A quiet Sunday on the farm...

We have just nineteen instructional days left in the school year. We're out of school on May 26. After that, there are some professional days and such, but there will be no students in the building. Our standardized testing lasts three more days and then we have two days this week and then three additional weeks. It's quite strange to try to fill the last seventeen days of the school year. There's a sense of urgency to get in whatever instruction I can combined with the same urge my students have to quietly resign myself to the joy of summer vacation.

Last year in the post-CATS test time, I got my students focused on one final project for the year--writing their own student handbook for our school to be used by ESL students the following year. This year, my students are more advanced, and I'm trying to design a project that is a bit more multi-media oriented--they'll be doing a welcome video/handbook video for students who will be new to the school next year. I'd actually like them to orient it towards new speakers of English so I can use it with my newcomer's but I've not yet worked that out, either. I have to work out the details of it, and I'll start that process on the run I'm about to go on, but I think it will be an interesting way to end the school year. If only the technology will cooperate.

But today is a quiet Sunday on the farm. Last night I had a dog follow me home on my run that was just adorable, but Kevin took her back to the house where she started following me from. They don't seem to own her, either, but they also don't seem to mind her being around. They told Kevin that she's been hanging out at their house all week, so it was fine by them if she stayed around there. She's an adorable chihuahua/beagle mix. And if it were up to me, we'd take her in here. But Kevin is the voice of reason in the family because we both know that if it were up to me, we'd have a house of MANY dogs. And we have a house that is tiny--too small for two people, really...let alone the two people, two dogs, and a cat who already live here. And having another dog is expensive because we really do take care of our animal companions (Annie's bills in the last month alone have been over $500). Honestly, I just want every animal (and human, for that matter) in the world to have a place where they feel like they belong, and I like the chance to provide that place for them. So whether it's a new friend on the farm or a new friend in my classroom at school, there's an instinct in me to provide that place... sigh. No new dogs for now. 

After twelve years in education...

I am no longer an intern. Thank goodness. For crying out loud. Geesh.

It's been a two-year saga. I knew that going from a career in private schools and higher education would mean that I'd need to jump through some hoops to get to teach in public education. But, as I've said before, I never thought that every time I made it through a hoop, they would make the next hoop smaller and light it on fire. 

I have a MATESL degree from a well-respected program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I spent a year teaching overseas in a k-12 environment. I came home to spend a year working as an intern at Utah State University in their intensive English Language Institute. From there, I moved to NW Indiana to a private high school where I taught ESL for three years and then worked in the student leadership program for three years. From there, I moved to Kentucky for an ill-fated job at an experiential learning place. From there, I moved to another part of Kentucky to take a job teaching ESL at the middle school level. BUT...the public school requires a pedigree that I didn't have, so I needed to get to work.

After much wrangling, many phone calls, and several strings being pulled by people above me in the system (to whom I am forever going to be grateful), I found out that I would only need to do a portfolio demonstrating my teaching experience and compliance with the New Teacher Standards for the state of Kentucky. Upon successful submission of that portfolio, I would be able to take several tests and then, I thought, I would have the necessary pedigree to teach ESL. Prior to the wrangling, phone calls, and string pulling, I was actually told that in order to be eligible to teach in Kentucky Public Schools, I would need to complete a second bachelor's degree or, alternatively, get another Master's degree in an area that I'm not remotely interested in and spend a year teaching in that area. I was grateful for the string-pulling. 

So I spent a full six months of the last school year compiling a teaching portfolio with sample teaching units, reflective pieces, and other documentation (references, notes from students, student work samples) to try to accurately reflect my ability to teach English and English as a Second Language (because Kentucky is just starting to offer the option of English as a Second Language as a standalone certificate, I needed to get my teaching certificate in another area first and then get the ESL endorsement). I was quite proud of my 127 page teaching portfolio and even more pleased when I finally submitted it and it was accepted.

The next step was to spend $435.00 on Praxis tests over English Literature, Teaching Methods, ESL, and the like. That was another two months of studying--I had to review works of literature I hadn't looked at in 10 years. Most people take these tests immediately upon graduation from their programs--I've been out of school since 1997. It was fun to do all that reading, but with a wedding about to happen last June, I would have liked to have had the time for other things! I took (and passed) my last Praxis test the weekend before our wedding last June. I was all set! (Or so I thought).

When we started school this last August, a teacher whom I admire and respect in my building came to me and said, "Kim, I'm going to be your resource teacher for this year. You're my intern!" I smiled in that polite, "I have no clue what you are talking about" kind of a way and said I'd look forward to that. Then I stopped and said, "Wait. Intern?" That conversation began a whole other round of wrangling and resume-submission and argument with everyone from the superintendent on up through the head of the department of education. It turns out that anyone coming into the state of Kentucky with less than three years of teaching experience is required to go through an intern year. 

Wait. I have three years experience. 

Ay, there's the rub. Those three years experience have to be following certification. 

But I got my certification based on my experience. [Imagine three different phone calls with this line being said by me followed by silence on the other end of the line]. 

We filed protest after protest, but they all fell on deaf ears. Regardless of the lack of logic of it all, I ended up an intern after twelve years of teaching. And an intern position meant another portfolio, 70 hours of conferencing, meetings, observations... sigh. And, it meant that I still didn't actually have my teaching certificate--I just had my intern certificate.

Fortunately, it's been a good year. I've gone through some more hoops (although not as many as some had to go through!), and I've just today completed the internship. When I got home, I paid the $35.00 via ePay for my teaching certificate, and I will hope to see it in the mail in the next few weeks. Phew.

But seriously. All this drama. I consider myself highly qualified to teach, honestly. And I had to spend two years proving it before the state would officially let me have a classroom. I can understand why people who don't take a traditional route to education can get discouraged by the process. I was also very lucky to have incredibly strong advocates in my principal and the superintendent of schools. Still, it was such a lot of work that a lot of people had to do when someone with their finger on the right button in Frankfort just needed to say, "Stop the madness!" 

Now, I'll write about my position on tenure in another post (don't think it should exist), but I do wish that more people would have to prove themselves as qualified to KEEP their classroom in public education. They should have to go through what I had to go through just to get a classroom. But it's amazing how much work it all was. I'm glad that it's over. (We did have a celebratory DQ blizzard on the way home!)

Why I run...

Some days, I run to spend time with my Grandpa Postma. He went blind when my mother was still in high school, and I never knew him as a man who could see the world through the same eyes I did, but I loved how he saw the world through his hands. We have pictures at my parents' house of my grandpa when he was a dashing younger man. And when I run, sometimes that young man comes with me. I always imagine my Grandpa Postma as the kind who would run just a step ahead of me to keep me on my toes. He'd chat easily even when I'd be coughing and wheezing. And he'd smile. He had a great smile. He's been gone for a few years now, but sometimes I can spend time with him when I run.

Some days I run because my best friend's mom got a double-lung transplant. Yes, a double-lung transplant. At one point, my best friend and I were talking about her having to spend her last Christmas with her mom. Then, a miracle happened for us all, and she was on her way to the hospital for a surgery that would save her life and enrich ours. Two months post-surgery, she was running a ten-yard stretch of the Chicago marathon with Jen and I. And now, when we race, she still will run parts of the course with us while cheering us on. I run for that.

Some days I run because even though it pains me to pull on the shoes, I know I'll feel better when I'm done.

Some days, it's because Coach Lawton, my soccer coach in high school, tried to tell me in the most delicate way possible that he would like to cut me from the team because I hadn't run off the weight that he'd wanted me to, but that he couldn't because otherwise he wouldn't have a goalie. 

Some days, it's because I can feel the natural instinct to run pulsing through my veins and can't imagine doing anything else. On those days, I run high on my toes.

Some days, it's because people are expecting me to, and I feel a sense of responsibility to those people. I've convinced a few people to try out running, and if I don't run, I feel like I'm letting them all down (or giving them an excuse to skip their run...and I definitely don't want to do that).  

Today, I ran because running can be hard. And I like to run when running is hard. I like doing the hard stuff. To quote Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own "Of course it's hard! The hard's what makes it good."

Coughing and running and wishing

Cough, cough, hack, hack, ahem, ahem...

I've been floating through this week. I came back from a weekend visit with my best buddy in Indiana, and I was flat out on the couch as soon as I walked in the door. I actually wasn't feeling all that well in the car on the way home and stopped at the rest stop to take a quick nap, but I didn't realize what was to come. By Monday morning, I was really in the thick of it. And it's been three days of just yuck. It's a miracle, really, that I haven't gotten sick sooner with all the germ carriers that I work with, but I hoped that with Spring coming I'd make it all the way to summer without the hiccup of an illness. I'll try again next year. 

Running

See above. Not much of it happening this week. One of my favorite runs in the world is around Lake Maxinkuckee in Culver, Indiana. It's a nice 10-mile loop, and it's where I got my start. I had hoped for the chance to run it with my best friend last weekend, but a) I wasn't ready and b)the weather wasn't cooperating. I honestly think I could have struggled through a ten-miler by myself, but I didn't want to put Jen through the torture of running such a slow pace with me--I'm embarrassed about my current state in a lot of ways. I'll work back from it, but I'm also very hard on myself, and right now I need to be hard on myself. 

House

After nearly two years of our house sitting on the market...empty...I'd think that the stress would even out. In some ways it has. It's a low-grade stress that is constantly there. Right now, it is slightly lessened by the fact that we have a trustworthy tenant in the house for the next month and a half, but then the house will go back to sitting empty if we don't sell it. And we don't have any prospects even considering the place at this point. I just don't   know   what  to  do. 

I have prayed. I have tried to earn karma points. I have put my time in living in a run-down farmhouse that is so small and falling apart that we have to put out no fewer than five buckets or trash cans each time it rains to catch the water from the leaking roof. Our wedding gifts are now coming up on their one-year anniversary in my father-in-law's basement along with 80 percent of my belongings, and looking at them makes me want to cry. I dream of having friends over for dinner, of living in a place where all the burners on the stove work, of having a dryer (yes, we have no dryer because we have no place to hook it up). I can't wait to cut my commute (currently 1 hour and 15 minutes each way each day). Yet it's been almost two years, and it's starting to feel like it's just never going to happen. It's felt like that for a long time. I just don't know what we can do. 

We are lucky. We aren't like the folks caught not being able to pay their mortgage. I just happened to leave my job at a time when the housing market was about to take a dive. And without going into too much detail, there's a story behind leaving that job that makes this all even more sad... and there's a level of unfairness about that whole situation that I just have to let go of. The boss I had at that job ran her tornado through the lives of me and my coworkers, and while we ultimately found a recourse for that, it was not without a heavy cost to me and my friends. 

So selling that house for me will be finally closing a chapter that I've been working to close for two years. And it will mean a new start for my husband and me. But we're doing alright. Just...wishing. 

ESL

We start standardized testing on Monday, and that will run for the next nine school days. Every morning. Kids will be tested in Math, Reading, Science, History, Social Studies, Arts and Humanities. And our school will get its funding based on their performance on these tests. The thing about it is, though, that there's no motivation for the kids to do well. I'd like to think that their sense of responsibility and community would be enough to make them want to do well, but at the middle school level, the world is all about them. And for a middle schooler to really want to do something just because it's the right thing to do is often a tough sell. 

I had a conversation with another teacher that went something like this:

Me: I just don't understand why we don't tie their CATS tests into something for the kids--hold them accountable for their performance on the tests.

Other teacher: I TOTALLY agree. And we had an expert on testing come in here, and he said that we just can't hold the kids accountable for their scores on these tests.

Me: But aren't we held accountable for how the kids are doing on their tests?

OT: Yes, we are.

Me: So you mean we are held accountable for the performance of kids whom we are not allowed to hold accountable? 

OT: Yes.

Me: [dumbfounded silence]

OT: Yes. 

Me: One other thing, are we also held accountable as a school for the improvement of our students or for the actual level of the students?

OT: The actual level of the students.

Me: So you are saying that if a kid came in here at the beginning of the year, and they were a novice, and they have moved up to apprentice (seemingly as a result of our instruction), that doesn't matter because they aren't proficient?

OT: Right. 

Me: So no matter what we do, if the kid actual shows outstanding improvement, we don't get recognition for that as long as they don't meet that "proficient" standard?

OT: Yep.

Me: [dumbfounded silence]

Annie needs to go out. I've gotta take her. 

My Kryptonite...grading

I'm PAPER FREE! I imagine this is what it is like to be debt-free. At least in some small way. I just sat and graded for the last three hours, and I have now officially caught up on all my grading--including entering it all in the system. I graded five or six different sets of papers and one poster project from my students. I have a horrible habit of giving my students a task in class, collecting their work, and then not getting it back to them right away. But I finally sat down tonight and got all caught up, and tomorrow will be catch-up day, as well, in terms of handing back work to the kids. 

I hate grading. I like feedback. I hate assigning numbers to things. I like talking them over with kids, negotiating changes, and having them rework them. I hate having to quantify how well a student received feedback and made changes. I like just watching my kids grow as learners...and I seldom think, "Wow, he his grades have improved." I wonder how I'll assess next year. This will be another new challenge for me.

I'm heading to Culver next week (home, in a way, really) to visit my best friend (see picture at right) and probably see some old friends. Fired up.