penguins! raaaawR!!!

What can be an easier and quicker reference than a list of DOs and DONTs to the new first years:

DOs

• go out
• drink
• hang out with non teachers
• talk about non school stuff with your teacher friends
• see Oxford, all of it
• go to an Ole Miss football game weekend experience
• participate in some type of extracurricular at your school
• your blogs, actively, not just the required ones
• find a hobby and pursue it actively
• drink (on weekday afternoons when you get home from school)
  
• show a real side of yourself to your students
• drink coffee
• lesson plan ahead
• workout
• call Ben Guest with questions, he will help you
  

DONTs

• give up and quit
• spend your planning period aimlessly browsing the internet
• skip your MTC classes
• bring your grading home with you
• bring your school troubles home with you
• get too lax on your classroom management
• gain the Teacher Corps Twenty pounds
• suck any toes of your students
• touch your students
• keep your problems to yourself on MTC class weekends
• prejudge or stereotype

In a nutshell, just don't get discouraged. The process will be long, and it will be hard. But there will be those moments that will inspire and motivate you. The MTC classes might get you down, but stick with it. Plow to the end the of the row. Shuck the corn and eat it too. Good luck class of whatever you are (because it's wacked out now or something).

Was I excited about Mississippi Teacher Corps? Sure I was. Why not?

 

Since my senior year of Mrs. Shivers’ AP comparative politics class, I knew I wanted to teach. There was something about Mrs. Shivers that just flat out inspired me to be a better student. A passion, a compassion, a determination for her students and her work. I knew what it felt like to be inspired and I wanted to know what it felt like to be the inspirer. And so, I would become a teacher.

 

At first, Ole Miss was just that convenient university that had an honors college, an international studies program, a marching band, a free ride via my alumni grandpa scholarship, and one helluva college football tradition. Then, it turned into something different. I lived it. I breathed it. I drank it (among other things).  Ole Miss will always be that “spot that ever calls”.

 

And now you are telling me there’s a program that will allow me to teach in Mississippi, live at home, earn a free master’s degree, AND give me reason to come back to Oxford? Well hell, where do I sign up?

 

Then came summer school…

 

This wasn’t so bad, 20ish kids, 50 minute lessons, team teaching. Then come back to Oxford for classes that would help me become a better teacher. (The only thing I might have done differently would have been to live in Northgate. I feel like I missed some camaraderie among my fellow MTCers by having my own place in Oxford) Dr. Gutierrez did indeed motivate me to teach Spanish and teach it well, and boy was I out to teach some inner city Jackson kids some Spanish!

 

Looking back at Wingfield, everything is kinda blurry. I can only remember a few students’ names without really thinking hard, I have a few lesson plans, and the rest is just kinda like one of the scenes in a movie where you only get to see certain clips of a the revelation moment that happens at the end. Here are the clips that stick in my mind:

 

Pushing, condoms, tennis team, anger management kid, student/faculty basketball game, afternoons with Ms. Mathis, and then the faces of some of the famous (or infamous) students that I had.

 

For me, Wingfield is like that big term paper that was worth half your grade for a class in college. At first, you tell yourself that you are going to work adamantly on the paper and make a good grade. But procrastination gets the best of you and you end up throwing things together at the last minute. This is obvious to your teacher (or in this case your students) when you turn in the final project. You get a C even though you know you are capable of getting an A. However you blame it on the teacher and the fact that you weren’t happy with your assigned paper topic. At the same time, because of your mess up on that paper, you have learned how to write better, how to organize your paragraphs, write a thesis statement, and put together a bang up essay. Now you can write that paper for your next class and completely WOW your professor. And so you find out about a new exciting course being offered and sign up with high expectations…

 

And those expectations didn’t miss a single beat.

 

Madison Central has helped me love teaching even more (because there were those moments at Wingfield, granted not many, that really did make me love teaching). Motivation and respect, the two biggest characteristics that stood out from my Madison Central kids in contrast to my Wingfield kids. I just felt more at home at Madison Central. I didn’t have to be this hardass teacher that was too big for his breaches and kept a straight face on at all times in order to “potentially” instill some type of fear in the students (wow I was a mess). Now, I laugh with my students, I make fun of my students, I smile at my students, I make stupid lesson plans with pictures of myself photoshopped and wearing a bikini. I call parents and they immediately want to have a conference so we can work out the problem. I fall in that category of the few and far between. Simply put, I love my job. Each morning I drive to school, excited about what could potentially happen that day. I’m excited to see certain students. I’m excited to see my coworkers. I’m excited to eat the lunch I prepared the night before. I love my job.

 

Other teachers at my school complain about a student in their class chewing gum, texting in the bathroom, falling asleep….at this time last year, I was complaining about students cursing me out to my face, smoking in the bathroom and texting in class then hiding their phone in their bra. All things are relative. Whenever my students frustrate me, sometimes I take a deep breath and think back to the situation I was in at Wingfield and tell myself to let it slide.

 

Still, I look back at my time at Wingfield and I have a lot of regrets. Would I have liked my job a lot more if I had had better classroom management? Yes. Would I have felt a better connection to more of my students if I had let down my hardass mode every once and while? Probably. Would my students be more interested in what I was teaching if I had put more sense of humor in my lessons like I do now? Considering my sense of humor and theirs, probably not. However, regardless of all these “what ifs” and “only if I hads”, I still consider my time at Wingfield a learning experience that has helped me grow as a teacher and individual.

 

In addition to my teaching, MTC has sparked my interest and love for my home state. While teaching Spanish might not be as highly regarded as teaching English, Math, or Science, whatever I can do to educate and influence our youth, I’m gonna do what I can.

so i joined a USTA tennis league to play around and stay in shape (now that ive lost 20 lbs.)....i nonchalantly mentioned it to some of my students and some of my male students said they were gonna come watch....lol ya right.....

..........

.........

5 of my students came and watched me play tennis, i was so embarrassed...then, to top it all off, they had taken sharpie marker and wrote S-E-N-O-R, letter by letter, on their chest and pulled their shirts up to show me

i lost the match 7-5, 6-1...but had a hell of a time laughing at them as they clapped for every point i won (even those when my opponent hit into the net). moments like these make me love what i do and feel like im really making an impact, even if it's only to have students come and laugh at me flail on the tennis court

ya, i know i havent updated in a while....no real excuse, just been real lazy. the new year has brought some changes...for starters, class is going well.....after the first semester i had ONE (yes ONE) student failing....granted this is probably due to the fact that my semester exam was 10% of the semester average (school policy) and me and the other spanish teacher made the exam SUPER easy....going into the exam, i think i had about 10-15 that were failing or borderline....thanks to the easy exam, they were bumped up just fine

during the holidays, i stuffed my face and gained a lot of weight, so i decided to buckle down and go on a diet....ive gone through phases where i have gone to the gym on a consistent but never have i actually gone on a diet where my food was limited....some people had told me about south beach so i looked at the book and it seemed like something i could handle....well after 8-9 days on the diet, ive lost 8lbs and still going strong....usually i go to the gym 1 hour a day and just eat right....who knew it could be so simple right?

i also went to the cotton bowl over the break which was FRIGGIN AMAZING. go rebs!

other than that, i dont really have any funny and outrageous school stories to tell as other MTCer still get exposed to due to the schools they are in. to be completely honest, my job is simply amazing.....last year, every morning i dreaded waking up and going to work.....the drive to my school was miserable because i knew that every minute that passed, i was that much closer to getting to my job...

now, i LOVE going to work....i still listen to the same ESPN radio morning show but it is no longer like im driving to my execution at the hands of 16 year olds while listening to Mike and Mike....granted there are still tests to grade and slackers to put up with, but the support of the administration and the desire to learn of the students makes teaching so much more enjoyable and less stressful.

at the same time, i wouldnt trade my experience at WHS for anything. if i had been thrown right into madison central, theres NO WAY IN HELL i would have anywhere near the sort of appreciation i do now for where i am and where ive come from....i have a completely overhauled sense of humility and that helps me in my daily life. never thought id say this but....thanks wingfield

alright so im sure most of yall have been exposed to pandora by now....if not, in a nutshell...its an internet radio station where you type in an artist, band, or song name....then pandora generates a playlist similar to that taste of music....i was skeptical at first but the site is VERY accurate

anyway, in class on day we were doing some coloring of skulls and skeletons for my students' day of the dead project and i asked what music they might want to listen to. given all the differences in taste, i brainstormed my head for music that EVERYONE likes....the closest i could think of was music from disney movies. lets be serious, its hard NOT to like songs from the likes of Alladin, Little Mermaid, Lion King, etc.....

so i type in Disney in pandora...what luck, the first song was that phil collins song from tarzan (be in my heart or something)....next was whole new world, followed by beauty and the beast....what a great station with all the disney hits!.......then the shit hit the fan....

what followed was an endless array of hannah montana, jonas brothers, hillary duff, high school musical, etc, etc....at first reaction i started dying out laughing, then something even funnier occurred....almost all of my female students KNEW EVERY SINGLE WORD TO EVERY SONG...apparently, the other channel behind MTV that my students watch is the Disney Channel. i laughed even more on the inside at the thought of jamming out to the Disney pandora station with my students at Wingfield. their reactions and outbursts played out in my imagination

"WTF is this sh*t mr jimenez! you gay or something?"

10 miles.....only 10 miles separates these districts and students

there are many benefits that have come with being a member of the MTC....however, like everyone else, there are a couple that really stick out.

the first i can think of would have to be the humility that has come with teaching. ive never considered myself to be someone who was really full of themselves in the past, but i can definitely say that i was not a modest person and enjoyed the action of tooting my own horn here and there. the first humbling experience was when i first came to oxford for the orientation and when i met all the other participants. granted ole miss isnt a bad university and its honors college was great to me, but i also know it doesnt have that national reputation as an academic powerhouse such as the universities from which the other MTC participants were coming from: princeton, duke, harvard, UNC, etc.....

next was just the experience of teaching in a critical needs school with the kind of students that attend those schools....as i grew up, it was just expected for students to respect their teachers and do mostly whatever they said...however, once i started teaching at wingfield, that all went out the door. never before did what i have to say become so unimportant....when some students will blatantly look you in the eye and tell you to f*** off, you know you have gone through a humbling experience. in addition, just the fact that i was serving a position that was almost completely thankless.

the other benefit from MTC has been my drastic increase in appreciation for MS and its history. growing up, i was dead set on getting out of MS after i graduated high school. after attending ole miss for undergrad and having dr mullins insight from classes and guest speakers, i have really come to appreciate more the history that MS has come from. also, from meeting the other MTC students and hearing about their reactions fo how things "work" in MS, it really showed me how different and somewhat backward MS has been in the past. before, i couldnt really appreciate faulkner's quote:

"to understand the world, you must first understand a place like mississippi"

now after having had classes on the history of education in MS and meeting some of the influential people that have lived through it, i feel like i have a better grasp on the history of my state which has given me a greater appreciation and better idea on what should be done in the future

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008810210372

because switching from a school like bailey magnet to a school like wingfield, callaway, jim hill, forrest hill will really make THAT big of a difference.

hi kettle, my name is pot....im different from you

http://www.palestra.net/videos/play/15823

me on foxnews college network talking about the grove...pretty cool segment and she kept coming back to my comments   =D

i was grading some quizzes and then entering in the grades into my gradebook and i noticed a really funny pattern...

most of the students who have last names towards the beginning of the alphabet were the ones making really high marks on the quizzes...then i got to thinking, maybe this is because due to their last name and assigned seating in most classrooms, these students are the ones who are always placed on the front row. im sure there are already studies that have shown that students that "choose" to sit on the front row generally make better grades because it can be a sign of motivation, etc. but what if these kids were routinely placed on the front row due to their last name?

granted this would only work if you do your alphabetical seating chart going across the front row first, then the 2nd and so on, rather than down the row....but it seems like it could be something that could be studied if you implemented that kind of seating chart in a district. then would your kids with last names towards the end of the alphabet who are placed in the back become worse students? less attentive because they consistently sit in the back? just something that randomly came into my head. other thoughts?

well, what can i say? my first days back have been completely awesome. my new school is so much fun, especially considering that i am coworking with my previous spanish teachers and we are all on the same hallway.

the very first day, i was just the same as i was last year: very strict, straight to business, with only 1 or 2 small little jokes that the students didnt really think were funny anyway (at first, its a good thing to have your students think that your an old fogey with lame jokes)...however after those initial house keeping days, i blew the roof off

my personality was allowed to come out and interact with these kids mainly because they knew when it was ok to play around, and then when it was time for business. the best part about my students? they WANT to learn spanish. already i have had about 10 students drop my class after the first 2 days because it was obvious to them that we were gonna be going balls to the wall spanish and that that wasnt something they were really looking forward to. the students that have remained with me though are primarily excited each day as they come into the class.

one girl in particular, each day she comes in, sits on the edge of her desk, and looks up to at the front of the class with a big ole goofy grin on her face and her eyes as wide as platters. now granted this might be because i am the hott new spanish teacher (sarcasm aside of course) but i like to think that she is just really excited about learning spanish and is really liking my class

so, fortunately i have been able to open up and have more open conversation in my classes. the other biggest change is that i dont have "rules"...i have "expectations"....and they are labeled on my posted rules poster as such...expectations because as i told my students, i shouldnt have to make rules to come down on yall with, rather, i have expectation of them because by now they know what a healthy learning environment looks like and what they need to do in order to make that happen

lastly, my other change is that im doing tickets as a positive consequence and the kids love it! they are very eager to volunteer and get mad at the other person who had their hand up. i will ever be confused by the attitude and motivation of students that do not live more than 10 miles away from each other. i guess, as we have stressed, it all starts at home.