My attempt to change the world...one student at a time.

Story Time!

I have talked a little before about a Deeper Learning project that my students completed in the fall. To give you a little more background the project was developed by the students to raise awareness of harassment that occurs in their immediate communities. The students wrote their own plays, acted, directed, and filmed them to create a documentary to show their parents, teachers, and community members at our deeper learner symposium.

I have had a couple students who really took this project to heart and who took the initiative to go beyond where we stopped in the classroom. As an educator this is the whole point in education! To teach the students something, to open their eyes to a situation around them, and for them to actually DO something with that!

After our project a new instagram account popped up associated with my school. The account was called the happiness project and it was created to bring some positivity to our school culture. The posts were sweet, all about encouraging one another and trying to share some more positive and uplifting material. I liked the account immediately because it was similar to some things I had posted on my classroom twitter/instagram.  I took note of it but didn’t think too much about it until this quote came across the page; “People don’t realize how badly verbal harassment and cyberbullying affects you. I wish they had hit me in the face and gotten it over with because what they said to me sticks with me to this day. It affected me into the person I am today.” That quote was one my students used in their harassment project.

So I started really paying attention to the account. I started combing the captions for hints as to who the author of the account was. One of the captions struck a chord with me and in my semi-selfish heart I hoped that the author was talking about me. The caption was under a photo of the quote “If you’re looking for that one person who will change your life, look in the mirror.” Under the quote it read; “A wise woman once told me that I have the world t my fingertips and to go out and chase my dreams! I am taking her advice, you should too! The path to success starts with you Go, go be who you want to be and be proud of that person because being who you are will make you happy rather than being someone you’re not. You have the power to change your life forever. Love and honor those who help you like I have honored the wise woman. She has a large impact on the person I am and I don’t know what I’d do without her. Hopefully she will read this.”

As time went on I was more and more convinced that one of the young women in my class was the one organizing the Instagram page. I didn’t bring it up to her because I feared destroying the organic nature of the endeavor she was attempting to engage.

About a month after the Instagram account popped up I was conducting grade conferencing with my students as the end of the grading period was rapidly approaching. When her turn for grades conferences arrived, I brought her up and we were able to have a little conversation that we don’t always get to have since her grades were well over 100%. In our conference, we talked about how her life was going and we got to talking about the power of positivity. I asked her if she had seen the Instagram account and how incredible I thought it was that middle school students had taken it upon themselves to try to spread a positive message to their peers. She claimed she hadn’t seen the account but would follow it later that day. As the conferences continued, I could see her sitting at her desk with a little smile on her face. When the period ended, she came up to me and whispered in my ear that she had started the account and that the wise woman she had mentioned was me. At that moment my heart practically burst from my chest. She is such an incredible young woman who shows immense maturity at such a young age and knowing that in some way I have influenced her life was a breathtaking moment.

Another situation that occurred with this young lady is that a fellow teacher nominated her to attend a leadership conference over the summer and I had the privilege of giving her the letter. Seeing her as she opened this letter and realized an adult on team had singled her out was powerful to watch. You could practically see the confidence boost it gave her. I think that out of all my students she is one of the ones who will truly understand that this is an opportunity not a reward or show of favoritism. I asked the students who had received the invitations to write a letter thanking the nominating teacher, as that is appropriate adult behavior. Many of them wrote less than emotionally critical letters but I read hers and she understood that this was going to be a life changing conference and articulated how humbling it was to have been invited. Every day I find something that amazes me about my students. Some days they are good things, some days they are bad, and some days….like this one…they are validating and so uplifting.

Time for a little dose of honestly...I have really been struggling to love my job over the last few weeks. The students are really beginning to act out,  the days have been long, and less than stellar. The entire team that I work with have been at their wits ends due to student behavior. When I decided to continue my holiday (brand new) tradition of decorating the back of my door I really didn’t anticipate struggling so hard to come up with things. But let me be honest...this has been a struggle. Since it is March I decided to write reasons why I am lucky to have these students….well recently I have been feeling lucky when 2:20 rolls around and I no longer have them.

So I have challenged myself to write the lucky clover when I am in a moment of frustration. I have been doing a lot of work in order to build a growth mindset. I have experienced some things in the last calendar year which has pushed me to breed positivity and really pushed myself to see the good in all the darkness. These last two weeks have had a lot of darkness coming from my students. I have been able to come up with some reason every day but I know that when I go back and look some of them are going to be pretty weak because they were written when I felt weak.

“Reasons why I am lucky you are my students….

1. I am lucky you are all so passionate

2. I am lucky you care about your education

3. I am lucky you all love one another

4. I am lucky you listen when I need you to

5. I am lucky you have big hearts

6. I am lucky you try everyday

7. I am lucky you want to learn

8. I am lucky you all have a future

9. I am lucky you want to talk about big ideas and issues

10. I am lucky you are all kind”

We are learning about the Oregon Trail right now and Manifest Destiny so I searched high and low to find the old school Oregon Trail game for them to play. I used to play that game all the time growing up and I remember it being so much fun, educational, and frustrating as all get out. Luckily I was able to find it online and found a nice little worksheet to go with (so that way it at least seemed more legit). I have never seen kids more engaged, emotional, or excited about an educational game in my life.

They were asking all kinds of questions about how to survive and what the best strategies were. You overhear things like…”Did you say I got collard greens?!”, “My wagon broke..I repaired it, went 3 feet and it broke again! Talk about annoying”, among other hilarious questions and exclamations. Today the students begged if they did their work to play and when I allowed them to I caught one on a blog trying to get helpful insights and strategies to win the game. On top of that today their warm up was to tell me some challenges they faced in the Oregon Trail and they were able to articulate all kinds of different problems…even my lowest class! I count that as a major win. Some good examples of responses to the warm up: “The only challenge I faced was taking my teacher, she broke her arm like 3 times.”, “I went as a banker so I thought the extra money would help but it made more things on my wagon break.”,  “I bought as many oxen as possible and someone came and stole them in the middle of the night and only left me one….then it died.”,”How is one thief going to take 7 oxen?! I just got finessed!”,  “I kept drowning when I tried to cross the river.”

Moments like this are things that keep me going during the dark and long days between christmas and spring break.

Sidebar: I totally ended up with the highest score out of all my classes...good to know I’ve still got it!

In order to show you what I mean when talking about influencing students lives I would like to share a story with you about a young man I connected with over the last year.

He is a kind young man with a big heart who was seeking acknowledgement in all the wrong ways. I am sure you know the type if you have ever been in a classroom. He would talk out, act silly, play the class clown, and just generally gave all this teachers a huge headache. But as you watched him you also saw the depth of his kindness towards others and a child seeking someone to show him love.

As the semester went on we finally got some of his behavior issues ironed out and he has become one of the best students in class, incredibly engaged, asking solid questions, and scoring better on his assessments. One of the things that has had such a major impact on his transformation is that he has recently found out he is going to be adopted. He has been in the foster care system for a long while now and had been carrying this fear of rejection. He was just waiting for this foster parent to realize he wasn’t worth keeping. I’ll never forget the day he came into class and said that he had been told he was being adopted. I had never seen his face so alive.

As the fall continued I began interviewing students for a project on harassment occurring at our school or in the community around. The students really got into this project. They dove head first into creating a campaign to raise awareness about harassment as well as to create skits and videos to help show others the types of harassment that occurs in schools. They also took this  a step further and did positivity speeches that built people up even after people have been speaking ill of them. This young man jumped into the project with full force! He was leading the charge; acting in the skits, writing the skits, speaking in front of a room of 200 parents, presented the project to 500+ parents, business partners, and community leaders. He also came in and shared an instance of bullying he had experienced. As we were talking he said “I’m not really sure if this fits into the project we are doing but I would really like to talk about something if that’s ok.” I had NO idea what was getting ready to be shared with me. This sweet young man shared with me how he was afraid to accept love from his future adoptive family because he was afraid they were going to leave like everyone else had done before. Insert my heart breaking and tears falling. I was completely unprepared for how this was going to impact how I viewed all the misbehavior from August and September. So I sat there with him telling him how he needed to be ok being vulnerable and allowing his new family to love him because they would see the same young man I was seeing in that moment. I talked to him through tears and in broken sentences trying to impart to him how special we all thought he was and how if he allowed them the chance they would see it too.

Since then I am happy to report they have set a date for his adoption, which is quickly approaching. His behavior has been a little off recently but he pulled me aside today to tell me that he is just so anxious he hasn’t been able to really focus on anything else over the last month. I pulled him into the hallway the other morning just to have a chat about him staying focused and he was just such a ball of nervous energy he could hardly stand still. I can’t imagine the level of excitement, fear, and anticipation he is facing right now. It makes me anxious for him but I know that this will be just the right kind of change and stability he needs to grow into a highly successful, kind, and intelligent young man.

Recently this young man received a letter inviting him to attend a youth leadership conference over the summer. This letter came directly following his ADOPTION! I think he was pleasantly surprised because he is often the student who is overlooked for things like this because he can be a tad excitable. The nominating teacher had moved schools over winter break so I asked the students to write a thank you letter if they wanted to and I explained to them that in the adult world it would be appropriate to thank someone for honoring you. Before sending the letters I wanted to read them to ensure no one wrote anything inappropriate (They are 13-14 after all). His was incredibly moving. He was so grateful in his letter and I sat and thought to myself about how something so small can make such a deep impact on students. That letter, which he may not even go to the conference, could have altered the path he will follow as he grows into an adult. Having had that boost of confidence may push him to achieve more and to push for academic success in the future.

After the news broke about what happened in Florida I have really been struggling with how to protect my kids. That’s what they are. My kids. All 100 of them. I want to protect them from everything and I got into teaching thinking I would be protecting them from things like heartbreak, failing tests, and having a rough weekend…not from the darkness of the world. Yet here we are.

Since January I have had to really think about what I would do in a similar situation. I know without a doubt that I would do whatever I had to in order to keep them safe. I just wish I didn’t have to. I wish that my 13 year olds weren’t asking me what will happen if someone gets into our school and where we will go. I wish they didn’t know that because the shooter in Florida was a former student that he knew the protocol we are supposed to follow to keep us safe. I wish their minds didn’t have to work like that.

I was in the office Friday and overheard a mom coming in to remove her student from school because she just can’t deal with the fear of something like that happening. I totally get it lady. I am not yet a mother but I hope one day in the future that I will be. I worry about what I would do in a similar situation. What happens when the places that are supposed to be safe havens turn into death traps. How do we reconcile that intellectually? How do we overcome that as a nation?

My Heart: Valentine’s Day special

I anticipate writing a longer post about how much my students have woven themselves into my heart but in the spirit of Valentine’s Day I want to share with you something that I did in my classroom to let the students know how much they mattered to me.

On the back of the door I began a list of reasons why I loved the students. I tried to do one for each day of February before Valentine’s Day. Sadly I got the flu and missed a couple days but I think the message was conveyed, even if a couple days were missing.

Reasons why Ms. Durbin Loves you:

1. You work hard in my class, even when you’re having a bad day. Thank you for putting your best foot forward.

2. I love how kind you are to one another and how compassionate you can be.

3. I love how each of you have goals and passions.

4. I love how generous you are with what you have.

5. I love how curious you are and the questions you ask.

6. You all show up to school, no matter what else is going on in your life and you try your hardest to be successful. You have hope for a better future.

7. I love you because you are who you are. You are kind, special, smart, and hardworking.

<3 Ms. Durbin

Hello!

So glad you stumbled upon my page!

I am a middle school social studies teacher in Kentucky who is trying to change the world 100 kiddos at a time. Sounds cliché right? Yeah I thought so too until I started trying to live that out every day. I taught high school in the past and it’s funny to see how much kids change even from one year to the next. In high school the students didn’t really want to show me they cared, I know some of them did but it wasn’t cool to be the teacher's pet. In middle school the kids still want to love you openly, at least some of them do. I’ve had half a year in the middle school environment and so far i’ve gotten hand drawn pictures galore, sweet notes, funny posts, and even one note that broke my heart. I imagine this is how parents feel when their children present them with little trinkets of their affection. Basically like your heart is going to burst.

In my room the philosophy is that I am there primarily to make the students better people by raising awareness about serious social issues that face our world today. I am happy if the students leave my classroom knowing what year the declaration of independence was signed...but I am ecstatic if they leave my room passionate about a social issue. I come from a background in sociology so that is where my passion for social justice comes into play. I really want the students I teach to recognize there is something much bigger than themselves in this world that they should care about; whether it is racial inequality, gender inequality, poverty and homelessness, or international relations. I try very hard to not only cover content but life as well. Sometimes we end up spending a little too long on the life section but where else are they going to be able to ask questions and dig deep into the issues facing our world when most people look at them and think, they are 12...they don’t know or care what’s going on in the world. You would be surprised the depths of some of their questioning minds.

This blog is going to follow along on my journey, the successes and the inevitable setbacks. The heartwarming moments and the ones that leave me in tears at the end of the day. The world is harsh and in reality I do not always do a good job being a steward of the students future, I get frustrated and tired. I plan crumby lessons but every day I come in and try to positively influence at least one person. I hope that one day I will look back on this blog and see that I was successful.

Welcome to Durbin’s social studies class!!