Institute

1. Jacksonville is something else. I am happy here. It has a lot of quirks but in all good ways. Very sprawled out but lovely- the river goes through the city and the ocean is on the outskirts. There are lots of neighborhood pockets, each with a strikingly different character, which makes exploring fun. However, it is also very segregated, and that didn’t happen by coincidence. Every single one of the Title 1 schools are clustered in the North. This creates a ripple effect. It means that the least educated, lowest socioeconomic bracket of people live in one small area of the city, and failing schools in that small area do not give kids the opportunities needed to rise above those circumstances. Many of our kids have never been to the other side of the St. John’s river. The north district is literally “the other side of the tracks.” It’s all backwards. For instance, there is a high school in the area named after the founding leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Sixty three percent of students who go there are African American. How is that acceptable? People who live elsewhere are unaware of the problem. On the first day of summer school, our bus driver said that she had never been to “the hood.” She also said she has lived in Jacksonville her whole life, and I would guess she is in her sixties. It is so blocked off that people on the outside either don’t know the disparities exist, or they choose to ignore them.

6 am commutes across the river

2. Institute is reliving freshman year of college again, but instead of training for college, you are training for a job.
 3. It is also a bit like a mission trip experience- you get to know everyone extremely well, extremely fast. When you start the day eating breakfast with people at 5 am and end the day cramming to meet deadlines by midnight with those same people, deep friendships develop in record time. Proof I have friends:

 4. Being in elementary, 24 of the 27 people are girls. There is a lot of estrogen in the workroom at our school, and a lot of tears and laughter happens there daily. We are stressed out of our minds, in love with our kids, and challenged by our advisors. Good days are amazing, and bad days are horrible. Even though it is way too much sometimes, I think it is important that we feel things, really feel things. You need to attempt to understand the educational and socioeconomic issues you are facing so deeply that when you have a bad lesson or are unsuccessful, it moves you to tears, because you understand that having a bad lesson does not improve things for your kids. If people weren’t distressed when they failed as a teacher or learned something upsetting about the challenges our students face, then it would mean they didn’t care, and that would mean they weren’t here for the right reasons.
5. The three guys on the elementary team are incredible. The kids are totally captivated by them. The presence of male figures, especially black males, in the classroom has powerful implications for our kids. I think it is one of the most important pieces in closing the opportunity gap.
6. It is cool to be in a place surrounded by people are truly passionate about the same thing you are. People here get it- what is at stake for our kids, why doing this is urgent and that everyone must take ownership of the problem of educational inequity and commit to fixing it right. It inspires me every day. For the first time in my life, I feel like I am meant to be somewhere- in a different way than I felt at Tech or the Dominican Republic, because if I hadn’t gone to Virginia Tech or studied in the Dominican Republic, another equally or more qualified person could have easily filled my spot. Here I am a part of something so much greater than myself. But for the first time, I feel that I am a very necessary piece of that great thing. That I must be here, that me leaving would be detrimental to my student, co-workers, and county. In running, my performance affected my teammates, but if I had a bad race, it would not put anyone behind in life. In college, my success as a student only affected my individual life pursuits. I have never wanted to excel at something as badly as I want to excel as a teacher, because my excellence as a teacher can positively affect a room full of students for their entire lives. I feel like I could not be investing my time in anything more important than education, and that my skills could not be better utilized in any other field. I am exhausted and inspired at the end of every day, and that is a wonderful way to live.
7. The staff here is incredible. They are excellent at what they do, which makes me confident in everything they teach me. Some of our staff have been here long enough to see their first elementary class students graduate high school- how amazing is that! It makes me realize that this commitment lasts much longer than two years. Closing the achievement gap won’t happen unless teachers make it a life long pursuit, which is exactly what many of our staff is doing now.
8. I am teaching fifth grade. It is a perfect fit- they get sarcasm and are funny because they are at an age where they have a developed sense of humor; they’re not funny just because they are little kids acting like little kids. I am obsessed with them and I think most genuinely like me back.

A very unique gift from a student

9. My model teacher did not have a behavioral management plan. The transition from her style to mine (I’m strict) was a bit drastic for my students. I spent the first 15 minutes of every lesson learning a new procedure (how to pas out papers, how to not have conversations during instructional time, how to line up and walk in a line, how to transition from desk to carpet, how to raise your hand, how to sit up during instructional time, how to sharpen a pencil in under 20 seconds, how to work independently…) I’m not kidding. But now that the kids know my expectations for behavior, our time is not wasted on me correcting it. One of the greatest moments of my life was when a student corrected another student saying “You better stop cause you know Ms. Berlin won’t play.”

10. The power of Narration. Oh my goodness. Justin sits next to Anthony and has a hard time not resting his head on his desk. I say “I am noticing that Anthony is demonstrating excellent behavior by sitting up straight during instructional time.” Suddenly, Justin is sitting up. Amazing. I narrate All. Day. Long. Kid doing the right thing gets noticed, kid doing the wrong thing doesn’t get called out in front of the whole class.
11. The power of the Responsibility Notebook. I decided to implement the Responsibility Notebook into my class because my favorite teacher had one, and I will never forget the two times during my 4th grade year that I had to sign it. It was a devastating blow. The dreaded Responsibility Notebook sits in an ominous corner of the classroom and it is a sad time when they have to journal about their negative behavior and how they will fix it for all to see.
12. The power of home visits. It is critical to see where your kids live and meet parents who are more invested in their child than you could ever be. We have established some great relationships with families and gotten to know our students better as a result. Plus, our students’ think seeing us exist outside the classroom is mind blowing.
13. I have four consequences: 1. Check (warning) 2. Entry in the responsibility notebook 3. Call home 4. Referral to Principal’s Office. No one has ever gone past responsibility notebook ever since one student made a call home and his mom came in and made him do push ups in front of the class on his knuckles (just FYI I wasn’t in the room, she came after I left and apparently this wasn’t that unusual.) Things are different here than in Fairfax County.
14. Our classroom is Virginia Tech themed! Our class motto is “Invent the Future” and at the end of each week our students write down a goal for how they will Invent the Future next week by demonstrating our four class pylons, L.E.A.D (Love learning, Excel Academically, Achieve our goals, Do what is right.) The kids love it. For example, if a student calls out and made it their goal to not call out, then I can just point to their goal of the week and remind them of the standards they chose to hold themselves to. It’s so much more powerful when the student sets the standard instead of the teacher. We do Hokie Highs at the end of each lesson to recognize what went well and who did well, chant Hokie cheers and songs (kids love them and I pretend to love them because they love them), Turkey high fives, and have our Hokie Academic and Behavior Trackers, which gives a star to the kids who got a 4 or 5 out of 5 on each day’s lesson assessment and those who went a whole class without a single behavior warning. The one they love the most is Class of 2025 Compliments (they’ll graduate college in 2025), where they get a popsicle party and a teacher-student dance off once they get enough stars. I am kind of dreading the day they get enough stars. Rewards, cheers, stickers, dance parties, all that jazz- it motivates kids and makes learning joyful.
15. The power of Random Bribery. You bring in a hat, a puppet, a bag of magical beans (dried black eyed peas), sunglasses that give you magic vision to see the answer, magical pencils that have been marinated in “the jar of knowledge”, and kids, even at age 10, eat that stuff UP. Example: During reading lesson a kid who is demonstrating exemplar behavior gets to wear the dinosaur hat, and all of the sudden everyone is following along in the book with such concentration, just dying to be the next one awarded the dinosaur hat. The best is when they lose prized possession. “Hmm It seems like you forgot the kind of behavior that awarded you the dinosaur hat because instead of paying attention, you are messing with the dinosaur hat. Please select a student who is behaving correctly to wear the dinosaur hat instead.” Giving up the dinosaur hat? Nothing could be worse in that moment.
16. Being White is something that sets me apart in the classroom. 98% of the students at our school are African American. I have become more aware of my racial identity than I ever have been in my life because my race and background is something that makes me different than my students. You can pull the "I don't see race, we're all the same" card all you want, but kids notice it, I notice it, and divides are formed when you do not address them and do not act humble and self-aware in the classroom.
17. My co-lab is named Thekia Cheeseborough, also known as Ms. Cheese. She grew up in Jacksonville just down the street from where our school is. I swear they did a personality test on us because there is not a single person here that I would click better with in the classroom. It was love at first sight. We teach in the same classroom and each week we switch off teaching Reading or Math. We balance each other out in the classroom and she is my rock outside the classroom.  I’ve learned a great deal about the experience of our kids, because Kia went to the same school we are teaching at, she lives where they live, she understands the school system and how Jacksonville is set up. She is a testimony of how wonderful and successful and beautiful and influential our kids will grow up to be if people give them the same opportunities as children in more affluent communities.

Ms. Cheese

18. I wasn’t the only person who noticed how well Kia and I gel in the classroom. A principal contacted our staff and needed to fill two spots in the fourth grade. It was a co-teaching position, and they wanted to hire two people who had already developed a strong team dynamic. Kia and I were recommended. So, without us knowing, the principal of SP Livingston Elementary came in during our flextime and we were called into the back room. The assistant principal took Kia and the principal took me. She started the interview with “I want to hire you, but this is a package deal. I won’t hire you without Ms. Cheese.” Not kidding- I started tearing up. In the interview. I still don’t understand how it happened. Kia and I had forced ourselves to stop thinking about the possibility of us getting hired at the same school because the thought was too good to be true. But the same classroom? It was too much to take in without warning. The principal’s response was “Baby! You really want this!” I nodded yes, pulled it together and talked about differentiating instruction in math class. After a great interview (the principal was amazing!!!) the four of us got back together and Kia and I could not contain our smiles. When they left, Kia laid down on the floor saying, “It’s too much. I can’t. I just can’t. Hold me Ms. Berlin, hold me” while I held her hand and got misty again. We are teaching in a grade F school, where only 50% of our fourth graders are on grade level. Fourth grade at SP Livingston is about to learn a whole lot of math. Couldn’t imagine doing it without Ms. Cheese.
19. My dear friend Emily and I have a house! Well, a condo, but it is on the river! It is in the art district of the city, and our place is in this super old historic building called the Peacock that was made into a few condos. We are thrilled.

The Peacock

20. When I have really bad days, or am totally burnt out on the weekends, I remember, I live 12 minutes from the beach. And I go to the beach. And life is good.

Love to all. Being in my own little world far away makes my heart all the more fond of my wonderful family, friends, boyfriend, etc. Please email me, call me, and most importantly, visit me! A stretch I know but the offer is open! I have a place and will hopefully have a couch or futon soon. xoxo