Hello, Old Friends

Tomorrow I start another long term sub position in a building where I used to work. My husband is joking with me that by the end of the school year I will get a third long term sub position in the only other school where I have taught, completing the circuit, backwards. But since there is a possibility that this job could last until the end of the school year, I'm not holding my breath.

I'm excited but also nervous. This time it's a middle school English/Language Arts position. I know I can handle the subject matter and the students.  But I left this building three and a half years ago on a very, very sour note. The last set of fifth graders I taught graduated last year, mitigating the impact of the negative circumstances that surrounded my departure. But many families who know me from the eight years I taught there still have children in the school.  I think that's mainly a plus. I know I was well liked, even as I was leaving, by most families.  And based on the reaction I got from people in the building when I went in for the interview, there are still many people there who will be excited to see me. 

Most of the staff I taught with is gone. In fact, there is only one homeroom teacher left from the entire pre-K - 8 staff. They are even on their second new principal since I left.  The classrooms have almost entirely shuffled around, and the preschool is in the room I used to know as the faculty lounge.  So there will be a lot to get used to in a space that I used to know so well. 

I said in my previous post that I needed a job with less work or closer to home, or preferably both.  This school is closer to home, but sixth, seventh, and eighth grade ELA in a single class per grade level school might just be the most time consuming position to plan and grade.  Every class period is something new to plan; there are no duplicated classes with a different set of students.  There are also three classes of students to get to know and scaffold work to meet individual skill sets and ability levels.  Middle school writers are writing longer pieces, and the work of teaching 12-14 year olds to revise and edit their writing into well polished essays and stories takes close reading, meticulous attention to detail, and careful articulation of suggestions.

In the midst of all of this, I am still needed at home in a way I was not for the past several years.  I feel like I need to start making a list of ways to take little bits of time for myself in order to stay grounded.  Actually, I do already have such a list. I guess the goal is to use the ideas on it.

Another Goodbye

I rolled off subbing in my old classroom on Friday.  The new teacher finished a transformation of the classroom - complete room rearrangement and brand-new, colorful bulletin boards. She's establishing new classroom routines and getting to know the school routines. She's been meeting with parents upon their request, to get to know specific concerns parents have about their child, and to ease their anxiety over the third new teacher for their child since September.  Today it's just her in there without me. 

As I said in a previous post, I have mixed feelings about rolling off. Today it feels good to have time to do some laundry and write.  I was already missing the students last night.  And it also feels weird to have no where to be today. I enjoy working, but there's too much going on in my life.  I need less work, or something closer to home, or preferably both.  There are a few possibilities on the horizon, but nothing definite yet.

I did go out in style. My last day was the first "ski Friday" so half of the fifth graders were out of the building. I let the new teacher and the other fifth grade teacher have a day of planning.  The principal and I took all of the fifth graders who did not sign up to go skiing for a STEM Friday with a space theme.  I wore my flight suit and showed the kids where they can access NASA's video gallery. We made straw rockets out of different materials, which took much longer than anticipated. Toward the end of the day I played the "round peg in a square hole" clip from Apollo 13, and talked about creating a design knowing the end result required and the materials on hand, but having to come up with the process.  Students then attempted rubber band propeller planes with a photograph of the end result displayed and all the materials laid out for them.  They ran out of time to complete even one propeller plane, but they had fun. I'm thinking there may have been lots of straw rockets flying in fifth grade homes this weekend, and perhaps even one or two rubber band propeller planes.

The incoming teacher had the kids make me thank you posters and write me thank you letters. Their letters credit me with changing the culture of the class, making science fun, and bringing art back into their instruction.  I think many of them were genuinely sad to see me leave. I know I was sad to leave.

Ah, Fifth Grade

I've been back in my old classroom for four weeks and have just one more to go before I roll off this long term sub gig. I'm excited for the direction the class is taking, and the relationship I've built with their new teacher. We have both been in the classroom for the past week and a half, and will both be there through next week.  Last week I handed off the lead teacher role to her, and spent much of the last two days of the week seated at a table in the back of the room.  She has rearranged the furniture, re-done the bulletin boards, added color back into the room. Her layout doesn't quite match anything I would use for myself, but I understand it. The room feels cleaned up, more colorful, and is easier to be in - to the point that students literally asked, "Has that wall always been blue?" Um, yes. It was painted blue in the summer of 2016, so it's been blue the whole time this has been your fifth grade classroom. That's a good summary of how drab it felt at the beginning of the month in the space.

It's going to be easy to hand the class off to the new teacher. I have felt like we have been on the same page about EVERYTHING.  Okay, almost everything; she did change the layout of the room. I know she is going to take care of these kids and their needs. She is going to meet the students where they are and work with them and their families, or in spite of their families, to do what is best for each individual.  She will strive to help them achieve more academically than they thought possible, and have a gentle but firm handle on discipline.  She will celebrate the positive and endeavor to minimize the time spent on necessary redirections or handing out of consequences.

It's also going to be hard to leave.  I like this job. Well, really, I love it, and feel strongly that it was what I was meant to do. I'm pretty sure I'm pretty good at it. I have already built relationships with these kids, and walking away from them will be very, very difficult. I hope their new teacher remembers to have them write me letters. I promise to write them back!  There is also the glaring fact that I like to work. I am more balanced when I have something besides my kids and their needs to worry about. It's as true today with the addition of the foster-adopt process as it was when my biological kids were an infant and a toddler.  I'm going to miss having a place to go and be needed after my kids are out the door each morning come February 5.

I know I've said it before, but fifth graders are in the sweet spot between loving school and being too cool for school, for having a natural curiosity about everything, and finding one or two passions that make every other subject seem totally boring. It's the mushy middle of a K-8 school - they are not primary students, but neither are they middle schoolers yet.  It's the year where critical thinking begins to supplant the concrete-operational, black and white thinking of childhood. It's the place where you can have a student say in an oral report, "Only the lowlands of Pennsylvania have mountains," and no one in the class giggles or even smirks. (This happened last week, I swear it's a direct quote.) The kids in the audience fall into one of two camps; they

are either oblivious or too kind, too aware of how hard it is to get up in front of the class and speak, to react. It's the place where students begin to advocate for themselves, while still striving hard to meet the teacher's expectations.  Last week I had a student ask, "Mrs. Conrow, can you read cursive?" and when I said I could, he followed up with, "I mean, like, fifth grade cursive?" Yes, yes, I can. And more than that, I know what you mean with your question so I can gently tell you I have taught third graders to write in cursive, and can read even their cursive.  It's the place where a teacher's day can be made by reading in a student's letter to her parents, "Mrs. Conrow is so patient with us!"  It's a place where I feel I belong. 

Long Term Subbing

I started the calendar year back in my old classroom, my old space. Only it wasn't my space. Someone else had been in the room for four months, and left under less than desirable, less than normal circumstances. The outgoing teacher was out sick on the Thursday and Friday before the winter break. I know the sub who was in for her - she's amazing - but the room felt trashed: All kinds of paper stacks all over the room. A very large stack of ungraded work. Teacher's manuals in different locations all over the room. Barebones bulletin boards, and the set of posters collected by myself and the teacher who had the room before me, for 30 years, GONE.

I'm just a sub in for the month. I am a stop-gap. A short term solution. A band-aid for a very bad situation. Whatever the parent community thought of the outgoing teacher before I got there, I have heard nothing positive. It's understandable - they are angry and nervous. Their ten and eleven year olds will have had to learn the teaching style and expectations of three fifth grade teachers by the end of January.  The "real" new teacher begins Wednesday, but I'm staying on until February 2 in order to allow for a much more smooth second transition.

I've had a lot more fun than I expected. It's been overwhelming too, but every time I begin to worry about all the work, I've been able to remind myself that I'm not there for the remainder of the year. I'm just a sub. I get to have fun with the kids and do something I like and I'm good at, while trying to help further the education of twenty young people. I'm not attending meetings and cutting out as early as I can to get home to my kids... and there's been a lot going on there.

But I'm also relieved.  I get to do what I do for a month. The new teacher has already been hired, and I get to work with her - a much more seasoned teacher who has also been a principal - for two and a half weeks before I go back to being a stay at home mom who works on writing in any spare time I find.  I know I need to spend some time finding me again. I am a teacher. I am a mom. I am a wife. I like who I am. It's a good start, but I am not grounded right now. Hopefully writing will help with that.

A New Beginning

I got a call on the Friday before the Christmas break. Apparently the teacher hired to replace me when I left at the end of last school year quit just after the staff Christmas lunch. The principal was in crisis mode, trying to figure out how to solve the problem before he hopped on a plane to Italy for the duration of the break.  He asked me to come back to finish out the school year, or at least sub for January.

My new baseline at home makes the idea of taking back the classroom and all the responsibility it entails laughable, but I talked to my husband, enlisted the help of friends and neighbors, and figured out how to make January work. It took me until Saturday to get into the space that used to be mine with my former partner teacher, intending to plan. But the room was a disaster. Apparently the teacher who quit had been out sick the two days prior to the holiday break. We spent two hours cleaning and rearranging the room to allow for two more desks for Korean exchange students who will be joining the class tomorrow.  It's still a work in progress. I feel like I need to dust, and there is a rather large stack of ungraded work that I have no idea what to do with.

That meant I had to plan at home. I spent the evening of December 30 planning for the first week back in my old space that decidedly does not feel like my space.  I had teacher's manuals and my computer spread out over half the table on a Saturday night, like old times. I don't want the demands of teaching to take over my home life again: I don't want to spend major time planning and grading when I should be making dinner, helping with homework, or just spending time with my kids. I am worried about the impact of working full time for four and a half weeks on my family. I'm also worried about the impact of having their teacher leave abruptly on the students I will be teaching this month.  Will they feel betrayed by her? Will it magnify the usual January crazy or will it afford me an easy path for resetting the classroom expectations?

But I'm also excited. I know several  teachers in the building are excited that I will be back, even if it's just for a short amount of time. I came home from my two hours in the classroom animated and looking forward to the week ahead. This January feels like its new beginning, full of potential.

Subbing

I subbed today and Friday. Both jobs were at the same school, but Friday was in kindergarten and today was in fifth grade.

Before I ever became a teacher, I told people I wanted to teach kindergarten or first grade. All of my classroom volunteering as an undergrad was in these two grades. Then, in my final year of college, I had the opportunity to spend a few hours, three days a week for the entire school year, in a kindergarten classroom. It was my dream come true. I loved working with the littlest group of kids. I helped Hope understand that using the mouse was more difficult for her than her classmates because she was left handed (like me), and that if we put the mouse on the other side of the keyboard, she had less difficulty.  I was there to be angry at and depressed for Sam's mom when she finally told the school (in December) that Sam might be having more than the average separation anxiety (sobbing for 20+ minutes every morning after drop off) because his Dad had been killed in a car accident two weeks before school started.  I was learning how to be there emotionally for children who had been alive barely longer than I'd been in college, and still challenge their learning at an appropriate level.

In January, a student teacher was assigned to the classroom. And my dream position became a nightmare overnight. The class that I had come to love became totally unmanageable. Throwing a new teacher who really didn't know how to manage students yet at first year elementary school students - right after the holiday break - now seems like a massive error on the university's part. But at the time all I knew was that a veteran teacher had a solid handle on the kindys and the new teacher did not.

I had an instant change of heart. I decided it was not in my power to teach kids to learn how to "do school." When I got to pick my student teaching assignment, I chose a 5/6 multi-age placement. I spent my first four years as a certified teacher in third grade, followed by two years of subbing, and then eleven years in fifth grade. As I told the school secretary today, fifth grade is my jam. Yes, those words came out of my mouth in a professional setting to someone who might have the ear of my future principal. I blame my most recent partner teacher. I was also wearing glittery cowboy boots I bought with her when I said it. Teaching can in fact keep you young.

I suppose my point is, I totally enjoyed BOTH jobs.  Those five year olds on Friday were incredibly sweet. I had endless patience to explain over and over that the BIG shapes needed to be circled in red crayon but in the next set, the LITTLE shapes needed to be circled in blue crayon.  This was too much for many of them, especially since the worksheet had four additional sections.  It was the kind of worksheet that makes teachers of older students wonder where the academics are, but teachers of five year olds wonder why it's really that important to gain mastery over these concepts at such a young age.

The school's annual fun run was on Friday.  It was ridiculously exciting as we got to watch the KA aide race a mechanical pig with the other top fundraising classes. Sadly, "our" pig lost the race, but happily, she won the beauty contest.  But the most exciting part of the day, at least from a five year old's perspective, was probably when the principal was turned into a "human sundae" by the top ten fundraising students in the school. I was a little worried during the actual run when I didn't know where many of the kids were, but the aide assured me that the missing kids were with their parents. She was correct - by the time the parents who had attended the fun run had all left with their children, only one kindy was left. I read her two books and then we played on the "little toy."

If Friday was fun, today, I was in my element: speaking Pokémon and Magic the Gathering on a passable level; blending sarcasm with understanding; teaching from textbooks I had used for eight years, and even tweaked tests from, to better suit my needs.  There were two boys who saw a sub at the door this morning, and thought it was going to be a fun, no work kind of day. With all the experience I now have managing classrooms, and fifth graders in particular, it was easy to shut that down, fast.  When a student said he couldn't find his notebook I asked him to be a problem solver, and a classmate offered up the very solution I would have suggested. When a different student lamented that she couldn't find the pencil she had been using before recess, I told her, in all seriousness, "I didn't eat it."

At the end of the day I had the table groups tell each other the worst part about having me sub and the best part. My favorite response (overheard as kids talked among themselves, as I did not ask them to share these responses with the whole group): "Mrs. Conrow is as hyper as me!"

I can't sub tomorrow, as my foster-adopt son has a mid-day appointment, so I just had to turn down a job in my former building.  I'm disappointed, but not sad. Life is full and I can still rock this teaching thing - if only for a few days here and there.

The Family Leave Begins

Flowers from Valentine's Day and from my last day before leave.

The past month has been very full. I'm sure I missed several opportunities to write about the amazing activities happening in my classroom, but I never found the time to sit at the computer and compose my thoughts. In addition to getting ready for a long term substitute teacher, my students took a second round of standardized testing for the year, created newscasts or skits to showcase their learning from our novel study, created and presented projects displaying their knowledge of the liturgical seasons, observed and graphed the phase change of ice through water to steam, made and calibrated their own thermometers, and celebrated Valentine's Day during the past month.

Proudly showing off their custom thermometers.

My husband went back to work today for the first time since before Thanksgiving, when the foster kids moved in. He has been out of the office for 12 weeks. I will now be out of my classroom for 9 weeks (except for two days during spring conferences), taking my turn at home with the crew of kids.

I have very mixed feelings about the beginning of my leave. I am sad to be away from my students for so long, and anxious about what kind of "mop up" I may have to do when I return for the last six weeks of the school year. I am also worried about my ability to parent full time, to keep the kids' schedules straight and get everyone to their appointments and activities on time with a minimum of family discord. However, it's also very freeing to not have to worry about daily lesson plans and materials prep, meetings, and timely responses to emails for the weeks ahead at school.

But I also feel that this time with me at home is exactly what my family needs right now. The kids, biological and foster, need to know they rank a higher priority in my life than my students. The foster kids need time with me around to really get to know me as a parent so they can trust me and feel the love and stability I hope to represent in their lives. Somehow this all came together for me on Saturday when I attended the funeral of a former fifth grade student. He was not quite twenty when he died, and had been a student in my classroom a decade ago. As I sat in the church where I had taken him and his classmates for school masses, watching his parents sob for the duration of the funeral and beyond, I realized there could be no other reaction to losing a child. The gut-wrenching, soul-deep ache clearly displayed by the parents mourning for their son would be mine if I had to sit through the funeral of any one of the four kids I now call my own.