here I am torn in two different directions. I have this long list of objectives and ideas that my students have to master and a long list of behavioral expectations I want them to understand before the end of the year, which is oh so quickly approaching. Yet, for the next month, I have to reteach everything to my students so that they don't say, "Ms. Knipp, why aren't you sending him to time out?" on the day the observer comes or "Why aren't you doing small groups?" causing me to be out of compliance. So in the next month, I am dumbing down my day, teaching for only 40 minutes a day, allowing students who have made some seriously bad choices to keep playing after a quick "conference" and attempting to re-prioritize everything so that academics is our last priority, right behind student choice, sanitation, safety and everything else you could possibly think of.
It kills me to do this. I know my students will LOVE the new schedule (centers all day!) and behavior may even improve due to this. However, my bigger concern is will my kids learn enough and will they be ready for next year with this new all play, no work schedule? You think my schedule is hard, you should see kindergarten. Part of me feels guilty for asking so much from my kids, maybe I should take academics less seriously. But the other part of me looks at the statistics and wonders if I can even do enough in just one year. So here I am. Torn. The state grabbing one hand, my nonprofit grabbing the other, pulling me farther and farther apart, while I gasp for air. I just hope this tension helps me find my comfort level in the balance between work and play.
So to end a rather nightmarish account of the current stress level I am at, I want to end with one of those cute feel good stories. One student, SB came in SUPER low. I'm talking every report card, she inevitably achieved "still working" in every subject (which is a nice way of saying failing) no matter how much progress she had made. This quarter, however, she passed the STEP test (putting her on a Kinder reading level) and all around just really started getting the toughest content. When her mom came to the conference she had a Progressing in nonfiction (C), a Mastery in math (B) and in ELA she had an Advanced (A)!!. Her mom was in absolute disbelief. She checked the name about five times and kept saying, are you sure this is SB? She has never done this well before! To end the meeting, I showed an answer she gave that I knew would make her mom proud. February was black history month and I taught the kiddos about Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks. After learning about all these leaders over the course of a week, I had students graph their favorite leader and tell me why they picked who they picked. As a end of quarter test, I asked them to recall their favorite again and tell me why. SB explained assuredly, "Martin Luther King because he fight with his words." When I read the words aloud to her mom at our conference, I looked up to see her mom biting her lip trying not to cry, as proud tears fell down her face to her bursting smile. "I have never been more proud of my daughter" she said in shaky breaths. I kept it together then, but I must admit, a little later that night, in the safety of my home, I gave SB a couple proud tears myself, after all she did earn it.
And that is why I do it. I'm exhausted, torn and downtrodden. My boss is determined to hate me despite my best efforts to prove my competence and work harder than everyone else at my job. Another coworker is going behind my back trying to get me moved out of her team because she sees me as a threat to her reign as Pre-K queen. I gave up my Friday night and Saturday morning to study and take certification exams and some days, I do not even remember the last time I went to the bathroom, I am so busy. But SB makes all those troubles seem silly in relation to her growth. So go ahead times, I dare you to get harder, nothing will keep me from my kids.
"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies." -Mother Teresa
