Life in Philly

The Promised Land

2010-07-10T13:58:00.000-07:00

I sat in the waiting room and tried not to stare. Just minutes before my interview I was surrounded by all the propaganda of a freshmen counseling suite. There were inspirational posters everywhere and banners from prestigious colleges. But it was the copier that held my gaze. Stop staring, I told myself. It was huge. It was new. It was not broken.

It took everything in me not to ask the secretary if teachers were allowed to use that copier. I thought it might give the wrong impression. Instead I chatted casually about the latest summer storm. I tried not to think about the copier...tried not to think about how badly I wanted the job I was about to interview for.

******

"So, did you encounter any challenges in your three years of teaching?"

The question came about halfway through my interview.

"Are you kidding? I was teaching in Philly," I said. The administrator chuckled, then waited for me to elaborate. Which challenges should I share? Obviously I skipped over the difficulties involving the PSSAs, lost lunches, and long hours. That might make me sound lazy. I thought of my 8th graders in year one, the thrown calculators or the disastrous day I brought them M&Ms. Or the day one of students became a mini-Malcolm X and staged a civil rights protest in my classroom. I smiled. And then I shared something about the difficulties in motivating reluctant learners.

"What interventions did you use in your classroom to help students learn?"

I started listing them. The tutoring, the data tracking, the lunch groups, the extended day sessions. I had forgotten probably half of them and still I had plenty to pull from. The interview continued, they wanted to know how the teachers were willing to work so hard. I realized suddenly one thing about my old school that was unique, but crucial. We believed in the kids. We believed they could make AYP, we believed the school could be turned around. I thought everyone believed in kids...but I guess many teachers are more cynical.

After an hour I was done. I shook hands and walked out of the beautiful building that is just minutes from my new home. For two weeks I held my breath. And then the phone call came.

"Bring your driver's license, clearances, letters of recommendation..." I was in shock as I listened to the list.

"Does this mean you are making me an offer?" I interupted.

"Yes, we are offering you a permanent position..."

And just like that I left the city and walked into the promised land. The land of milk and honey. Or should I say copiers and funding. Hooray for a teaching job in the suburbs! :)

p.s. This post is dedicated to Christina for all her help.

Grief

2010-06-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

Saturday marked two permanent transitions in my life. In the morning Jason and some guys from the church helped move me to my new home. All my earthly possessions are now piled helter skelter in the house that Jason and I bought. Only moments after finishing the move, Jason and I packed up my minivan and headed for Hershey.

My grandfather was in hospice care and I wanted to see him again before he died. Jason talked to me during the ride, making me laugh and keeping me from being overwhelmed by the flood of memories as we drove through the Lancaster County countryside. As we approached the nursing home I felt my chest tighten, but I tried not to think about what was happening. I wandered the confusing hallways and found the room. I greeted my Aunt and cousins and saw my grandfather for the last time. Moments after I arrived he stopped breathing and peacefully slipped into eternity.

If you are a grandfather, or soon to become one, do not underestimate the effect you may have on a child's life. My grandpa was a blessing to me in so many ways. When I was very small he was Pop Pop, the ambassador of humor, candy and mischief. His jokes and toys brought so much joy into my childhood. I grew up five minutes away from his house and visited him at least weekly. During the summers I would ride my tricycle in endless circles around the oversized driveway. In the winter we played cards and my grandfather loved nothing more than going for them all in a game of hearts. "Now you're all 26 in the hole," he'd chuckle.

As I grew into a teenager my grandfather was a constant presence at all events. He videotaped and snapped pictures. A man of few words, he reserved his comments for humor. He loved a good joke, especially if it reflected his staunchly Republican values. And during these years our relationship transitioned from him caring for me, to me helping my dad care for him. Still, he maintained as much independence as possible and continued chopping wood and gardening despite his weakening body.

When I left for college my relationship with my grandfather changed. I started to understand him not just as my Pop Pop, but as a man who had lived his life well. He was a member at the same church throughout his lifetime. He worked hard and lived simply. On an Easter morning with 5 people in attendance he married my grandmother. That marriage lasted 64 years and was seperated only by death. It makes me reconsider all the details of my own upcoming wedding.

This week has been characterized by remembering. The night my grandfather died we sat around and swapped stories. My favorites are the ones that happened before I was born, stories of my grandfather as a young man or as a father raising my dad. The more I hear the more I respect and love him.

And my love and respect for my dad grows. My dad was the primary caregiver for my grandparents over the past decade. Anything he could do, he did. He managed their bills and explained the countless doctors visits. My dad set aside his job, his hobbies, and almost all his Saturdays to spend time with his parents. He defined patience and love for the years when my grandfather slowly and painfully lost his mental and physical abilities. I know that my dad will make just as good of a grandfather for my kids as Pop Pop was for me. I only hope that can care and love my dad with the same respect and dedication that he showed his parents.

This post is dedicated to Marlin Bell.

The End?

2010-06-17T15:03:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is my last day teaching in my current Philly school. For the past week I have been saying "goodbye." Kids who have been mean to me for three years are suddenly turning soft, giving hugs and whining about how much they will miss me. Again and again I face the question from them: why, why are you leaving? I just say that I am getting married, that it is time for a change. And every time I assure them that it has nothing to do with how much I care about them.

So where am I headed? Originally the plan was the suburbs. I dreamed of fully funded classrooms and well-mannered students. Perhaps I would land a job where paper was provided? Who knew? So I applied and interviewed and called and updated my resume throughout the spring. It had some fun moments. One of my favorites was when a suburban principle asked me if I had encountered any challenges while teaching in Philly. Haha. "None, whatsoever." No, I gave some answer about obstacles making you stronger or something like that.

I had to re-edit my essays because apparently my tone was a bit more aggressive than the suburbs are used to. The suburbs are a totally different land of parent involvement, gifted programs, and legal issues. You have to be inclusive, current, and active after school.

But I am not currently headed to the suburbs. I'd love to write something eloquent about how I decided that the city was where my heart was. In reality, the city is where the jobs are. Budget crunches have eliminated most suburban positions. So I transferred to a new school in Philly. Perhaps God still has more for me in the urban setting. I am excited and ready to see what happens. And now I don't have to change my blog because I will still be a Philly Teacher.

A new school year means new beginnings. So here I come with all my renewed ambition and optimism. Perhaps it will be different this time :)

Resistance

2010-05-13T14:18:00.000-07:00

As the school year comes to a close I have been reflecting on the past 3 years spent at my school. It is now certain that I will not be returning next year. This gives me a chance to step back and reflect on the biggest challenges I faced. I've decided that the harshest reality of the inner city is that people don't always want to be rescued.

Track with me for a second. I grew up in the suburbs, went to college, and earned a teaching degree. I was equipped to impart knowledge and to explain difficult concepts. Arriving in Philly, I was enthusiastic and eager to help kids get out of the ghetto. But surprisingly I met with great resistance.

Some student are passive. They never argue they just don't bring a pencil to class. They sleep. Or worse, they are absent. Silently resigned to live a life characterized by poverty, these girls tell themselves that their lives in North Philly are not that bad. They are unmoved by speeches about upward mobility. It doesn't interest them. Tragically bored, they continue on the easiest path even if it will probably lead to pregnancy, poverty and prison.

Others are not so passive. Their resistance is almost violent. They yell when I ask them to do work. The get in my face, they hate my guts. It is a shocking reaction. I hold the key to their future survival, I offer them an education that would permanently alter their fate and they cuss me out. It is a strange and painful experience. But at the end of the day I am only briefly affected by their disrespectful protests. The girls are permanently shutting the doors of their future.

The longer I work in the city the more aware I am of the opportunities that are out there. Money is available for students. College scholarships. Food. Boarding schools. Tutoring programs. Everyone is reaching out to these kids. Just in my classroom alone Americans have donated fabric, quilting supplies, sewing machines, calculators, notebookos, pencils, and posters. The support is overwhelming. But many of my girls are opting out, they would rather stay in the neighborhood where they were born. One of my students summed this up for me. I told her she needed to pass my final if she expected to do well on my final. She replied that she was going to be a welfare mom.

This is the greatest tragedy of the poverty and crime that surrounds the city. The sickness is so pervasive that my girls are not even well enough to accept the cure. My girls are numb. They have forgotten how to hope--how to dream. When I was 16 all my thoughts were full of optimism and overconfidence. One day I was going to be a history professor, or a poet, or a member of the UN. My girls never talk about the future, occasionally one of them mutters that they will probably not live that long.

That is the great need of the inner city. Not money. Maybe not even not education. What we really need is hope. There are too many dashed dreams, too many children forced to grow up quickly. Before I educate I must learn how to inspire.

p.s. This post is dedicated to Jade, because somehow she learned to dream.

French Class

2010-05-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

"Salut!" I yell to a group of 7th graders outside of school.

"Salut, Ms. Bell!" They call back.

" Ca va?" I ask with exaggerated expression so they understand what I am saying.

" Ca va bien," one of them remarks proudly. Yep. Inner city kids conversing casually in French. And it all happened unintentionally...

I got an unwelcome phone call during 2nd period. The roster chair needed me to teach 7th grade social studies once a week during my prep. I sighed. A 9th period class is normally crazy. But I showed up and enthusiastically greeted the students.

" We've had three teachers this year," Jayonna said by way of introduction. "They all quit...they said they quit because of us. Their ninth period class." She looked a little ashamed as she mentioned this and the other girls looked at me shyly, waiting for my reaction.

"That's crazy, I think you guys are great," I pronounced. It was definitely too early to tell, but I was hoping it would prove to be true. I t0ld them I wasn't a social studies teacher so I was going to teach them math. A chorus of groans spread through the room.

"Ms. Bell, I already have math for four periods every day," one girl complained. I felt bad for her.

" Well, what if I teach you 9th grade math?!" I offered excitedly. One girl put her head down, preparing to sleep for the remainder of the period. Obviously this was not a popular idea. I racked my brain. I needed some sort of structure.

"What about French? What if I teach you how to speak in another language? Je parle le francais. C'est bien. On peut avoir une langue secrete." I added some French at the end to pique their curiosity. It worked! Heads came off the desk.

"Yeah! Yeah! Teach us French!" The class jumped with enthusiasm. I started off with a long speech in French that no one could understand. But as I acted out the words the girls giggled, falling out of their desks and pointing at my silly actions. Soon they were guessing the meanings of different words.

The first week I taught them greetings. The second we learned how to talk about our feelings. Each week there are requests for certain slang phrases. It is hard to translate ebonics into French, but I make an effort.

Now the girls greet me in the halls. The other students stare and we laugh. It is hilarious. Not bad for a 9th period coverage.

Black Power

2010-04-05T18:33:00.000-07:00

Race is a constant backdrop to the drama that unfolds at my school. I never thought about race growing up, probably because there wasn't much diversity. Even at Pitt it was more something discussed in English class rather than a dinnertime table topic. But in North Philly it is in your face. I can feel my whiteness sometimes. Today was one of those times.

In order to get ready for the PSSAs our school is on overdrive. All teachers have pretty much lost their lunches and their preps in order to tutor. I run around all day, I am either teaching my own 9th and 10th graders or darting across the school to teach the 7th graders. It makes for good exercise but a pretty stressful day. 7th period is the worst. The kids are coming up from lunch, hyped up on slushies and cookies and I am running in from my library tutoring group. Normally they beat me to the door. So then I am running around, trying to project the assignment, and yelling randomly at everyone.

Today I changed their seats. Yes, any veteran teacher already knows what is coming. I warned them before break but it was still a disaster. The kids mobbed me at the door and rushed to their old seats. I then started calling out the new numbers in a pathetic voice that could barely be heard over the din. Kids were running around and I was getting desperate. Then the revolt happened out of nowhere when I told Synia to take her seat.

The revolt took me by surprise because the one other thing I did not know is that the girls had a pretty exciting lesson in African American history that morning. I told Synia to go to seat three. She said "no." Smiled. And then raised her left fist into the air.

"Black power!" She yelled. I stared in shock.

"Synia, for crying out loud, sit down," I said trying not to chuckle at her theatrics. But her friends were joining her. Soon three girls popped out of their seats.

"Black power!" They yelled raising their fists. I glanced nervously at the door to see if anyone could hear the uprising. Soon a little bandit of would-be freedom fighters had formed and was chanting and running around the class.

"We won't sit down! We won't sit down! Black power!" They yelled. I am all for democracy--and for civil rights--but this little uproar needed to be squelched.

I made two freedom fighters leave the classroom and managed to out yell the rest of them (not a good teaching strategy...I later had to apolgize to a few frightened students). I rarely yell so the class soon fell quiet. I gave them a long pep talk about 9th grade responsibility and the general cruelty of disrespecting teachers. A few stubborn students were threatened with detention.

"You can't give me detention! You're racist! Black power!" One girl protested. I smiled.

"Denia, I am not giving you detention because you raised your fist, I am giving you detention because you won't sit in your seat."

"Yeah, well we learned about this in history class. I won't give in," she announced.

"Oh my goodness, what are you even trying to protest?" I said smiling at her. " The people you learned about in histroy class were protesting against racism...and I am not a racist. What are you trying to do? Protest against little math teachers?" I asked. The class exploded into laughter and finally my last little rebel moved to her assigned seat.

Phew! You never know what to expect I guess :)

Factoring trinomials

2010-03-12T18:18:00.000-08:00

I stay up too late on Wednesday night. This is a common occurence in the middle of the week, I think it is a symptom of being engaged. Even when I go to bed on time I lie awake, excited about life. It is hard to sleep when you're in love.

But this means that on Thursday morning I am dragging. I keep guzzling coffee but to no avail. I mix up my students names, forget what time the period ends, and mess up several examples. Right now I am teaching polynomials to my algebra students and it is tough going. Frankly, it is boring. My students have told me this. But I have had no great epiphanies about how to make x^2+8x+7 interesting. Just looking at it I get bored. On Thursday I was in the middle of my lesson on factoring trinomials when Precious raised her hand.

" Ms. Bell, when are we going to use this in real life," she said interupting my example. I was halfway through factoring the trinomial. I looked at her and drew a complete blank. In the moment I muttered something about her needing good grades to get into college. But can I confess that I thought about it the rest of the period and I couldn't figure out why in the world we factor trinomials. What's the point anyway? I think it is just to drive people crazy. Look at this problem:

Factor.

3x^2-34x+63

Instant headache. I know, I know, there are probably some strategies and shortcuts I could use. But why? Why go through all that just to rewrite that polynomial in a different way? I think we should just put it on the graphing calculator and use the trace button.

Anyway, I am still teaching my poor 9th graders how to factor. Imagine trying to factor when you do not how to divide. Yup. It takes the headache to an instant migraine. My students struggle to factor 4x+16. They keep telling me 16 divided by 4 is 12. Sigh. Hopefully someone is making progress.

But there is still a third of the year left. After I finish teaching them about polynomials I am going to go back to teaching them how to divide :)

p.s. This post is dedicated to my student, Tiara who came to tutoring after school every day this week so she could learn this factoring stuff. She's the kind of student who makes me excited to teach each morning.

Boathouse Row

2010-02-09T18:35:00.000-08:00

Three years ago I left Pittsburgh for the big city. I was nervous and scared but ready for adventure. My SUV was packed with books, clothes, plastic bins, and hopes for the great beginning of my adult life.

Many things were different in Philadelphia than I expected, teaching was hard and I missed the comfortable life I had left behind. Yet, I felt so strongly that I had done the right thing... I believed God had led me to Philly. There were many lonely moments. For a dark period I had no roommate and I lived alone in a dingy apartment that was a little too close to the neighborhood where I worked. But I clung to the hope that things would get better.

So I pressed forward, loving the city and full of faith that brighter days lay ahead. I'd drive to grad school exhausted after teaching all day and pass Boathouse Row. The pretty river and the bright lights became a symbol to me of God's love, of his promise not to leave me. And I'd pray. For nicer students. For less violence in the city. For a roommate. And that someday...maybe...God would bring a man into my life.

Three weeks ago on a Friday night I greeted my boyfriend after a long day at work. I was tired and worried about my unruly students, I was expecting a quiet evening and maybe a nice dinner. Instead we ended up at Boathouse Row. Before I could realize what was happening Jason was on his knee, holding something shiny, and asking me to be his wife.

If only I could have seen that moment three years ago when I first set eyes on Philadelphia. If only I could have heard the words he shared with me during those lonely nights in my dingy apartment. Our prayers are so small, so timid before a God who longs to bless us lavishly. Even my grandiose dreams fell short of what was waiting for me in this City of Brotherly Love.

My days have become a whirlwind of happiness, phone calls from well-wishers and happy discussions with Jason about our new life together. But in the midst of all the busyness I am most overwhelmed by how it all happened. I made a wish...and it came true. Life is indeed a beautiful thing. And some of the greatest adventures are yet to be lived.

This post is dedicated to my best friend...Jason

Sitting on the Floor

2010-01-25T14:47:00.001-08:00

Today I was sent to a district wide PD in downtown Philly. I found myself in a cramped high school classroom surrounded by teachers who taught remedial math. We were all from empowerment schools, all of us looked tired and many seemed cynical.

Our presenter was an overly hopeful woman who represented a textbook company. She kept using words like "miracle" and "inspired" as she talked about the new strategies we needed to use in order to help our students catch up. She was in the middle of describing how to monitor student behavior while teaching when a woman raised her hand in the back.

"Yes?" The presenter asked.

"You're doing a great job and this is helpful...but my class meets in a hallway," the middle-age woman said. The room fell quiet and we stared at her. "I'm an art teacher but they don't have enough teachers for remedial math so they are making me teach this. We don't have a classroom so the principal is having me teach the students in the hall. We're right next to the bathroom so there are constant disruptions as students come and go. And the biggest thing is we don't have any chairs. So we're sitting on the floor....in the hall. I'm not sure how to monitor student behavior when my students are sitting on the floor," she finished. The presenter stared at her. No one said anything.

Eventually a few people offered some suggestions but the rest of us just sat in silence. How do you teach kids math in a hallway?

Remotely Controlled

2010-01-08T15:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday during 8th period my computer started acting up. I was in the middle of my lesson and getting ready to give my students a quiz. This section, Drexel, is particularly difficult and unruly so I was trying to keep the class under control. Things were going fine, I was reviewing mean, median and mode while my students took notes.

Suddenly I looked up and my SMARTboard flipchart had disappeared, instead my computer had opened up its media player. The blue menu filled the screen.

"That's weird," I muttered as I went over and escaped out of it. I continued to teach--it popped up again. This time I heard giggles from two of my most challenging students. Shalia was looking slightly sheepish. I ignored her, went back to teaching. The menu popped up two more times and both times I just closed it but glanced suspiciously at Shalia who was whispering to her friends.

I handed out the quiz and had finally quieted the class down when from nowhere I heard "This fall in a theater near you..." To my horror I turned to see a preview for a somewhat inappropriate movie playing on the SMARTboard. I tried in vain to escape out as the preview blared and my classroom exploded into laughter. My face reddened and I felt panic rising. In vain I pounded ctrl+alt+del or whatever other MAC key I could find to try and make it stop. Finally, I yanked all the connections out of the wall and slammed my laptop shut. The screen turned a brillant blue and my students were on the floor, laughing. I glared at Shalia who had one hand in her purse.

...But I wasn't totally sure she was messing my computer up. I couldn't figure out how she could be doing it. And maybe my computer was just crazy. Unfortunately I had a hard time getting my computer to boot up after the rather hard shut down so I taught the next class with no projector. I prayed my way through it.

The next day my computer was fine--absolutely no glitches. That is until Shalia came to my class in 4th period. This time I was watching her. Her left hand was in her bag every time my computer opened the media player. I snapped. I had had enough.

"Shalia! Meet me in the hall!" I barked as I grabbed a slip and started filling it out. I checked the box for class disruption because I didn't have time to explain that she was somehow hijacking my computer.

"Ms. Bell! You don't know it is me! You're computer is broke and you're blaming me!" She yelled and protested. Inside I doubted myself. What if I was wrong? What if it wasn't her? What if my computer had a weird glitch? But I stood firm and kicked her out.

The computer opened the media player one more time--but this was to be expected. I knew Shalia had slipped whatever she had to a friend in the middle of her hissy fit. Luckily, her friend wasn't as bold and I was able to finish my lesson with no other interuptions.

6th period I blazed into the teachers lounge still mad as a hornet. I spilled out the story, begging for someone's help.

"They have your remote," Mr. Dennis the Spanish teacher told me.

"What? Computers have remotes?"

"Yeah, or they might be hijacking into your blue tooth. All we have to do is disable it on your laptop. They might even be hacking into your system with a cell phone," he explained.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"Universal remotes, Ms. Bell. They work on different systems. I bought one and wreaked havoc in my health class when I was in high school," he confessed. I laughed. I guess even the craziest students can become good teachers.

So the physics teacher disabled my computer and there haven't been any more problems. At least not in my class. Because unfortunately they still have the remote and occasionally I hear stories of "computer glitches" in other classrooms.

This post is dedicated to Destiny...because she'd understand.

Strong Woman

2009-12-19T08:03:00.000-08:00

Khyria sat in the back of my room for several weeks before I really noticed her. She was quiet and respectful. She is in my 8th period class where I have three major behavior problems. I have my hands full trying to keep that gang in their seats and quiet, so I unintentionally neglected Khyria. She sat silently in her Muslim coverings with only her round face showing. She wasn't completing the work and her grade was steadily declining. Finally, she asked if she could see me after school.

I was surprised when she actually showed up looking for help on her road trip project. Not wanting to get up from my grading, I told her to start by reading the first problem to me. She paused. I though maybe she was confused so I walked over and read:

1. Where do you want to go on your trip?

We talked and she chose Miami. She asked me how to spell Miami and I helper her with the letters but when I looked at her paper she had written Maimi.

"Oh, you made a mistake," I offered casually. "Ok, read the next problem." There was a long pause and then she started.

"H-how....m-many....miles...is...y-your...." her voice trailed off. She was sounding out each word. "Ms. Bell what is this word?"

"Can you spell it for me?" I asked not wanting to walk over. There was silence. I walked over. "Trip, Khyria, that says trip." I felt my voice catch a little and a knot formed in my stomach. She doesn't know how to read, I realized.

"Oh, thanks, " she said and started happily working on the numbers part of the worksheet. My mind was elsewhere. Khyria is 15 and in 9th grade and she cannot read. She is learning Arabic so she can read the Qu'aran but she cannot read her math worksheet.

We finished the worksheet, although it took quite some time. Khyria looked up at me when we were done.

"Ms. Bell you must be a strong woman," she said matter-of-factly. I smiled, curious about the sudden comment.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you are only 24 and you teach high school! You come every day and teach these children. And my class is bad," she explained. "I can't imagine. You must be so tired. I'd be exhausted after teaching three classes and you teach all day." I went quiet just listening to her encouragement. It is so rare that students realize teaching is difficult.

"And every morning you are by your door saying hello to us. I wouldn't be like that. Not with these girls who are so bad and all." I stared at her. She had noticed that I tried to say "good morning" to all my students. She had noticed that I tried to love them all, even the ones that drive me crazy. In that moment I felt God's pleasure. I have made many mistakes as a teacher, but has gleaned my works for the specks of gold. And now He is showing me some of the fruit.

There is so much work left to be done in North Philly. Khyria still can't read and many of my students are unable to do basic math calculations. But maybe my job isn't to stay until they all know how to read. Maybe it is to stand at my door and greet the with love each morning.

Christmas Cards

2009-12-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

This past week was a hopeful one. I forget how bad it was when I first started teaching. Every day was so difficult, so painful. My job has become a much more manageable thing...and now after three years I am starting to see fruit.

******

My dad sent me back home after Thanksgiving with several 2 lb. bars of chocolate. On a whim I wrapped one up and gave it to the school secretary. That gift has worked wonders. Now she is all sweetness and smiles when I see her. When she calls my room for a student she apologizes for interrupting my teaching. I should have given her chocolate a long time ago.

On Thursday I went to my mailbox and saw an envelope. I feared some new memo about something that needed to be completed before Christmas break. Instead I saw a Christmas card from the secretary. The cover took me by surprise, three wise men traveling to a stable. I was shocked. Religious Christmas cards are rare in a school where we’ve edited all Christian content from the holiday break. Opening the card I see a message, Rejoice in the Savior! My heart feels warm. There may be another Christian at this school with me. What if all this time when I thought I was laboring alone others were praying too? Now I am even happier that I gave her the chocolate bar.

******

Yesterday one of my students caught me off guard. Siarria came into my room during my prep and thrust something in my face.

"Huh!" She said and then looked at me quizzically. I figured it was some form I needed to sign. It was a Christmas card. On the outside Ms. Bell was scrawled in painful letters, Siarria has difficulty writing clearly. She is one of my lowest students academically, but also one of my favorites. I cannot think of her without smiling.

I opened the card and thanked her. She rushed out and I felt tears fill my eyes. I read the warm Christmas greeting and the large letters that said Love, Siarria. I stood by my window for a second and looked out at the city of Philadelphia. And I kept crying. Sometimes you are working so hard you forget to look for fruit. And then suddenly God sends a moment of such wonderful encouragement. When I look at Siarria I am very glad I came to Philly.

This post is dedicated to all my special education students because of the joy they bring to my life.

Snowed In

2009-12-19T07:42:00.000-08:00

A blizzard has hit the whole Northeast cancelling all my weekend plans in one fell sweep. The snow has brought an unexpected calm to my social schedule and now I am sitting here and remembering. I have made it to another Christmas. So much have my life has been happening in West Chester and at church that I have neglected my blog. But this break I hope to catch up, to recall some of the stories from this fall.

So grab some hot chocolate and a warm blanket and rejoice with me in all that God has done :)

Grades

2009-11-02T17:25:00.000-08:00

"Ms. Bell, I need a favor," Laquisha saya poking her head into my room during 9th period. I am chomping down on an apple.

"What is it?" I ask setting the dripping Granny Smith aside.

"Can you get me all my missing work? I want to pass your class. I open my web browser and click on Laquisha's grade. 53%. She has 27 absences, that is three each week for the first grading period.

"Nope," I say abruptly. She stares at me blankly. "There's not enough time for you to bring your grade up."

" You can make me a packet during 9th period and I'll do it over the weekend," she offers. I groan thinking about how much work that would be for me.

"Laquisha, you are going to fail my class this grading period. It is impossible for you to make up all that work in one weekend. It is too late," I say perusing her grade report again. She missed both unit tests, 4 homeworks, and countless days of class work.

"I hate you, Ms. Bell!" she huffs and marches out the door.

Phew! One week until grades go in.

Supplies

2009-10-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

My first year I thought the lack of supplies at my school was kind of cool. We were under resourced. This was the mission I had always dreamed of. It felt inspiring to buy my own paper and supply my students with pencils.

Year two I started grimacing at the bills from Staples. At this point I was trying to pay for a grad degree. And I had enough time to go out to eat or to hang out with friends so I had other ideas on what I could do with that money. And I watched as the students flew through my supplies. Often the expensive lesson I prepared with elaborate manipulatives was ruined by misbehavior. Still, I felt inspired and continued to purchase things.

My third year I put a permanent end to buying my own supplies. I banned Staples except for the annual Penny Sale in August. The "underesourced" label is no longer inspiring or impressive. It is completely exasperating. I am a third year teacher trying to explain Algebra and I go home at night worried about where I can get a class set of scissors. Will they bring me another box of tissues on Monday? Where can I find some markers for our project?

In general, there are three things that we never have enough of at school:

Paper

Every week we are allotted three reams. Exit tickets for 150 students take up a whole ream, so you're down to two right away. Homework assignments need to be handed out. Worksheets are budgetted to every other day. And then you realize you have to make a review packet. That is when all the teachers start to go a little crazy. People steal paper out of other teachers' boxes. You see teachers walking around with their reams, clutching them tightly. Give a teacher at my school a ream of paper and they will hug you, maybe even burst into tears.

Toner

Please add toner. That is the message that can throw an entire copy room full of staff into a tail spin. The copiers are always running out of toner because we have three copiers for the entire school--one of which is normally broken. When the toner runs out someone must go and ask one of the secretaries for more. There is then a long delay during which we are given a speech about not using so much toner. A day later the toner might be replaced. Yesterday two copiers and the printer all ran out of toner. Argh. If only our kids brought their books to class, then we wouldn't have to be so frantic about copies.

Calculators

This year I have an auditing system that would rival the IRS. I am so tired of calculators disappearing into the backpacks of my students. I received a class set of 33. 23 of them are hidden behind my desk, my students think we only have ten. I put the ten out next to a sign-out sheet. Every day ten lucky kids are there in time to get a calculator. The others bring their own or brush up on their mental math skills :) At the end of class I turn into calculator drill sargeant. I start yelling 5 minutes before the bell.

"I am missing 6 calculators! No one is leaving until I have those calculators!"

Students start scrambling around as I begin reading the names.

"Tameka! I need your calculator! Sharnice, get that calculator out of your bag! You cannot take it home. Let's go people!"

After two weeks of this I grew tired of the daily yelling. Now I have a student do it for me. Rysha bosses the whole class around. She can be down right mean. But she always gets ten calculators. Thanks to her and the auditing system I still have all 33 calculators. That is true success.

So the lack of supplies continues. I have good days, like when a random American citizen donates $800 towards my classroom. I have bad days when we run out of tissues and paper towels. But the sad thing for me is that I know the supplies are out there somewhere. Probably stashed away in some forgotten warehouse in Philly. Because our problem isn't really lack of funds--anyone in Harrisburg could tell you that. We need leadership and an effective administration. Maybe when we find that in Philly I will have four reams of paper a week :)

Run for Orphans

2009-10-12T07:01:00.000-07:00

The memories hit me at unexpected moments. In college I visited a dozen orphanages in 15 different countries. I'll be cleaning my room and find a coloring book page covered with stickers and messages written in Spanish. Suddenly I can see the child care center in Brazil that we went to on Semester at Sea. At my parents' home in Hershey there is a picture of me holding an orphan in Venezuela. I'll be rushing around trying to get ready to go somewhere and that picture will stop me in my tracks. I remember the girls curls and soft sigh of her breathing as she fell asleep.

The images from Egypt and India are more painful because there the poverty and hopelessness was more overwhelming. In Egypt adoption is illegal so all the orphans I met 5 years ago are probably still there, it is unlikely that their lives have changed. In India the orphans I met had AIDS. That whole day is frozen clearly in my memory. I remember the smells, I remember the poverty. To my shame, I recall my fear when I found out the child I was holding was HIV positive. But despite HIV and cultural differences those children were children just like the ones that run around my church's lobby. They loved to dance, to hold my hand, and to receive gifts :)

I've done very little to help orphans since I returned to America. But there are others who have responded to the call to help the poor. In February of 2002 a man name Doug Hayes started something called Covenant Mercies at my church here in Philadelphia. That organization now sponsors over 900 orphans in four different countries. They aren't in the Middle East yet--but I keep praying :)

This fall Doug decided to run a marathon to raise money for Covenant Mercies. On November 22nd I will be joining him. Not in the marathon...I already blogged about that painful endeavor...but in a 5 mile race on the same day. Originally I thought that I would just run it and not try to raise money especially since I know the economy has negatively affected so many. But God is doing so much through Covenant Mercies and I want to be a part of it.

So, if you'd like to sponsor me you can go to : http://www.covenantmercies.org/pages/index.php?pID=485 Just write in my name in the comments field. Otherwise, please just continue to pray for the orphans and impoverished people that Covenant Mercies is trying to serve. Especially during this economic time.

Siarria

2009-10-02T18:05:00.000-07:00

The first thing I noticed about her was her hair. In typical North Philly fashion, Siarria was braiding it slowly over the course of several days. But for the first two weeks of school her whole head was in individuals except for a large tuft right on top. It stuck straight into the air and bobbed slightly as Siarria bent to complete algebra problems in her notebook. It gave her a bird like appearance and I often had to restrain a chuckle as the hairstyle persisted week after week.

She is special ed and her IEP lists goals on the 4th or 5th grade level. But our school has eliminated the special education program for 9th grade so she landed in my Algebra 1 classroom. Somehow we bonded. For the first three days it was a battle, Siarria had a tendency to be out of her seat. She was at the trash can. She was looking out the window. She was in the hall. Anywhere but in her seat. But I liked her from the first day so I was firm, but loving. I couldn't help but smile, she was so entertaining. Now she responds to just a look in her direction, she is so eager to please me.

And nothing is happier than Siarria when she gets the right answer. It is almost explosive. I watch as her long, gangly arm shoots into the air.

"Oh! Oh! Ms. Bell! Ms. Bell!" She is jumping out of her seat now, her notebook has fallen on the floor. What will happen if I do not call on her? I think to myself.

"Siarria, what is the answer to the do now?" I ask casually,

"Nine! It's nine! It's nine!" She shouts. And then she smiles and calmly resumes her seat. She scans to room to make sure all her classmates witnessed her right answer.

"Yes, and why is the answer positive? -2 and -4.5 are both negative numbers. Why isn't the answer negative nine?" I continue. "Shante?"

" Because--because a negative times a negative is a positive! It is like when you are going to the ATM, no I mean like if you decided not to go to the ATM. And--" Siarria is out of her seat again shouting answers.

"Very good, Siarria, but I didn't call on you. I asked Shante," I correct.

"Oh," Siarria says as if she has just realized she is not the only student I am teaching. She slides dejectedly back into her desk.

Siarria is one of the best things about my job. I love seeing her each morning. She is why I go in when I am tired. There are dozens of students like her, girls that have won my heart so quickly. But Siarria is a success story. She is cleaning up in my class. She has learned so much she might actually catch up this year. Her tests show progress. I can't wait to see how she does at the end of the year.

After School

2009-10-02T17:44:00.001-07:00

"Aretha Franklin wrote Amazing Grace," Shakeima says matter-of-factly. I stare at her and smile.

"No she didn't, some guy in England wrote it a long time ago," I say as I flip through a pile of geometry tests.

"Oh," she says looking a bit disapointed. Shakema comes every day after school to help me. She grades papers (with an answer key), files old homeworks, cleans up, and gives suggestions on how I can reorganize my lessons. It is priceless. I think she is a gift from God. She tells all her friends that she is my TA, that it is her job. She rearranges her schedule so she can come, even on Fridays.

Normally after school is a peaceful time. I crank up Taylor Swift on my laptop as my room fills with kids serving detention and students looking for candy. It is a happy moment in the day, I am relaxed as I eat my long overdue lunch.

Today our peaceful grading session is interupted by the sharp sound of police sirens. I wait for them to pass, but they only grow. Getting up, I walk over to my open classroom windows which look out onto the street in front of our school. I watch in shock as 12 police cars arrived in succession, each with sirens blaring. Only then do I realize that there is a louder than usual commotion at the school's entrance. Shakeima and I press our heads into the glass pane to get a better look, trying to hear snatches of conversations.

The police have batons out, but they drape them casually over their shoulders. They are trying to break up a throng of girls, encouraging students to get on city busses and to go home. Craning my neck I see a policeman with someone behind him. The uniform gives her away and I realizes that one of our students is in handcuffs. The back of a police van is opened and she is escorted inside. The doors slam shut behind her. The sight of a girl that young being arrested breaks me. I go quiet and feel that quick stab of pain that hits me sometimes in the inner city. A feeling that things should be different. A grief for the children we are losing.

But there are students around me. They are talking excitedly and I can sense their hysteria growing. I remember I am a teacher, I am the adult in the situation. I push the image of the arrested girl aside, swallowing back the sadness.

"Calm down," I say sternly. "Wait until the police leave and then you need to go home," my voice is flat sounding unimpressed and unaffected by the drama outside of my window. I've become a good actress. They listen and soon they have trickled out of my room, eager to enjoy the weekend. I finish grading, shut off Taylor Swift, and join them. I need the weekend too.

Priorities

2009-09-11T15:07:00.000-07:00

I have 150 students. 54 more than last year. The classroom is stuffed, I can barely move between the desks. Children are everywhere. The only thing more prolific than children is paper. Do Nows, exit slips, homeworks, and worksheets are everywhere. Every day I institute a new organization system, only to fail.

When the bell rang today--ending the first week of school--I sat completely exhausted in my classroom. From third to eighth period I teach non-stop with no bathroom breaks and food stuffed quickly in my mouth between classes. The effect is dizzying. And now the to-do list sitting in front of me is beyond ambitious, it is physically impossible. Multiplying tasks by 150 dramatically increases their size.

1. Call 150 parents.
2. Grade 150 exit slips
3. Enter 150 weekly grades
4. Sort through the 150 papers that were turned in that day. Actually 300, many people turned in work I didn't ask for.
5. Learn 150 new names. No, only 130 because I have 5 Kareemas, 6 Shakearas, 3 Dominiques, etc.

I felt like crying and the clock was steadily moving towards 5. Earlier this summer I resolved to stay every night until 5, but never past 5. Letting teaching take over my life no longer seems cool. There was a time when I was attracted to a workaholic lifestyle. Now I have friends and people I want to be with ;) Besides, you can't last three years if you work constantly. There needs to be a healthy amount of apathy--that is what keeps people from quitting. If you care a little too much and become a perfectionist you won't make it.

Another teacher stops by my room to commiserate. We swap stories and talk about her marriage. She doesn't believe in God but she is fascinated by my faith. We philosophize. She leaves and one of my students walks in. Dominicia has me for homeroom, algebra 1, and remedial math. 3 periods. Even I would get sick of my own voice after all that.

"Ms. Bell, I wish I had your class all day," Dominicia announces talking happily about the worksheet she had aced that morning. I smiled, still stressed, but relaxing a little as I watched her backpack bob to and fro. I looked at the task list in front of me that threatened to rule my life. Taking a fresh sheet of paper I wrote (1) Love the Girls. Content with this shorter list of priorities I closed my laptop and went home for the weekend, talking to Dominicia on the way out about her other classes..

Redemption

2009-09-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

I saw Dominique's name first. I was looking for it. You may even recognize her here on the blog. In 8th grade she ruined my class. In 9th I was supposed to be her teacher and she cussed at me on the first day. Then I was switched and I only had her for homeroom. We had arguments daily.

10th grade and she is on my roster. The fight began almost immediately. I was explaining my rules and the "no food" stipulation. Dominique interupted me and said I couldn't do that, I couldn't ban food. I looked back at her. Only two years have passed since she sat before me in room C101 and watched my 8th grade classroom spin out of control. But those two years mine as well have been twenty. I am old now. I know what can happen if I back down. I look her in the eyes. Yes, Dominique, I can, I say firmly.

The next day Dominique whips out a sandwhich in the beginning of my class. I scold her. She glares. We are headed down that same road, one I don't feel like being on for 190 days. So I did the only thing I could do with the headstrong pupil. I made her class president.

She still has to obey all the rules--but now Dominique is bossing around the rest of the class instead of me. She relishes the authority. And today after school she found me in the copy room. Her face was all child and I saw fear in her eyes. She was quieter, shy almost.

"Ms. Bell...is you going to have tutoring this year?" I can hear the apprehension in her voice. Her eyes look penitant. She looks young, standing here in front of me, with no crowd she has no need to show off and yell.

"I stay after school every day until five," I reply quickly. "Was today's work a little confusing?" She nods. "The textbook is difficult but it won't be as difficult tomorrow." She looks reassured, and she thanks me as she walks away.

This year perhaps I can redeem some of what I lost that first year.

Top Philly Schools

2009-09-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

Lobster is $4.99 a pound right now at Shoprite. You can't beat a $7 lobster. That is why I headed back to the grocery store tonight to buy one--even though I already ate a lobster feast last week. This is a once-in-a-year opportunity. I figured it would be an end-of-summer celebration the night before school starts.

I stood there in the line waiting to check out, curiously watching the lobster who was lethargically lifting his claws. My eye caught a magazine on the shelf running a cover story: Top Philly Schools. I smiled. What were the chances my school was in there? We did make AYP last year...still.

I flipped through the pages looking at synopses of Boys Latin and The Science Academy. Then, there on the last page, was the name of my school. Unbelievable! Maybe things are changing...or maybe the standards for a top Philly school are a little low. Optimistically, I'll go with the first option.

Happy back to school everyone! Wish me luck tomorrow.

Menial Tasks

2009-08-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

I love glorious tasks. I like having a to-do list that feels important. Watching movies like Lord of the Rings or Amazing Grace fire me up. I want to get up the next day and change the world.

And then I do wake up and see the following list in my planner:

1. Devotions

2. Clean the bathroom

3. Mow the lawn

4. Write the first unit of Algebra 1

5. Find a good quiz on trapezoids

6. Make dinner

7. Go to church

Feel inspired? I didn't. Where is the war to be won? Where is the excitement of travel or the thrill of doing something important? I came to Philly to change the city and instead I am cleaning the bathroom. Hmmm....

But first I must admit that the past two years have revealed my arrogance in "wanting to change the world." Because such a noble desire begins with the proud assumption that I--a 24 year old know-nothing from cow town--have the ability to change an entire city. So first let us be honest and recognize that even if I was boarding a plane this morning or heading up a citywide campaign against gun violence there is a very distinct possibility that I would change nothing.

And then there is this other realization. Much of my life has been spent grasping for the glory of another calling when what is right before me was already significant. Not significant in that it was impressive (mow the lawn???) but because it was what God placed before me. It is a glorious calling, just probably not in this life. So I look again at my to-do list and sigh. What can I do to faithfully serve where I am? I can do the tasks on my list well, polishing the mirror and writing an outstanding Geometry quiz. More importantly I can do it with joy. Learning to be content, I can lay down my "greater" aspirations and do the more menial tasks of my life happily.

The interesting thing is that if we all did what was before us with excellence and joy there is a chance that we might end up changing the world.

Touring West Chester

2009-08-18T06:43:00.001-07:00

Friday morning arrives and I am packing my green duffel again. The duffel was bought in Cairo three years ago so it is now tattered and barely able to contain its bulging contents. The weekend means I venture out from my solitary apartment where I have been cleaning and planning all week. I transition from seeing almost no people all day to the aggressive social calendar of the singles ministry at my church. A typical weekend involves parties and outreach from Fri night thru Sunday afternoon. I live 45 minutes away from my church--thus the tradition of the duffel.

I'm a bit of a strange sight if you catch me speeding down 476. A single girl driving a minivan that is packed with a duffel, food, and salad bowls etc. that I need to return after the last party. As I drive I am on the phone, lining up places to stay. These conversations occur last minute so you can hear me saying something along the lines of I am driving towards your house right now...can I stay with you?

The choices for hospitality are limitless. I never end up stranded and choosing can be difficult. My friends Jackie, Leah, and Suzanne offer fun apartments and couches as well as late night conversations about God's work in our lives and the blessing of our church. The Josephs top the list consistently because they're family. Walking into their house I feel at ease instantly. My aunt cooks up steaks and my cousin vacates her bedroom so I can sleep soundly on a queen. I feel more at home there than in my own apartment :) Weird.

The Mellingers are another fun option. Meg's cooking is the big pull but they also have the added entertainment of small children. Life doesn't get much funnier than listening to Ryle and Ben's explanations of life.

So I wander, crashing at two or three different houses a weekend. The Smiths are the fall back if for some strange reason people are busy. The Smiths are always busy but they have people over anyway :) I'm not sure Mrs. Smith cares too much if dinner goes from 11 guests to 12.

Yesterday I was thinking about the close of summer and wondering where it had gone. What had I done with my time? And then a flood of memories came over me. Joining the church and feeling Covenant's love as the pastors said "welcome to the family." Pushing Ben and Ryle on their swing set as we talked about why God had created daddy long-leggers. Chatting with Shanna and Aaron about the similarities and differences in our families. Eating meals with eleven people at the Smiths house. I suppose that was what I did this summer...I drove around West Chester in my minivan and ate meals with people. A sort of unofficial hospitality critic. Covenant passed with flying colors :)

This summer will always be remembered as Covenant Summer. God knit me into peoples' lives over the past two months. With time on my hands I was able to attend all the meetings, showing up early and staying late. I watched people parent, cook, laugh, sing, and share their lives with me. Through it all I was storing up joy so that now as I head into the school year those memories go with me. Happily, the members of Covenant go with me as well. I can feel them standing behind me and cheering me on. They're not just my church any more, they're my second family.

Three weeks, three years

2009-08-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

August is disappearing in a haze of humidity. I am not sad to see the weather go, but the beginning of school is approaching steadily. This week I cracked down. I whipped out planners, laptops, textbooks, and Geometry videos to begin laying out a plan.

Year three. I have my sylabus written except for a part at the top that says "goals." It is still blank because I am still debating what to write. I could fill it in quickly with the same goals as the district, overly ambitious academic statements that make no allowances for the fact that my students are 3-5 grade levels behind. I have tried that before. It is frustrating and I wind up discouraged by October. And by now I know that district goals can change.

My two-year commitment is over so I no longer share my organization's goals. I don't have to use their taglines or political speeches. I am free--if I want to--to be the most mediocre of teachers. The accountability is gone.

I'm leaning towards something a bit more personal. What if this was my last year in that school? What if these 190 days were all that I had? It shifts my focus from impressing my supervisors to actually teaching my students what they need to know. And so a plan is forming. I am going to try to teach two classes at once. I will teach geometry because I have to. But the homework assignments, tutoring sesssions, and mini-math warmups will be a review of all that they have missed. Percentages, fractions, multiplication, division, place value, and most of all algebra. I saw these students last year and I know they didn't learn algebra. Somehow solving 3x+2=11 seems more important than stating the properties of a trapezoid.

So that is my goal: teach two classes at once. But I also want to savor this year. I don't know if there will be a year four. Maybe. Probably depends on how year three goes. But this year I think I'll have my head above water enough to love each day. To find things to be grateful for and to live each day as if it was my last. Now the question is if I should write those goals on the syllabus :)

Paddling

2009-07-16T17:27:00.000-07:00

The raft balanced for one terrible moment, thrust upward against the face of a rock. I stared in horror at the rapid that threatened to engulf our six-person raft. The current nudged us forward and suddenly we pitched over the rock. My sister screamed and my body fell as the river below greeted us with a rush of cold whitewater. 4 inches of water filled the bottom. Now I was screaming as our raft careened around boulders and whitewater.

"What do I do?! What do I do?!" I panicked.

"Paddle!" Cameron, my sister's boyfriend, screamed back at me. He was thrusting his oar violently at the water, trying to make up for my lack of participation. We spun backwards, hit another rock, and then righted ourselves.

It was my third water trip of the week. First, catching the waves on Lake Erie. Then kayaking along the Swattie. And now rafting down the Lehigh. All of this is how I recenter during the summer. I paddle and I forget the trauma I left behind in North Philly. I haven't driven through my school's neighborhood--or even the city for that matter--since the last day of school.

Some teachers always carry their kids on their hearts. They think about them, pray for them, and call them during vacation. I'm impressed by these teachers. I admire them, but I am not one of them.

My compassion seems to have an "on-off" switch. During the school year I lose sleep over my kids. During the summer I forget their names. Maybe this is how I survive :)

We did make it down the river, mainly due to Cameron's skill. I returned to Philly where the geometry textbook on my bedroom floor is a constant reminder of the reality that is coming. Soon I will whip out calendars, notebooks, and math problems so I can plan the year. But for now I prefer to forget about all that and find some new water adventure. The Atlantic perhaps...

This post is dedicated to Cameron.

A Family of Teachers

2009-07-02T15:47:00.001-07:00

I munched happily on my meat pie listening to my Aunt Lois describe her teaching career. School's been out for a week and I'm quickly switching into summer mode. Reading, sleeping, quilting, gardening, and catching up with friends and family.

Last week my mom and I traveled to D.C. for an education conference. We perused the vendor hall and learned all about the influence of technology on the classroom. Most of it was well beyond my school's budget, but still cool to see. However, the main motivation for our trip was a visit to my Aunt Lois and my Uncle Dave...relatives on the Lebanese side of the family. That means Arabic, dynamic conversations, lots of directions, and excellent food.

Aunt Lois was offering us meat pies--a delicious mix of spices and beef tucked inside of a triangular roll--before we had even brought in our luggage. She was a kindergarten teacher who made the newspaper when she retired after 31 years. A true Joseph, she was legendary. She still volunteers regularly at the school now when she isn't serving at hospice or hosting neighbors and family at their house. My Uncle Dave was a math teacher for three decades as well--but he also coached the high school basketball team. The walls of their den are covered with the photos and awards he accumulated.

We always think we choose our destiny, that we picked our future. And then you look back and realize you've turned into your mother and that you picked the same career as half your extended family. And more than that--you realize you don't mind walking in their footsteps. The teachers in my family led the way and modeled for me what it means to be the leader of a classroom and of a community. My name may be Ms. Bell, but I think I became a teacher because I am a Joseph.

This post is dedicated to Aunt Fanny and the legacy of her family.

Well done, Ms. Bell

2009-06-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

Today was the last day of the 2008-2009 school year. The kids left on Tuesday and all that was left to do was some boxing up and cleaning. This morning my principal called us all into the library to announce our school's PSSA results. I was bracing myself for bad news, mentally preparing for my 7th graders failing results to be broadcast to the whole school.

That is not what happened. If you have talked to me over the past few months and asked me about my experience in the inner city I have probably sounded cynical and discouraged. Over the past two years I have questioned everything--questioned even the possibility of changing things--and I had given up on ever seeing fruit.

And then this morning my principal handed out the test results. I stood and watched as another teacher sorted my girls--ranking them according to their performance.

Sharron...below basic. I had hoped she'd be one category higher in "basic." I knew it would take a miracle for her to have tested "proficient." A whole year of work and the test showed no gains. But the list of names continued.

Sierra...proficient.

Akiera....advanced.

Shakiema...proficient.

Synia...proficient.

The proficient pile swelled with names and my hopes soared. Excitedly, the other 7th grade math teacher and I started furiously computing the percentages, tallying the names on a piece of scrap paper and whipping out our cell phone calculators. Last year 30% of our students were proficient or advanced on the test. The State mandates that we need to gain ten percentage points each year to make AYP...and to keep from being shut down.

"Ms. Bell, we made it! We hit fifty percent," the other 7th grade math teacher announced. I thought I might cry. We both jumped up and down and started high-fiving. I felt so proud.

It took the English teachers in the room a little longer to process the data. To make AYP the students must make gains in both English and math. After a long, dramatic pause our principal made the unbelievable announcement. Our school had improved impressively on the PSSAs...qualifying us for AYP status. Only 2 out of 36 schools in the region were able to do that.

This changes everything. It means less supervision from the district and greater freedom in our teaching practices. It means less pressure and more job security. But most importantly it means we are teaching our kids. The school is improving even if it is improving slowly. Now the majority of our seventh graders understand math. That has never been true at our school before.

Later, as other teachers rushed out of the building to enjoy summer vacation, I lingered in my vacant classroom. It was a bare and unassuming place. But so much happened in that room, each desk fills me with so many memories. I remember opening the door back in August--whispering a quick prayer as I did. Since then there have been many more desperate prayers. And now I'm done. Just like that the school year--and my two year commitment--is over. I can remember so many bad days, so many difficult moments. But the moment I'll choose to crystallize in my mind was when my principal looked me in the eyes this morning and said at long last, "well done, Ms. Bell. Well done."

This post is dedicated to Mr. MacIlvain...the other seventh grade math teacher.

October Sky

2009-06-15T15:20:00.001-07:00

In the back of my classroom there is a handmade poster: "How Math is Used in Real Life." Today I added the word rockets to the list and announced that we were going to watch the movie October Sky. Watching my students watch a movie is an interesting experience. You notice things you never saw before. There is only one black character in the movie. The poor family in the movie isn't as poor as my kids. And they don't understand the concept of coal mining.

But they laughed hysterically when the boys kept blowing up their rockets and they loved the science teacher that told the boys to pursue their dreams. The hardest concept to explain was the "mining town." My girls didn't understand why everyone in a town would have the same job and they were totally baffled that the boys in the movie never left their little West Virginia community. And even at the end of the film no one in the room could grasp what coal actually was.

Six more school days. The walls of my classroom are bare and my textbooks have been turned in. I surrendered the calculators. This is the limp to the end. Many students have already stopped coming because the grades already went in. Most of my teacher friends are done. But there is a precious stillness at my school. For the first time all year I am more burdened by boredom than business. The seventh graders have grown affectionate as they realize I will soon be leaving them. The tenth graders have finally started expressing some gratitude.

Just a few more strides now and I will be across the finish line eating a banana :)

Good luck, Ms. Bell!

2009-06-04T18:17:00.000-07:00

The seventh graders had a trip today. I was so excited. I dreamed of a first and second period with no students. Worst case scenario I imagined having the three or four stragglers that had forgotten to pay. At 8:30 I had only five disgruntled students and things were looking good. Then my class was unexpectedly called down to the auditorium.

There had been a logistical oversight. 3 seventh grade teachers were going on the trip with the kids. That meant they weren't at the school to teach the 18 seventh graders who weren't going (either they didn't pay or they had bad behavior). So we needed a babysitter for the 18 furious "bad-behavior" seventh graders that remained. And there I stood...Ms. Bell with only 5 seventh graders. So I returned from the auditorium with 18 girls not even knowing most of their names. I needed to survive second period.

I sent up a quick prayer, took a deep breath, and started teaching. I told them to sit down, get out some paper, and start taking notes. I didn't really have much of a 7th grade lesson so I projected my 10th grade geometry lesson instead. I moved fast, solving the problems quickly so no one had a minute to get into trouble.

And the seventh graders whipped into shape. Startled and alarmed by my stern expression, they started frantically trying to solve the tenth grade problems with me. Many of them turned in their worksheets even though I obviously won't be grading them. Some were quite distraught but others loved the challenge. It was almost a little fun.

Second period passed and none of the seventh graders attacked each other. I was relieved. I dismissed them a bit early and breathed a deep sigh of relief. I found out later that their other "babysitters" that day were the chemistry teacher and the high school biology teacher. They probably learned quite a bit :) But we really need a better plan for trips.

The Last Mile

2009-06-04T18:01:00.000-07:00

" Ms. Jackson, the copiers are out of toner," I said to the school secretary. She looked at me, slightly annoyed by my interuption so early in the morning. She didn't respond.

"Are-are we going to get more toner?" I asked hesitantly.

"No, the district is monitoring the amount of toner they give to each school. There will be no more toner for the rest of the school year," she replied as she continued to file papers. I felt sick.

" But there are three weeks of school left...I haven't even copied my final yet," I protested. I listed a dozen other reason why this news was impossible. Ms. Jackson continued to file. Upstairs the news was making its way to the teachers and a borderline mutiny was occurring. We need summer. Everyone is exhausted and frayed. It takes a small trial to incite panic among our staff right now. The news about the copiers sent the entire building into shock.

Luckily, one staff member had the gall to drive down to the district office and ask to use their copier since they had rationed our toner. When she announced she need 500 copies they balked and gave her a thing of toner. Our staff was elated.

Still, these final weeks of school have been quite challenging. On the one hand, we are told that instruction must continue until June 23rd despite the heat and the fact that grades go in on the 11th. On the other hand, the janitor is collecting all my textbooks, art supplies, projectors, etc. Not to mention our continued battle over the....you guessed it...calculators. The latest in that never-ending saga is that the janitor insisted I turn them back in yesterday. I explained that my students needed them for their final...that it is almost impossible to take geometry final without a scientific calculator (those were confiscated months ago) and most certainly impossible to take a geometry final with no calculator at all.

The janitor hasn't backed down and I am slightly fearful that she might march in and just take them. Oh the drama! But in some ways it is what keeps life interesting. Every day is a challenge. Can I teach without calculators? Without books? Without pencils and notebooks? And in the back of my mind I keep wondering what in the world the janitor is doing with all those calculators.

Three more weeks. Send up a prayer for me. We are so close to the end...but yet so far away.

Strength in weakness

2009-05-13T16:31:00.000-07:00

I'm sick again. Is anyone counting? I think I have set a record. Humbled again by a fever and a soar throat that my students are convinced is the swine flu. I resolved earlier this week not to call out sick. My sick days are running out, I'm in danger of violating my contract. Everyone will think I am taking mental health days. But Tuesday night I laid down to "take a nap" after work and woke up the next morning still feverish. So defeated and slightly embarassed I called out yet again.

This is the brutal march to the end. So close to the finish line and yet it lingers around the corner. Grad school is done, I graduate on Saturday. My robe lies in the living room and my coursepackets in the trash can. 5.5 weeks left until I have two full months off. Mentally I feel fine. This isn't nearly as difficult as last year. But apparently my body is exhausted. Too much stress is going away all at once.

Summer is exciting, I can barely grasp the reality of all that vacation. But this year a part of me is sad. 5.5 weeks. That is all. And still there is so much to teach them. Britteny still hates me--how can I break through to her? Sharron can't add fractions and she is going to 8th grade. Shakira is so bright, but is she ready for algebra 2? The days trickle by and I watch the opportunities disappear. Most of the time I am too tired to feel nostalgic. But when I am sitting on a desk in the back listening to my 10th graders argue about how to solve a trigonometry problem I feel sad that the year is ending.

Getting sick today reminded me of the theme this whole year. Strength in weakness. It is a paradox. I am a good math teacher precisely because I am a terrible one. I lose my attendance records, mess up the grades, yell at my seventh graders, and get sick constantly. There is a brokenness in me because of my job. Teaching in Philly destroys arrogance. The inner city humbles all of us, we crumble before its challenges. But in that brokenness I have found the strength of my savior. So as I lay on my couch bemoaning another day of lost instruction I'm reminded again of the source of my strength.

You love us

2009-05-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

Sharron likes to philosophize. She interupts my class repeatedly with random comments about her weekend, what her mom said about Barack Obama, or her latest thoughts about the Swine Flu. She startled me with these words at 7:50 am on Thursday:

"Ms. Bell, do you like teaching? You seem like you really like teaching us," she is looking up at me from her desk, her face is still round and childish. A few of her individuals (braids) have fallen out so there is a row of hair that sticks straight up on the top of her head.

"Yes, Sharron, I do, " I say as I finish stapling worksheets. She looks back at me pensively.

"Yeah, I think you do. You seem happy when you teach us. You're different from our other teachers. You love us....you probably will miss us all summer. You'll be sitting there not knowing what to do without your students."

I didn't bother correcting her final statements--I won't be bored this summer. But I was touched by her comments. After ten months of hard work she had finally seen, she had finally realized that I loved her. I've suspended her, given her detentions, taught her how to divide, talked to her after school, hugged her, and greeted her every morning with a smile. And now, at long last, she knows that I did all this because I love her.

There are so many others who know what it is like to love someone who is unresponsive. Tomorrow is Mother's Day. I think of all the mothers who have loved unconditionally for years. And still they wait for someone to realize that they are disciplining out of love. That they sacrificed and persevered because they couldn't give up on a child. This is the goal that I aspire to. Every day that I teach a difficult child I think of all my heroes that have parented.

Hang in there, moms. You never know when on some random Thursday morning your child will finally understand how much you care about them. Your persistence will pay off.

Technology in the Classroom

2009-05-02T09:26:00.000-07:00

On Monday I started teaching the trigonometry unit in my geometry class. Chapter 12 is my favorite. However, we ran into a major issue....no calculators.

Last year I didn't have enough calculators so I asked to have some donated. Stephen Colbert worked his magic, Americans donated over $1,000, and I was given a class set of graphing calculators. But since I would also be teaching 7th graders I had a class set of middle school calculators donated as well. These are very simplistic, they can perform basic arithmetic and that is all. No trig functions, no graphing, no square root button, etc.

Well, the PSSAs rolled around and my school was (no surprise) short on calculators. So mine were taken "for the PSSAs." I knew then that they wouldn't be returned. But I didn't see a way to avoid the situation. So I taught the chapter on the Pythagorean Theorem by having kids just ask me whenever they needed a square root. I'd walk around the room and someone would shout 400! and I'd call back 20! without blinking. It got interesting when we did volume and they couldn't take the cube root because normally I couldn't do it in my head either.

I pleaded with my janitor to no avail. She is the one who confiscated the calculators. I told her that teaching trigonometry without scientific calculators was impossible. She said she would swap me the high school calculators for the middle school calculators. But there was a catch. I had to give her 30. That was how many I had had in September. I was done for. We have a major theft problem in my school. The fact that I still have 22 is impressive compared to last year's rate of return. But still. I wasn't getting the high school calculators back.

So on Monday I started explaining sine, cosine, and tangent to students who had no trig buttons on their calculators. When we got into the inverse it got really terrible. Yet another unmitigated disaster. On my lunch I brainstormed. What did people do before calculators? In the textbook they had a picture from the 1970's of trig tables that listed the values for all the different angles.

I ran to the library and googled. They still existed! So I copied a gizillion and passed them out to the next class. It saved my entire lesson. Problem solved. Now I am thinking of finding some slide rules. The kids will never steal those. My class is so prepared for the 21st century :)

Stay

2009-04-24T18:30:00.001-07:00

The great exodus has begun yet again. It is the topic of the copy room and grad school as teachers compare notes and contribute to the horrible retention rate in Philadelphia. Where will you be next year? The answers vary, but all are impressive. Med school. Law school. A job at a top investment firm in Boston. A better teaching position at a magnate school.

Out of politeness people ask me in return. My answer always brings a moment of awkward silence...I'm staying actually. I'll be teaching at the same school.

After the silence people say different things. Some hesitantly ask "but weren't you almost fired last year?" which is true and ironic. Others raise their eyebrows. Others just let the silence persist and don't say anything. Not that I think I am better because I am staying. Let's be honest. If I was accepted at Harvard Medical School...I'd be leaving too :) But Harvard has yet to call, we have enough lawyers in the family as it is, and magnate schools sound like a lot of work. So I'm staying and officially becoming the most experienced math teacher at my school.

I'm not a sprinter, I am a marathoner. I don't do half the things my cohort does to prepare my lessons. I haven't tracked my students' progress, my lessons are never that impressive. Before I decided to stay I wasn't on my principals short list of great teachers.

But the third year is calling me...full of promise. My heart longs for fruit. Longs to see kids really learning. Longs to see calculus at my school, to see a school year when I think more about math each day than about gang violence.

And more importantly God is calling me. Not to be a sprinter. Not to be the best math teacher in Philly. Only to be steadfast. If he gives me the strength to endure and to continue I think that great things may happen.

This essentially why I have decided that what I will do next is stay.

Still

2009-04-07T18:13:00.001-07:00

I am in the middle of my run, in the middle of my spring break. I spent a weekend in Hershey and ahead of me lies a packed weekend in Philly celebrating Easter. And now on Tuesday I feel restless, unaccustomed to the pause in activity. There is of course a list of things that could be done, but no list of things that must be done. The stillness makes me uneasy.

A bench catches my eye. I have run to my old neighborhood and the path is full of memories. I sit and to my joy I notice a random patch of daffodils bobbing their golden heads right in front of me. My favorite flower. Perhaps I came on this run and sat on this bench just so I could enjoy this moment. It seems sovereign.

The water is gurgling a twilight song as it drifts lazily down hill. The light is slanted and makes the trees shimmer. When you live in the city nature seems miraculous. I can feel my heartbeat slow and my mind relax. I think of summer, my future, and all the happy memories that lead me to Philly, to this neighborhood, to this bench...

It can be difficult to be still. I love to be productive and I mentally guage each day by my accomplishments. But there is a preciousness in waiting, in the quiet, in the lack of movement. I feel in the midst of it my dependency on God. As I sit on a bench, poised between two seasons in my life, I feel my need as I ponder the craziness of the end of the year. Time rushes by so quickly and without God sovereignly interupting me I will never really accomplish anything.

Shadows begin to fill the woods, I am chilly, the path is vacant. It is time to run back to my car. It is strange to think that next week when I am managing a loud math classroom that bench will still be there sitting quietly in the stillness. Hopefully I can bring some of that peace into my classroom.

Roach

2009-03-31T12:46:00.000-07:00

Warm weather and springtime means all the birds and critters of nature stir and rouse themselves from winter hibernation. This means more sunshine, twitterpated robins, and happy flowers popping up on median strips. Unfortunately it also means our school building is once again faced with the reality of its pest problem.

Teaching 7th grade is like riding a bucking bronco. I am always precariously balanced between a productive math classroom and sheer chaos. I don't teach, I just manage behavior for two hours. So when a roach appeared in the corner of my classroom I was hardly pleased.

He was huge. I couldn't contain my own reaction of disgust when I saw him scurry behind my desk. Yuck! Worse, he sent my 7th graders into chaos. They stood on desks, ran into the hallway, and screamed. Great. That looks real good if my principal walks by.

Swallowing my own fear of the nasty creature, I cornered him and chased him behind a cabinet. Then I spent 10 minutes convincing my students that he was gone and that they now needed to sit down and do math.

However, Mr. Roach decided to make a dash for freedom and ran across the front of my classroom. There was a chorus of screaming and three students went charging out of the room and told a janitor there was a rat running around. Mr. Roach was large--about the same size as the ones in the movie Independence Day--but hardly worthy of the rodent title.

At this point I realized I had to take action. All 16 pairs of eyes in my class were focused on the cockroach who was frozen complacently in the front of the room. Silently I cursed the exoskeleton-creature, fearing that I wouldn't be able to smash him. I've tried before with a broom and failed. I grabbed a 7th grade textbook. Feigning boldness I walked over and dropped it. The roach scurried out from underneath unscathed. My students screamed....again. I felt my blood boiling and I knew it was only a matter of minutes until I got in serious trouble for the chaos in my classroom. I lifted the textbook above my head as rage filled me. Bam!

We waited and watched. The book didn't move and no one felt the need to investigate further. I sighed and turned to face my scared 7th graders. Ariel ran foward and lifted my hand above my head like a referee in a boxing match.

"Ms. Bell is the champion!" She yelled. The class burst into applause and I smiled.

"Ok, I killed the roach. Now sit down and do some work," I said.

There were a lot of battles today that I didn't win, but at least I beat the roach.

Pizza

2009-03-30T16:05:00.000-07:00

I was on the cell phone during my prep. You're not really supposed to do that so when I heard a knock at my door I jumped. Hanging up quickly I opened the door. There stood Moulu grinning at me.

"What are you doing?!" I hissed. She was supposed to be next door in Spanish class.

"Want some pizza?" She asked happily opening one of the boxes she was carrying.

"Moulu, you can't be in here. You are going to get me in so much trouble," I said scanning the hallway for administration.

"Come on, Ms. Bell. Can I eat this in here? It didn't come in time for lunch period," Moulu whined. She then explained her elaborate Friday lunch plan. She wasn't a fan of the freebie that the school provided, free lunches for students from impoverished homes. So she bribed one of the school cops, convincing her to go and get a medium pizza and a cheesesteak stromboli. Now the greasy mess was in my classroom and Moulu needed a place to eat. And also a reason to avoid Spanish class.

If it hadn't been Friday I would have said "no." But I was hungry.

Behind closed doors we devoured pizza and talked about the track team. Moulu has the highest score in my geometry class, she is the smartest girl in our school. She has a goofy grin and a knack for mischief.

There are only 11 weeks left in the schoolyear. So even though I could be fired for aiding a student in skipping class and smuggling a pizza, I'm glad I got a chance to spend seventh period with Moulu and a greasy stromboli.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

2009-03-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

It wasn't my intention to steal from our impoverished inner city library. That wasn't what I set out to do. So as I found myself trying to sneak around the scanner with the pile of non-fiction I tried to remember how this had come about.

For some reason I had never noticed what Synia had been reading in my class. I noticed the books and was constantly telling her to put it away and focus on her math. But as we were finishing up taking the PSSA I saw her pull out a thick paperback: The Autobiography of Malcolm X. There is nothing rarer at my school than a 7th grader who reads above grade level.

We were done with the test and we had time to kill. I started asking her questions and as she told me about Malcolm X's life and the murder of his father I wondered why her bookmark was still on page 80.

"Synia, how do you know all that when you are only on the fourth chapter," I asked.

"I've already read it," she replied.

"Why are you reading it again?"

"I don't have any other books to read. My uncle gets me books but they are too easy. I like thick books," she explained. I was intrigued. I grabbed the book and started quizzing her on the vocabulary.

"Do you know what 'fateful' means?" I asked.

"Yeah, well sort of and then I use the words around it to figure it out," she said happy to be the center of attention. We decided she needed some more books so I told her to meet me in my classroom after school. Imagine my joy when I heard her shouting at her literacy tutor that she couldn't come to tutoring that day, she was meeting Ms. Bell.

We went into the library and went to non-fiction because Synia said she liked learning about things that were real. We found a book about basketball and the inner city. She seemed somewhat interested. Then we found a book about the holocaust.

"Do you know what the holocaust is, Synia?"

"Oh my word! That's like Anne Frank. I read that book, that's the only book I ever read about the holocaust. Wow, I can't wait to read this one!" She went on and on holding the book tightily. I grabbed a book from the Redwall series for her because it was nice and thick.

Then we hit problems. How do we check them out? The "librarian" who doubles as a sort of TA/security guard was no where to be found. Synia went to tutoring while I devised a plan. I tried to sneak them out one entrance and set off the beepers. That was embarrassing. I asked three teachers how to check out the books, all of them English teachers. They looked at me blankly. This library? Can you do that? I've never seen anyone do that. Eventually I did corner the librarian/security guard and Synia became the first person to check out a book this school year. Hooray!

Some place else

2009-03-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

I hit "print preview" and then sigh in complete frustration. Only 4 of eight pages are written. It is a gorgeous spring day and I want to be anywhere but on my couch trying to squeeze 8 pages out of no research. This is a skill I failed to master as an undergrad at Pitt.

In exactly two months I will graduate from Penn and be done with school forever. Al-hamdu lilaah! Thus ends one of the longest seasons of my life. I remember elementary school and how I would fly through math worksheets and spend long afternoons reading on my bed. Then CHESS started and my life changed. Research papers, science fair projects, and late night study sessions before AP tests became the defining features of my life.

At Pitt I was known as a Friday night studier. I had my own desk at Hillman Library and spent Saturday mornings trying to learn Arabic at Starbucks. Every semester I struggled with discontentment and tried to appreciate the blessings of that season without wishing for what was to come. And now here I am, inches from the finish line and struggling again to love the process.

I do love to learn. I love books and questions and long discussions with my mom. I like taking notes and listening to a lecture from an expert. There is a bustle and excitement about universities that I will always be drawn to. But spring fever kills ambition in the best of us. I can't help but imagine my life without grad school. No more classes, no more readings, and no more papers. Yet, somehow even as I long for graduation I know I will miss school in some ways.

So time to buckle down and try to crank out four more pages. After all, this is the last paper I will ever write. It better be a good one.

Family

2009-03-01T17:33:00.000-08:00

Sunday is the best day of the week. My alarm goes off and my first thought is regret over how late I stayed up the night before. For a moment I debate getting up to read my devotions...and then I remember it is Sunday. I am not getting up to go to work. I am going to church. Oh happy day.

It takes me forty-five minutes to drive to my church. When I first moved to Philly this bothered me so much that I considered switching congregations. But now the hike to the suburbs is a holy and happy time. The music is blaring and I sing and talk to myself as I shake off the anxiety and frustration of the week and prepare my heart to meet with God's people. My excitement grows as I speed towards my destination, passing dozens of other drivers who are headed to King of Prussia or Longwood Gardens. I have not always loved the church. Even last year I struggled with the commitment. I thank God that his grace is persistent and that he continues to call us into the body of believers even when we resist.

When you walk through the doors of my church you can feel the warmth and the holiness of God's presence. The choir sings, the band plays, and hundreds of people lift their voices in unison to the savior. Words that I muttered to myself during the week become more powerful in the corporate context. In a way everyone else is singing the words to me, reminding me that God is greater than the PSSAs and even the hardships of North Philly.

I left my family to come to Philly and that continues to be the most painful sacrifice. But at church I have found another family, a larger and more diverse set of relatives. Whether I am hanging out with eight kids and sharing lunch, or talking to another single girl who teaches in Chester, I feel the bond and their support. The people of my church are what shore me up before each Monday.

My favorites are the Arabs. There is a surprising amount of Middles Easterners in our congregation and we quickly found each other, looking for the dark eyes and similar last names. In August we formed a group: The Middle Eastern Connection. So although I don't have my Jidu by my side in Philly, I do have scores of "cousins" hailing from Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon. We reminisce about the mother country, eat food, and speak in Arabic. It takes about five seconds to become friends with a fellow Arab. I say "inta min aiy balad?" and suddenly there is a stream of Egyptian slang. Instantly we are best friends.

God is so kind. He doesn't just surround me with fellow believers, he surrounds me with fellow Arabs. The day I left Hershey behind and began the lonely trek down 76 to Philly, I couldn't see what was waiting. I thought only of the students, the job, and the challenges. I never could have
imagined that in the years to come I would find fellow teachers, fellow Christians, and fellow Arabs. I came to Philly for a job and found a family.

This post is dedicated to Michael Iskander.

One Child

2009-02-25T17:38:00.000-08:00

The tears are welling up inside of me as I hit a wall of frustration. 7th graders are everywhere, swarming around my room. I am trying to send 2/3 of them to the library while managing the other third at a small table in the back of my room. Tensions are high, the PSSAs are only 12 school days away and the new superintendent of Philadelphia is threatening to shut down 35 schools this year. These stressors feed all the way down to my second period classroom where I am desperately trying to move my girls two categories, from "below basic" to "proficient" on the PSSA. I can feel the impossibility of it every morning as I try to teach scale factors to a student who does not know how to divide.

I finally chase 12 girls out of the room and sit down with the other 6 at a small group table in the back. Deraya is showing pictures of her cousin to all the girls instead of doing her work and I address her sternly.

"Ms. Bell, are you angry at us?" She asks bluntly.

"Yes, Deraya. I am angry at you girls today. Today was not a good day for our class," I answer candidly.

"But do you still love us?" Her question is disarming and I pause. For a moment I see her not as a twelve year old terror but as the child she is. Her face is still round and the eyes a bit fearful if you pay attention. I feel in her question the insecurity of her life. I am, after all, her second math teacher that year. And their math teacher was only the first one to leave them. The history teacher never came back after Christmas.

"Yes, Deraya," I said slowly, "I do love you guys." And I knew as I said it that it was true and I hoped her child's mind could hear the truth in it.

******

We were in the middle of the geometry high school benchmark when my phone rang. The tenth grade English teacher wanted to know if Shakirah could come to my class and "do math." At first I hesitated and protested that we were in the middle of a district test. Then I faltered, remembering Shakirah's impish smile.

"Ok, send her over but tell she has to sit in the back and be dead quiet," I said. I stopped Shakirah in the hallway and interrogated her. Apparently they "weren't doing anything" in her English class and she was bored.

"Please, Ms. Bell. Can you give me some math?" Shakirah feels the same way about math as I do. It calms her, she loves the predictability and the order of it. Her story is just as broken and tragic as my other girls, but she is very bright. And the girl loves numbers.

I searched my room and spotted an Algebra I book, something she could handle without much help. Flipping the pages to "solving systems of equations with substitution", I set about 50 problems before her. She grinned.

By many standards, today was a cataclysmic disaster. My 7th graders were out of control and most of my 10th graders completely missed the district benchmark because of an unannounced black history month speaker. But for one child...maybe two...I was able to make a difference. My 7th graders may not be proficient but at least they know they are loved.

Fight!

2009-02-12T14:23:00.000-08:00

For the past year and a half I had never seen a fight, which is a miracle considering how frequently they occur at my school. That streak ended yesterday.

Ciara was fuming when she came into my classroom but that was no strange occurence. She tended to be angry. As 7th period changed to 8th I felt the hallway swell with students. They seemed to be lingering and soon I heard some shouting. Ciara was back out in the hallway screaming at another 10th grader. I went out and told them to back down. I gently pushed Ciara back into my room and grabbed my geometry students out of the crowd. Happily assuming I had prevented a fight, I started teaching my lesson.

Yanny said she was going to her English teach to get an assignment. I didn't believe her but I couldn't quite convince myself she was lying. And more importantly I didn't have the energy to argue with her. We've had nothing but arguments since Christmas, a situation that grew more serious when Villanova elected her as their class president (argh! Democracy is so flawed). She returned from "English class" talking loudly about the chaos in the hallway. Carelessly, she insulted Ciara's group of friends. Ciara stood up and started screaming. I still didn't think they were serious and I told them to be quiet and then rolled my eyes.

I tried to coral Yanny into the hallway but she was rapidly approaching Ciara. Suddenly the earrings were off, the bags dropped, and the two girls had pounced on each other. Surprisingly I felt calm and completely unconflicted about whether or not I should try to break it up. Both girls are twice my size. They were rolling around on the floor trying as hard as possible to inflict pain. The other students tried to pull them off each other as I called for security. Hair weave was everywhere, a poster was town, and my SMART board barely escaped damage. Soon a police officer got one out of the room while the other stood cussing up a storm in the back of my room.

Once the two fighters were out I needed to calm down my remaining students and teach the lesson. My first move was to impeach Yanny which the whole class agreed to. With a new president and some level of peace we resumed our problem about the area of a hexagon.

And just like that life went back to normal.

Technology

2009-02-07T06:48:00.000-08:00

Things have shifted a little bit at my job, I have found more gratitude in my heart insteadof dread as I walk through the doors each morning. With the economy tumbling and friends losing jobs it seems selfish to complain about work. I have a job. Twice a month I have a paycheck. That should be enough.

Philadelphia School District doesn't seem to be feeling the pinch of The Great Recession. Recently a new technology initiative has been introduced at my school. It started small, a new projector that I used to project powerpoints onto my white board. Then I got a brand new Macbook. Sweet.

One day I walking into my classroom to see that a smartboard had been installed. It took the district another week to get me the pointers and the USB chord, but now everything is hooked up and my lessons are a flurry of click-pointing as geometric shapes shoot across the screen.

A few weeks later I find out that I have access to a laptop cart. This is a mixed blessing. It isn't that I don't appreciate 33 brand new Macbooks. It is just that when you start handing them out to 22 7th graders your discipline problems can multiply. I now have a new rule: you may not visit http://www.barbie.com/. Never thought I'd have to be that explicit.

5 weeks until the PSSAs start. We are still in the midst of the craziest part of the school year but it is happening. With the help of laptops, smart boards, and projectors we just might pass.

This post is dedicated to Ed Rendell.

Drexel

2009-02-03T14:39:00.000-08:00

I was beyond stressed. The knot in my stomach had been there since the weekend and I hadn't been able to eat much because of the tension in my body. My to-do list was impossible: a paper due for grad school, lesson plans to write, grading, phone calls to parents, and worksheets to copy. Not mention that I had no plan for what to teach the following day. We are 27 school days away from the PSSAs and 3 months away from my graduation.

Drexel, one of my geometry sections, filed in quietly as I was talking with someone from the district. Without me prompting them they all started doing the problem on the board. Soon they were at the board arguing over which formula to use and whether we needed to know the diameter or the radius. I almost laughed for joy.

Before Christmas Drexel was driving me crazy...now I love them. I suppose I always love my kids. But sometimes they are a joy to teach and sometimes they make me want to cry. I've won the battle against Drexel. Villanova, Penn, and (oh my!) Temple have yet to fall into line. Temple especially has been dishing out the disrespect lately. But every other day during 4th and 5th period I get to teach Drexel.

The class president in Don Don who likes to be referred to as President Alexander. I had her last year for algebra 1 and she drove me crazy. The uniform is yellow and grey and Don Don would go to great extremes to sneak purple in somehow. Headbands, socks, shoes, an undershirt, a hoodie, it never ended. Colors are banned at our school because of gangs so I was always addressing her.

She was elected president of our class two weeks ago and her leadership has changed everything. She can silence the whole class in one sentence--a feat I have yet to accomplish. And she is bright, scoring an 80% on the district geometry quiz. Her intelligence and creativity have led Drexel to new heights.

We are learning in my classroom. In the midst of stress and angry students it is hard for me to see it. But then I step back and watch them. We are doing real math in my class. Despite their sqawking I have refused to water down my class even though most of my students came to me three grade levels behind. We're charging through the 10th grade curriculum with dogged determination.

My grad paper was so-so, my grades are a mess, 75% of my students hate me, and I am not sure how many of my 7th graders will pass the PSSA. But I know one thing....Drexel is learning.

Storm Day

2009-01-27T02:40:00.000-08:00

4 years ago I was in the middle of the North Pacific, sitting on deck six trying to not be nauseous. The girls next to me were crying and our captain had just announced that one of our ship's engines had died. We were on a program called Semester at Sea and we were trapped between two giant storms. A fifty foot wave had crested the bridge of our vessel and wiped out our navigational equipment. Now we bobbed up and down on the raging waves while the coast guard carefully monitored our position.

God spared our ship that day, but altered the course of my life. Instead of Japan I went to Hawaii, but a greater shift occurred in my heart. Suddenly the fraility of my life became tangible. I prayed and a resignation took place inside of me, a willingness to do whatever my savior asked. Later that semester God began to focus my desire to be an inner city school teacher.

Now every year, on January 27th, I celebrate Storm Day. It is a small marker, an altar I build in my mind. Today I am thankful for life, I am thankful that God calmed the seas and spared our ship. But also grateful for all the times following where he protected me. In my travels I've had many close encounters, times when things should have gone differently. But God placed a hedge around me.

Today I am running on less sleep than normal...and it is Tuesday which is normally a mundane and annoying day. My kids might be cranky and there will probably be unpleasant surprises waiting for me in my classroom. But today I will not complain or worry. Today I will remember.

If you want to read more about the mishaps on the M.V. Explorer you can follow this link to my old blog:
http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/kaytethegreat/sasspring05/1106885580/tpod.html

The End of an Era

2009-01-24T16:52:00.000-08:00

I was five, my brothers were seven, and my baby sister was a shy two year old with a pile of dark curls on her head. Our parents had promised us a pet if my brothers stopped sucking their thumbs, but the promise had gone unfulfilled for two years and was long forgotten. So when my mom packed us into the Caprice Classic and announced she had a surprise we had low expectations.

We pulled Buttons out of a barn full of newborn kittens. The calico farm cat had an unknown father (probably a stray) and soon proved to be rather frisky. She hid in our basement for three days when we took her home and finally emerged to climb frantically up the cinder block walls. Not exactly the gentle kitten we had expected.

She found things to kill: mice, moles, birds, and baby rabbits (which deeply distressed my little sister). A spastic kitten, Buttons turned into a petulant adult. She never forgave us for getting Whiskers...but anyone acquainted with that cat and his bladder problems wouldn't blame her. She was unmoved by our affections and relentless in her insistence on the most expensive wet food. Any attempt by my dad to cut costs was met by a hunger strike.

Buttons died today at the noble age of 18. We saw it coming...first the arthritis, then the diabetes, and then the constant meowing. And then suddenly I am on the phone, hearing about the makeshift viewing my family held in the living room.

It wasn't really about the cat. Working at my school, I am used to a constant state of grief. Images of seven coffins at one funeral--one extra small for a child--are still emblazoned on my mind. I don't have the emotional energy to muster any remorse for an animal that suffered so little and enjoyed such a happy life. But my brother summed up my feelings well when he said, "it is not so much the death of a cat as it is the end of an era."

Buttons represented my childhood, she was the last stubborn reminder of those innocent days. To grow up can be a sorrowful thing.

I am short, but I used to be shorter. I couldn't see over countertops and I had to stand on a stool to add detergent to the washer. Saturdays used to mean Fireman's Park and sliding boards, not lesson plans and grad school. Gabe used to be "Dado" and now he is getting married. We used to all live at 6 Royal and now only one of us still lives at 9 Eagle. I am now closer to having a child, than being a child.

As the door of childhood creaks shut behind me, I am peering around the corner. With tears still in my eyes over what I have have lost--over what is gone--I feel the curious stirrings of what comes next. It is unknown, but it will certainly be just as happy as the day we brought a kitten home in a box.

This post is dedicated to Buttons and all that she represented.

City

2009-01-17T06:17:00.001-08:00

The lights of boathouse row glisten even brighter when it is cold. The city stands bold and brillant against the night sky, man's small mark on the horizon. A lone runner is defiantly pounding the pavement in University City, his breath coming in short puffs of fog as he quickens his pace.

It is Friday night and the Hiola girls are out on the town. My roommate and I are heading in West Philly in search of crepes and my friend from Pittsburgh, Erin, is taggin along. Without fail, going into the city makes my heart soar. The traffic has stopped bothering me and on the weekend it is even better because I don't have the pressure of grad school hanging over me. We round the bend on 76 and pass my favorite mural. I remember the first time I took this road, that May weekend so long ago when I came to Philly to interview. I was alone and scared, intimidated by any highway that had four lanes.

Now I lace confidently in between the traffic, taking a shortcut through the ghetto, and finding my favorite free parking spot. Penn is icy cold in the 9 degree weather, but still beautiful. In four months I will graduate so I am trying to soak up the campus that I have barely enjoyed. Market street is a miserable wind tunnel, Chestnut houses my favorite bookstore, and Locust is the peaceful walk in the middle of campus that turns magical at night as the lights fill the trees.

The crepes are piles of chocolatey goodness, made even more delicious by the Ivy League decor of the cafeteria. I feel a small tinge of regret that I have spent so little time at Penn. But when you don't live there it becames so inconvenient to pack up, drive, find parking, and then find a place to study that I rarely come for anything but my classes.

The night passes quickly and after a full week of teaching I feel my head bobbing. Probably also induced by the sugar high. Erin, Maggie, and I hurry through the dark streets back to my car, laughing as we recount stories from undergrad in Pittsburgh. Spontaneously, I decide to go home through the city.

We avoid 76, instead driving right into Center City. Maggie, a history teacher, morphs into a tour guide and fills our car with anecdotes and facts about the surrounding buildings. Ahead of us City Hall looms large, William Penn stands on top casting a blessing on the city. We take the awkward, squarish round-about and land on Benjamin Franklin Parkway. My heart thrills. It reminds me of my races and of happy afternoons spent touring the museums in the city. Maggie wants to talk about the architecture--I just love the flags. I make a wish every time I pass the flag of a country I have visited. The cedar on Lebanon's flag reminds me of where I have come from and the bright lights of Philly's sky scrapers call me back to where I am going.

Kelly Drive is the happy, serpentine road that leads to home. It is fun to drive fast on this road, free at last from the traffic. We pass all my favorite bridges, the river sparkles peacefully beside us. And then all too quickly we are back home, snuggling up on the couch after a wonderful, but deathly cold evening.

This post is dedicated to Radd.

Dawn

2009-01-12T16:57:00.000-08:00

I am never mentally prepared for Monday. The adjustment is too harsh, gone is the warmth and security of West Chester and suddenly I am back in the turmoil of the inner city. It continues to shock me.

This morning I prayed again for strength and slipped into my minivan in the quiet of the early morning. The moon and stars still glistened brightly in the winter darkness. Each day I am startled by the power of dawn, it is my source of courage as I head back to the battleground of my classroom. Every day the sun rises over North Philly. Every day. It is the most constant demonstration of mercy in our lives. It doesn't matter what happened the night before, what atrocities were committed or what words of blasphemy were uttered. The guilt of North Philly only grows as we murder and pilfer each other, struggling in the darkness of poverty and sin. And yet every day the sun rises. It is a miracle.

My first stop at school is the copy room where I meet an unhappy gathering of nervous and irritable teachers. The first years look unhealthy and pale at this point in the year. I feel for them when they respond predictably that they "did work all weekend." Not a happy way to live. Many of them have lost weight and are having trouble sleeping. Since Christmas break two more teachers have quit.

7th graders bound into my room talking all at once about their weekends. My great goal for every math class is to keep all 22 of them in their seats. I have yet to succeed. In between the worksheets and lecturing I try to whisper some encouragement to the quiet ones in the back and put a comforting hand on the shoulders of my lowest level students.

The tenth graders are grumpy and petulant. 2 hours of their whining as I teach. But I count the victories differently than they do. Today Ciara announced she was no longer doing work in my class. I retorted that she was lucky I cared more about her education than she did. Then I called her mom. Check. I win.

The obstacles right now are real and at times overpowering. 40 school days until we face our nemesis, the PSSA. Each morning I am greeted by countless rebellious and rambunctious teenage girls--regardless of how little sleep I got the night before. But beneath it all there are so many mercies. The hug from a lonely 7th grader, the smile from one of my old students, and a quiet worship song playing in the background as I stay up late to grade. And regardless of how we fail the next morning the sun will rise.

A Time to Mourn

2009-01-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

"Ladies, I need your attention!" The loudspeaker startles all of us in the midst of fourth period. For a second I am confused...then I remember.

"On December 26th we lost a member of our community, we lost one of our own. We are going to have a moment of silence," my principal's voice is shaky with grief. I feel my stomach drop as I stand in the middle of my tenth graders. Don't cry, don't cry Bell, I think to myself. The room goes dead quiet and we all automatically bow our heads. I stare at the floor and try not to think, trying not to let myself imagine the flames and the piercing grief of a family that just lost seven children. But all class the girls want to talk about it, forcing me to relive the tragedy.

*******

Brittney pops her head into my room later during my prep. She never does that, she "hates me" apparently.

"Are you ok?" I ask looking at her.

"No. She was my cousin," she says. "Sh-she lived at my house." There is a slight stutter.

"I'm so sorry, Brittney," I offer dumbly. No one trains you for grief counseling. They just drone on and on about curriculum and differentiation. No one tells you what to do with the empty seat and the void. I feel numb and she wasn't even one of my students. I can't imagine...no I won't imagine that. I have come to love them all so dearly.

*******

"Zykia!" I snap her name. For the past hour she and her group of friends have been mocking me and disregarding all of my instructions. "You are being completely disrespectful. What is your problem?"

"We're upset about the fire. She was our friend," Zykia explains still staring defiantly back at me. I crouch beside her and lower my voice.

"I know...but you are taking all of that out on me. I understand that you're upset, but you can't treat me like this. It's mean," I say. Zykia's eyes soften.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Bell."

"I forgive you."

We're grieving at Rhodes. I can see it in my principal, but worse I can see it in all of my tenth graders. The girls are nervous and irritable. I think each death reminds them of all the others. Of other fires, of shootings, of cancer and diabetes. I suppose my job is to try and help to forget about all that and force them to think for two hours about math. It is a poor comforter, but at least it brings some amount of "normal" back to their lives.

Sad News

2008-12-31T09:27:00.000-08:00

On Christmas day a family gathered in South Philly to eat soup and watch movies. They lived in the basement of a three-level house and were immigrants from Liberia. Someone improperly filled the kerosene heater and it exploded. Immediately a fire filled the basement, seperating half of them from the basements solitary exit. There were no smoke alarms, no carbon monoxide detector. The inside staircase had been destroyed during remodeling. Four people escaped. 7 died. One of these was a student at my school.

I forget sometimes what we are up against. No teacher, no matter how capable, can prevent a fire. On Monday I expect the halls to be quieter. She didn't have my class...but it will still feel empty.

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20081227_Portable_heater_sparks_fire_that_kills_seven.html

Resolved

2008-12-30T06:16:00.000-08:00

The year is almost over and my ambition grows. As I sit in the midst of math textbooks and plan out the next few months my overreaching dreams are rekindled. We will learn calculus, we will do homework, we will learn how to solve word problems.

Break is a wonderful reflective time when I can sort through all the details of my life and reevaluate. It puts things in perspective, a deep breath of air before another lap. Yesterday as I was hiking with my dad I started bothering him with questions about marrying my mom, having kids, and working almost thirty years for the same company. I wondered what he was thinking and planning when he was my age, still single and at the very start of his career. It made me want to plan and pray for my own future--a life that is so undefined. I don't know the details but I have driven a few stakes in the ground.

Build Something that Will Last

So many things will crumble during my lifetime. I could slave away at my school only for it to be shut down in five years. What is certain? Where can I lay a brick and know that it will not be moved? I want to invest my life into a community, into an organization that will survive generations and political revolutions. For me, that means the church.

Do What is Before You

In college I dabbled in so many different things. To be honest, I never imagined I'd still be in the U.S. right now. Instead, I envisioned grad school in Beirut and life in a refugee camp, interpreting in war torn countries. Some times when I read a blog about Liberia, or see a headline about Hamas I feel a pang. What am I doing here? Why can't I do something more important, more glorious? Amd although I think the pining for stuffed grape leaves and labneh, the yearning for a different call and a different life is dangerous. Before me is an incredible opportunity, it is a privelege to teach where I teach and to serve the students I love. There is no soundtrack playing as I teach the Pythagorean theorem, and it is rare that someone gushes about the contribution I am making, but in the end this job is what has been laid before me. So until life changes, I want to teach as best I can.

Invest in Your Family

My dad built his life around his family. One day early in marriage he found out he was about to be the father of twins and everything shifted, weeknights would never be the same. Thus began an 26 year long career as "daddy." The piggy back rides, games of daddy lion, football games, and college visits might have seemed common and ordinary but they were not unintentional. My dad chose to invest in his kids, to spend time with his wife, to care for his parents.

So as I juggle the demands of career and grad school I also feel my heart tugged towards Hershey. Some days a lunch with my sister-in-law or an evening spent at my brother's house is a better investment that yet another three hours spent entering grades.

I suppose someday I will go hiking in Mount Gretna with my children and more of my life will be behind me than ahead of me. My memories will outweigh my dreams. I hope on that day I will have lived a life that mattered.

This post is dedicated to "the greatest dad we know."

Wrapping Paper

2008-12-27T04:50:00.000-08:00

"I'll have a grande gingerbread latte," I declared and with that one statement the holidays officially began. The steaming red cup of caffeinated goodness marked the halfway point of my ride home. I had pulled out of my school's parking lot and jumped right onto the turnpike. There was nothing better than leaving that world for the warmth and joy of Central PA.

In the back seat a pile of happy Christmas presents bobbed up and down in my spacious minivan. I could see their brilliant red paper as I sang along to the Christmas best mix on the radio. In my mind I still saw all the faces of my kids and in my purse I had a card from one of my 7th graders:

Ms. Bell, you are a great teacher. Last year I was so confused in math. This year I am not so confused. Merry Christmas!

I pulled up at my parent's house and was immediately greeted by the craziness that is my family. The house is filled to capacity this year with friends and siblings. We barely fit around the dining room table any more and that is without any grandchildren. This is going to get interesting in the future.

My twin brothers spent most of their time trying to prank one another. Their favorite gag is taking a wrapping paper roll, sticking it right next to someone's ear, and screaming "Merry Christmas!" as loudly as possible. The effect was rather startling for all of us--especially our 18 year old cat.

Christmas always passes more quickly than expected. Inevitably the tree stands sulllenly in the midst of unwrapped gifts and clusters of torn bows and boxes. However, this year I am more grateful for family and slightly less focused on gifts (my three-tiered Christmas was a success tho). Our family expands like an amoeba, our row at church is starting to spill into the aisle as more people squeeze in past my parents. The presents are all opened and now I am sipping up all the moments I have left with cousins and siblings. Each late night dinner seems to get more raucous than the one before. Someone starts with a story about work, soon there are impersonations, another sibling mentions the economy, and then like a jack-in-the-box the banned topic of politics pops up. We have yet to solve any national problems but two days after Christmas I think we have debated them all.

There is still a week and a half until I go back. To be honest, I haven't thought at all about my kids. I know they are having a very different Christmas than mine, but sometimes you have to back away and rest before you can plunge back in. Soon I will start planning and praying. For now I am more focused on watching Everybody Loves Raymond and eating cookies.

This post is dedicated to my cousin Andrea.

Hope for the Holidays

2008-12-10T12:56:00.000-08:00

I returned to school after Thanksgiving buoyant and optimistic. 3 weeks and 2 days until Christmas break. I imagined a happy, festive three weeks of carefree learning until we departed for a nice vacation.

Hardly. The theme of my life lately has been "what can go wrong, will go wrong." Everything from annoyances to inner city problems have been piling up until I found myself calling out sick just to cope.

Small things can cause a great deal of stress. 5 weeks ago the plug for my laptop stopped working. That insignificant piece of plastic started a chain reaction of disasters. My computer died and with it all my Word documents and my grades. Also, my ability to use a projector at school. I borrowed my roommate's MAC and almost destroyed it. I took my computer to two repairmen and neither could fix it. Now I call every day to hear "it should be done tomorrow." I feel like I am back in Egypt...bokra, inshallah.

The laptop has dramatically increased my stress as I try to finish two grad classes and continue to teach every day. Trying to write a paper during my prep and grading my kids tests during my own classes is my current strategy for balancing everything in my life.

And then there are the kids. It grieves me because I love Christmas and it used to be a time of such joy. It seems like I used to finish college finals the first weekof December and then would fritter away the days until the 25th shopping and wrapping presents. Now I teach until the 23rd with some of the most disgruntled and obnoxioous adolescent girls I have ever encountered.

They are cranky, rebellious, and rude...but with good reason. They dread Christmas the way they dread back-to-school night. Because for many of them the Christmas commercials and billboards only remind them of what they don't have and what is not going to happen. Many hate the long break because it means two weeks in a cold house with no free lunches. Others despise the holidays because it reminds them of all the family members they have lost. They arrive in my classroom and take all of this out on me. Students who used to hug me now shout at me and declare their absolute hatred for my class.

And I am no silent sufferer. Stressed out and tired of their attitudes I am all too quick to shout right back. I had to tape record one of my classes for graduate school and my tone shocked me. It wasn't just firm. It was angry, frustrated, and communicated complete exasperation.

We need help in North Philly. The gangs and violence from last year haven't disappeared. More young girls are pregnant. Yesterday I found a letter from the boyfriend of one of my students. The return address was a prison. The situation in my classroom alone is hopeless. The girls are mad at me, and I am mad at them. Love fades, bitterness grows. It is so much easier to worry than to hope.

That is why Christmas has become more meaningful for me. It no longer is a carefree season--in fact, it is a particularly stressful time at school. However, I am grateful for that because it has driven home the truth of the holiday. Every day I am so aware that North Philly needs a savior...that I need a savior. We are trying on our own and we are failing.

So as we eagerly count the days until the holiday the anticipation in my heart grows as well. A savior was promised and savior was provided. No matter how dark December may seem redemption is still certain.

This post is dedicated to Mark Prater.

Family

2008-11-29T10:09:00.000-08:00

Breaks come so slowly. Each day the kid grow more antsy and the teachers more weary. The day before Thanksgiving was interminable. My kids defined the word obnoxious, interupting me constantly with comments about turkey and stuffing. Hyper because of the approaching holiday and the candy all the other teachers were feeding them, they challenged my every move. Ms. Bell, whhhhhhyyyyy are we doing work today? they whined. To make matters worse my administration scheduled me out of my lunch and prep. Tired and hungry, I taught math for 8 and half hours and then crumpled into my car.

The drive from Philly to Lebanon county is picturesque and peaceful. I watch amazed every time as the culture changes right before my eyes. This time it was dark and a few stars pierced the early evening as I tried not to speed down 76. Soon the apartments are replaced by farms and the familar dairy cows make me nostalgic. When I exit 76 I am on a two lane road with farms on either side and lone farmer's market, stubbornly still trying to sell Thanksgiving provisions at 6 o' clock.

This year when I turned left onto my family's road I could see my childhood home glowing on the top of the hill. To my shame I got choked up and a tear might have even emerged. The place looked so warm and secure, tucked away from traffic and crime. It reminds me of when I was younger and life was simpler. A few minutes later and I am in the door, hugging parents and siblings and smelling the sausage stuffing and yankee candle.

For the past couple of days my siblings have come streaming in, leaving their jobs and college classes to gather in our family room and chat. We compare stories about Living Hope and Covenant Fellowship, Gabe fills us in on his latest adventures living in inner city Harrisburg and Kristen is eager to vent about a ridiculous professor. Mike and Destiny have developed a baking obssession and strategizing about apple pies and cinnamon buns as they flip through recipe books.

It takes about one hour for me to forget about Philly, two to forget my kids. As I am bouncing my baby cousin on my knee I slip into holiday time where only traditions and food exist. There will be a turkey basted in apple cider and games after we eat dessert. Gabe will kill any tension with some hilarious story and Kristen will succeed in conquering me yet again in a tickle fight. My dad will want to watch It's a Wonderful Life and we'll hit all the tech stores at 6 am on Black Friday. Now we are adding new traditions...picking out a real Christmas tree despite my mom's alergies. Kristen wants it to be perfect and Mike just wants to use the saw. Destiny is standing by trying to take pictures in between fits of laughter.

On Monday I will walk back into my classroom with a pocketful of happy memories. My kids will be tired out (hopefully) and a little grumpy. And we'll head back into reality wishing the break had lasted a little longer.

All That is Good

2008-11-17T17:33:00.000-08:00

The bleakness of November threatens to dampen my soul. The trees have lost their last burst of splendor and now their vibrant leaves lie in a rotting pile in the corner of my driveway. Their skeletal branches warn of the long winter. Even the wind is trying to prepare me, announcing the frigid arrival of winter. And I am tempted to think of sad things, of a suffering friend or the mundane trials and annoyances of a typical Monday.

And then my conscious is pricked. A worship song comes on the radio and my soul is aroused from its bleak stupor. I remember all that is good, all that God has done and all that I must be grateful for. Here are a few of the happy thoughts that rush through my mind.

My family. Thanksgiving break is quickly approaching and with it a much needed trip back to Central PA where there will be food and laughter. I miss my siblings more and more the older I get. Now that I live in Philly and afternoon spent talking with a sister has become a treasure, something not to be wasted.

Christmas is a month and half away. Outwardly I complain about the early sales and the obnoxious music that began in October. But secretly I am happy. Especially at Starbucks. What is it about those red cups that just puts me in a good mood.

Laeemah ate lunch with me today. She apologized for her behavior in my class and then began opening up to me. She told me about her three year old, the child support checks, and her dream of attending Millersville University (because that is where my sister Kristen went). We pour over a letter from Dickinson together, analyzing the financial aid packet sentence by sentence. As the lunch drew to a close she looked me in the eyes and told me I was always the first teacher to notice when something was wrong. She put me on her short list of teachers that she knew cared.

Ariel did her work in my class and wants to make up the work she missed last week. She was at a funeral for her sister who was shot in a driveby. I can't imagine her grief but I am encourage by the 7th grader's resilience.

Sunday. Whenever I am distraught I remember Sunday. It is the jewel of my week. Today as I sat dejected and discouraged looking at the low test scores of my 7th graders I let my mind drift to the day before. I remembered praying for India and worshipping with my family at Covenant. I laughed as I recalled the happy teasing and joking at the Smiths house as we watched a pathetic football game (the Steelers are definitely the better team). And I felt peace return as I remembered the concert I went to Sunday night. The hymns of Keith and Kristyn Getty chase away all shadows of doubt and anxiety.

Sometimes you can't let you mind go where it wants to. Sometimes you have to make it choose a different path. Don't ponder the dead leaves and dwell on the despair of this temporary world. Instead look for the redemption that lies just beneath the surface. Force your mind down a different path and think of all that is good.

Persistence

2008-11-15T07:36:00.000-08:00

Chante's mom hangs up the phone and I am ready to bang my head into the wall. I haven't seen the pregnant 7th grader since our conversation the week before. I called her once to wake her up at 6:00 but her mom sounded less than thrilled about this so I didn't call again...until Friday afternoon.

The conversation was completely unhelpful. I said something along the lines of "Chante hasn't been in school for six days and she has already flunked for the first grading period. She is in danger of flunking 7th grade, she will be repeating next near if she doesn't come." Her mom responded that Chante had morning sickness. Argh. Yes, she has morning sickness. Yes, she also has a slew of doctor's appointments. But what am I supposed to do? Let her drop out of school.

I can feel Chante's life changing and it is driving me crazy. I can see her sitting at home, pregnant, waiting for a baby. She is thinking about the baby. I am thinking about when she is 16 with a 3 year old and a 6th grade education. 6th graders can't calculate a 15% discount. 6th graders can't balance a checkbook. 6th graders can't read their paycheck and understand the deductions. Where do students like Chante go when they disappear from my classroom? I don't know. I imagine a dark and frightening existence. Next week I am calling Chante's house again.

Each of my geometry classes is named after a Philadelphia college, an act of faith on my part. Drexel has done little to live up to their name. They are my worst class and Thursday was a record performance of disrespectful attitudes. On Monday they were so bad that I informed them they "had just been the worst class of the schoolyear." They raised the bar on Thursday with an even more astounding display of teenage ignorance. How do I describe what occurred?

I greet all my students as they come in. Jazzy is loud and hyper from the outset, but she still sits down and slowly starts working. Sarne on the other hand has one of the worst attitudes I have ever encountered. She was formerly my class president but when she lost in the second grading period elections to Ashia, she went South quickly.

"Hi, Sarne," I say from the doorway.

"Don't talk to me, Ms. Bell," she says as she shoves past me and slumps into her desk, immediately putting her head down to sleep.

When I try to teach the lesson Sarne wakes up to scream at me.

"This is so confusing! You aren't explaining it! No one understands!" I pause as she launches these bullets. She fails to recognize that sleeping thru class and screaming at me might be adding to the confusion. "I hate your class, you are so disorganized," she concludes throwing her compass and ruler onto the floor. This last insult sticks--because it is true. False accusations are easier to dodge. You are a racist. You hate me. You never teach us anything. The more outlandish the charge the easier it is to ignore it. But others hit closer to home. I kick Sarne out of my class. She refuses to leave. I call security. They remove her.

Order is not restored. Jazzy has flipped out for no apparent reason and is now telling jokes and talking loudly. No one will quiet down except for the students who are sleeping. I stop, glare at them, and then pray. Some peace returns to my soul even tho my classroom is in chaos and I walk over and quietly close the classroom door.

Class ends, a few girls skip their lunch detentions and I am left alone with Ashia and her friend Dia. I didn't ask Dia to stay, she is failing my class. But for some reason she seems to think she is invited to the presidential lunch meeting.

"Ashia, we need to talk. Drexel is so far behind the other geometry sections because of the behavior. You guys have got to stop acting like this. What is going on?" For ten minutes Ashia and Dia discuss different social dynamics, confessing that they are so confused in class it is hard not to act up. Without me prompting them, they both independently apologized for their behavior. And then Ashia said something I never will forget.

"Ms. Bell, you know what your problem is? You won't give up on us. You care too much. Our other teachers don't care. You won't kick Jazzy out because you know that she will just get more and more behind. And when people are sleeping you won't let them. The other teachers don't say anything. But you just keeping tapping us and shaking us and waking us up. You don't do it twice. You just keep doing it the whole way through class because you won't give up on anyone...I guess maybe that is a good thing."

My mom says persistence is the key in parenting. It isn't so much about getting it right that one day. It is about years of days where you keep asking the tough questions, keep driving them to activities, and keep praying for them. Imperfection doesn't even begin to describe me as a teacher. In that classroom with Drexel I was angry, there were moments when I felt hatred towards them and I had to force myself to calm down. But I am not going to give up on them. Every morning I am begging God for strength and every day I am loving them as much as I can...and praying that after 190 days some of them might change.

Chante

2008-11-06T17:43:00.000-08:00

"Ms. Bell, you called my house and said I had to come and make up a lot of work," the skinny 7th grader announced from my doorway. I looked up, annoyed. Grades had already gone in for the first marking period and I was tired of the endless barage of pestering students.

"First of all, who are you?" I questioned sternly. I stared at her face trying to recognize her.

"Miss! I am Chante," she said glaring at me. My jaw dropped.

"Chante Brown?" I said incredulously remembering the name listed on my roster.

"Yes, now where is my work?" I jumped out of my seat grabbing my gradebook. Here was a student I had completely given up on coming to me for help.

"Chante," I lectured, "I already failed you. Do you have any idea how many absences you have? 19. You have 19 absences since school started." Those are only the unexcused absences in my book. Truth be told, I only think she came to school for a week in September.

"Oh....well, I was sick," she explained. I was about to continue to my lecture when she placed her hand on her abdomen. My stomach sank. She can't be more than 13 years old.

"Chante...." I started. How do you talk to a pregnant 7th grader?

"I'm four months," she declared nonchalantly, "I am getting an ultrasound later today." I questioned her for awhile. More than one student has feigned pregnancy in my class. But Chante wasn't lying. My usual questions of "Boy or girl" and "what names" stuck in my mouth. 16 may be young to become a mom but I'm accustomed to that now. 13...13 is just too young. I kept staring at her skinny arms and girlish face.

Focus, focus. You are here to help her get an education. How can you help her get an education, I forced myself to think clearly and make a plan.

"What is your phone number?" I asked, "you are officially going on my wake up call plan. If I wake you up at six can you get to school on time? And I am printing you off a November calendar. I will sign your calendar every day that you are here by 8. You can't miss any days in November. Have perfect attendance and I will get you something. What do you want? What's your favorite candy bar?" Chante stared back at me and I remembered she was having a baby. Maybe I should buy her diapers instead of a candy bar. "Well, we can decide on the prize later. Here is some make up work."

She took the papers and walked away, her backpack bobbing as she raced down the hall. Everything about her was girlish. I crumpled into my chair and tried to get back to planning.

World Series

2008-10-30T17:48:00.000-07:00

The Phillies won the World Series and sent the city into chaos. I watched the end of the game and then heard the sound of car horns, pots and pans, and random shouting drifting from Center City up to my home. The next day everyone was hung over and grumpy at school. I wore a Phillies hat while teaching and rewrote my examples to include Chase Utley (who is amazing)

But the victory put everyone in a bad mood because of an administration disaster. I'll give you the timeline below.

Monday: Mayor Nutter announces that if the Phillies win we will not have school the day of the parade. Problem? Mr. Nutter does not control the schools and can't technically make that decision.

Tuesday: Barack Obama told Philadelphians that if we won we should all skip school and work the next day. Barack Obama also does not control the schools.

Wednesday night: Our boys bring home the championship! The school district of Philadelphia posts the following message online:

"Congratulations, Phillies! All schools and adminstration offices will be OPEN on October 30th."

Thursday: A small and disgruntled group of students shows up at school. The phone is ringing off the hook in the office as parent after parent calls the school to ask about Friday. At this time all charter schools happily announce that school is cancelled for Friday. We the sad public schools make no such announcement.

Yet another example of administrative confusion in our lovely city. At least we know how to play baseball (-:

Quitters

2008-10-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

4 teachers have quit so far this year. The result is a chaotic scramble at our school as we try to fill classrooms so no one is sitting without a teacher. Our staff is stretched so thin.

I teach every 10th grader in the school geometry. A week into the schoolyear they switched me from 9th to 7th because a 7th grade math teacher quit. Soon after that the 11th graders started showing up in my room. Their algebra 2 teacher was struggling and they were totally lost. Why couldn't I teach them Algebra 2? When the seniors started begging me for help with precalculus I started feeling pulled in too many directions.

Meanwhile the athletic director was calling me...asking me to coach. On the school announcements they are pleading for a staff member to step up and become the drill team leader. I stayed focused and started my quilt club, not letting myself think about all the other vacancies.

Today the algebra 2 teacher quit. So the poor 11th graders have gone from a struggling teacher to no teacher. But 11th grade is a PSSA test year, so our roster chair sat down and did some crazy rearranging. Some of that rearranging involved my best friend at school Ms. Stine. She teaches science, but suddenly she was reassigned to one section of algebra 2. She has no math background.

So today at lunch I was tutoring an 11th grader who had yet to be informed that her teacher quit. As I tried desperately to catch her up I was calming Ms. Stine down...giving advice about how to teach the hardest math class at our school. Crazy.

Later in the day Ms. Stine gets a call. They are desperate yet again, this time for an after-school tutor. The subject? Literacy.

Ms. Stine now teaches every single PSSA subject. Kudos to her.

All this is by October. Last year no one quit until November. Things are still going well in my classroom but I feel the strain of other people leaving. There are too many empty classrooms in our school. Today 7 teachers called out sick. It is like trying to raise a barn with five people. If the whole town would just show up this would be easy.

Friendship

2008-10-17T06:01:00.000-07:00

The day I met Beth I was five years old. We lived in a duplex where all the walls seemed to be dark brown. Kristen was a baby and Beth and I still clung to our dads' legs when meeting new people. We went outside to play and hid behind a pine tree. It was the start of a perfect friendship.

Our birthdays fall within ten days of each other so over the years we have celebrated together whether at a gymnastics party (with bubble gum donuts) or at a surprise Sweet 16 with a Mary Kay representative. But the shared birthdays pale in comparison with the academic projects. Beth and I teamed up in every CHESS class, she significantly boosted my science grade. Whether we were watching a movie on the Ring of Fire or trying to create a Lego model of Camelot, there was always laughter as we continued our pursuit of an A.

When you are friends with someone for 18 years you go through many seasons. You see each other grieve and celebrate. There are summers of childhood bliss and of endless boredom. For Beth it has meant seeing me at my worst, when I am cranky or bitter or tired or aloof. She was there when I totaled my car, got cut from the basketball team, and single-handedly destroyed an entire Christian Lit performance. We've walked the two-mile country road next to her house countless time talking about the upcoming play, our acceptance into college, or boyfriends. A few months ago it was an entirely different conversation....Dan had finally asked for her hand in marriage.

Thus ends an era of sleepovers, science projects, and pranks (well maybe not the pranks). Tomorrow as I watch her take her vows my heart will be overflowing with gratitude to God for all the happy Friday nights and Tuesday mornings we shared together.

The Hallway

2008-10-09T16:12:00.000-07:00

Whack! Shaheedah bams Barbara in the back of the head while sauntering to her seat. It is the last in a long list of offenses Shaheedah has committed that morning. I sigh and glare at her. She is pretending not to care about my reaction but her little body is tense as she feels my ire.

"Shaheedah, come out in the hall with me. Everyone else, see if you can get through the rest of example 3 before we come back," I say grabbing my clip board. Shaheedah sidles out, leaning against a row of lockers where her classmates can't see me chastise her. I position myself in the doorway where I can still put down any insurections that might arise during my absence.

"Shaheedah, what is going on?" I whisper, suprising her with the gentleness of my voice. Her top lip is quivering. I know she is close to tears. "Listen, you are an excellent student. I am more than willing to praise you and give you shout-outs when you are doing well. But your behavior in my class is out of control today. Is everything alright?"

A minute later Shaheedah is back in my classroom, quiet and pensive after my little speech. The hallway has become my new office for small conferences. Away from the peer pressure of their classmates my 7th graders morph back into little girls. Shaheedah is all attitude, she fights and probably belongs to a gang. Beneath it tho she is desperate to please me, one glare from me melts her.

On a different morning Tiera and Synia asked to speak to me in the hall. Imagine my shock when they dutifully ratted out their classmates, telling me which girls had taken my stuff while a substitute was there. I didn't care about the stuff--a few stickers and a pencil--what touched me was that Tiera and Synia were so offended on my behalf.

T'Keyah grabbed my elbow and dragged me into the hall. "I have to tell you something" she had whispered and I grew nervous thinking there was going to be a fight later that day. But once we were out of the classroom she began recounting the details of her birthday party the day before. For a moment I thought of interupting her, confused that she thought this was something I needed to hear. Thankfully, I realized quickly that she had to tell someone and I was the only one who would listen. T'Keyah is extremely smart but socially awkward and has few friends. So I chuckled as she described her sister smashing the cake into her face and offered a belated "happy birthday."

The hall in front of my classroom has become a bustling counseling center. Students who don't have me as a teacher stop by to say "hi." My students from last year are late to their real classes because they sneak into mine. One morning I looked up with surprise to see a 9th grader hiding in my 7th grade math class, her yellow shirt sticking out in the sea of grey 7th grade uniforms. She thought I wouldn't notice and was hoping she could sit there quietly. I kicked her out, silently wishing I could let her stay.

My kids like me. It is a stange feeling. They tell me about their weekends. They tell me about their siblings, the political debates, and their opinions on the cop killings that are sending shock waves through our community. These little conversations are what I live for, they are why I love my job. I can only imagine how many stories we will share by June.

Breathe Deep

2008-10-01T04:58:00.000-07:00

The morning starts too fast and I find myself rushing around my room trying to prepare before my 7th graders arrive. I never win that race because they have a habit of coming early. First five minutes, then ten minutes, and now a few straggle in 20 minutes before class officially starts. Adorable with their still childlike faces, they want to talk to me about their cousins, Old Country Buffet, and their grandma who is in the hospital. Normally when I see them I surrender, skipping to the track O For A Heart on my Ruckus player and sighing as once again I forsake the ambition of "getting things done."

Rosh Hashannah has arrived in Philly which means two days off in the middle of the week. The unexpected pause in my crazy schedule has calmed me, bringing with it perspective and peace. Yesterday I actually cooked a meal, dicing onions and mincing garlic as hamburger sizzled on the stove. Cooking makes me happy and it helps me destress. It reminds me of summer and of my family, of the countless Saturday nights when Gabe would bring a dozen or so guys over who all hadn't eaten and I'd be running around trying to scrounge up a meal at 9 pm. Afterwards there would be laughter as we sat around the table and watched as Gabe imitated all his football coaches.

Most of those guys are now married, Gabe has bought his own home, and I am the lone Bell sibling who up and moved to a big city. Despite the pang I feel every time I talk to one of my siblings, I have discovered that Philly is now my home. I don't long for the winding roads of Central PA the way I used to, instead I am full of joy as I speed down 76. West Philly feels familiar and I have driven past the majority of murals in my coffee table book.

The air is crisp, it is October and pumpkins are on sale at ShopRite. The school year started, somehow I worked up the courage to go back in. The introductions are over, my kids have shown me their true attitudes, and we are about to get to the real work. Before us lie another eight months of education. Last year I ticked the days off, wishing them away. This year I am startled by the speed and I wish I could slow things down. Girls have already transferred out of my class or my school. My opportunities with them are so limited. So my prayer this Rosh Hashannah is that God would multiply our time, that he would enrich each conversation. May every hug, every math problem, every cheer express my love for them.

Heritage

2008-09-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

The year is going well. That one sentence is what I craved for, searched for last year. It is difficult to even know how to describe the difference. My job has shrunk in size and now fits nicely into the margins of my life, neatly contained between Monday and Friday. Grad school has assumed its rightful role as a priority, and church dominates my week. I couldn't be more happy for the change. I used to rush out on Sunday so I could go lesson plan. Now I spend every waking moment Friday night-Sunday afternoon hanging out with covies.

At church we are going through a big transition and so we've been reflecting on our past as individuals and as a corporate body. Every week there are stories of God's faithfulness and incredible power to redeem. It has made me pensive and grateful. This morning I couldn't sing, I felt the words catch in my throat as my eyes watered. Because around me there are people I have known for decades and my memory is clear. I can still recall who they were as teenagers. I remember the disinterest and rebellion and now I watch as they worship with their children. Where once we lived timid lives full of fear, now there is boldness and courage.

And I remember who I was. How is it that I am a 23 year old math teacher in North Philly? How did I grow up? How am I handling all this responsibility? How is it that my faith survived the tumult of the teenage years, the skepticism of college, and the sheer ferocity of last years' challenges?

Some of the songs we sing each week at church are the same songs I learned at age 13 when my favorite food was grilled cheese and getting cut from the basketball team was my idea of a significant trial. The continuity of it, the consistency of hearing those same words now that I teach 13 year olds, is beyond reassuring. It is grounding and inspiring.

In two weeks some of you will be coming to Covenant Fellowship to celebrate the ordination of our new pastor. I hope you make the drive and join us because I know you will be encouraged. For everyone else, I pray that God stirs your memory as well. Who were you when you were 13? Who talked you out of a foolish decision? What friendships have you enjoyed for years? Looking back gives us the strength to go forward. Because there is always more grace behind us than trials before us. Who would have guessed that we would find ourselves here, doing the things we do each day? I could never have dreamed that I'd be teaching these girls, holding their babies, and imitating Jaime Escalante as I speak to them again and again about going to college. The problem with my aspirations as a thirteen year old is that they were entirely too small.

"Ms. Bell, can I please come to your class?" The small seventh grader is pleading with me during seventh period.

"No this is my prep, besides you have science. Science is important," I say quickly. On the inside I am baffled. She spent two hours with me that morning, a block of time I find almost unbearable. This is weird, why does she want to come back?

Last year I was hated. Do not think I exaggerate. There is a significant list of students who greeted me each morning the words "I hate you Ms. Bell" so the sentiment is a confirmed fact. Any time I heard students talking about my class certain unhappy adjectives like boring, long, and drawin seemed to surface quite a bit.

But a lot has changed. Our school had 75% turnover and the students flock to my room just to see a familiar face. Being a better teacher helps too. When classes change my doorway is quite chaotic. My geometry students from last year come to see me and ask me again and again why I am not their algebra 2 teacher. I am touched. My 9th graders return to me and ask for help with their homework, they wish they hadn't been switched to a different teacher. And my current students are the strangest. They keep returning to my class, sneaking in and sitting in the back. I have to yell at them to get them out. Oh my goodnes! Not you again! I already had you for two hours today I can't take another minute of Jasmine Jones today, I say as I try not to laugh.

There are few people more fickle than middle school girls and I am quite sure in a month or so I will once again be told that I am "a hater and a liar." But until then I am soaking up my newfound popularity. Especially since I too have changed since last year...I love them. I cared about my students last year but it was a choice to be kind to them as I ducked flying calculators. This year my classroom is a well-oiled machine and my affections have grown. On Saturdays I wake up missing my 7th graders and wondering how Asia is doing and whether or not Shaheedah is having a happy birthday. At night I find myself whispering prayers and worried about whether or not Selimba will drop out of school now that she has had a baby.

They are the most important part of my day. When I greet them, teach them, put my hand on their shoulders, hug them, and listen to their stories I feel God's pleasure. This is exactly what he wants me to be doing and in my heart I feel the deep contentment of following his will. I am so glad I didn't quit last year, I am thankful I didn't make a rash decision in the darkness and confusion of year one. Because without last year there would be no this year, no Asia, no hugging Mariah, no listening to Synia talk about the death of her father, no laughing as they belt out Amazing Grace at the end of a long week. The seeds of my joy this year were planted last year.

Lights out

2008-09-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

"Raelyn, what grade are you in?" I ask, blocking her from entering my classroom even though she is at least 5 inches taller than me.

"10th," she mutters.

"So you've been here three years now and you're telling me you still don't know the uniform policy? Girl, come on give me a break. You can't wear colored jewelry, you know that! Take it off," I say putting my arm across the doorway. Raelyn stares at me. She is wearing 6 giant blue hoops in each ear, starting at the lobe and climbing all the way to a small blue stud at the top. I stare right back and smirk as I watch her take 3 minutes to take each and every hoop out. The colors are banned because gangs use them to signal when they're going to fight and I am not about to back down on the fifth day of school.

Five minutes into my lesson the projector shuts down and the lights flicker off. Next door I hear the 7th graders scream.

"Ms. Bell, it is September 11th! The terrorists are coming to kill us!" One of my geometry students shouts.

"Sit down Jozel and stop scaring people," I scold as I scan the hallway and note that the whole school has lost power. Our Principal's voice comes on over the loudspeaker to confirm this fact. We have temporarily lost power...

"Oh, Ms. Bell, people are going to fight!" Sha'anna announces. With lights off and security in disarray students across the school are eager to capitalize on the rare opportunity. Suddenly a sea of hands shoot up across the room. Four people have suddenly decided they need to go to the bathroom. Once again I place myself in the doorway "No one is going to the bathroom, don't try to play me. You aren't leaving the classroom. Now try to get that fourth problem, that one is an honors geometry problem," I say as I continue to scan the hallway trying to assess the situation.

Dutifully my classroom settles down, engrossed in the honors problem. I told them they were the unofficial "honors" classroom and they bought it hook line and sinker. As they frantically try to remember PEMDAS I am making up a new lesson. The powerpoint presentation on word problems is out and I need a plan B. I grab my class president and ask her to copy problems onto the board. She skips up to the board and starts writing in flawless handwriting.

School has been going so well I am shock. It hasn't been without its bumps, Monday I was switched to 8th grade and Tuesday I was switched to 7th. Wednesday there was a fight and today we lost power. But I have come to realize I like the craziness...it reminds me of Egypt (-: And classroom management has revolutionized my life. The kids are on their best behavior and I am dishing out consequences with joy. Lunch detentions are my specialty. After last year I know how bad things can get and I am not curious to see if it can get that bad again. My poor kids are paying for the sins of those who came before them.

I still feel like I sleep, teach, prepare to teach, sleep, repeat...but when the actual teaching goes well the whole endless cycle is much more bearable. So for now I am one very contented Philly teacher.

p.s. Shameless plug: my race is one week away and I am $325 short of my goal for World vision. So go to http://www.firstgiving.com/kaytebell and chip in a few bucks (-;

Locked out, switched, and tired

2008-09-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

When I was in India they taught us a phrase: IWA. It stood for India Wins Again and it came to represent a very common occurrence during our stay. Whenever you were trying to do something very simple or normal and everything went completely crazy as it only can in the third world, we'd shrug and mutter IWA.

In Philadelphia I find myself losing to the inner city in the same way. I get too comfortable and think, ok this is my second year things might go smoothly. Then it all comes crashing down and I remember why our district was taken over by the state. And instead of IWA I say "that's Philly" and get on with my day as best as possible.

This morning I ambituously rose early and headed to work to get my copies done before all the other teachers showed up. I arrived at 6:45am only to discover I was locked out of the office and the copy room. I paced, looked for the janitor, called down different hallways. No one was around. Soon a crowd of angry teachers was outside of the copy room, all of us standing there with our stacks of copying grumbling as we watched the clock show 7:20am. What a waste of time. At last someone arrived to let us into our own job. That's Philly.

At lunch one of the math teachers expressed his concern.

"Ms. Norris isn't doing well," he said in between bites of his sandwhich. I shrugged, she was new and this was typical. "I think she is going to quit." Silence filled the room. A teacher quitting on day three! Forget the hastle of all of us covering her classes for the rest of the year, think of what that will do to her kids. They grieve every time another teacher leaves them.

She did. Third day of school she told my principal she was leaving. That's Philly.

3:20 pm on the third day of school I am sitting across from my principal. Ms. Norris taught 8th grade math, a PSSA year. We can't put a substitute in a PSSA prep classroom...we will never make AYP. So it doesn't matter that I have already bonded with my algebra 1 students. It doesn't matter that I planned for a month and that we've already started learning content. I'm being switched to one of Ms. Norris' abandoned 8th grade sections. And my 9th graders...probably they'll have a substitute if they're lucky. That's Philly.

I understand that it is hard, I understand that the kids can drive you crazy. I don't want to be self-righteous because my year last year was harder than anything I had ever imagined and if it hadn't been for my faith in God I would have quit. But still...these kids are behind. My algebra 1 classed averaged a 5th grade level on their diagnostic test. And now they have no teacher. It is starting to make me mad. But hey, that's Philly.

Forgiveness

2008-09-04T15:55:00.000-07:00

It was hard to think about anything besides Crystal Jones as I lay awake last night. Two credit cards stolen. A phone stolen. Both by her. That was nothing compated to the 140 days we spent together. She was the second "behavioral problem" to be switched to my infamous 8th grade class. For a few weeks she was good, and then it soured. Crystal topped everyone. She threw desks, erased all my white boards, cussed me out, and convinced the rest of the class to revolt against me. Every day when I tried to start fresh and would greet her she'd scream back at me "don't talk to me Ms. Bell! I hate you Ms. Bell!"

Crystal has a monopoly on hating me. No one has ever "hated" me as much as her. She told the administration she hated me, she chose to fail and sit in detention rather than come to my class. And so it was with great trepidation that I noticed her name on my roster for 1st period algebra.

First of all, she is hopelessly unprepared. I know who her teacher was last year and I know that teacher was incredibly unsuccessful. Additionally, I thought she was transferred out of the school because of her behavior problems. Turns out she came back on probation.

At first I flipped. Of all my 8th graders to have for 9th...not Crystal! Please. But God has a way of pricking my conscious and right now I am reading the story of Paul's conversion in Acts. More specifically I had just read about how he persecuted the church. So my protestatons that Crystal was beyond hope fell flat.

Today she greeted me with a big hug. But before I decided she had an incredible case of amnesia, she proceeded to test me the whole way through my class and then to curse. So day 1 and she is written up. Tomorrow we are having a big conference to try to start this off right. So say a little prayer for Crystal. And me...the trembling Ananias in this story.

Hold Your Breath

2008-08-31T18:17:00.000-07:00

Staples hates me. They are running a deal "25 free folders for teachers per visit." Ha! That was before they met me. I live 1 mile from a store and I am passionate about free. How many visits? Not sure, but I have over 200 folders. I know the cashier by name, he stares at me each time he hands me the receipt for $0.00.

My classroom sits in silent anticipation. For those of you who pray the ladies return on Thursday. Tomorrow I am staying home and working on tests, handouts, and my first two months of plans. Tuesday and Wednesday are the crazy days when the reality of school will hit and all the 1st year teachers will spread fear like wildfire. And then the first day will come and it will pass.

I am bracing myself mentally. Occasionally I remember different struggles from last year or someone says to me you're going back for another year! and dread fills my body. But on other days when I have had enough sleep and I am not jacked up on cofffee I am quietly confident, mentally planting my feet and bracing for a battle I am determined to win.

In the meantime I have created a much better support network, a safety net beneath my trapeze attempts to educate the inner city. My roommate is a fellow teacher and devoted optimist who refuses to let me wallow in anxiety. And more importantly I am far more connected at my church and hopeful that small group and Sundays will keep me from losing all perspective in November.

So I close my eyes, hold my breath, and jump off the high dive into another school year. Wish me luck!

Team World Vision

2008-08-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

I've been searching for a cause for some time. It feels silly running race after race without one. But I didn't want to pick a charity just to get the shirt, I wanted to find something I believed in.

Here's where many roads begin colliding. It began with an article in Runner's World on Ryan Hall where I found out that Ryan is a Christian. A full-fledged committed Christian going for gold in the Olympics on Saturday. He is also positioned to be the first American to win the marathon since the Kenyans took over. Ryan broke the one hour mark in the half-marathon and set a record at the trials in NYC. In terms of runners, he's incredible.

But that's not why Ryan's awesome. He joined Team World Vision with his wife, Sara (also a runner). The name caught my eye and I got online. World Vision is a Christian non-profit that supports orphans and people in some of the world's poorest regions. They are incredible when it comes to disaster relief. Tsunami hits, they're there. War breaks out in Lebanon, they're there. Earthquake in China, they're there. And now if you go to their website they are featuring their aid program to Georgia where fighting broke out a few weeks ago.

World Vision is also where a good friend of mine Melanie Scherf worked while I was in college. Melanie is now serving with Samaritan's Purse in Liberia, but she always spoke highly of the organization. I volunteered with them several times during college at their warehouse in Pittsburgh. Second only to Covenant Mercies in my mind, they are a phenomenal organization.

So....I joined the team. Ahhhhh! I am on a running team with Ryan Hall! Small perk. But it will also be great to run in a World Vision T-shirt and think about their AIDS relief initiative while I am gutting it out on mile 9. I am trying to raise $500. I just picked a number because I figured I'd have to raise some money, but I didn't want to bug anyone because of the tough economy and the building fund. Within hours I had already received 3 donations! How exciting! Thanks so much everyone. I'll be running the Philly Distance Run (13.1 miles) on September 21st. If we get the whole $500 I am willing to do something crazy. Post your ideas.

p.s. If you want to sponsor me go to
http://www.firstgiving.com/kaytebell

p.p.s. For more information on why Ryan Hall is awesome go to http://www.ryanhall.org/. Watch the second video on the right.

Adequate Yearly Progress

2008-08-16T04:02:00.000-07:00

Last year began with the announcement that my school had made Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP. I had no idea what this meant but watched as we hung a banner in the hall and cancelled school on a Friday to celebrate instead. Throughout the year I quickly made up time as I sorted through terminology so I could keep my head above water.

No Child Left Behind mandates that all schools have to meet certain standards, these standards are set by the State. So on a weekly basis last year I logged onto the State Department's website and scanned their list of eligible content, the concepts in mathematics that they have deemed most important. In order to assess whether or not my students are learning this content we have a test...the PSSAs. On the PSSa there are four scoring categories: below basic, basic, proficient, and excellent. To give you some perspective the names of all the students at my school who scored proficient or excellent can fit on one bulletin board. To put it another way, almost all my 8th graders last year tested below basic in 7th grade. I'll still haven't seen their individual scores for last year...but I'm not expecting too much magic.

The goal is for all students to be testing proficient or excellent, but that is ambitious (and actually technically impossible since the PSSA is a normalized test...one of the many flaws with NCLB but I'll get all fired up if I go down that path). City schools were at a disadvantage with this goal because we started out so far behind. Moving 90% of your school population into a different testing category is a colossal task. So the State divides this progress into steps, each year you need to move a certain amount of kids. This is called Annual Yearly Progress.

If you make AYP nothing happens, originally in NCLB money was promised but the carrot never received funding...just the stick. If you don't make AYP your school is placed on corrective action. Every family in the school district is notified, results are published in the paper, and your school is branded with the deflating term "failing school." After about 4 years of not making AYP all sorts of nasty things can happen: staff can be fired, funding can be cut, students might be transferred, etc.

AYP hangs in the air all year as teachers frenetically prepare for the PSSAs. Scores were recently released and in one brief moment I logged onto a website and read the words "your school has not made Adequate Yearly Progress." The declaration was followed by in-depth criticism of our attendance, graduation rates, and low literacy scores. What is discouraging to me is even if we had made AYP the percentage of kids in the proficient category is still extremely low. Sigh. So much more work to do.

Backyard

2008-08-12T16:29:00.000-07:00

The sun is painting the brick houses brown and gold in the slanted light of a summer evening. It sets hastily behind the river, slipping away like my summer vacation. For a moment, my neighborhood is still. Cicadas and Vusi Mahlasela serenade me as I sit on a dirty lawnchair and enjoy one of the incredible perks of my new house, a backyard.

My to-do list is only 70% complete and in the back of my mind are thoughts of tomorrow's demands. But for a moment I am still. My hands still smell of cilantro and lime from making dinner. A bird is making a strange bleating noise and for a moment I am convinced it is a goat. Perhaps it is the dusk colors, perhaps it is the August stillness, but something in me longs to pause. In my heart I find a great store of gratefulness.

Summer was a wonderful stream of happy memories, more than anything it was the lack of activity. But as I watch Phelps swim, or slice cucumbers, or sip my late morning coffee, my heart is refreshed. My naivety has finally returned. No perhaps not my naivety, because I have completely reworked my rules and consequences and the memories of catapaulted calculators are still fresh in my mind. But I have rediscovered something that used to be my daily companion. Joy.

As a child, and even throughout college, I was filled with wonder. Whether I was lost in a Middle Eastern market, or starring at the stars in my backyard, I saw the world and marveled. I loved life. Now I am startled to find that childish happiness still inside of myself.

My neighbor is outside watering his plants. On his shoulder sits a parrot. That solves the bird-goat mystery. The Soweto Gospel Choir is now singing In the Name of Love and the birds are chirping frenetically as they rustle into their nests for the night. Another neighbor paces at the back of his yard, a 5 month old baby boy bounces in his arms. And there...the sun is gone.

I should head in. August is ending and soon the schoolyear's troubles will return. But this year I'll continue to see the beauty of life, even when the carefree days of summer have ended.

I Can't Die Today

2008-08-07T19:26:00.001-07:00

"Ms. Bell, I can't die today," Lillian said firmly. We had met at the school to have lunch and now we were walking to a nearby MacDonalds. She stared at me, frustrated that I didn't understand her comment. I had been jaywalking and I returned penitently to the sidewalk where she was waiting.

" I am a senior." She said emphatically as if this one fact explained everything, "I can't die before I graduate." I laughed.

"Oh, I forgot," I offered jokingly. I hadn't. One year ago I had met Lillian at school in August while I was setting up. She helped me decorate my classroom and trim my bulletin boards, in exchange I heard long stories about her hopes and dreams...and disapointments.

"My family came to my 8th grade graduation and they didn't give me any shout-outs. I crossed the stage and it was quiet. Silence. I mean come on, 8th grade graduation and no shout-outs!" She had confided in me. Barely knowing her, but deeply moved, I promised I would attend her high school graduation.

"I'll shout you out so loud you'll be embarrassed," I vowed even though I wasn't quite sure what people shouted at graduations...most of the ceremonies I had attended were somber events with someone plucking out a worship song on a harp.

Our friendship grew over the school year, it helped tremendously that Lillian wasn't assigned to my math class. Instead we talked over lunch or after school. She likes country music like me and doesn't like her family. At 3:04 you'll find her wandering the halls, looking for an excuse not to go home.

She took a large bite out of her Big Mac and told me about her plans to go to college out-of-state. I was slightly distracted, still adjusting to my school's neighborhood. Subconsciously I was counting how many other white people were in the restaurant. Three. Lillian explained siblings to me for the second time. I constantly confused her dad's side and her mom's side. More importantly, I missed the cues about her poor relationship with them.

"There is no one like me in my family," she finally said and shrugged "I don't know where I came from."

Lillian slurped the bottom of her vanilla shake and I leaned back in the booth, very happy we had gone to lunch. Going back is always a little unsettling. The aggressive driving, crowded grocery stores, expensive gas, and unhelpful strangers are a shock after Central PA. And the reality of my school is fresh each time I notice the cop car staked out in our parking lot or check our test scores from last year. But Lillian and her graduation exuberance remind me why I returned and make me glad I did.

Compared to last year

2008-08-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

I am sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by textbooks, calculators, and calendars. Ruckus happily serenades me as I begin the daunting task of mapping out the coming months. Last night terror struck and I felt fear rising up within me. I didn't want to go back, I didn't want to teach again. All things seem large and fearsome in the middle of the night. It is amazing how they shrink as the sun rises and I start my morning devotions. Suddenly it is difficult to remember exactly what I was anxious about.

The first order of business is make my long term plan. I pull up google calendar and happily add all the political holidays. The fall is an endless succession of little interuprions. Labor Day, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Columbus Day, Election Day, Thanksgiving...and so on. No wonder Philly kids are so far behind. I'm surprised we don't take off all of September for Ramadan.

Public education is a mess of standards, elligible content, and objectives. If you don't understand these terms then you are exactly where I was at last August. But this year I am well-versed in all my PSSA prep and I can recite to you the five strands of state standards without blinking. Currently I am synthesizing all this information as I try to formulate my syllabus. Mentally I am battling the fight between ideals and reality. What does the state say I need to teach? Which objectives are the most essential? And then the guessing begins. What skills will my students have when they show up on September 4th.

I know what my 95 students could do last June. But what about the other sections of 8th grade and Algebra I that will now wind up in my high school math classes. And worse, what about all the transfer students. From September 4th to the end of October I will face a constant stream of new students...most transferring from schools worse than mine. I make myself dizzy thinking about all the possible challenges.

Still, compared to last year....well it just doesn't compare. Last year the first day of school was an all-out revolt against my authority. Last year I didn't know what the PSSA was. Last year I didn't even know what Rosh Hashana was, I just thanked God we had off three days into the school year.

So even if I get a bit stressed trying to head back into the Philly school system again there is one refrain that echoes repeatedly in my mind: at least it won't be as bad as last year.

Come One, Come All!

2008-07-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I faced the daunting task of moving from one Philly apartment to another. How can a twenty-three year old accumulate so much stuff?! I repeatedly told my dad that a U-Haul would not be necessary. That was before I actually packed up and looked at the mountain of boxes in my old living room. How embarrassing! If I keep gathering junk at this rate I am going to move into a hut in Kazakhstan. It seems materialistic America might be winning the battle for my soul.

Thanks to the help of three amazing Drexel guys, we were able to pack it all in (filling a 17 foot U-Haul that my dad had convinced me to rent) and drag it to my new place. My new roommate was along too, we're totally excited to finally live together after spending all our weekends sleeping over at each others seperate places last year.

My new apartment is a gift from God. Hardwood floors, 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, a den, a dishwasher, and--oh happy day!--a washer and dryer. It is huge and there are only two of us so right now it feels rather cavernous. Which means we need visitors. So this is my official open-ended invitation. If you find yourself in the Philly area, give me a ring. And don't worry the neighborhood is safe. We live next to a cop.

For the Love of Learning

2008-07-22T11:36:00.000-07:00

"Wow! That's cool," I say out loud even though I am alone, sprawled on the family room floor. Engrossed in a book about the history of numbers I've forgotten that it is summer and I am vacation from my job as a math teacher.

But the book is explaining the double tally stick and the origin of the word "stockholder" and it's just cool. I'm surrounded by other books and math strategy games. For days I've been pouring over different Geometry books and activities in preparation for September. And something unexpected happened. I remembered the magic of math and the thrill of learning.

The website I am looking at is explaining how to write your own mathematical comic strip. Hmmm....I imagine the cartoons my girls in Philly would produce. We would definitely have to do some censoring.

But ideas are emerging and my passion for education has resurfaced. This is why I became a teacher, because I find tally sticks and the stock exchange fascinating. September is still a comfortable distance away and the realities of school are still pleasantly forgotten. Yet, slowly I am awakening from my summer stupor and beginning to plan, if only in my mind, what I will teach my girls.

Summer

2008-07-02T19:00:00.000-07:00

Oh, happiness! If I am not happy now I should be slapped. In fact, if you hear me complain about anything please hit me. Then remind me that I have something that the rest of the working world yearns for. 2 months off! Two weeks into my vacation I am still blissfully unable to comprehend that I don't report back to work until the end of August.

So, what am I doing? It is easier to explain what I am not doing. I am not waking up at 6:00am (It has been more like 10am). I am not thinking about my 8th graders. I am not planning for next year.

Instead my day passes in a succession of lazy events. A few hours spent weeding at my grandparents, uncountable hours spent talking to my mom, another hour kayaking with my dad on the Swatty, two more spent walking around Living Hope's land. All tasks you can't cross of a to-do list but worthwhile none the less.

In the midst of it all some very important things are occurring in my soul. I forgot the dim halls and the harsh words of my students, the thick humidity of a Pennsylvania summer dulled the painful sharpness of some of my memories. I told one of my teaching friends that I went home to forget. And that is exactly what I have done.

But not for always because let's not be melodramatic. It was not all bad, and things can become larger than life in our minds. August steadily approaches and when it arrives I will face reality with a newfound boldness. I am Ms. Bell, second year teacher. That is a very different identity than last year. In August I'll prepare. In August I'll be lesson planning my little heart out so when 100 new students fill my classroom I am ready.

Still, that's in August. July is happy forgetfulness. So tomorrow I'll be back on the Swatty. Ms. Bell who?

Graduation

2008-06-18T19:42:00.000-07:00

One year after graduating from Pitt, I donned another black robe and marched down the aisle to pomp and circumstance...this time as a member of the faculty. Behind me came a sea of white caps and black faces, beneath the robes each girl had on a perfecty planned outfit. The roar of the parents and friends was deafening, I could barely make out the familiar strains of the processional over the shouts of "we love you baby!" I had to laugh as I watched the girls walk with rhythm. Step...bop...step..dip..step...bop. They were practically dancing.

This was no ordinary graduation. In Philly making it to 8th grade it notable. Our speaker was well aware of this fact. She stated proudly that many of the graduates were the first people in their families to graduate from high school. I turned and saw a tear slide down the face of the graduate seated across from me.

Every single girl has been accepted into college or a trade school. A few of them outshine their peers: a full ride to Villanova, a full ride to Gettysburg College, a full ride to Penn State. Now perhaps their chances are fifty/fifty. Some will make it in college, some will not. But with a high diploma their fate is in their own hands, if they want to they can escape.

I watched rivetted as one girl's name was called. She marched proudly across the stage, posed with the principal, and accepted her diploma. As she turned to pose for a picture she burst into tears and raised her arms above her head. "I did it! I did it!" She sobbed. Suddenly my heart hurt. You can't help but cheer for these girls.

Checkers

2008-06-17T17:12:00.000-07:00

I tried to teach them chess because it is linked to higher math scores. But we got bogged down just by trying to learn how all the pieces move. Checkers, on the other hand, is something they all know how to play. So I threw down the guantlet and challenged them to try and beat me.

They did. Repeatedly. I forgot a lot of the rules and I still debate their interpretation of how the king moves (he can jump anything and fly as far as he wants). But even if we had played by my rules they would have trounced me. It was interesting to watch. I grew more and more frustrated and they started beaming.

Three more days of school. I am limping across the finish line. September feels like a long time ago. As I tore down my bulletin boards I remembered putting them up during the August heat. Wow. I had absolutely no idea what I was headed into.

Yesterday I saw a young white girl sitting in the school office. She was dressed for an interview and looking intently at the different news articles hanging on the wall. I stared and saw in her myself. So the cycle continues. Will she be hired? Will she quit? I don't know, but I do know that her confidence will evaporate in September. She will have to find something else to rely on besides herself. I did.

Things end strangely sometimes. We scan our lives for reason, search in vain for the fruit that justifies every trial of our lives. I see very little in terms of data or high test scores. But I do see something good in my students eyes as they work on our class scrapbook, documenting their favorite memories. I've earned their trust and affection. That has been my greatest success.

Origami

2008-06-04T17:08:00.000-07:00

12 days. 11 more days with children. Friday the grades go in so after that most students won't even come. For those that do there will be little projects and math games. I've taught all I can. I'm tired, they're tired...anything they don't know will have to click for them in summer school or in class next year.

My school has a haze over it...suddenly that intense fortress of PSSA prep is transformed. The kids are starting to run the school. The entire student body comes late so teachers find themselves staring at empty classrooms 10 minutes after class has started. In the hallway you find so many 8th graders that it is hard to decipher the different sections. I yell randomly. "Tia go to class!" "Jameka you're supposed to be in history right now!" They scurry temporarily, disappearing into the library and down the stairways until they are good and ready to go to class.

No one wants to learn. I should have given finals just to get them to focus. At this point nothing is going to change their grade. Those flunking are flunking. Those with an "A" cannot lose their A.

Out of pure stress I started doing origami at my desk and it has transformed things. I was covering a class and they had revolted against my factoring worksheet. They talked, ate, and listened to music. Two girls were reenacting the most recent brawl in the lunchroom. I looked at them and gave up. Absentmindedly I started folding my papers, engrossed in the new pattern for a box with a lid that I had learned. Slowly, a crowd formed around me. I said nothing just folded furiously and mocked even more intense concentration. More girls walked over, staring and asking questions.

"What are you doing?"
"Aren't you using tape or glue or something?"
"How many sheets of paper are in one box?"

Fold. Fold. Fold. I finished and placed the lid neatly on top of the box to the awe of all the girls. I looked up and saw something on their faces I hadn't seen all year. Curiosity.

"Who wants to learn how to do that?" I announced. They scurried to pull up chairs and sat down obediently. Flip, flip, fold, fold. I watched in amazement as they eagerly followed my detailed instructions. They were more committed to it being perfect than I was.

Next year I need to do more things like this. We need to discover, we need to have fun.

Mine Eyes Have Seen

2008-06-02T16:25:00.001-07:00

Only three students showed up for my geometry class today, it is hot and with only a week until final grades go in most are feeling rather unmotivated. So, I decided to be a bit more relaxed and interupted our long discussion about the Law of Cosines with questions about their lives.

"Brenda, how was your weekend?" I asked. Brenda began a long speech about the Friday night party on Allegheny and Lehigh while Brittney and Nadia furiously copied the problem on the board.

"My whole weekend was good except Sunday....Sunday ruined it," she said sighing. Sensing another long story I told her I'd ask her about it after we finished discovering the Law of Cosines. We divided by the hypotenuse, set our altitudes equal to each other, battled through some serious algebra and finally emerged with... b^2=a^2+c^2-2*a*c*cosB. Ta da!!!!

"Ok, Brenda, what happened on Sunday?" I asked as I realized my 11th graders were less thrilled with our discovery than I was.

"There was this man, right, and he was standing on the corner across from me. And he got jumped. I saw it happen. They took his stuff...his wallet and his ipod. And they hit him hard in the face like this, "she paused to reenact the force of the blow, "and he went down on the ground and then he was just laying there his face on the ground and there was all this blood." I stared as Brenda contorted her face to match the man's expression of pain and shock. "So then all the kids came running over to where the man was. And it took the ambulance 20 minutes to show up. This man across the street identified the men who did it, he even gave a description!" Brenda announced in horror. I was thinking about the ambulance's delayed arrival. Statistically, ambulances respond more slowly to calls from bad sections of Philly. The delays increase the amount of deaths my students see. Even someone suffering from a heart attack or asthma is more likely to perish when perimedics are nervous about driving into their neighborhoods.

"He gave a description?" Brittney asked. Obviously this detail was more interesting to them.

"Yeah, I know. You don't do that. You just don't do that," Brenda declared.

"Why not?" I asked naively.

"He's a dead man," Brittney explained matter-of-factly.

"They'll find him, they'll kill him or beat him up, Ms. Bell," Brenda said.

"So, if you see something happen you don't say anything?" I asked.

"No, we don't ever see anything happen," Brenda said. She paused and the room was silent as my three students stared at the ground. "But oh, Ms. Bell, if you only knew the things I have seen."

Still in School

2008-06-01T12:39:00.000-07:00

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;

But there is no joy in Philly— still three weeks 'til school is out.

Despite the sunshine, Memorial Day, and the opening of HersheyPark I would like to announce that it is not summer yet. In Philly we take the beginning of summer literally, no one leaves until June 21st. So I still have three lovely weeks with my children left. Prayers would be appreciated.

In all seriousness, nothing is left now but the finish line. I still have another formal observation and the monumental task of keeping my kids awake for my two hour classes (heat and exhaustion combine to make people a little sleepy). But on Friday the grades go in and then my high schoolers say they will no longer attend. And I only have 5 eighth graders left. So here goes the last mile!

Sprouts

2008-05-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

It was a long week, one that left me searching the parched ground for some sign of growth. It feels as if I have been watering and planting and praying for months and nothing has changed. But today I saw some fruit, if only a tiny seed sprouting.

******

"Ms. Bell, will you adopt me?" Tamyra asked me at the end of a long day. I stared blankly at her.
"No, Tamyra. I don't have enough money," I answered blankly. She laughed. But I saw in her face genuine affection. She is not one of my students, but she looks forward to me covering her class when her science teacher doesn't come to work.
"I wish you taught us all day," another 8th grader announced. So after all the drama with 802 I have won their hearts.

******

The morning was crazy. I had already been yelled at twice and criticized harshly as I tried to explain the Pythagorean Theorem to a disgruntled batch of 9th graders who informed me "we just don't want to be here." There were battles over uniforms and I spent twenty minutes arguing with them about food. We have a mouse who is growing fatter each day and still my students insist on throwing sunflower seeds all over the floor.
I was hitting a wall, anger boiling up inside me, and my kids were close to revolting. I asked them to go to page 710 and no one moved. Slowly, and with exaggerated sighing and facial expressions, they pulled the books out from under their seats. One girl took hers and threw it loudly on the floor.
"Ok, Dia. Pack up," I said curtly grabbing a slip and opening the door for her. As I kicked her out of my class the hall monitor walked over to me.
"Ms. Bell, you're going to get a halo for this," she said, "I could never deal with these girls the way you do." I melted. My first thought was that I wasn't dealing with it very well. But then the compliment sank in and I felt suddenly that God was watching, that he heard each insult and saw me pull into work each day despite the trials of the day before. And even as I stood there recognizing my frustration and anger with the girls, I felt God's pleasure.

******

In the quiet minutes before class started this morning I sat alone and wrote a brief card to Kadesha. I congratulated her on the birth of her daughter, Zaira, and I told her I looked forward to seeing her in my Geometry class that fall. She has stopped coming to school since the birth of her child 3 weeks ago. As I sealed the note I prayed that she would beat the statistics and come back to school in September. With a baby it will be difficult...but Kadesha is one of my students who could do it. She's exceptionally bright. In 3 weeks she took her grade from an F to an A, completing the classwork and extra credit every day. I placed the card in a bag with some pink onesies for 6-9 month year olds and prayed one more time.

******

The woman from the school district walked out my room and I breathed an audible sigh of relief. I had just taught perhaps the worst geometry lesson of the year and she had been there for all of it, taking copious notes. Who invented the Law of Sines anyway? I thought. It was only as I was teaching it in front of the whole class that I realized I didn't understand it at all.

"Ms. Bell, are you ok?" Alexis asked me in a concerned voice.
"I'm stressed, Alexis," I answered honestly. "And I am frustrated because I changed my lesson for the district people and I completely confused all of you."
"Teaching is a hard job," Alexis stated matter-of-factly. I smiled thinking that sometimes Alexis was one of the reasons it was so hard. But apparently that day she liked me.
"Are you going to be here next year?" She asked.
"Yes."
"Good," she sighed. There was silence and then she said firmly, "Ms. Bell, you are a really good teacher." I asked her to write it down and give it to me.
"You going to hang it on your wall in your apartment?"
"Yes, Alexis, I am going to hang it on my wall."

Please Sign Here

2008-05-20T18:10:00.000-07:00

"So sine is the opposite side divided by the hypotenuse. You need to identify which angle we are talking about. Remember we colored the opposite side in green and the hypotenuse is red. Let's fill in our ratio..." my tenth graders were rivetted as I explained the trigonometric functions. I had hooked them, motivating them to take on this challenging topic that I had practically flunked in high school.

"What if we don't know the angle but we do know the ratio? Can we solve for the angle? What do we do when we want to undo multiplication?" I continue.

"Divide!" A motivated student in the back offers.

"Yes, division is to opposite of multiplication. What about additon? What is the opposite of addition?"

"Subtraction." They answer in chorus.

"So, we have inverse operations. The same is true for our trigonometric functions. When we want to undo sine we do the inverse of sine-" I am interrupted by a knock at the door and Ms. Brown, our school's disciplinarian walks into my classroom with a clipboard and a legal document. She walks over to me and whispers....please sign here.

I glance at the document. "The members of this school recommend Jamia Smith for immediate transfer due to behavioral problems and continued suspensions..." I had lost another one.

Jamia is the fifth 8th grader this year to be transferred out of section of the World's Worst 8th Graders. I hesitated as I looked at the form. She's being switched to a "behavior school" for 9th grade. Once there her education will be minimal. She messed up big time this year, barely making it through her second year in the 8th grade. I doubt she'll stay in school, I doubt she'll graduate. Most likely, she will be sucked right back into cycle of poverty and prison she was born into. I signed if only because I didn't know what else to do.

Class of 2010

2008-05-13T14:46:00.001-07:00

Today I pushed myself, I stepped out of my comfort zone. Instead of giving a project at the end of our geometry unit on similar figures I assigned a project. Each student had to pick a picture, grid it with one inch squares, and blow it up on a big poster.

The project provided all kinds of learning opportunities. Ms. Bell, how do I measure inches? was the most common difficulty and I walked around pointing out the thicker, wider lines on each person's ruler.

On a whim I had printed out a picture of the words "Class of 2010 is taking over!" I was worried that my sophmores would think it was corny but they glimpsed it before I even explained the project.

"Ms. Bell! Ms. Bell! That's our year!" One of them shouted, interupting me.
"Yes, I did that on purpose Quendijah," I replied. Despite my protests they were soon passing out the picture and excitedly discussing the two short years between them and graduation. I put down the clipboard and watched the class get off topic.

For my kids making it to high school is a huge achievement, graduating 8th grade is perhaps a greater accomplishment for them than graduating from high school was for me. At my school we talk to them about college constantly, but it is such a hard road. Three of my tenth graders have children. Many more will have a child in the next two years. I cross my fingers and pray that my brightest pupils will be able to avoid pregnancy.

The posters turned out prefectly and I proudly hung them in the back of my room over my lunch. As I closed out class I excitedly announced that our next unit would be trigonometry. Amazing. I am so pumped to teach a topic I hated in high school. I barely learned trig my senior year and passed my trig placement test at Pitt by one question. Maybe I'll finally understand it.

Five weeks remain for me at school. But now I am finally teaching. Every day we are learning so much math. I am pounding it into them because I know that next year they will be promoted into the next grade and I don't know if they have a good teacher, or even a teacher at all. They moan and ask me when we're going to "stop learning new stuff." I wish I could explain the urgency. I wish they comprehended the challenges that lie ahead for them. But they don't so until June 19th I'll be teaching my little heart out, keeping track of every small inch of progress.

Cop Killer

2008-05-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

"Do you have an Acme card?" Jason asked me as he keyed in my produce items. Beep, beep, beep. I watched happily as a fresh supply of food slid across the scanner. I went to swipe my card and a small sign caught my eye.

Please give to the family of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski who was slain last weekend. Donations will be collected through May 26th.

Grocery shopping is not supposed to remind me of my job. My mind flashes back to my classroom. In the past two years there have been three cop killings. My students know the killers. They talk about the crimes that are committed but from a very different perspective. "My cousin is going to jail, Ms. Bell," they'll tell me and then I'll try to remain calm as they talk about the gangs, the guns, the violence that has infiltrated their family.

And then there are the other stories....

"Ms. Bell, Ms. Bell, did you hear what those cops did? They beat up some black people. It was on the news, they were hitting these men and the men didn't do anything." And I stand there feeling white and unsure what to say. So I let them talk. Where I live everyone is talking about the grieving family of a cop who died serving his city. Where my students live they are talking about a new law that lets cops stop people for no reason and search them. "My brother gets stopped all the time and he isn't even in a gang," one of them complained to me.

Today I asked two of them about it. I told them about the cop who died. They told me about the shots they heard the night before. The worksheets on FOIL sat untouched on their desks as I listened to them laugh and joke about the violence. Finally I asked them what they thought should happen, how could we change Philly.

"I don't know, Ms. Bell," Lillian answered, "people just crazy." I sighed and returned to FOIL because it was an easier thing to explain than racism.

"Ma'am? Ma'am?" I look up to see Jason staring at me. "Your total is $53.34." I stare at him blankly and then realize I need to sign.

"Oh," I say blankly and walk out to my car.

Tough

2008-05-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

"Take your seats and start working on the worksheet. It is 1:26 you are already 60 seconds late. Let's go, ladies!" My voice is commanding and full of confidence as I face section 803 during 7th period. It doesn't matter that I'm not their teacher, nor does it matter that I am simply covering for their science teacher who quit. All I know is the last time I covered them there were two fights.

"Ms. Bell, can I go to the bathroom?" One of them asks me.
" No. Not until everyone is in their seats."
"But they're all still out in the hall," the desperate 8th grader whined. I didn't answer, I just shot her a look and soon she was rounding up all her classmates and begging them to sit down so she could leave.

"Alright, the first thing we are going to do is review one-step equations," I announced. They growned.
"Ms. Bell, we have math right after this for two periods. This is science class. Why can't we learn science?" One of them pleaded.
"Yeah, or do nothing. None of the other teachers make us do work," another chimed in.
"Too bad. I am a math teacher so we're going to learn math," I said curtly. Secretly I did feel bad for them. They were going to have three periods of math that day. And they really needed to learn science. Mr. Thompson was the the third teacher to quit on them that year. From September to November they had Ms. Smith, but Ms. Smith also taught 802 (the infamous ones who I teach math to...think flying calculators). 802 had made it their personal mission to get Ms. Smith to quit. They succeeded, she didn't come back after Thanksgiving.

From November to Christmas they had no teacher. 802 and 803 sat in a classroom for more than a month with no teacher. In January they were switched to another science teacher, a woman who was already at her limit. Two days after Christmas she quit. So 803 then spent another month and a half sitting in a chemistry lab looking at the 8th grade science textbooks that sat untouched on the bookshelves. In March my school hired Mr. Thompson to teach them. I know little about the man but he lasted a month. So once again they are teacherless.

As I stood in front of them and gave them one more hour of math instruction I felt bad for them because they are now miles behind, most of them won't be able to go into 9th grade science next year. But at the same time pity on my part will result in nasty behavior from them. So I offered little comfort and instead drilled them again and again about inverse operations. They're behind in math too, so the time wasn't wasted.

I've changed throughout the year. I can chew out a pregnant girl for missing my class. I'll look a grieving student in the eyes and tell them to sit down and shut up. Two days ago a student told me that their cousin had just been convicted in a cop killing. After talking for five minutes about her feelings I transitioned right into geometry.

It is not that I am jaded and that I no longer care. Not at all. If anything I care more. But my students don't need a friend or a counselor. They don't need someone to feel sorry for them. They need a teacher, so I teach them. If they are going to make it they have to be able to factor quadratic equations, pregnant or not.

Field Trip

2008-04-26T05:06:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I walked into work at 7:30 and spotted Mella.

"Oh my goodness, Mella! What are you doing here so early?" I questioned. Mella ends up in the late room most mornings. She explained that there was a 9th grade field trip that day. I peered into the auditorium and saw my entire algebra I class. One great thing about my school is the level of communication. Here I was prepared to teach a two-hour lesson on completing the square and my whole class was leaving. That was fine with me, I don't really understand completing the square anyway. I can do it, but my question is why. Why in the world do we do that?

Anyway, I went up to my room and waited. As expected 4 stragglers wandered in. Some girls were too late for the field trip and some didn't get their trip slips signed. So there I was with four algebra I students. Tanaja was there, a dedicated student who comes every day but struggles tremendously in math. Sarne showed up for the first time in two weeks. Every ten days or so she pops into my class. She will flunk automatically this year because of her absences. Marquita trudged and sat in the corner, lately she has been mad at me. And finally Mia showed up. She is the student that is in foster care, this is her 5th school of the year. Recently she has been talking to me about whether or not she is pregnant, I might end up driving her to a clinic eventually.

I looked around the room and recognized that I had four of my lowest students. They were spread out across the room and I had them all move to a circular table in the back so we could work as a group. Marquita defiantly refused. When I went over to talk to her I saw a bookmark laying ontop of her notebook. In loving memory, March 2oth 1931-April 15th 2008. I backed up, her grandmother had died. I left her alone. A few moments later she asked me for a pass to go see a counselor. Absentmindedly I filled it out for 'Quita, the nickname I have for her, and I wrote the wrong time. She got stopped in the hall and the hall monitor chewed her out and wrote her up. She came back to me crying. I tried to explain the situation to the hall monitor, but the damage was already done. 'Quita later informed me that in the past two weeks her grandmother had died, her cousin had been shot and killed, and another cousin had been sent to jail for manslaughter. I took a deep breath and tried to ask compassionate questions.

We did algebra for about 15 minutes before we got totally off-topic. I started asking them about the violence in North Philly and soon the table exploded in opinions and ideas.
"Getting rid of guns won't help anything, people will just use knives," Mia said angrily.
"Why do you think people shoot each other?" I asked.
"It's dumb stuff, Ms. Bell. Someone looks at you the wrong way or some guy takes your girl. People just get mad and then they kill each other," Tanaja explained.
They went on to talk about the gangs of Philly, listing the gangs they had been in and which ones the police were targetting. 'Quita started shouting about a new law that lets the police stop people for no reason, she feels it is racist because the police are stopping her black cousin all the time.

"Are you mad, Ms. Bell?" Sarne asked suddenly.
"No, why would I be mad?" I answered.
"Because we're not doing our math," she said.
"Oh, I don't really care about that, " I said without thinking. It was true though. Lately at work I've been thinking a little more deeply about the whole situation. And since we only have 7 weeks left, a conversation with a few students seems more important than completing the square.

You're Going to Miss This

2008-04-21T18:04:00.001-07:00

You're going to miss this
You're going to want this back
You're going to wish these years hadn't gone by so fast

WXTU belted out the lyrics of a popular country song as I drove to Staples. As I listened to the chorus I muttered "psych, no" under my breath. I've picked up the phrase from my kids. The singer went on, crooning about how newlyweds and young moms should cherish each day. I was convinced that the newlywed should be happy, but not me.
When will I ever want this back? I find it hard to believe that someday i'll be talking to friends about my first year of teachign and how wonderful it was. I just miss having kids pelt me with putty as I try to teach them the order of operations for the 5th time. It is laughable.
I've had it. I'm counting down the days until summer and if given the choice I would gladly pull the string of time and jump forward to June 20th. I find myself daydreaming about blazing out of my school's parking lot and driving without stopping until I reach Pittsburgh.
But then I started thinking about my attitude. A part from being completely sinful, it is also incorrect. I am going to miss this. Probably not the putty projectiles, but I will miss the 8th graders. I'll miss coming into Covenant Fellowship absolutely desperate for God after a long work week. I'll miss the excitement of moving to a new city. I may even miss my beetle infested ghetto apartment.
Now I am trying to count the blessings instead of the days. Like noticing how funny my students are instead how bad they are ( I will miss being called White Jesus and Ms. Belly). Today they were all going crazy over my hair and asking me how I get it to be so soft and shouting about how white my scalp is. Were we learning? No. But it was fun having 5 eighth graders discuss whether or not they could put tracks in my hair.
Every opportunity, whether good or difficult, comes to an end. On my bedroom wall I have a list of people at my school I pray for. I made the poster in October. Six of them have already left my school, many of them very suddenly. One minute a student is driving you crazy, the next minute she transfers out of your school and you wish you hadn't chewed her out.
I want to run this last leg of the race. I've been in races before where I have copped out and walked across the finished line, so exhausted I didn't care anymore. But then the race is over and you wish you had that last mile back. When June 20th rolls around I don't want to have regrets. I want to look back and say I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

43 days

2008-04-18T17:26:00.000-07:00

The room was quiet, my last tenth grader had rushed down the hallway to lunch. I was alone in the eerily silent classroom on a halfday. I sat down exhausted and stared vacantly at the wall. I sighed and the room filled with voices again as a flood of memories poured over me.

"Good morning, my name is Ms. Bell and I am going to be your math teacher this year. I am very excited to be your teacher and I am certain that we will learn a lot together. What I need you to do now is full out this form with you name and your guardians contact information..."

That first day I was so naive. They all wrote fake phone numbers on the contact sheets so I wouldn't be able to call home when they misbehaved.

My eyes drifted to the back of the room where I posted my 80% club members each week. Every time I posted them I would greet the new members with high-fives and an excited "check the board! check the board!" They normally rolled their eyes and tried to act like they didn't care, but occasionally someone jumped up and down.

"I'm Dominique! Mr. V sent me to your class because he said I was destroying his class." I still remember how Dominique plopped herself right in the front row and dared me to teach her that first day she arrived in November. Yesterday she sat in my room for a half hour teaching me how to write gang symbols. It was the first positive interaction we've had since January. For two months she has told me on a daily basis that she hates me. But as I sat there in my chair and remembered all the days I had fought with her I realized I love her, I'll miss her, and I wish I could have helped her.

"White Jesus!" Denia's voice will always haunt me because she was always saying the craziest stuff. She's interupted 122 math lessons, but she has also made me laugh. This week she suddenly looked older to me. I stared at her and reconized a woman's face, a high schooler's mind. She's grown taller and more outspoken since September. I wonder what she will look like when she graduates.

And then there are the voices just from this week. Cierra telling me that she is taking a pregnancy test on Saturday and asking me for advice. Michelle showing me the ultrasound pictures of her baby girl, excitedly pointing out the fetus' face. Tia bringing me a flower from her science class and calling me cousin.

43 more teaching days. Part of me thinks I won't make it, I'll just keel over from pure emotional exhaustion or my eighth graders will jump me sometime in May. Getting jumped by them sometimes seems preferrable to teaching them. But the truth is it is only 43 days, my opportunities with these ladies are ending. Many of them I will never see again. So I hope, I pray that I can push and sprint across the finish line so that on June 20th when I pack up to leave, I hear the echoes of laughter and learning in my empty room.

Thankful

2008-04-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

It was a decidedly bad day. My students were grumpy, they stole my coffee, and I had to cover another class during my prep. But yesterday I realized that I am focusing on the wrong things. Every day I have so much more to be thankful for. For every challenge I face there are ten blessings that I have ignored. So here's my current list of things that are just amazing.

Food
Tofu cooked in olive oil and sprinkled with lemon pepper. Oh, yum! Plus just thinking about tofu makes you skinnier. Asparagus and strawberries which are in season right now. At long last my grocery store is selling strawberries that are red the whole way through. Coffee...thank God for coffee. Put some flavored creamer in there and then some Splenda and suddenly life is beautiful.

The Weather

It is beautiful outside! (my apologies to all of you living in Pittsburgh) Philly is going crazy. People are out in their yards whistling while they mow the lawn. Super out of shape people have suddenly taken up jogging. Everyone has their windows down and laughs even in traffic. I like to roll down my windows and crank my Country music station in North Philly. I get some strange looks.

Mira and Mella

When I yelled at my 8th graders for stealing my coffee (carnal sin I told them) Mira got all fired up and started yelling too. She was legitimately angry that they took it from me. So when I went out into the hallway to "count to 120 with my eyes closed" she was to one who forced the perpetrator to give it back.

However, while I was in the hallway someone took my pink rain jacket and hid it from me. The prank didn't really work because I didn't even notice it was gone. After class Mella was hanging around awkwardly. After everyone had left she whispered to me, "Ms. Bell, your jacket is in that box. Don't tell them I told you." So I have two loyal 8th graders.

Sharing

I get frustrated at my job, but I have so many opportunities. Now I have a student named Mia who comes 15 minutes early to class. As I rush around trying to get ready, she shares her life. She's worried that she's pregnant. We talk about what will happen if she is. We talk about her mom who died when she was 2 months old. We talk about boys. Someday soon we will talk about Jesus. I walk away from these conversations amazed. At school they just happened. I get paid to teach math, but I also get to have all these discussion with the young women of North Philly that I love so dearly.

Today as I was covering another class I started talking to the class of seventh graders about school. They were all multiple grade levels behind, I think one of them was 15. We got bored so I taught them how to do long division. One girl started jumping up and down when she got a problem right. "I'm smart! I'm smart!" she yelled. I could hear the pain behind her excitement, years of being in classes with younger siblings. I didn't change her future, but I got to share a little joy.

Sleep

At the beginning of the schoolyear I was so nervous about teaching that I never slept. I'm so over that. Now I snooze my alarm twice after a lovely 12 hours of unconsciousness. And on that note, I am going to celebrate sleeping by hitting the hay.

This post is dedicated to Wolfgang.

Sunshine

2008-04-08T17:22:00.000-07:00

On the drive in to work I always switch to track 3. I've tried to get myself out of the rut, but the song is so good. As my stereo is belting out Great is He I pass the VA hospital and watch the American flag flap boldly against the pink sky...good, it will be a good day.

Algebra starts joyously, our first day of normality after the three hour classes during the PSSAs. My students are fading, even the best ones are bored and ready for summer. So I made a big chart with their names and every objective I am going to teach from now until June. When they master the objective I shade in a little box next to their name. Right now there is only one lonely box filled in next to Theresa's name, but when that poster is covered with boxes I'll know the year is finally over.

In geometry we started studying volume. I had my students cut out 3D shapes and as they taped and labeled the bases and lateral faces, I circulated with my coffee. I love assigning group work and then purposely getting off-topic. Ask questions and you can learn a lot. Sarne has a child....I had no idea. Rea wants to be a judge. The party on Friday night was slammin but the one on Sunday afternoon flopped because church went late. Someone got shot on 24th and Hickory, a block from our school. There's camraderie in the class now. We've been through 7 months together and we survived the PSSAs. Suddenly even my bad students are feeling more affectionate.

Lunch was busy. A student stayed to work on her quilt. I was running around trying to get a ladder from the art teacher. I can't stand the walls of my classroom anymore so I started hot gluing posters everywhere. I hung the 8th grade mural on the back wall and tore down all the old stuff. The humming of the sewing machine provided background music as I tidied and filed.

8th period comes ready or not and my eighth graders file in. There were only 6 of them. They screamed, threw M&M's at me, and didn't finish the worksheets. But at the end of the day they could all graph quadratic equations so I won! We have long conversations all the time. I give speeches that no one hears because they are all yelling and throwing M&M's at me. But if they would shut up they would hear me talking about how much I care and how deep down inside I know that I love them. Because even though Maria tells me I have crooked teeth, she confided in me about her family. Dia interupted my class for 30 minutes as she reenacted a school fight, but she actually asked me on Monday if she could stay for detention. Shea acts like she doesn't care about me but I'm super careful because when I do yell at her the pain in her eyes is so obvious.

School ended and I spent an hour setting things up for the next day. As I made copies I sat down satisfied. I had barely eaten and I hadn't had time to go to the bathroom since 6:45 am. But wow, a lot of learning happened today. Mentally I remembered Cierra (a 10th grader who is 6 grade levels behind) telling me that an oblique prism was like the leaning tower of Pisa and Jade announcing that the Civil War ended in 1965 (only 100 years off).

Suddenly it is four o'clock and I realize I am going to be late for class. I fly home, change, and grab some trail mix before I am back out the door. Miracle of miracles there is no traffic on the way into Penn. Philly is looking more beautiful than ever, the sun glints off the skyscrapers, and the river is full of rowers. I pass my favorite mural and a wave of joy washes over me. I parked 9 blocks away on purpose just so I could enjoy the sunshine as I walked to class. We didn't learn anything and I got to catch up with my teacher friends. To make it even better we got out early.

Now it is almost time for bed and I am getting ready for another day. I guess the best days aren't really the weekends or breaks. It's when an ordinary day goes well. And I don't know what it was about today. I guess I just noticed the small miracles, God helped me step back and see that I do love teaching and I do love life. The school year will end and I'll never have these days back so I should live them to the fullest.

Set!

2008-04-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

"Ms. Bell, you are my favorite teacher," Tamira said matter-of-factly as I drew angles on the board. I blinked. She doesn't really mean it, I thought. I've developed an emotional shield when I teach my 8th graders. I try to deflect all their comments so I don't end up taking it personally. Still, I couldn't help but smile.

I went crazy in 8th grade this past week. They had the PSSAs in the morning so I felt bad teaching them at the end of the day. Everyone was exhausted; teachers, students, and staff. So there was no sense teaching a standard lesson. We studied angles all week and I spiced it up.

One day I lay flat on the ground in front of the class. "What am I!? What am I!?" I shouted excitedly. Multiple creative answers were shouted back. I decided to be more specific. "What kind of angle am I?" I questioned.

"180 degrees!" Delmirra called out. Yes! They were getting it. I continued to act out 30, 45, 90, and (ouch my abs!) 135 degrees. The next day they all could act it out as well...more importantly they could spot the angles on their worksheets.

We got off topic so many times. My family is always something they want to know about and somehow they found out that my siblings were called ding, dong, dang (me), and ding-a-ling when we were growing up. At one point when they wouldn't shut up I told them I would teach them song. After 5 minutes of quiet I belted out

Ding and dong, they're the Bell brothers.
Like king and kong, they're the Bell brothers.
Oh! You don't want to mess with...
You don't want to mess with...
The Bell brothers!

The class erupted and the next morning they were all singing it and calling me Ms. Dang. I don't know how I remember this stuff...I guess I just get desperate.

After we finished the worksheets each day I taught them to play Set. It is a game where you have to match cards using reasoning. My girls caught on so fast, they were soon beating me. The game caught on like wildfire and soon they were fighting over who would get to play. Now at the end of each school day my classroom is the one where half the girls are singing Ding and Dong, they're the Bell brothers and the other half are shouting "Set! Set!"

But the week showed me that my students aren't stupid, they just are bored. When I give them something engaging that they want to do, they'll beat me at it. Now I just hope we can keep it up until June. There is still a chance I can prepare them for high school.

Annie

2008-03-28T15:28:00.000-07:00

"Ms. Bell! Ms. Bell! Are we going to learn anything today?" Tamyra is bouncing in her seat, her tiny 4'9" body jittery with the excitement of a halfday.

"No," I answered happily. The morning was going to be filled with team-building activities. The whole room sighed in relief. My 8th graders are all below basic in math so my lessons are a source of great anxiety for them. They've always been bad at math so they hate it.

We were sitting there waiting for the loudspeaker in my room to give us our instructions. Jamila, a repeater who is four inches taller than me, grabbed my broom and marched to the front of my room.

It is a hard knock life for us! She started singing the whole song, swinging the broom around and laughing. I love Annie so i couldn't resist. I jumped in front of her and started shouting.

The sun will come out, tommorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow...there'll be sun! The room went silent in shock. Ms. Bell was singing and dancing around the classroom. Tamyra was bent over laughing so I felt encouraged enough to continue with Easy Street and finally a rousing rendition of Little Girls which seemed appropriate in front of the 10 fourteen year olds that have been throwing things at me for 7 months.

The room exploded. Soon we were all dancin, my DPAC was approved of but my Soulja Boy looks a great deal like a line dance. Jamila tried to teach me and I stopped her saying "Jamila, I am white. You have to go slower!" This produced more laughter and then Tamyra start crying out "White Jeeeessssuuusss!" in her the-holy-ghost-is-falling-on-me voice. I didn't mind because I wasn't trying to teach. Teaching when you're not actually teaching is easy.

Our activity ended up being a fashion show so we spent most of the morning pinning fabric and designing bags. I saw a side of my 8th graders I had never seen before. Jamila ran the classroom. I made her the captain and she took her job seriously telling kids to stop cheating and start helping. Tamyra was our model and she was so excited to go strutting in front of the whole school. For once we weren't the bad section of 8th grade. No one was shouting at them and I wasn't saying "can you please stop talking....can you please stop talking." Instead we were laughing. It was therapeutic.

Maybe Annie does that to people. Makes you see the brighter side of things.

Bring it!

2008-03-26T13:31:00.000-07:00

Halley walked into my class and I almost kicked her out before I saw the slip, in her hand she was carrying a brand new schedule. Great a new student, I thought. But I soon found out that she wasn't transferring. She was from a different section of 8th grade, but the same school. Her behavior had earned her a transfer to my section, the bottom of the barrel. We're not a dumb section, we're a bad section. I thought things were rough in October. Then 3 new students got switched in who had been kicked out by their teachers. So if it wasn't bad enough yesterday when my students threw my potted plant across the room, things have just gotten worse. Welcome, Halley.

But something has snapped in me. My students keep asking me if I am going to quit and I am more firm every time I say "no." Things keep getting worse and they will probably continue to get worse until June 20th. But there is no way I am quitting. I'll drag myself across that finish line if I have too.

At this point the challenges are so great that it is all a little bit funny. For instance, during PSSAs week I have one class for 3 hours...3 hours! Meanwhile I won't see the class that is a month behind all week. And I have to teach my 8th graders more math right after they take their PSSA. So next week will be rough. Bring it!

50% of my 9th graders are flunking because they are absent more than they are present. My top student got pregnant and another just got back from a 5 day suspension. Three girls have decided to "go on strike" so they sit in the front reading magazines and talking incessantly. I'm not allowed to kick them out of class until 9 so for the first hour of class their sit-in distracts everyone else. This means that on a typical day I have 15 of my 28 students and three of them are cutting out pictures of hairdos. These are the girls I am trying to prepare for college. Bring it.

I don't care about being embarrassed anymore, I don't have any pride left. So what have I got to lose? Nothing. And actually I have a lot to gain. God has got my back so nothing too atrocious will ever happen. And I'm being sanctified in all of this, really sanctified. Even better, if I actually do teach someone it is more impressive if I did it against all the odds. The worse things get the more opportunity I have to shine and be the amazing teacher I am. So Halley isn't a setback, she is a blessing. She's the kind of story I need so I can write a great essay, win the Rhodes scholarship, and be the next Bill Clinton.

So who cares? Sure, transfer everyone into my class! We'll just have one big calculator throwing party. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of below basic behavioral problems. I am the Ellis Island of 8th grade classrooms and we are taking everyone.

Thank You Stephen Colbert!

2008-03-21T10:33:00.000-07:00

I got graphing calculators! Thank you America! And thank you Stephen Colbert!

Several months ago I submitted a proposal on donorschoose.org. It is a website that allows private corporations and individuals to sponsor teachers working in high-needs areas. I asked for 10 graphing calculators since I don't have any and asking my free-lunch students to buy an $80 calculator seemed unreasonable. But the proposal was around $1000 and no one touched it despite my long essay about how horrible it is to teach students to graph exponential functions by hand.

The situation deteriorated. The 25 calculators I did have were broken (the 8th graders keep throwing them) or stolen and now I only have seven. I'm sure this might seem like the just desserts of students who steal, but the situation is actually more complex. I have lots of students who are trying very hard to learn and who would never take a calculator. They're now reduced to sharing a calculator with 3 other students during tests.

But this morning I got online and saw that, miracle of miracles, someone gave me $1000 towards my calculators! I flipped. So they are being sent to my school and they will stay with me for the rest of my teaching career. Not wasting any time, I got on donorschoose this afternoon and requested 30 regular calculators to replace the broken/stolen ones. I already have designed a calculator assignment system so these 30 will make it through the years.

If you want to see Stephen Colbert talk about education here are the links:

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=81750

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=81749

And if you want to help me out you can sponsor my new request on donorschoose. I just posted it:

http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=171810&zone=113

5 Grey Hairs

2008-03-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

Erin and I were lacing our way through Oakland's streets as I pointed out the important landmarks. That's the Cathedral of learning, where I studied. That's Hillman...where I studied. Oh! Here's Starbucks...where I studied. I was freshly aware of how mundane my college experience had actually been.

As I passed all the old coffee shops, rundown apartments, and cheap restaurants I remembered with shock that I went to Pitt a year ago. I've only been working in Philly for seven months, it feels like 7 years. And I feel ancient, so much older than the bright young faces that rush around Pitt's campus. I listen absent-mindedly to the kids next to us at the crosswalk. They are stressing about whether or not they can get into Chinese I in the fall. I'm still wondering if I should write up Shakeara for threatening to jump me on Monday.

Despite my admission that I am now middle-aged and that one year of teaching has demoted me from energetic co-ed to decrepit old maid, most people still mistake me for a teenager. I used to find this funny but now that I am in charge of 16 year olds, I don't like when people think I am one.

Even if I look like I am 16 I am now a greying 16 year old. 5 grey hairs have appeared since I started teaching! If that becomes a linear function I'll be silver by the time I am forty. However, based on my 8th graders I'm guessing it may become an exponential function. Which basically means I should get married...now. Sigh. Oh well, at least I am a lot richer than all those bright-faced co-eds walking around Pitt's campus.

Pittsburgh

2008-03-05T15:47:00.000-08:00

8 days...until spring break...until Pittsburgh. Nothing has changed in Philly a part from the weather, the kids are crazy and the teachers are exhausted. So instead of reflecting on all that craziness I'd like to think farther back to last year and another Pennsylvanian city.

Pittsburgh. Oakland and the university there seem like a dream, I have already forgotten street names and favorite restaurants (that place with the burrito eating contest?). I miss riding the T and falling asleep and missing my stop. I miss the rain. I miss the tunnels and Daron saying "the only city with an entrance" every time I drove him back from church.

Craig Street was the one pocket of uppity culture in Oakland with its little boutiques and $15 hamburgers. The incline was fun and romantic every single time and Light Up Night was better each year. I spent most of my time in Hillman, sitting at "my desk" and watching the snow as I studied for finals.

More than anything I miss Providence. I'd go to church early for prayer and stay late talking. I'd be there as long as both my Philly churches services. I miss coffee and cookies after the service or even better church picnics (KFC anyone?). Frisbee and the squish squish of the mud because it was always raining or something. Basketball after church during the winter and running on the Bethel Park trail during the spring. In Pittsburgh parties are packed out, everyone comes and often in costume. The church is vibrant, quirky, and committed. Great things are going to come out of that church...I just wish I could be a part of it.

8 days Pittsburgh...8 days 'til I see your wonderful grey-cold-winding-roads-hills again.

Spring has Sprung!

2008-03-03T16:46:00.000-08:00

Today two miracles happened. First, it was 60 degrees. I went jogging without gloves, felt the sun warm my face, and laughed out loud as I spied on some robins. Adieu, winter! Second, I had no detentions with my eighth graders.

....well I have one student coming tomorrow to serve 20 minutes (she left her literacy class to "visit" me while I was teaching my geometry class. Glad she likes me, didn't appreciate the interuption). Today I came back with a vengeance. For the past 7 months 802 has been winning. But today Ms. Bell won! I came in with a huge poster and a point system so complex I don't even understand it. I gave them all behavior plan folders and made a big speech during advisory.

"35%! What do you think that number is? That is our last benchmark score...we were the lowest in the whole school," I let this depressing fact sink in. They finally fell quiet. "The reason this number makes me so upset is because I know that there are students in this room who can do much better," I paused to make eye contact with the three ring leaders of my classroom. "Tomorrow we have another benchmark and we need to hit it out of the park. At the next assembly I want you guys to win some awards."

So math class came and they actually did work. No one through anything except for one marker. They got all their points and I gave away a prize at the end. For the two weeks before break there are going to be lots of prizes and candy. Plus, Ms. Bell is going to act crazy. I'll stand on my head if it keeps their attention. Today I wiped marker on my forehead just to keep them entertained.

9 school days until break. That is going to mean a lot of antics until then. Wish me luck!

p.s. This post is dedicated to Melanie's roommate Sarah who told me it takes a certain kind of person to teach middle school. Now I know what she meant.

Name the Mouse

2008-02-28T18:28:00.000-08:00

There was a soft scuffle and then a loud rustling in my classroom's radiator. My advisor stopped talking and raised her eyebrows. We were going over my plans for the next month, planning the final weeks before the PSSAs.

"Oh, that is just Charlie," I offered casually. Her brow furrowed. "My mouse," I explained. Yes, I named the mouse. I had some help from my 8th graders and was slightly inspired by a friend who shares the name. When I am mad he becomes Charlene since we aren't sure of his gender. We rarely see Charlie except for when he darts out from the heater and shoots across my room inspiring terror.

After 6 months of teaching I have officially lost my marbles. I have gone from hating the fact that my classroom is infested with vermin to viewing Charlie as welcome company. He is bolder in the early morning (or maybe that is the only time I can hear him) and occasionally I talk to my furry friend as I write out the day's objectives. He has it good, he lives in a heater and eats the endless supply of chips, sunflower seeds, and snickers bars that my students smuggle into class. At 6:45 on a frosty February morning I can even find myself envying him...a mouse.

If you name the mouse, you have control over him. Charlies is my mouse. Pest becomes pet in one christening act. This and several other strategies have helped me cope with some of the odd challenges at my job. Sometimes I laugh to keep from crying. As I said to our school librarian, this is one crazy thing to do as a first job out of college. I have almost completely morphed into Ms. Bell, the no-nonsense math teacher who keeps legal records and speaks to parents about truancy issues. But occasionally I still remember that I am 22.97 years old and it wasn't that long ago that my biggest responsibility in life was making it to class.

So to preserve my identity as a human and not just a math-machine I do some weird things...like naming the mouse.

Pipeline to Prison

2008-02-24T10:36:00.000-08:00

"You are so lucky I am on probation right now! I would so hit you if I wasn't on probation," Dia was massaging her fist and she seemed very serious. I was actually chuckling at the dialogue between my two 8th graders. Star swore that Dia had called her a name and she was standing up, taunting Dia. Dia kept shouting back but wouldn't rise out of her desk. She wasn't lying, she was on probation. One punch, one more pink slip, and the 14 year old was going to jail.

Dia's list of grievances is impressive. She's continually throwing things in my class including desks, calculators, homework, textbooks,...actually as I reflect it is hard for me to think of something she hasn't turned into a projectile. Her latest mistep was threatening the principal, this got her arrested in handcuffs and a 5 fay suspension. If you met Dia you probably would agree with the harsh judicial response. She's big, loud, and has a temper. In many ways, she is dangerous.

But Dia has another side. She came to our school in October because she got kicked out of another school, a public school with an even worse reputation than mine. There is no dad in her life and her mom is addicted to drugs. I have tried to call home about ten times at this point. I've realized that there is no one to contact, no one cares about Dia's behavior at school. More tragically, it seems no one cares about Dia.

What is it like to be 14 and have no one ask you about your day when you go home? What is it like to have no one look at your report card? Occasionally Dia softens and we talk. I think, despite our frequent confrontations, she knows that I like her. Each day I ask God for grace to say "Good morning, Dia. I am happy to see you," no matter what she said or did to me the day before.

She may have threatened the principal, she may have thrown a calculator at my head, but she is still 14. And currently the discipline of our school is a pipeline to prison. I see so few students make it out of the current of misbehavior. Pink slips turn into suspensions which turn into fights and expulsion. I wish there was a way to get these kids on a different road. I wish I could get them to make better decisions, to control their anger. But there are always limits to what I can do. It has made me rethink things though. Someday if Dia commits a major offense it may have all started with her throwing calculators in my class.

Life in Philly

The Promised Land

Grief

The End?

Resistance

French Class

Black Power

Factoring trinomials

Boathouse Row

Sitting on the Floor

Remotely Controlled

Strong Woman

Christmas Cards

Snowed In

Grades

Supplies

Run for Orphans

Siarria

After School

Priorities

Redemption

Top Philly Schools

Menial Tasks

Touring West Chester

Three weeks, three years

Paddling

A Family of Teachers

Well done, Ms. Bell

October Sky

Good luck, Ms. Bell!

The Last Mile

Strength in weakness

You love us

Technology in the Classroom

Stay

Still

Roach

Pizza

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Some place else

Family

One Child

Fight!

Technology

Drexel

Storm Day

The End of an Era

City

Dawn

A Time to Mourn

Sad News

Resolved

Wrapping Paper

Hope for the Holidays

Family

All That is Good

Persistence

Chante

World Series

Quitters

Friendship

The Hallway

Breathe Deep

Heritage

Popular

Lights out

Locked out, switched, and tired

Forgiveness

Hold Your Breath

Team World Vision

Adequate Yearly Progress

Backyard

I Can't Die Today

Compared to last year

Come One, Come All!

For the Love of Learning

Summer

Graduation

Checkers

Origami