Pretending Hard to Be a Teacher

This weekend, I went with the rest of the middle school faculty to Chicago for the annual NativityMiguel Network of Schools Convention. This weekend was basically an excuse for all schools within the network to get together and party without students, while learning and networking.

NativityMiguel claims to "break the cycle of poverty through education," but since the oldest schools are barely celebrating their 15th anniversary, there is little firm data. I believe in it, however. The ideas behind the model are fairly simple, and based off of two schools: Nativity and San Miguel. (These schools have a richer history than NMNS, which may be part of what convinced me.) Some of the basic ideas : the schools are faith-based, serve in underserved communities, involve families, and keep students in school more hours for more days.

Oh, did I mention that the schools are middle schools? So we face the particular challenge of getting students into high school, seeing them through it, getting them into college, seeing them through it, and getting them into the real world. No one sees results for literally ten years. At least.

The Convention drew together teachers, principals, board members, and grad support counselors from across the country. And I had my first teacher class. I learned how to teach students by using games and the way the parts of their brains communicate. I took lots of notes, which I intend to use in class. I also became very confused about how to identify right and left brain tendencies, something I thought I had known, but not according to the definitions I encountered. I'd share what I was taught, but I really don't get it.

The other teaching session I went attended focused on curriculum, with the ultimate point that teachers should plan by: 1) deciding what to teach, 2) deciding how to assess it; then 3) deciding how to teach it. And not in any other order. It seems very intuitive to me, even though the speaker spent an hour and a half convincing us it's true.

Our keynote speaker blew me away. Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries spoke about his ministry to gang members trying to reform their lives. After David Bereit, he's my hero.

We also had a few minutes Friday night to wander the streets of Chicago, although we didn't get out too much. We ended up at Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company, a Forrest Gump-based restaurant, eating a late dinner and enjoying ourselves. Ana especially loved the transformation of people once you get them out of the school. I know at least one of the teachers was fascinated by the way I changed from Ms. Z to me.