5 Things Inner City Teachers Do

5 things inner city teachers find themselves doing (that have nothing to do with education):


1.  You will end up driving your students home, to the train station, or to the bus station because its to cold and dark outside to let them go by themselves.

2.   You will have to become a parent to your students (making sure they eat, have a coat,  have clean clothes, etc.)

3.    You will have to babysit your students' little brothers and sisters after school while your students are at practice or club meetings.

4.    You will end up having at least one kid who ends up staying after school with you everyday because they don't want to go home.

5.    No matter how tired you are from the day, you will openly allow numbers 1-4 to happen even if its a Friday because you don't have the heart to say no.


As a first year teacher you think well is it right to drop off a kid at their house?  Is it legal?  Then you end up looking outside and realizing that its 5pm, its dark, its cold, and its not such a great neighborhood.  Does it matter if its legal or not?  I still don't know the right answer but I do know whats humane.  Hopefully being humane overrides the legality of things.

It surprises me that however much these kids annoy me at times, argue with me, act up in my class, they still come back to me.  They still want to "hang out".  It amazes me.  But then again, they're just trying to create a strong relationships with their teachers and so I let them.  I allow them to stay after school with me.  Sit in my classroom as I grade papers, clean my room, prepare for the next day.  And it amazes me the things that they dish out about their lives.  And I can't help but think wow!  The things that these kids go through everyday.  I remember when I was in middle school.  The biggest problem I had was what I would wear the next day.  My life was a joke compared to theirs.

The point of this blogpost?  I'm slowly realizing how much I love these kids.

-Ms. P

Real Teaching

So two other teachers and I have had it with the lack of engagement and care for learning from some of our students.  So we decided that we would divide and conquer.  The first was to attend mass at a student's church to really get involved in what he does out of school.  He is the junior deacon at his church, yet acts like a complete fool at school.  Something had to be done.  So we decided to go support him at church today.  We spoke with the parent before hand to let her know that we would be attending and we asked her to keep it a secret from her son.  The outcome?

Oh boy was he surprised.  His teachers had actually taken the time to attend the two hour service just for him.  That we actually cared enough about his grades and behavior at school that we made the effort to come all the way to his church.  It was great.  We introduced ourselves as his teachers and told everyone that we were there to support him and to make sure that he keeps doing his best at school.  It was amazing.  I honestly don't know how much of a positive affect this will have on this student.  I will have to see on Monday, but while sitting there and sharing that personal experience with that student, I realized that this was real teaching.

Forget about the science, the curriculum, the lesson plans, the assessments, and the standards.  That right there at that time was real teaching.  Sharing that personal experience with the parents, family, and friends of that student was real teaching.  I don't know if that lesson sunk in but it felt good.  It finally felt that I was doing something right.  Having that parent look at me and say thank you for sharing that time with them felt good.

Feeling good is very limited in my world of teaching...So I'll take it.

-Ms. P

Am I Teaching the Kids or Am I Teaching the Test?

Probably one of the many challenges that I am currently facing.  I plan my entire week during the weekend and I get this feeling of accomplishment.   I feel that I am prepared to teach these kids anything and everything.  Then I go to meetings and professional developments and leave them felling as if I were hit by a bus.  So I go back and think over my entire plan all over again.  Happens every week.

The worst.

They tell me I'm not teaching the right the thing.  I'm not teaching the right way.  I don't have time to teach my students grammar because it isn't in the standards.  I don't have time to read the entire novel with my students.  I shouldn't teach my students narrative writing the way I have planned to teach it because that isn't how it is going to look like on the state test.  The test.  It's not going to be on the TEST.  We need to teach the TEST.

But I tell them half my students don't know the difference between a subject and predicate.  They don't know that paragraphs should be indented.  They don't know what they need to capitalize and what not to capitalize.

But...I'm not allowed to teach it because it's not in the standards and most importantly its not on the test.  So what do I do in a school that is constantly watching my every move in the classroom.  In a school where strangers walk in to look through my lesson plans and make sure I'm teaching what they want me to.  What do I do with these kids?  How do I teach them?   More importantly how do I discretely teach them what they need to know?  What they need to know to become great readers, writers, high school and college ready individuals.

Isn't it more important to teach my kids than to teach the test?

Yes it is...But how come no one understands that?
Teaching the kids is what I'm struggling with.  Teaching the test is easy.

-Ms. P