Monday. Bah Humbug.

It's 10:06 PM and I am in lying in bed thinking, "how is today over?"  Seriously, where did Monday go?  We didn't start off on the right foot today.  When the 4:30 AM alarm went off I managed to convince myself that the battle with my running shoes and the pavement was not worth it.  That was a bad idea because I then continued to convince myself waking up wasn't necessary until it was after 6:00 and very necessary.  Next I realized I hadn't bought groceries and had no food for breakfast or lunch.  Breakfast turned into the only thing I could find in the fridge - a tuna fish quesadilla.  Then that quesadilla ended up on the floor.  It's ok, blow on it twice, brush it off, and it's good as new.  Then that same quesadilla ended up on my car/garage floor.  Once again, blow on it twice, brush it off, good as new.  The copy machine ran out of paper, I realized 6 exams were MIA, I lost the 45-day surveys, and realized I never made a powerpoint for the lesson 5 minutes after class started.  The nice thing is I've become extremely flexible as a teacher and somehow made it through the day.

I'm not supposed to pick favorites, but if I could, these would be their self-portraits

Now I'm going to brag.  My students scored a 75% average on a really hard test last week.  Their first test was a 65% average.  Booyah!  I literally skipped out of my classroom after I graded their exam on Thursday.  My other class scored an 87% average on a quiz today that I did not think they were ready for.  In the middle of everything going wrong this morning, I found four, sweet letters from past students in my box.  Today we started systems of equations which I love and in 4 days I'm going to Austin for Fall Break.

Systems of Equations are my favorite because we bring out the Chickens and Pigs

The Nitty Gritty

The weeks leading up to school my feelings included excitement, anxiety, curiosity, fear, commitment, confusion, ambition, dedication, and loyalty to my kiddos.  I had no idea what to expect.  There is so much pressure on the first day of school.  I was told over and over last year that the first day sets the tone for your entire semester.  I was also told to be a million different things and none of those things were myself.  Getting to the point where I realized my job sucked because I wasn't being myself is a different story.  I decided to actually take the best advice I received last year from my favorite teacher in high school and just be myself.  As a teacher you often "fake it till you make it," which is great, as long as you're not faking your personality.  They see right through it.

Anyway, I'm proud to say, 1 day down and 179 to go of my second year teaching!  After a whole lot of reflecting this summer and thinking about last year there is one critical thing that I realized my students were missing.  Many of them didn't believe in themselves and their ability to do well.  After researching motivation and interviewing students I realized that I truly believe anyone can succeed.  For some people success comes a little easier than others.  Those people are lucky enough to taste the sweet joy of success frequently.  But what about those who have to work a little bit harder to succeed?  For them it is even sweeter.  I want my students to taste success everyday and focus on their growth and how far they've come rather than striving to be a master.

Prepare yourself for a cheesy analogy (why is it that exercise analogies seem to apply to everything?)  I in no way, shape, or form am a runner.  I absolutely hate it.  Let's call running a marathon "mastery."  I would love more than anything to master running.  If I put on my running shoes with the intent of running 26.2 miles I will become easily discouraged and quickly give up.  Let's be honest, if I even tried doing a half marathon I would still become easily discouraged.  Tonight I ran two whole miles without dying (please wait while I brush some dirt off my shoulder.)  That was a huge accomplishment for me after barely being able to run half a mile not too long ago.

As Malcolm Gladwell says in my new favorite book, "success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard."  In other words, success is grit.  When my students walk out of my class at the end of this semester, they will walk out saying, "I have grit."  It is my goal that they will be able to find success, whether it's big or small, in everything they try.  In room 201 we are the nitty gritty!

Teacher Appreciation

Let's be honest.  Going into today I thought, "I have to establish dominance in 1st period!"  Finals are coming up, which means summer is coming up, which means students are getting anxious and behavior is getting bad.  Luckily for me, I was able to establish that dominance this morning when someone got up and walked out of class to answer his phone, followed by a few colorful words to me and about my class when I told him to go back outside after the phone call.  Happy Teacher Appreciation Day Ms. Sansom!  The gifts kept pouring in and I was able to kick someone out of 3rd period as well.

Fast forward to 8:30 tonight.  I just got a text from the student in 1st period that had the colorful language and stormed out.  He was working on his study guide and asking for help.  That kiddo stormed out of my class today because he was so mad at me, then went home and not only did his homework, but asked for help when he got stuck.  I was so happy.  In all seriousness this time, Happy Teacher Appreciation Day to me!

Phone Hijack

This is what happens when I leave my phone unattended before class starts. Needless to say, these two make sure everyday starts off interesting.

Word of the Day: Reflection

This post is all about reflections.  No, not the kind of reflections that Christina Aguilera sings about in Mulan.  The Teach for America buzzword kind of reflection.  During Institute (TFA's summer training program,) we were constantly told to "reflect."  Reflect on your students scores.  Reflect on your lesson.  Reflect on Leslie's question.  Reflect on why your students are getting high in the bathroom during your lesson (true story!)  One day I was even told to, "reflect on your reflections."  That's the point where my lack of sleep and complete exhaustion set in and I lost it.  You get the point, lots of reflection.

I've been horrible about posting for the last 6 months.  Worse than I've ever been!  I'm hoping that will change next semester because one thing I love is writing and another thing I love is my job.  Somedays that's not true and that wasn't true for the first two months of school.  Institute was great and I was known as the "lesson planning queen," but once I got to T-Town and started teaching it was completely different.  I was reflecting on some reflections in my journal the other day and read an entry that mentioned the fact I had made it through the entire day without crying once.  That was about two and a half weeks into the school year.  It got worse after I went home for Brother's wedding and spent the next week sobbing about how much I hated my job.  I'll admit, I was even hoping for a minor accident that would require me to leave the school and go back to Utah (nothing too bad, just bad enough.)  My other half in New Orleans helped me through that rough patch and I managed to finish 1st quarter.

Now I've almost completed 1st semester!  All I have left is three, 3-hour days where the kiddos take finals and I wait for the results.  I can't believe how far I've come or how far my students have come.  I came into TFA thinking I was going to be "truly transformational" (buzzword), but after a few weeks I was hoping for "adequate" (not a buzzword.)  At my turning point where I went from hoping for a car accident to looking forward to tomorrow's lesson I realized that being transformational isn't about everyone scoring above 80% on the CRT.  Being transformational is something different for each individual student.  For R it meant hunting him down during lunch and pulling him away from his girlfriend so he could retake a quiz, working before and after school to bring his grade up from an F to a C in three weeks, and helping in his other classes so he can be eligible for soccer.  For E it meant listening to her talk about the problems at home during my prep and attempting to attend all her vocal performances.

In TFA we talk so much about the data.  How many of your kids have passed the AIMS?  What is their average score?  What does your tracker look like?  The data can be fun; we love looking at the charts on my wall to see which class scores the highest on an exam and who has the highest class average.  In TFA we also talk about building authentic relationships.  After reflecting on the last four and half months the most important part of my job is the relationships I've built.  I love these kids.  They absolutely drive me insane, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.  I don't think I'm transformational and I'm definitely not close to being "truly transformational," but hopefully I'll get there by the end of my two years with TFA.

Photo from here

Welcome to 201

Time has been flying by lately, yet going so slow at the same time.  When I moved to Arizona multiple people told me to keep a blog about what's going on in the life of a high school math teacher.  I haven't really had a chance to breathe since school started, but I'm attempting to be better, starting....now.

First game of the season.  Go Wolverines!  We actually won!

Friday was the end of the third week of school!  Fifteen days down, 165 to go, but who's counting?  I hear its supposed to get a little easier and more routine by October or at the very least the end of the first semester (does that mean I have to wait until Christmas to feel like I know what I'm doing!?)  Some days are bad - really bad.  Others are just bad, but for the most part it's good.  The best part of my day is when I'm up there teaching those little kiddos.  By little kiddos I mean high school freshman and juniors.  There were two pieces of advice that I was told over and over going into my first year of teaching:  "Don't try to be someone you're not," and "fake it till you make it."  Those two bits were mixed in with a bunch of other advice like, "you can smile before Christmas, but don't smile in the first month," "make someone cry in every class during your first week," "you have to keep notebooks," "don't start teaching content until the second week," "teach content on the first day."  So much advice!  I want to go back to the best piece of advice I was given - "Don't try to be someone you're not."  It's not my style to not smile or to make someone cry.  I felt like I finally showed Liz and who she really is on Friday and it was the best day of teaching I've had so far.  Kids actually left my class saying they really enjoyed math that day and were looking forward to the semester.  Whoa!

Now on to a little bit of the fun and joys of teaching high school students.  Third period has been my toughest class so far.  Two boys specifically have made this class a challenge.  One of them changes his opinion of me constantly.  He walks in shaking my hand, telling me about his day, all smiles and laughter.  By the middle of class he's telling me he hates math and he hates my class and he's never coming back.  By the end he walks out practically skipping and saying, "bye Ms. Sansom.  Have a great day."  On Tuesday I was crouched down at a students desk helping her with a problem.  I turned around to see this student standing up in his boxers with his basketball shorts around his ankles.  "What are you doing!?  Pull up your pants NOW!"  I held him and the other trouble student back to talk about the de-pantzing situation.  Their responses were "why would I pull down my own pants," and "why would I pull down his pants?  I like girls."  That was fun....

More to come with the joys of teaching high school!

He might not like math and might pull his pants down in the middle of class, but on the bright side my student makes a mean origami bird.  

I'm a Survivor

I made it through the 5 week Teach for America Institute!  It was madness.  I was cramming with one of my students until one minute before grades were due, but the final result was wonderful.  100% of my students passed the class.  After a mid-semester assessment that every student failed I was seriously concerned, but we did it!  And I think they actually kind of liked me.  Bonus!  It just about brought tears to my eyes when one of the really quiet students came up to me on the last day and gave me the tightest hug and said, "thank you so much for helping me."  The first time he took algebra II he didn't pass.  This time he got an A.  The week after institute I had orientation where we learned about unit plans and had more specific training that focused on our content area, like mathematics.  Next Thursday I start my district training and I can't wait for that.  Each step I am getting more focused on my content area, my school, and my students and it is all so exciting.  I also can't wait for some free time to explore the new place I live!

Love my collab - Katie, Javier, and Allie (and me)

Institution

I can think of 1,000,000 other things I could be doing right now.  Institute is crazy.  I'm finally beginning to understand why my teachers said there was not enough time in a day.  Even though institute is absolutely insane and I'm always grading papers, writing lesson plans, printing copies, attending classes myself, and lucky if I get 5 hours of sleep at night, I am loving this.  The average day at institue looks something like this:

4:45 wake up
5:45 - 6:30 ride the bus to go to Westview High School
6:30 - 7:00 handing back papers and student trackers and getting ready for class
7:00 - 7:15 monitoring the hall
7:15 - 8:00 working on lesson plans
8:00 - 11:00 attending curriculum and literacy sessions/lesson planning
11:00 - 12:30 teach math
12:30 - 1:30 lunch
1:30 - 3:30 more curriculum and literacy sessions
4:00 - 4:45 ride the bus back to ASU

Then my night continues with planning lessons, printing homework, grading quizzes, writing/grading quizzes, attending evening sessions, and hopefully going to sleep by midnight.  There was an hour and a half of sleep in there one night last week.  It is hard, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.  I'm learning so much about being a teacher.  The best part of my day is definitely when I'm teaching class.  My students are great.  They have a hard time with simple mathematic operations, like adding and subtracting, which can be extremely frustrating, but I'm really enjoying getting to know them and watching them learn the material.

I've heard life after institute is easier, but I'm wondering how that can possibly be true.  How can it get easier when I have 6 classes of 30 + students rather than 1 class of 20?  And taking masters classes at ASU on Thursday nights.  I can't even think about that right now.

I've finished my first week of teaching and two more weeks to go, then final assessments.  As much as I love this, I am really looking forward to July 6 when institute ends!

We're attempting to stay sane in our classroom....it's not working very well

PHX

I made it!  I arrived in Phoenix Monday night for Induction into Teach for America.  I was so nervous for this week and it has been great.  We've spent time in groups talking about different things like diversity, leadership, and how we can manage our classroom and become transformational teachers.  Wednesday afternoon we spent 3 hours "in the community."  Basically me and one other girl walked around downtown Phoenix looking for people to talk to and learn more about the city and the people.  Well in case you didn't know, Phoenix is hot.  No one in there right mind is strolling around downtown Phoenix in the afternoon, except for TFA.  The only person I talked to worked at a doll museum.  The dolls were slightly freaky.  Although I wasn't able to talk to many people about Phoenix, I was able to visit the downtown ASU campus where I'll be going to school and find a lot of places that I'm excited to visit and check out later on.

The definite highlight of my week has been the email I received last night.  This morning people were going out to schools to interview for their specific positions.  Last nights email said that I didn't need to be anywhere until lunch because I had been placed at a school.  Well, this was news to me!  I met our director of placement at breakfast and he informed me that I'd been hired at Tolleson High School.  I could not be happier with that placement.  My number one subject/grade preference on my TFA application was high school math and that's exactly where I'll be.

Next week will be tough.  And the next 4 weeks after that, but I'm looking forward to how much I'm going to learn.  There are so many institute horror stories, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will be a positive experience for me.

Christmas Miracle

I believe in miracles and yesterday was a mighty miracle.  I had to take two Praxis exams before I would be allowed to teach in Arizona.  Up until January all I had ever heard about the Praxis was that it is a ridiculously hard exam that people take repeatedly before they are finally able to pass it.  Since my assignment in Teach for America is secondary math I had to take the Mathematics Content Knowledge exam.  For the second exam I was told to take Physics Content Knowledge.  I'm still not exactly sure why I was assigned that subject, but oh well.  I took the math exam back in March, but was really nervous for the Physics exam, which was at the end of April.  Halfway through the test I completely zoned out and started thinking about what I wanted to do for my birthday, what we should do the next weekend when Rachel was in town, and pretty much anything else I could think of that was not related to Physics.  The test was not going well and I had given up.  A couple days later I signed up for the next Praxis exam that was available because I was 99.9% sure I failed.  Well, that 0.1% chance pulled through.  Scores were released yesterday and I passed!  I'm going to be a teacher!  Yahoo!!!!

Dreams of a Crazy Person

I think a decent percentage of my posts are about weird dreams I have.  Here's another one of those posts. I just had a dream that I was getting chased around this mansion by all these different spooky characters.  At one point I was running with Eddie Murphy and we were running from a ghost ( Haunted Mansion, anyone?)  After what felt like hours of running I found myself in a large open basement with a jungle gym in the middle of it.  The giant ghoulish figure was on one side and I was on the other.  I decided the only way I was going to survive was if I bargained with the creature.  I yelled to him to stop and we both got down on our knees.  I was asking what he wanted from me and he slowly started transforming to a high school boy.  He was one of my (future) students and all he wanted was to go to college.  I gave him my motivational speech that I've been practicing in my mind about how all of my students can go to college and he will go to college and the big goal we are going to set to get him there.  This is just a thought that I'm going to throw out there, but I'm thinking that the anxiety of Teach for America is sneaking up on me.  Six days until the big move!

Oh ya, and my best friend gets married today!  Congratulations Stacie and Patrick!!!!

Other Half

Tonight we had a bridal shower for my best friend Stacie and some people in the neighborhood and ward.  I'm going to take a minute to brag about Stacie.  She is seriously the best friend anyone could ask for.  She moved into the neighborhood when I was 3 years old.  We always had the same teachers in school starting with Mrs. Suchey in kindergarten and walked together at high school graduation.

When I was 5 years old Santa Claus brought me a power wheel Porsche.  Stacie and I set up our own little community all over the neighborhood and we'd spend all day, everyday, driving around in the Porsche until our legs were too long and we had to drive with one leg inside and the other hanging over the side.  There were multiple occasions when we were in elementary school where she let me borrow one of her bra's because my Mom hadn't bought me one and she didn't want me to feel left out.  Now that's a true friend.

Some of my favorite memories with Stacie include....

• Mud facials in her backyard
• Making salad for Hitler (we went through a serious WWII phase) with tree leaves and Pam's fresh tomatoes
• Running around the neighborhood playing "Charlie's Angels" 
• Choreographing dances in the basement
• Setting up restaurants, bridal stores, hair salons, and clothing stores
• Filming our own rendition of "Brigham City" in the backyard
• Speeding to school at 7:25 in hopes of making it to art by 7:30 
• Going for our nightly drives listening to Coldplay and Augustana
• Many concerts
• Torturing Sarah :)
• Going to Einsteins for a bagel and mudslide cookie every lunch Senior year 
• Crawling through the neighbors doggy door....

The list goes on and on.  Stacie also got accepted to Teach for America, but she's moving to New Orleans.  I am so excited for her to marry Patrick, but am dreading saying goodbye.  The longest we've been away from each other in almost 20 years was 5 months while I was living in China.  It looks like I'll be flying to New Orleans a couple times each year :)  I'll miss you best friend!

A Really Good Day

I finally feel like I can breathe again.  Yesterday was January 17, which was kind of a big deal.  I was told I would be getting an e-mail at 6 PM that said whether or not I had been accepted to Teach for America.

I got it :)

I'll be moving to Phoenix, Arizona to teach secondary math.  Can I get a whoot?

TFA

I have been extremely hesitant to post about this little something out of fear that it doesn't pan out.  Kind of like relationships.  But the suspense is killing me and making me a little antsy and I can't keep it in anymore.

In October I applied for Teach For America.  This is a program that allows you to teach in a low-income area for two years while working on your Masters.  Which brings up another little update.  After almost four years of school and one year of looking for the perfect job in wellness or sports med, I've returned to the original plan.  Teaching.  I changed my degree from Elementary Education to Exercise Science my Freshman year, but now I'm back at it.

Back to TFA.  I applied because it was a free application.  Thousands of people apply and I thought "there is no way I'll get this."  I was invited to a phone interview and thought that was pretty cool, but still, no plans on getting accepted.  Then I got invited to a final interview at BYU.  This final interview was an all-day event that included teaching a sample 5-minute lesson, a group interview, and a personal interview with one of the recruiters.  That was on December 1 and I have to wait until January 17 to find out whether or not I was accepted.  If I don't post on January 17 that I'm moving to New York, DC, Seattle, Boston, Phoenix, Colorado, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, or the Bay Area then I didn't get accepted and I've crawled in a whole to die.