Finding Fun: End of Quarter Reflection Part 2

As a student I was always conscious that the day before a break or holiday was different than a normal school day-- filled with anticipation. Not much learning occurred on these days. It was an inverse relationship: the longer the upcoming break, the less productive the day of school. There was only a marginal effect leading up to a long weekend, but the day before winter break of the last day of school might as well have been holidays themselves. From the student perspective, these days are great. Relaxing, little to no actual work, because students know that the teacher knows that students are not in learning mode. Leading up to my first break as a teacher, I viewed that Friday as an easy day because I only had the student perspective to guide me. I would throw on a (somewhat) educational movie count the minutes until the start of my nine days of freedom. Not exactly the picture they show you in the TFA brochure, but that's life. I realized that for as much as I yearned for breaks as a student, a teacher blows that level of anticipation out of the water.

I came to school that day fully armed with a borrowed copy of "Planet Earth"-- a Discovery Channel series that has a bunch of different nature topics. All I had to do was make it through four forty-minute periods and my half-hour of intervention at the end of the day. However, I quickly learned that I hadn't mastered the "video day" routine (which is probably a good thing, honestly). I'm not sure why I thought   my students would want any part of watching "Planet Earth". Video day lesson #1: Make sure you pick a video that your students MIGHT actually enjoy. Even I was falling asleep after about five minutes. Almost nobody was paying attention, which leads me to my next video day lesson. Video day lesson #2: Don't allow talking during the video. This should have been a no-brainer; I have no idea why I thought it would be OK to allow my students to talk "as long as you are being quiet". My first period of  "video day" quickly turned into a madhouse, and I had to make quite a few adjustments on the fly (which isn't all that different from any normal day). The only thing that really bothered me was that I gave a few students an extra assignment for talking (after I had implemented my "no talking" expectation). Even before the period ended, I was disappointed that I had done that. The bottom line was the video was boring and I was foolish to expect perfect behavior.

The next three periods went much better. I went from Planet Earth to Mythbusters, which I knew my students (and I) would enjoy more. While I don't plan on having video day again until the day before winter break, I am glad I learned how to properly implement it. The last period of the day is always my intervention time, which is essentially study hall. Students have a few different choices-- they can work on homework from any class, they can read a book, or they can use a computer/iPad to work on Khan Academy and Study Island, which have online lessons and practice problems. Usually this period is pretty easy for me because students are used to the routine and, thus, behavior isn't much of a problem. I don't have to plan lessons for my intervention, so naturally I didn't have anything planned for this last thirty minutes before break.

In my first posts I described one of my toughest days of teaching. That day I completely lost control of a class-- during an observation by my ASU clinical instructor. I have come a long way since then. Nevertheless, there are still times when my inexperience is quite conspicuous. My last thirty minutes of the day before fall break, I lost control of a class once again. This time, however, the implication was completely different. This last period of the day is always tough for my students. 8th graders have the latest lunch and special-area period of the day, so they go to their four content courses first and go to their special area class last. For most of them, their special area class is P.E. or dance, so they come to my classroom sweaty, hyper, and ready to go home. This is on a normal day--now imagine what it is like on the day before break. Needless to say, I knew we weren't going to get anything done that day. My goal was keep them under control for thirty minutes. I lasted about five minutes. As predicted, they didn't have anything on their mind besides fun, but what made things even crazier was the amount of students that showed up in my room. I have about 18 students in my final period (much smaller than a normal class size), but that day our 8th graders (and teachers) were not too interested in following routine. After those five normal minutes to start the period, I started receiving a steady stream of additional students. For those of you who might find this strange, it's actually not that unusual at my school. Besides their four content periods (math, science, language arts, social studies), students have very flexible schedules in terms of choices for special area classes and intervention. Additionally, even when a student is assigned to a specific class, it is not uncommon for that student to show up to a different class. It seems like a crazy system, but for the most part every student shows up to every class such that everyone is accounted for, and the distribution of students is somewhat equal across classrooms. This day, however, I had what seemed like half of the 8th grade in my classroom. At first, it wasn't a huge deal.  A little noisy, but no one was working so it didn't really matter. Then, more and more students showed up-- not troublemakers, mind you, but my BEST students. It became an unstoppable force; they did what they wanted and I had no say in it. Interestingly, they were very adept at doing things that I would never allow during a real class, but that I would let slide at the time. They knew exactly where the line was and didn't cross it. A brief sampling of events: messing with the stuff on my desk (they definitely knew this would annoy me), taking a stack of sticky notes and posting them  everywhere around my room (I made them clean up later), covering all of my whiteboards with hearts and notes (see picture at top). Nobody got hurt, no damage was done. I was a little stressed at the time--definitely relieved when the day was over--but I realized that this was actually a milestone moment in my classroom. That my students felt comfortable enough to come to my classroom and be themselves, knowing that I would let it slide that day, is something that I am OK with. In the "teacher manual" this is probably a cardinal sin. We are constantly reminded of the need for consistent expectations and procedures--that we must be in control at all times. That I lost control must be a sign of weakness or inexperience. I might look back later and agree with that assessment. Perhaps that day was a glaring reminder of my inexperience. But looking at it now, during that time I was closer to my kids than I have ever been. The sharp distinction between teacher and student, adult and child, blurred for a moment. I think those moments are absolutely critical, not only to helping building relationships with students, but to preserving my sanity as a teacher. "Fun" is not a topic discussed much in education these days. I am not endorsing the view that "fun" should be the guiding principle of education (quite the contrary, actually, but I'll save that for another post), but I always try to remember that my students are kids, and an important part of being a kid is having fun. If my students can come to school and experience one or two moments of pure joy each day, I think it will have an enormous impact on their educational experience. The bottom line is that kids don't learn if they aren't invested in learning, and they don't learn from teachers they don't like. The same thing goes for teachers. I will never be an effective teacher if I can't have some fun when I am around my students.

So I end my reflection of my first quarter of teaching with a wonderful experience. It's amazing that "losing control" was the theme of two of my most memorable days--in two completely different contexts. As I return to my classroom next week, I am still driven by the same mission--to achieve transformational change in my classroom by preparing my students to be successful in high school. I also return with a greater understanding of my students as individual people, which further increases my motivation to improve as a teacher. But I also realize that I need to enjoy this journey. At the end of the year, if I had fun teaching and my students had fun learning, I am confident that we will have made the ambitious academic progress we seek.

Finding Fun: End of Quarter Reflection Part 1

I looked at the date of my last post—September 16; it has been a while since I last wrote, but it feels like no time at all. The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. As always, there have been peaks and valleys, but a routine is starting to build such that the swing of emotions has settled down. It’s an interesting feeling—each day is tiresome and challenging, but time passes with incredible pace. I am already done with my first quarter! I made it to my first real vacation, where I get to travel home for the first time in nearly a year and spend at least a little bit of time sitting around doing absolutely nothing. But more importantly, these nine days off give me a chance to reflect on the last few months without the daily stress of waking up too early, going to bed too late, and lesson planning during nearly every free moment. Much has happened during this time, and I believe that in terms of personal transformation, my experiences as a teacher have changed me more than during any other time in my life. 

My first few weeks as a real teacher were, quite honestly, miserable. No amount of training can fully prepare you for this work, but with only a few weeks of summer school teaching (where I only taught an hour a day) under my belt, I honestly had no idea what I was doing on day one. I had poorly planned lessons, inconsistent and ineffective classroom procedures, and no relationships with students. Days ranged from decent—where I felt like I could make it through the end of the year—to terrible—where I wanted to quit on the spot. At the end of my first quarter, things have greatly improved. I still have some poorly planned lessons; I still have many inconsistent and ineffective classroom procedures. However, my relationships with students have deepened. During those first few weeks, I remember lamenting to my friends and co-workers how my students were so far behind. “They don’t know how to sit still. They don’t know how to take notes. They don’t even know how to write their name on a paper.” I fixated on their shortcomings because that was all I could see. In retrospect, I blamed them because I could not blame myself. I am not sure I could have done it differently. As unfair as it was to cast my students in such an unfavorable light, if I would have dwelled on my own failures I am not sure I could have made it through those first few weeks. What allowed me to move past this pessimism was getting to know my students—understanding their interests, how they think, what challenges they face. They have also learned more about me—where I am from, why I am here, what kind of person I am. Even after two months, these relationships are still relatively shallow. From their perspective, I am still an outsider—White, privileged, not from their neighborhood. Not enough time has passed for me to break away from that characterization. However, one thing that has helped me tremendously is my age. As I was explaining to some of my students this week, I am closer to them in age than I am to most of my colleagues! Often, I feel I have more in common with my students than I do with the other adults at my school. I think this has helped my students (and me) feel more comfortable in my classroom. This has made all of the difference in the last few weeks. Over summer training, we talked frequently about “asset-based thinking”, which is a fancy way of describing how to focus on a person’s strengths instead of their weaknesses. We were constantly reminded to “see the best in our students” and to build our lessons around leveraging their strengths to transcend their struggles. This mode of thinking is absolutely correct and must be implemented to be a successful teacher, but what I failed to understand is that without building the emotional connection with your students, asset-based thinking is impossible or, at best, hopelessly shallow. It takes an exceptional level of compassion to fully embrace others without building any sort of relationship with them. I am the first to admit that I do not possess that level of compassion at this time. Thus, to truly see my students as wonderful, unique individuals requires time to connect with them on a personal level. That process began the first day they walked through my door and will continue throughout the entire year, but I am happy to say that I have started to see those relationships blossom. 

One of the important changes over the last few weeks has been that I have started to have fun with my students. I arrived at my school with a strong sense of my mission—to achieve transformational change for my students and help them reach their personal vision of success. Looking back at my earlier posts, that mission has been constant in my mind. It is what allowed me to get up each morning and make it through the day. A strong mission can drive individuals and groups to reach incredible heights, endure immense pain, and overcome unthinkable adversity. A common thread unites the entire span of human history—great accomplishments derive from a great sense of purpose. Without purpose, we are nothing. However, life is not purely defined by purpose. I do not believe that I exist solely to make the world a better place. I am not a martyr. More importantly, I cannot survive in this profession purely fueled by a mission, no matter how firmly I believe in it. I cannot be an effective teacher solely from a sense of purpose. Thus, my most important takeaway from my first months in the classroom is that I must enjoy my work to be successful. Further, to truly achieve transformational change in my classroom requires not just that students work diligently to reach their goals, but that they enjoy doing so. Not every single waking second needs to be enjoyable (though some of my students think it should be that way), but for students and teachers there must be moments of mutual joy—times where the distinction of “adult vs. child” falls away, if even just for an instant. For many of my students there are so many reasons for stress and despair in their lives that even those few minutes of pristine happiness make them want to come to school. For me, so much extra (for lack of a better word) crap goes along with being a teacher in an under-resourced school that the moments where I can simply enjoy interacting with my students are invaluable.

As I mentioned, the last few weeks of teaching have been much more enjoyable because of the relationships I have started to form with my students. These relationships are what create the moments of joy, which makes it easier to get up every morning. In an earlier post, I wrote about a pretty awful day—a day that I completely lost control of a class. I will never forget that day; it is a reminder of how challenging and depressing this work can be. In part two of my post, I want to share a different day. Ironically, it is also a day I will never forget—another day that I completely lost control of a class. This time, however, losing control didn’t turn out to be such a bad thing. 

To be continued…

Advice: Dime a Dozen

One of the things that makes first-year teaching so difficult is the constant time stress one faces. Not only are you  trying to create engaging lessons (which as I mentioned in a previous post, are critical to your success in managing behavior) on a daily basis, you are bombarded by your own education and training. In my case, I have graduate school classes, mandatory Teach For America events, and tons of district professional development. This week, I have Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights blocked out for these commitments, which amounts to back-to-back-to-back 13+ hour work days, not including the hours I spend at home planning my lessons. Needless to say, there is absolutely no shot that I will get more than six hours of sleep this week. This has become the regular for me. I bust my ass throughout the week with the intention of using the weekend to get a head start on the next week. But by the time the weekend comes, I'm so wiped out that I need the time off to recuperate. On the bright side, fall break is only a few weeks away, and I'm excited to take some real time off and travel back home for the first time in almost a year.

However, what I really want to talk about is the content of much of my "teacher training". By now I have sat through hundreds of hours of professional development, ranging across topics from science-specific to teaching literacy to classroom management. There is no shortage of advice or information for new teachers. Everyone has opinion, and everyone wants to share their wisdom. While I understand that this is done with the best of intentions, I think that much like our students, who try their best to master the "inch-deep, mile-wide" curriculum, new teachers feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information they receive. Even more confusing is that much of the advice a new teacher receives is contradictory. Countless times I have received advice from a colleague only to have that advice refuted by someone else. The most striking example of this was during my new teacher induction right before the start of school. On a particular day, we had an "expert" talk to us about how behavior narration (a technique where you literally narrate when students are behaving correctly) was completely useless. The very next day, we had another "expert" swear by this same technique. As I've encountered this phenomenon more and more, I've realized that successful teachers treat advice (and professional development) like items in a thrift shop. Most of the stuff you hear is junk-- not in the sense that it is worthless to everyone, but that there are only a few things that you can realistically use in your own classroom. It takes some digging to find, but there are gems out there for everyone. What I may find to be completely useless someone else will find to be their diamond in the rough. The challenge of the new teacher is that while you are often digging, you aren't very adept at finding those rare gems. Regardless, I'll be getting a lot of advice this week, whether I want it or not.

A "Bad" Day -- Continued

As I walk through the gates of my school, the sun shines against the weathered concrete walls. A sign reads "Welcome to Cougar Nation"--the slogan of the current administration, which inherited a school three years which had been one of the worst in the district, if not all of Phoenix. Today, we are a "C" school according to the Arizona Department of Education, whose ranking is based on a combination of overall student achievement (based on standardized testing scores) as well as year-to-year student growth. This ranking system, while obviously not perfect, provides a good snapshot of school quality. I have no illusions that I work at a great school, in terms of the quality of education received by students. About three-quarters of our students met the (low) state standard in reading, with only one in two reaching the standard in math. In my content area specifically, only about 40 percent of 8th graders passed the state standardized test in science last year. Increasing school achievement is not a simple problem; there are many factors which cause inner-city schools to struggle. Identifying these factors is a major part of my work. While on a daily level I am in the classroom trying to provide my students with the excellent educational opportunities to which they are entitled, I also recognize that I work in a broken system. Even for brand-new teachers, it does not take long to realize that the laws and structure that direct public education, especially in high-poverty areas, are fundamentally flawed. For me, the specifics of these flaws are still somewhat hazy. I do not claim to have the answers to fix the system. To many people, this type of statement seems very cynical. Simply pointing out a problem without providing detailed analysis or a suggestion of potential solutions is often very frustrating. However, in public education there are so many viewpoints, ranging from politicians to academics to teachers, that the issue becomes too complicated. There are simply too many actors trying to affect too many variables at one time. At the same time, policy is almost always a top-down process--instituted sweepingly at the national or state level. These broad policies simply cannot effectively incorporate the needs of a heterogeneous population of schools. Even within my own district I have experienced the frustration of an over-arching policy undermining effectiveness at the level of the individual school. For example, my school district recently extended its internet firewall to block YouTube. Ostensibly, this ban is to prevent misuse by students (or maybe teachers?), despite the fact that many have smart phones with unrestricted internet access. In reality, this severely hinders my ability to use Khan Academy in my classroom, which is a major focus of my school's instructional focus. Khan Academy is an online learning platform which has videos and practice problems specifically designed for student use. Unfortunately, many of their videos that cover relatively basic content (the stuff that middle school students need!) are imbedded YouTube videos, meaning that the district firewall blocks them even when accessed through the Khan Academy website. Sure, I can download individual videos at home to show in class, but the whole purpose of a platform like Khan Academy is that it is guided by student-specific needs, such that each student needs access to different videos. Under the current district policy, this is effectively impossible to carry out.

The hour and a half before my students arrive is always my most productive work time. If I don't finish preparing during this time, then it will lead to a rough day of teaching, so my productivity is fueled by a simple need to survive. I have not yet been able to apply that sense of urgency to my work time after school or at home, but once I master that skill I am sure that lesson planning will become a much easier task. Most days, I have to make copies of notes, worksheets, or activities that students will complete during class. For most professions (I would even extend this to say most teachers), making copies is a straightforward and simple proposition. Unfortunately, at a school trying to pinch pennies from every area imaginable, printing and copying often becomes quite a difficult proposition. The school policy is that each teacher must provide their own copy paper; we are not given any sheets. It's ridiculous to think that teachers don't need to make copies, especially in a school where students do not have 1:1 access to computers. The monetary aspect, however, is actually more of a minor gripe (I have already spent several hundreds of dollars in my own classroom). What's more annoying is that because there is no shared paper, the printer/copier has no paper in it. Thus, in order to print something out, I first have to walk from my room to the copier and put my paper in the machine, making sure that nobody else is printing or copying at the same time. Then, I have to walk back and print the document. If everything goes as planned, I will have my papers printed out when I go back to the copier. Often, however, I will find that the copier has messed something up, or another person has cancelled my job by copying something else. While it may seem inconsequential, those few extra minutes of stress and walking around pile up over the week. This is just part of a larger trend of teaching in under-financed districts--for the teacher, whose role is the most important in the education system, life is made the most difficult. It seems like common sense to me that we, as a society, should do everything in our power to make the "non-teaching" aspects of a teacher's profession as easy as possible, because the responsibility of being a role-model, mentor, and educator for students is already difficult enough.

August 27th started out like any other day. My homeroom students came in at 7:45 and ate breakfast, which is provided to them for free. That day was mini packets of fruity pebbles, so most students ate. Apple-splices-in-a-bag day is less popular. Homeroom is always an interesting 15 minutes, because I really just have to make sure the students don't kill each other. During this time I get to know my kids, slowly building the relationships that are critical to being a successful teacher. While I want all of my students to succeed, I feel a special attachment to homeroom kids. At 8 am I let them out for first period, and they hurry off to different classrooms. For some reason, there is no official passing period at my school, so usually students are ready to go right as I open my door. I wish there was a least a few minutes between periods so that I could quickly catch my breath, but instead I teach three periods back to back to back for a total of 225 minutes non-stop before lunch. That day I was teaching a lesson about identifying graphs, which is one of the standards that students will be tested on at the end of the year. Needless to say, graphing is a relatively dry topic. I shared with my students that I used to loathe graphing assignments when I was in school, but I tried to emphasize the importance of being able to accurately interpret graphs. Answering the "why on earth do I need to know this?" question is one of the most challenging parts of teaching. Sometimes, I can't even convince myself that certain content is important, but it is still my job to teach it. In this case, I believed that the lesson was important, but the lesson itself wasn't very engaging. If you ask a teacher, they will tell you that the most difficult job of a new teacher is managing student behavior. My Teach For America training, district professional development, and graduate school content has all been primarily focused on classroom management, and even with this amount of training I am still not close to mastering this skill. Nevertheless, one of the first things you figure out is that engaging content solves most management problems. If students are busy working on things that they find interesting, they have no reason to behave inappropriately. The number one reason a student misbehaves is because he or she is bored. That particular day, I did a terrible job of making my lesson interesting, which led to me effectively losing control of my classroom in one of my periods.

My roommate and I have dubbed this as "getting steamrolled". When you get steamrolled, it means that the students are misbehaving to a level that you cannot control, such that the class becomes a collective steamroller and runs the teacher right over. Every teacher, even veterans, get steamrolled sometimes--it comes with the territory. This wasn't the first day I had gotten steamrolled, but it happened to be the worst steamrolling I've had in my short career. What made it worse was that my graduate school clinical instructor was making his first observation in my classroom, specifically paying attention to my classroom culture. In short, he expected to see me running my classroom, and instead saw my kids running my classroom while I tried to explain the fundamental difference between a bar graph and a line graph. The highlights of this class period included: a student picking up his desk and moving it halfway across the room to a new location (without permission) during the middle of the lesson, and another playing with a dry-erase marker that eventually flew out of his hands and right over the head of my clinical instructor in the back of the room. When you look back on it, you can't help but laugh, but in the moment getting steamrolled is one of the most helpless feelings you can have.

At the end of school that day I felt completely defeated. I was tired, distressed, and regretful. "Why am I here? Why am I doing this work? Why do I work so hard for students who don't even want to learn?"--these were the thoughts running through my head. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go home and sleep. I wanted to go back to the life of comfort and privilege that I had enjoyed for 22 years prior. I wanted to do anything but teach. To make things worse, I still had five hours of graduate classes that evening, and I didn't have a lesson planned for the next day. I begrudgingly made the drive from my school to the downtown ASU campus for my 4:30 class, thinking that my terrible day was just going to get worse.

My professor walked into the classroom, introduced himself, and then told us, "I hope the next two years of your life are as brutal as possible. I hope they are challenging, tiring, and frustrating, because I want you to remember them for the rest of your life. Most of you will not stay in the classroom, but you will remember being a teacher no matter what you end up doing. I want you to understand how tough of a profession this is, because those who haven't done it simply don't understand." These words were exactly what I needed to hear. I needed someone to understand what I was going through. I needed someone to tell me that this journey was worthwhile. I needed to be surrounded by classmates who were on the same journey. Despite being completely exhausted when I came, I left that night feeling rejuvenated. I am not sure how I would have bounced back without that. One of the toughest things about teaching is that it really is a marathon; regardless of how you feel or what happened the day before, the next day your students will be back at your door. They expect you to be there, they expect to learn. They are counting on you to help them, and they often don't have anyone else who can. One of the aspects of privilege is having the option to walk away, to avoid challenges and adversity. I am privileged because I could walk away. I could leave my job and do something else. I would not have to worry about meeting my basic needs. For most of my students, there is no option to walk away. They face adversity every single day of their lives. Their only escape is school, it is their only chance to make things better. If they don't succeed, they will endure a life filled with hardships. For some of them, no matter how hard they try they won't escape. It's not fair. The system is broken. It is because of this I cannot quit. I must endure. Even after the worst days, I must come back the next day with the same level of commitment to my kids. Not because I have no choice, but because so many of my students have no choice.

A "Bad" Day

August 27, 2013 is a day I will never forget. That was last Tuesday, more than three weeks into the year at my placement school in the heart of South Phoenix. But this is where my story begins. Our memories often lie along a spectrum, and we tend to classify them in our minds as "good" and "bad" or somewhere in the middle. However, for my most vivid memories, their place in the spectrum is unfixed. I think, perhaps, they defy classification because they transcend the arbitrary labels of "good" or "bad". On a basic level, August 27th was a "bad" day. I know this because if offered the chance to relive it, I would certainly decline. Nevertheless, I also believe that this day is one of the most important in my life. It also happens to be the reason I decided to start writing this journal.

That day began like most days for a first-year teacher: blanketed in fatigue. I've never liked waking up early. In college some of my worst days began with an early morning workout for baseball. My senior year, I strategically planned my schedule as to never wake up before mid-day (never mind you that most of the time I'd get woken up by someone mowing a lawn, edging the sidewalk, blowing leaves, etc.). Most weekdays I wake up at 5 A.M.; sometimes I treat myself and wait until there's the tiniest bit of light outside, which only adds up to 15 or 20 more minutes. On average, I'd say I usually sleep 6 or 7 hours on weeknights. This particular day, however, it was far less. I'm usually out the door 45 minutes after I wake up, and depending on whether I choose to feed my coffee addiction, I normally arrive at school between 6 and 6:15. I am either the third or fourth car in the parking lot, arriving slightly later than the janitor, the principal, and sometimes one of my TFA counterparts. One of the interesting things about Phoenix is that there are about five different ways to get any place you want to go in a reasonable amount of time. From my Tempe apartment to my South Phoenix school, I have four different routes I take. The fastest route is to take the freeway down to the southern edge of Tempe, then drive west along the southernmost major road on the Phoenix-proper grid. This takes you past some of the "landmarks" one might associate with the area--the most striking of which is a giant resort where my school district, despite severe budget cuts to other areas, hosted two days of professional development complete with three course meals and a free Starbucks coffee bar to get you through that afternoon slump. This route is the quickest, but it bores you to death. You drive so fast that the already dull view of apartment complexes and strip malls blends together into one dreary scenery, the only demarcation being the intersections that count--48th St., 40th St., 32nd St.,--moving closer to the geographic center of the city.

In the weeks leading up to the start of the school year, I took this route every day. There was no thought of anything different. Isn't fastest always best?  What I hadn't realized yet was that this road was also very unreliable. Most days went without issue, but occasionally there was an accident or some other incident that caused huge backups. What makes things worse is that once you've committed yourself to this route, it's very difficult to recalculate and go a different way. My worst experience was a day when there happened to be a road-rage shooting an hour or two before I left my apartment. I hadn't thought to check traffic reports, so I was met by a wall of traffic and road blocks, turning my 20 minute commute into an hour and a half. Perhaps in protest of this great injustice, rather than real necessity, I started to take a new route to work. Instead of going straight south down the freeway and then west all the way over, I hopped on a different freeway that dipped under the city center heading west. From there I exit and drive over the Salt River into South Phoenix. Although it costs a few extra minutes each day, I actually prefer this commute, which may come as a surprise to those who know me as a very rational-thinking, pragmatic individual. Have no fear; most days I still take the quickest route, but there is a certain aura to driving past Rio Salado Park and seeing the skyscrapers of downtown right before crossing into an area of Phoenix filled with so much history and culture. The juxtaposition of the developed downtown area against South Phoenix is not unlike that of most major cities in the United States. But it is striking, and after a few months here I still have yet to be desensitized to the emotions it brings me. Driving through the backstreets that surround my school, I am reminded of why I am here.

To be continued...