Things I am not good at doing

#1 Taking a day off.

Today is Good Friday which, although we do not celebrate it as we are Baha'i, is quite the major holiday down here in the Mississippi Delta. We have both today and Monday off for the Easter holidays. For us, it's a nice and relaxing four-day weekend without any pressures, particularly because everybody else is occupied.

However, although I wasn't at my own school today, I still managed to get a good deal of time in schools and working with kids in. Not all too intentionally. This kind of just happens.

First, this morning Babak and I made a trip out to a small town about 20 minutes northeast of Cleveland called Drew to visit a few first year Teach for America teachers. Drew is notorious because it is the lowest-ranked school district in the Delta region (and, I think, the state of Mississippi) at the moment. They have had a good deal of turmoil this year and it's a well-known possibility that, with financial and academic difficulties, one or both of their schools could close. But, in the Delta, there's always some drama.

While we were there, we visited a close friend who teaches kindergarten and two others (that we know but see far less often) in fourth grade literacy and fifth/sixth grade writing. I always enjoy being in classrooms, and I always enjoy whenever I can be of use to other teachers, so I'm known to pop into other peoples' classrooms whenever I get the chance. There was also an added bonus today: three former Shelby students are now at the school, and I was able to check in on them. I loved seeing a child I knew as a kindergartener all grown up into the grade I now teach, fourth grade! I'd say he was equally shocked when we walked into his classroom.

This afternoon, we headed up to Shelby, where I taught 2005-2007 as a corps member, to help my first group of students study for their state English 2 test. I taught them English in 2005-2006, and they are now high school sophomores! They are concerned about their level of preparation for their state test, which is happening this coming Tuesday and is a graduation requirement. They've all got plenty of time to pass it, but--and this makes me so very proud--they want to do their best and pass it on the first try. They organized their own study group for it today, on their day off from school and on a lovely sunny afternoon, to prepare and posted it on Facebook. I heard through Facebook and some other teachers that they needed a literacy teacher to help them out, so I went up and we ended up spending the better part of four hours with a practice test out essentially cramming. They're just as loud, goofy, and intelligent as they were five years ago!

Although I of course enjoyed today, because it involved kids and schools like I always enjoy, it was terribly frustrating. Frustrating because I saw the contrasts, as I frequently do, between outcomes for students with highly effective teachers and those without, and between highly effective teachers themselves and those who might could be but are not. The more I live here and the more I see, the worse the frustration grows. I think, for me, the troubling part is knowing that my own beloved former students are frequently falling into classrooms with ineffective teachers and paying a higher and higher price for it. They are driven, dedicated, and intelligent children, yet they are falling further and further behind their peers in better school situations.

So what am I going to do about it? Well, I'm going to continue to be a better and more effective teacher, to help other teachers as much as I am able, and to consider school leadership in the future. I will always, always, always be willing to help my former students in any way possible, even when it's a high school content I haven't seen before with skills I haven't used in a decade. And I will speak up when I see things that need to be improved--like, for instance, support from TFA for corps members--that are critical for so many of our Delta students. Oh, it's such a large issue... I'm glad I'm still stubborn enough to believe it can be turned around.