Living Our Core Values

Hi everyone,

I was really inspired and interested by the comments and reflections that were brought up during our cohort time. Whether it was Sarah's comment about the "human element" of leadership in the classroom or Cody's story of explaining to his Principal that we have got to change things NOW, I am uplifted to find that we can gain strength from reflecting on our core values. I'd love to hear other reflections or personal connections to the values. Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts!

Core Values

Teach For America's core values define the beliefs and values that we hope will center the actions of staff members, corps members and alumni as we pursue our collective vision. Our core values are an integral part of our culture and we aspire to live up to them in all that we do.

Transformational change: We seek to expand educational opportunity in ways that are life-changing for children and transforming for our country. Given our deep belief in children and communities, the magnitude of educational inequity and its consequences, and our optimism about the solvability of the problem, we act with high standards, urgency, and a long-term view.

Leadership: We strive to develop and become the leaders necessary to realize educational excellence and equity. We establish bold visions and invest others in working towards them. We work in purposeful, strategic, and resourceful ways, define broadly what is within our control to solve, and learn and improve constantly. We operate with a sense of possibility, persevere in the face of challenges, ensure alignment between our actions and beliefs, and assume personal responsibility for results.

Team: We value and care about each other, operate with a generosity of spirit, and have fun in the process of working together. To maximize our collective impact, we inspire, challenge, and support each other to be our best and sustain our effort.

Diversity: We act on our belief that the movement to ensure educational equity will succeed only if it is diverse in every respect. In particular, we value the perspective and credibility that individuals who share the racial and economic backgrounds of the students with whom we work can bring to our organization, classrooms, and the long-term effort for change.

Respect & Humility: We value the strengths, experiences, and perspectives of others, and we recognize our own limitations. We are committed to partnering effectively with families, schools, and communities to ensure that our work advances the broader good for all children.

Check Out the Many Languages One Voice and D.C. Language Access Coalition

HEY LANGUAGE TEACHERS! How could we partner with this organization?

http://www.dclanguageaccess.org/cm/

The D.C. Language Access Coalition is an alliance of community-based and civil rights organizations that advocates for language access rights within the District of Columbia.

Mayor Williams signing the D.C. Language Access Act of 2004 into law.

The D.C. Language Access Coalition's (Coalition) goal is to ensure that D.C. residents and workers who are limited English proficient (LEP) or non-English proficient (NEP) have equal access to the most essential government benefits and services including food stamps, Medicaid, health care, unemployment benefits, job training programs, public education, fire and emergency services, the police department and mental health services.

The Coalition is also committed to increasing the capacity and ability of under-represented immigrant communities to engage in social change efforts. We are also committed to strengthening the Coalition's ability to sustain ourselves over the long-term in order to tackle other access to justice issues impacting immigrant communities.

The work of the D.C. Language Access Coalition is currently prioritized into three language access campaign areas: education, healthcare, and human services. These service areas are of critical importance to the LEP population, but government agencies working in these areas consistently fail to fully comply with the Language Access Act of 2004. In addition, Coalition member organizations identify pressing language access issues faced by their communities at monthly meetings. The Coalition takes on these issues as special projects.

Middle School Teachers Can Make All the Difference

Check out this really interesting article about the transition from 5th grade to Middle School!

"The study, part of the Program on Education Policy and Governance Working Papers Series at Harvard University, found that students moving from grade 5 into middle school show a “sharp drop” in math and language arts achievement in the transition year that plagues them as far out as 10th grade, even risking thwarting their ability to graduate high school and go on to college. Students who make a school transition in 6th grade are absent more often than those who remain in one school through 8th grade, and they are more likely to drop out of school by 10th grade."

Keeping our sanity

I think it's safe to say that October and November are difficult months. While I can say that my second year of teaching has been easier than my first year, I can also say that it is far from easy. At this time last year I had yet to use a mental health day, but this year it was necessary to take one. I remember how lonely I felt as a teacher last year. While I still have my moments of feeling isolated I think that I have made a greater attempt this year to do things that remind me that I am human and that we are not to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. I think about how important our mental health is in relation to our teaching. I truly am a better teacher when I feel more rested and able to separate my personal life and work. I think it is so important for teachers to find activities that bring them joy and truly being in the moment and experiencing joy in order to be able to take that into our classrooms (in schools which can often feel so void of joy). For me, I've discovered running, trapeze-ing, as well as having my faith that is crucial in getting me through difficult days. For me praying through out the day helps me be a better and more loving teacher to my students. For you it might be something else. I know teachers at my school that use lunch to go for a walk outside. In addition to finding non-school related activities that bring us joy, I believe that it is important that we reach out to other people (TFA and non-TFA) to help walk with us through these difficult moments. Speaking from personal experience, I know that in the past in my feelings of isolation I isolated myself even more from people. It's easy to get caught up in our to-do lists, but surrounding yourself with people that care about you and that can encourage you is important in our staying healthy. I can't say enough how important I think our emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, and any other kind of health is in helping us be better teachers for our students. The healthier we are the more we will be able to do and work for our students. I hope that everyone took time to relax this Thanksgiving break! Here's to another week!

Edmodo

I have been using Edmodo in my classes this year and I love it. It is a very simple and convenient way to communicate with students and give them extra help outside of the classroom. For anyone who doesn’t know what Edmodo is, it’s very similar to facebook—but it’s only used for educational purposes and the teacher can control who is allowed into the Edmodo groups as well as how much freedom the students have to communicate (akin to a autocratic dictator—what we’ve always wanted). Once you sign up as a teacher, just create groups for your classes and then give students the group code to sign up with.

I am in a situation in which most of my kids ride buses to school so there isn’t really any time outside of class to work with students one on one. With Edmodo, they can send me questions about the homework or due dates, etc. I think the most helpful aspect of Edmodo for me has been the ability to remind kids about homework. I only see my kids every other day so it really helps them to remember the homework when I send out the homework reminders on Edmodo. Just make sure the students put in their email address if they have one so that the messages go straight to their email.

Some other wonderful features on Edmodo…

Library. In the “Library” you can create folders and upload any sort of file you would like to share with your students. I upload everything that we do in class as well as powerpoints and all the homework assignments. So if a kid loses his homework (of course that never happens…), he/she can download it and print it off at home. This is great for when students come at the end of the semester wanting a bunch of makeup work to pull their grade up; I just tell them to print it all off at home so I don’t use up a bunch of paper.

Calendar. You can fill in the calendar so that students know what lessons are coming up and when assignments are due, etc.

Mini groups. You can create mini groups within class groups if you are doing a group project, for example. You arrange the groups and put whatever students from the class into whatever group you want. I recently did a group project and this allowed me to send messages and resources to specific mini groups. Very helpful.

Quizzes, assignments, and grades. You can also give quizzes, assignments, and grades through Edmodo. I have yet to do any of this yet, but I hear it is a very simple operation. Kids do the assignments right on Edmodo and you can grade them fairly quickly. I haven’t done this yet because there is a good number of my kids that don’t have internet access at home.

Resource sharing groups/teacher connections. As a teacher you can join other groups that are content-specific for resource/idea sharing. I am a member of the world languages group. I’m sure there is a social studies group as well. Also, you can connect with other teachers through Edmodo to collaborate. I am connected with about 5 other teachers at my school who teach a lot of the same students that I teach.

Parent codes. Lastly, once a student has joined your class group, you can give their parents/guardians a “parent code” specific to their student. This allows parents to stay up-to-date on what’s going on in the class, and they receive the communications as well. This is a wonderful way to help parents stay involved and hold their kids accountable.

I’m still learning more about this awesome tool. Please share out if you use Edmodo in a creative way or find out more useful features that haven’t been mentioned here. Those of us who are on Edmodo need to connect on the website and we can collaborate more with this great resource. ¡Buena suerte!

Thankful for my students

I am so thankful to have been selected to join Teach for America. I am only a few months into this experience and I have felt so many emotions; from doubt, to frustration, to joy. I have learned so much about myself in these past few months and I know it has only just begun. I cannot wait to see what the next few years hold.

This week, I took a few hours (yes, a few hours) out of my time to write each and every one of my students a card for Thanksgiving. First, I prayed that God would give me the right words for each of my students in order for me to make the biggest impact I could in a short paragraph for each student. I was surprised to find that I was able to find positive words to say to each and every one of my students, even the ones that I struggle with the most. I was so pleased to realize that, what I thought might end up being a chore, actually was so fulfilling to me. I realized that, yes, even the kids that test my patience every day mean SO MUCH to me. Every single student I have has something positive to offer and I MEANT every single word I wrote to them.

When they received their cards, they all opened them up right away and read them and were passing their cards around to show their classmates what I had written. They looked so genuinely happy to have received kind words from their teacher. Then, I realized that I would have loved to receive cards from my teachers to know just how each teacher felt about me. After all, our kids aren't mind readers.

The rest of the week ended up being lovely, and I truly believe that the cards had something to do with it. I received the best gift of all from my students when they prepared cards for my mother and sister's visit to the school. They told my family such wonderful things about me as a teacher and my class.

These students have taught me just as much as I have taught them. For that, I am infinitely thankful.

CRC

Reinforcing my Vision

At the beginning of the year I was excited at deeply motivated by my vision. Fortunately, this excitement has endured as the year moves into a tough stretch. What I have not done a great job sustaining has been reinforcing the importance of my vision with my students. It is so easy to move from objective to objective without pausing and going back to why we are doing what we are. My last lesson, we analyzed our latest unit test, discussed how it related to our goals and our futures, then looked at the college process. Although this lesson didn't move us forward in terms of the curriculum, it was incredibly rewarding and will surely pay dividends in the form of future investment. I would be interested to see what others have done to keep there student's invested in their classroom vision.