Progress Monitoring

October 22, 2019October 22, 2019 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

This is my seventeenth year of teaching, my seventh in this school district. I have taught seventh through twelfth grade English literature as well as English Language Development to every level of English Learners. I have co-taught seventh- and eighth-grade science and social studies courses, and I have even taught a computer applications middle school elective.

At this school, I have taught a new curriculum for at least one of my classes every. Single. Year.

This year, I have four preps. Every other year, I’ve had at least two, if not three.

In addition to these preps, I have to spend a minimum of five hours every week sitting in data meetings, leadership meetings, and planning meetings.

On top of these meetings, I have to make sure that my students understand enough English to be able to take the bus home. To find the food bank. To sift through the clothes in our donation closet for coats and gloves for a sudden October snow.

For the course I’ve been teaching consistently for the better part of seven years, I have worked tirelessly to build a curriculum when there was none. I have listened to my school, my neighborhood, my district, and my world tell me about how fucking important a grade-level standardized test is even if my students are still learning how to correctly form letters or decode words.

I have built assessments based on those standardized tests, based on the grade-level curriculum, but tapered down, sheltered, supported, for my students.

I spend anywhere between thirty and forty hours a week PLANNING the lessons for four preps, trying to teach my Newcomers everything from how to greet strangers to present progressive verb tenses to vowel-intensive phonics identification. Trying to teach my level 3 ELLs how to become fluent readers, how to effectively present information, how to listen to, write, and correct dictated sentences, how to create a cohesive paragraph supported by text evidence.

Do you give me time to meet with other ELD teachers?

Do you give me a curriculum that includes common assessments?

Do you visit my classroom and see that, oh, none of my Newcomers know how to write the letter ‘k’ because none of their languages use that letter, and maybe I should spend more time teaching them how to do this? Or see that my ELD Seminar kids spend each Tuesday sifting through grammatical rules to correctly identify their errors on their SAT-style assessments? Or see that every word I teach my kids, whether it be “north” or “however”, is built upon a concept or misunderstanding from a previous lesson?

Have you ever looked at–let me break some shocking barriers here–my GRADEBOOK? Do you think, just for a moment, that it is possible that I progress monitor my students there each week? That I look at their scores and determine what I need to reteach? That my students meet with me to retake quizzes and revise written work based on the scores that they receive, and that I endlessly allow this?

Oh. I forgot.

You don’t have time to visit my classroom.

You are running this and seven other meetings this week.

You are sharing SAT data with the entire staff.

You are making me fill out a graphic organizer that analyzes how blatantly biased standardized tests are against ALL OF THE KIDS I TEACH.

You are here to criticize what I HAVEN’T done. Not to offer:

Common planning with ELD teachers.
Fewer preps.
A curriculum with its own COMMON ASSESSMENTS.
Fewer data meetings and ones that ACTUALLY APPLY TO ELLs.

This is my seventeenth year of teaching. I know I have taught longer than you, probably more than all of the admin team combined. I think I have an idea of how to monitor the progress of my students.

Do you have an idea of how to progress monitor your ability to listen? To support? To collaborate with those of us who are in the trenches?

I didn’t think so. This “meeting” is adjourned.

Dream House. Dream Fire. Dream Husband.

October 19, 2019 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

in warm October

you will find his love for me

as in all seasons

Filled with Light

October 14, 2019 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

moon day on Monday

because the sunrise is pink

but not quite enough

Scarred for Life

September 22, 2019 / lovizmytrio / 2 Comments

I was eight when the plastic surgeons took their scalpels and shaved a thin layer of rectangular skin from my upper right thigh to carefully morph it onto my shoulder and, twenty stitches and forty-seven staples later, make me a new scar over my burn scar.

For the remaining years of my youth, every time I wore a swimsuit, a tank top, an open-necked dress, I had to answer questions. “What happened?” “How old were you?” “What were you doing?” “How much did it hurt?”

Even though I know my mother worried that the questions would always lead to blaming her, no one ever asked me, “Where were your parents?”

Obviously, they had done the best that they could. After a few moments of shock when the six cups of water came tumbling down onto my ballerina-shoe sweatshirt, they ripped off the thick cotton and lifted me towards the sink, flushing me with cold water. They called the neighbor who was an EMT. They placed me in an ice-cold bath to try to soothe the bubbling blisters. They drove me to the hospital, to doctor appointment after doctor appointment for six months. They scheduled the surgery. My mother took off work for two weeks to care for me in and out of the hospital–her only vacation time of the year spent fretting over the major surgery her eight-year-old child had to undergo. The extra three days in the hospital because I just wouldn’t heal. The forty-five minutes I screamed after the surgery because the hospital was undergoing a major renovation and no one could find me a nurse to administer pain meds.

But no matter the sacrifice, no matter the recovery, no matter the gymnastics lessons I took that fall to stretch the skin, no matter the special silicone-filled vest I had to wear for months to press the new skin onto the old, that scar would always be there.

Primarily on my shoulder, but truly spilling beyond their surgical tools till all the way below my belly button, I was scarred for life.

Its bitter reminder stung me on my wedding day when I knew I could only pick a dress that would fully cover my shoulder.

On each of my children’s birthdays, when their anxious, hungry lips opened up a new wound in my left nipple that wouldn’t heal for six weeks of excruciating, needle-through-the-veins pain each time they nursed.

On every cock-eyed look I’d received throughout my life when people noticed the scar more than they noticed me.

I was eight years old when I had the best birthday of my life. My parents spoiled me that year because the surgery would prevent me from swimming in any of the five Finger Lakes for an entire summer, a punishment equal to hell for an upstate-New York kid. They let me have not one (the usual), but three friends spend the night. I got a Smurf watch and two Slinkys and a bouncy Gummi Bears toy that we played with for hours. My mom made a strawberry cake with strawberry frosting because I was obsessed with pink. They borrowed the neighbor’s VCR and let us stay up late watching movies. They made my night magical.

Despite everything–the ugliness of the scar, the ugliness of the pain–the scar became a part of me. So what if every time I went to the beach I’d get a look or too? At least I had a story to tell. At least it wasn’t worse. At least it was the worst thing that had happened to me as a child.

When my fiancé proposed to me more than ten years later, there was only one date I had in mind for my wedding day: 8.8.98. The number reflected everything–twenty years old, infinity, the life-changing events of my eighth year of life.

And though my mother always fretted over my scar, and though I feared making the choice I made yesterday for my entire adult life because of my fear of never healing and that cursed scar, I have no regrets.

It is dark. It is light. It felt like a cat scratching me a thousand times. But it did not feel like pouring six cups of boiling water onto myself. It did not feel like giving natural birth to three 9-pound babies. It did not feel like surgeons pulling forty-seven staples out of my skin graft.

It felt like infinity. Like the perfect figure 8.

Scarred for life. Just like I always have been and always will be.

Mount Bierstadt

September 15, 2019 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

first: the moon and sun

second: 8.5 miles

third: a fourteener

fourth: pomapoo strength

fifth: learning to climb mountains

sixth: altitude high

5:30, Mama??

September 11, 2019 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

pooped out each morning

pup is tired of school days

only one month in!

The Rush. The Run. The Race.

September 10, 2019September 10, 2019 / lovizmytrio / 2 Comments

My daughter’s face perfectly encapsulates my day, my motherhood, my career. Straining to run through the burning sun of a late summer day, pushing the limits of what she’s run before, and wishing for a closer finish line.

Disgruntlement at a too-hard, too-narrow concrete runway, making it nearly impossible, impassable.

Fear that her time will be worse than before, that the heat will beat her, that the world will beat her.

A sliver of hope for that final push, that final lap, that is just around the corner yet feels like twenty thousand steps too far.

In the background, teens cheer. “You got this!” “Just one more mile!” “Keep it up!”

Parents chase the runners, crossing the park’s midsection while they wrap their legs around its exterior shaded walkways. Parents trying to get the next best vantage point to capture that pic, that glimpse of angst that is in every athlete’s face.

Coaches stand on the sidelines, their own cheers tight with passion, with expectation and longing. “Lift your legs!” “Raise up those arms!” “Just like at practice!”

Her expression, their words, the globally-warmed, never-ending sun, beat down on the tumble of meetings that began and ended my day. The constant admonishments from my administration. The constantly shifting expectations and placement of people in power at my school district. The constant lack of a curriculum for the students who need it most and don’t have the right words, the right expression, to beg for that finish line. The constant task of preparing three hours of sometimes-failing lesson plans I must place in front of my Newcomers.

The rush–my god, the rush. Three weeks back, adding item number one thousand and seventy-three to our Google family calendar, Bruce rearranging his ever-strict hours to be able to make this meet, the shuffle of only-two cars, three girls in three activities with varying times, my after-work meeting, my cycle down the bike path, my fifteen-minute window to cross a park three times to gather this glimpse, my Torchy’s Tacos stop, bike locked and unlocked, bathroom locked and unlocked but only with a code, taco bag ripped on the rush up the elevator, only to find a buffet of snacks waiting in the final meeting room. My race to beat the moon home because it would never be light enough, our car in the shop for nearly six weeks, and I don’t even have time to fix the chain on my bike, let alone buy a decent headlamp.

All of this is in my daughter’s face. All the angst, the cheers, the backtalk, the doubts.

And just like her, I am racing to the finish line. It is never close enough, but both of us, somehow, have made it today. We have made one more race, one more step, towards what we hope will be better on the other side.

And that is enough. For today, it is enough.