Teaching Math in 2007

So as you know I am really really bad at updating my blog. There are many reasons why but the main reason is just because I get so worried about everything else I tell myself I have no time to type up a post. BUT, no matter, I am writing now to inform you about my life the past 4 months. As many of you know I have been teaching Algebra 1 and Geometry at an inner city school in Houston. The biggest challenge this year has been and will continue to be the fact that most of my students are English Language Learners meaning that they really don't understand what I am saying all the time and have an even harder time understanding anything they read in English.

This experience has been the hardest most rewarding experience of my life. There have been many days I have asked myself "How am I going to teach these kids today?" Actually this was a common question every morning for the first 3 months. My daily routine was to wake up in the morning at 5:30 with anxiety filling my body, go to school and finish preparing for the day ahead, teach the best that I could, go home at 7 or 8 feeling confident that I could teach well. So I would start my day wondering how the heck I was going to do anything and doubting myself , then end my day excited about how the day went. The one thing I struggled with the most and I still struggle with now is knowing the best way to teach something. That I believe is the hardest thing about teaching is figuring out a good way to teach a topic and being able to make it exciting enough and connect it to the real world so that your students will want to learn. I definitely bored some students to death and I felt super bad about that because I want Math to be as exciting for them as it is for me. I never needed any special hi jinx to convince me that Math was awesome. I just always enjoyed it because there is only one specific answer to each problem.

As you can imagine living this way affected my social life along with my physical body. My social life basically didn't exist up until about Thanksgiving. I pretty much only cared about my life as a teacher and figuring out how the heck I was going to survive. The only people I would talk to were my mom, my girlfriend Danielle, and my roommates when I saw them around the house. I was a pretty big loser and I knew it. I think at this time I was either slightly in or getting really close to depression. I was definitely lonely because I am good at cutting myself off from the rest of the world. As far as my physical body goes, before I came to Houston in June I weighed close to 200 pounds. Now I weigh 165 and I have not been exercising, though I believe I do eat much healthier and smaller portions than I used to. I believe the anxiety has something to do with my appetite and always worrying gave me less time to think about eating or snacking.

Since Thanksgiving when my friend Adam came down to visit my anxiety has diminished and my confidence in my abilities has increased. I have been hanging out with friends on the weekends to get away from the stress of the job and I have not been worrying as much about how I will get through this. God has blessed my life so much to be in the situation that I am and I am thankful to Him for all the people in my life and the opportunities He has provided.

Now since I didn't keep up with my blog over the last semester I am going to try and recall some of the exciting events that occurred over the past 4 months.

- My best class at the beginning of the year ended up being my worst class because of the addition of some rowdy students that did not want to cooperate. In that class I have 4 students that will never shut up. The most defiant one is SPED and has ADD but does not take his medicine because he doesn't like how it makes him feel. He likes to talk back and act big and bad. He is one of my two white students and was caught on campus high on drugs. He is being transferred to the alternative school where all the unruly students go. He is pretty scared about it because he knows it will be tough for him to survive there as a skinny white kid.

- Another student from that class that class that doesn't shut up is a 21 year guy who moved from Ghana and is one of my most immature students. I think a lot of his problem is that he is frustrated that he is 21 and still in high school with younger kids. He makes a lot of stupid comments on purpose and then gets mad at others for making fun of him. One day I mistakenly left 5 minutes of "free" time where we didn't do anything at the end of class. Apparently one of the other students said the wrong thing to this guy and he flipped out and wanted to fight. He threw down 2 of my desks and was prompting the other kid to fight. Of course neither was going to back down and I luckily was right there to get in between them both. That was the only time this semester that I feel things got too out of control in my classroom. Luckily it was at the end of class.

- The student that caused the 21 year old to fight gave me other problems too. This student is the type of person who is annoying and a troublemaker but is so charming that he gets out of a lot of things. Well , one day I decided that I was fed up with the crap of these 4 students and I needed to crack down on their behavior. I told each of them as they came in the door that I was only giving them one chance that day. Each of the other 3 responded fairly well and didn't give me much trouble. Well this one did not want to listen to me at all. At the end of the class I tried to hand him a detention slip and he just walked away disrespectfully. I wrote him up and my AP promptly suspended him for the next day. The next morning I see this student walking down the halls. I told my AP and they had him arrested. Apparently he ended up in jail for the whole weekend and then he has a court date and they are threatening him with 6 months in jail. He is 17. He comes in the next Monday and tries to tell me that he had to see people crap right in front of him because of me and that he was going to jail for 6 months because of me. I eventually had a heart to heart with him and things have cooled down with him.

- Last but not least is the 4th of these students. He actually is one of my most intelligent students and part of the reason why he is so disruptive is because he is bored in my class. Apparently though he used to be a bad kid in middle school and shaped up within the past year. His attitude was getting so bad in my class and he would never listen because he thought he didn't have to and then do bad on the tests. I setup a parent teacher conference with his mom with the help of my AP to translate and this has helped since. What is interesting now with him is that his girlfriend is pregnant and they are only freshmen. He has changed his mind from being a police officer to being an engineer and I hope I can help encourage him in that because I was an engineer.

- There have been many students that I have felt that I have made an impact on. I had one student's mother come in and tell me that she used to hate math and now she loves it and that she says good things about me to her mom. The reason she hated math before was because she didn't understand it. Now she understands it and really likes my class.

- There have been many students that I have referred to the counselor to set them up with mentors. I have noticed the benefit of this program even though every time the mentor lady comes to the door the students act like it is a joke. I have seen a positive difference in the students who are using it.

- Last week I took two of my seniors to the college resource center that we have at our school.
They were planning on either going back to their home countries of Mexico and Guatemala or working for a year before going back to school. After talking to the college director they have both changed their minds and are planning on going to school right after they graduate. It warms my heart to know that I am making a difference in these students lives. They have some of the hardest lives I have ever seen. It has opened my eyes to a whole new world within the United States. They have so many pressures from family, school, the country, their own desires, and friends. I cannot imagine the anxiety these students have.

I have many other stories I could probably tell but if you want to know more you can talk to me in person sometime. I have been so blessed to be put in this situation and given the opportunity to learn and grow so much while hopefully positively affecting the lives of about 100 students. No matter how hard this has been or how worried I have been I have never regretted doing this and it is the most rewarding experience I have ever had. I can honestly say that I love teaching! I look forward to improving and perfecting my teaching so that I can have a greater effect on these students.

I hope everyone has a blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year. I hope to see many of you when I am in Ohio from Dec. 28th to January 3rd.

Peace,
Michael