The Moving Student

Another first happened to me last week.  A student moved to another city and therefore is out of my class.  Now, the fact that a student moved is not anything new to me.  In fact, a male student in this same class moved and there was nothing of note that happened with him.  Additionally, a female student during my student teaching also moved.  But this particular student was very emotional.

For anonymity purposes I'll call the student Janice.

Janice had told me she was leaving the week prior, and I thought nothing of it.  Students come and go, I have no control over that.  I didn't think twice about it.  The week goes on with no big issue.

Then, her last day is her at last.  It was a somewhat cloudy day, a little drizzle falling outside.  A note from the office comes for her and she goes to talk with the assistant principal.  Upon her arrival, the students and I are in the middle of reading our novel, and she is crying.  I don't mean tears quietly falling down her cheek, but sobbing. Her nose sniffling.

"You have to sign this, Mr. ________, " she sniffs, handing me a form for her transfer.

I asked her what was wrong.  I thought maybe she had gotten into trouble. 

She sobs, "I.. don't.. want.. to leave..." and breaks down in class.

Now, I don't care who you are, just thinking back on this pulls on my heart strings.  I was at a loss for words.  Part of me wanted to stop class and let everyone say their good-byes, the other part wanted to keep a professional demeanor in the class and continue with what we were doing.  I noticed several students looking at me while I decided.

In the end, I chose to keep class moving along, eventually sending a female friend of Janice's outside with her to calm her down.

I'm sure you're thinking, "How heartless!"  But really, I think I would choose that option 97% of the time in the future.

The two girls come back in and there was no issue for the rest of the class.

And, so, that is my first experience with the emotional student saddened by leaving school.

I was also taken aback by the hug.  I am, by nature, not very emotional in the classroom.  I am not entirely comfortable making contact with students in this way.  These two things added together meant that the hug was an awkward, one-armed, side hug on my part, and a two armed strong hug on her part.

Again, I'm not heartless, just not experienced with how to act in these situations.

And since I have no better way of ending this, I'll borrow those iconic words from Forrest:
"...That's all I have to say about that."

The PLC Conference

I had wanted to update during the conference, but did not find the time.


A little backstory:

My district is in the process of converting to the Professional Learning Community (PLC) model.  I have had some experience with the process throughout the year, but I was able to get the information straight from the horses' mouth (the DuFours). 

A PLC can be applied in any industry, but for education it's basically a structured, fancy way of moving from different teacher, different curriculum to different teacher, one curriculum.  Or, a consistency among teachers instructing the same grade level or course.  And it's not a consistency in that the exact same lesson is being given to every student, but a consistency in that the material is the same, and the skills being taught are the same, which means freedom for teachers to still put their personality into the lesson.  However, this isn't to say that some schools won't take it as far as same lesson among the teachers.  This isn't the case at my school--Thank goodness.

Some people like it, others hate it.  From a first-year teacher's perspective, I LOVE it. 

I mean, my first year could have gone 2 ways.  The first is spending countless hours coming up with a curriculum for the whole year on my own.  I would use the whole year as my experiment on what worked and what didn't, crying when 90% of it didn't.

Or, it could go the way it has been.  Meeting with other sophomore teachers--veterans of the craft--and seeing how they present the material, deciding what skills we will be teaching within each unit.

I am not using everything they give me, but I like to think that I can add it to my bag to pick and choose from later.  Rather than filling that bag with janky things I have no idea work, I can fill it with tried methods and choose from those.  I mean, I am still going to add my own ideas into that bag, but when those don't work, I'll have a fallback.

Anyway, the conference went well.  It was basically a reinforcement of the ideas that the English department has already been doing and implemented.  It was enlightening, too, about what still needs to be done at my school to fully function with the PLC model.

I am excited to see how it turns out!