The Power of a Teacher: Some Memories As You Retire, Mrs. D

This afternoon I will be attending a retirement reception for one of my high school teachers, but not just any teacher, one who truly impacted me; and the funny thing is, I never even took her class.  Mrs. Dandridge, or Mrs. D, was our student council sponsor.  In that role, we spent several years and many hours with her.

The time we spent proves a point, relationships are built with time.  With the meetings, the conventions, the homecoming planning, the special events, and more, we became more than just teacher and student, she became a mentor and a friend. Once again, I find myself thankful for social media.  Because of social media I'm able to share her retirement day with her.

Being the analytical person that I am, I've been contemplating what to do for her, a card, a gift, what?  As I was reflecting, I recalled so many memories and knew that my senior book was filled with them.  As a teacher myself, I decided what better gift than a heartfelt thank-you and a few flashbacks.



These words, signed in my senior book, gave me hope and encouragement.  Hope and encouragement that I had what it took to accomplish my goals.  I believed her, and based on her actions, I believed she loved me.  She also forgave me for hitting her parked truck my junior year in high school.  How crazy is that!  You fall asleep at the wheel, have a wreck, and the truck you hit belongs to one of your favorite teachers.

Some of my fondest memories of my senior year were with student council.  Looking back, I think it was because I learned so much about being a responsible contributor to society, how to be organized, plan projects, have goals and reach them, but I also met some great friends.

I remember Mrs. D becoming a friend, too.  She became not just a mentor, but a friend because she laughed with us, she danced with us, and she talked to us about life.


Now that I'm at the high school, I realize the sacrifices she made to love us.  I realize how her children and husband had to share her with us.  And for that I thank them.  I hope as I continue my career that at least one student will recall my class or my interactions with them in the fond way that I recall Mrs. D.   It would be an honor to me, and to her, for all of the influence she had on my life.

I especially want to thank Mrs. D for talking with me about college when I didn't have people in my family to walk me through it.  As I am talking to my class about the difference between motivation, ambition, and hope, I'm feeling blessed for Mrs. D and the other teachers in my life who gave me hope that I could use my motivation to reach my ambitions.

Mrs. D, I hope you enjoy your retirement; it's more than well-deserved.  West will surely not be the same without you, but after taking care of so many students these past 35 years, you deserve a time to take care of you, .  Have fun with your grand-babies.  Make memories and know you made a difference; your influence lives in all of us.  May your retirement be all that you wish for.

Love,
Lisa

Mother's Day,Teaching, and A Heart That is Still Healing

Some weeks are easier than others.  I'm pretty sure that's a true statement for most people.  This past week wasn't one of the easy ones.   At school, we had testing, lots of testing.  In addition to the STAAR Assessments, we had AP tests going on.  I administered the AP Spanish test.  What a day that was!  The test involves CD players, audio recordings, and CD burning.  Testing alone is enough to make a hard week, but then my husband got sick, my daughter got sick, and my husband and I got in a disagreement over something silly.  Stress will do that.

Being a teacher and being a mom is hard.  This week I was feeling especially down on myself for being a less than ideal mom, mostly because of social media envy.  I see posts of moms doing cool things for their kids or with their kids and I think, why didn't I think of that, or why didn't I take them to do that, and I remember.  I was probably grading papers, planning lessons, sending an email, or answering a remind.  It's May.  We are all exhausted.  I convince myself that my kids do have a good mom; they just happen to share her with other kids, too.  I don't usually let things like this bother me.  I do the best I can and I believe that God placed my kids and me right where we are supposed to be.  I couldn't help but wonder why the mommy guilt was nagging at me more than usual, and then it hit me.  I missed my mommy.

My Mom and Me - 1999

When your bucket is empty, and you're feeling like you aren't good enough, who can you count on to always lift you up?  Your mom.  My mom passed away on Mother's Day, 2014.  My heart seems to know.  As I parent these teenagers, I long to hear her voice, and her advice, and her cheering me on; because that's what moms do.  I firmly believe God has a perfect plan, but I also know that it's okay to slow down and mourn for what you miss by not having her around.  I still need to remind myself to give my sadness and my worry to God.  He can carry the sorrows that my heart can't always bear.

Mother's Day will always be a bittersweet holiday for me.  I need to remind myself that my being a mom all started with her.  And through me, her legacy lives on.  If I can be there for my kids as often as my mom was there for me, then I have nothing to regret about my mommy powers.  It's these people who remind me daily that being a mom is what makes my heart beat stronger, even while it is healing.

These two:  This man who trusted me to become the bonus mom to his little girl.  This man who took a second chance on love.  That trust and that chance enabled me to become a mom.

1999

This little baby:  This little boy, my man-child.  This picture says it all.  I adore him.  God chose me to be his mom, but he chose him to fill my heart with a kind of love that I didn't know I had.  

2000

This beautiful girl:  That smile, my daughter, whom I wished for since I was a little girl.  I had no idea how precious she would grow up to be.  From the moment I found out she was a girl, I couldn't wait to meet her.  This angel completes our family perfectly.

2002

These three:  The frame says it all.  Dreams really do come true.  I don't live a princess life, but I live a good life.  I love my job.  I love my kids.  I love my husband.  Yes, my heart has some broken pieces, and they may not ever mend, but cup runneth over with blessings.  So, today, I will mourn, I will celebrate, and I will remember:  Being a mom started with my mom who molded me into the lady I am today.

2002

My Best Lesson

My best lesson?  I've been teaching so long and have taught so many things, this is a difficult question.  I've taught kids to read, write, spell, add, subtract, multiply, divide, to problem solve, to create, and more, but I've also taught kids about history and science, and the love of a good book.  One of my favorite things to do as a teacher is to read to kids.  Reading a book and having the kids get into it is the best!

I do remember the first time I taught a "wow" lesson.  I was in my first semester of student teaching, the primarily observation semester.  We were assigned to teach a math lesson.  The lesson I designed and created was on combinations of numbers.  I used the number of kids in a family.  I created manipulatives of boys and girls for the students to use to create different combinations of siblings.  I will never forget the feeling of hearing my mentor teacher tell me she couldn't have planned a better lesson.  I truly looked up to her and admired her teaching craft; it meant a lot to know I had accomplished a truly good lesson.  A lesson where kids were not only engaged, but caught on and understood.

I have taught a lot of good lessons over my years, and a lot of lessons that didn't go as planned, but my favorite thing to teach is writing.  I love seeing a child finally see themselves as a writer.  Many people don't like to write.  It's seen as hard work.  As a writer, you wear a lot of hats, the art of writing is daunting for many.  When I can get a student to believe in their ability to write, I have given them a gift that will keep on giving.  They have learned to communicate their thoughts so that they may share them with others.  Writing is an art that goes across disciplines and across careers.  Writers keep the world informed.  Being a writer is a powerful thing.

Below is a sample of one of my favorite pieces of fourth-grade writing.  You can truly hear this child's voice in her work.  She worked hard that year to grow as  a writer.  It is empowering to know I helped her find her writer's voice because it can go with her wherever she goes.  Teaching writing isn't easy, but the fruits of labor are truly worth it.

Me . . In Five Years

IIn five years, I will be 52 years old.  How can that be?  I remember when 50 seemed ANCIENT, but I don't even feel that old yet.  Maybe being an educator helps keep you young in spirit.

So, how will my teaching change in five years?  I hope it will be more student-driven.  I love the lessons where the students take control of their own learning.  When it works, it works well.  Over the course of the next few years, I plan to perfect the student driven lesson and implementation of these lessons.  I also expect it will be more technology driven, to which some of students might say, "Really, Mrs. Pogue, how could it be more technology driven?  You love the ChromeBooks and we just want paper!"  Actually I think they want fill-in-the blank worksheets that don't require them to think much.  My class is hard.  I make you think.

And to that end, I hope to be able to inspire students to want to do their very best and to love learning.  If I can get a student to have a thirst for knowledge, then I have succeeded!

But truth be told, I'm not sure where I will be in five years.  If you had asked me last year if would be teaching high school, I would have thought you were crazy.  My career has been a funny thing.  I have my masters to be an administrator, and perhaps someday I will be.  I've put it aside to be a mom for the past sixteen years.  Right now, I'm enjoying my new challenge - challenge in the classroom and challenge as a mom.  Parenting teens is harder than teaching them.  I  have faith that I will always be right where God intended me to be.

Image Source:  http://www.hippoquotes.com/god-has-a-plan-quotes

What Does My Desk Drawer Say About Me?

My desk drawer says I have issues - the struggle is real when it comes to school supplies.  I have an overabundance of colored sharpies, fine point, regular, and thick.  Add to the sharpies, a collection of highlighters, colored pens, felt tip pens, good pencils, and mechanical pencils.

My desk drawers also show that I like to be prepared.  I have band-aids, a lighter, a pumpkin cutter, lotion, reinforcements, rubber-bands, many sizes of binder clips, duct tape, a screw driver, and more.

Lastly, they show my attempts at being organized.  My files are nice and neat, but my favorite is the basket in the back with note-cards, note-pads, and pretty stationary.  These kinds of things make me smile.  I don't use them as much as I would like, but I enjoy having them there.  My desk is my space and it's my pet-peeve when students touch "my stuff" without asking.  Maybe, I'm not so good at sharing some things :).

The Student Who Changed Me

hmmmmm, this is a hard question.  I honestly can't define ONE student who changed me.  I can recall a lot of students and their impact on me; some students' stories are sad, some are inspirational, some students make you laugh, some make you cry, some make you "want to spit," as my grandma would say.  So, where to start?

My first year teaching there was Greg.  I will never forget Greg.  I can picture exactly what he looks like to this day.  He did leave an impact on me.  He was my first "behavior problem," but goodness he was also adorable and sweet.  He was always in trouble.  Greg said curse words that I had never even utterred and made it very clear that he learned them from home. Greg was smart, but he didn't always reach his potential as his impulsiveness got in the way.  He was a challenge to my naive, "gonna change the world," younger self.  I will never forget the day he was sitting in my room; it was just him and me as he was having a consequence.  He and I were both working on separate tasks.  The room was pretty quiet when out of the blue he said, "I love you."  My heart melted.  I'm tearing up thinking about it.  It was one of those moments that freeze in your memory.  From Greg, I learned that I could be stern, I could say no, I could expect good behavior, and the kids would appreciate.  They would love me because they knew I cared.  This interaction with Greg helped me not only be a better teacher, but a better mom when the time came, and ultimately a better person.

Greg is just one of the students who have changed me.  I have specific memories of many students who have left an imprint on my life for different reasons.  My heart is fuller, stronger, softer due to the little people who have touched my life the last twenty-five years.

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Improving Education

As you can probably tell from my blog posts, education is near and dear to my heart.  Asking me to discuss how education can be improved is like asking me to get up on my soapbox.  Seriously, I could go on and on with my Polly-Anna ideas, but I'll do my best not to write a dissertation today.  I'll just hit the high notes.

First and foremost, I believe that all of the adults in education need to remember that education is about kids.  We are a service industry, here to serve kids.  By serving kids, we are impacting our future.  Working in education is HARD, but we can't forget that it is all about the kids.  And we must remember that they are kids, not mini-adults, just kids.  We must do whatever it takes to help our students succeed; it won't be easy, but it will be worth it.

Now, when I mention the adults in education, I am also discussing the politicians and other policy people who make decisions about what education should look like.  In my humble opinion, these people should be required to spend an entire week - yes, I said it an entire week in a public school.  I am inviting them to walk in our shoes before they make decisions about what education should "look like."  Folks, you. have. no. idea. until you've lived and breathed it. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Educating Kids is Hard Work; if you want to make uber important decisions about educating kids, then come spend time in the trenches with us.  I can almost guarantee that they would see things differently.  And that new vision my friends, would improve education.

The other important change I would make would be to the standardized testing policies.  These high stakes test in Texas, and other parts of the US, stink, as in they stink really bad. It is completely unrealistic to expect all kids to achieve at the same pace.  Should we assess kids to determine if they are making progress?  Absolutely!  Should we use the assessments to guide future instruction?  Of course.  Should we expect teachers to help kids make progress each year?  Well, like duh, it is called teaching for a reason.

The emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing is KILLING our future.  The over-emphasis has teachers in a panic, and because of this, kids are missing out.  A prime example of what kids are missing out on, is good quality writing instruction.  Our state assessment asks kids to write ONE page, so that's where teachers focus - aiming at getting their babies to fill up that page so they can pass the test.  PEOPLE, high school students should be able to write more than one page.  What are we thinking?  If we expect a fourth grader to write one page, then why is one page the goal at 7th grade, 9th grade, and 10th grade, too?  I thought our policy makers wanted rigor.  A one-page essay = NOT RIGOR.  We teachers know this, but because the state asks our kids to write one page; we make for dang sure they know how to write one page, but this one-page expectation may only be rigorous for a handful of students.  Many other students should be writing way more than one page.

Please policy makers and politicians, let the TEACHERS participate in the decision-making.  If we as professional educators had a voice in how education looks in our country, you'll see improvement; and it will be amazing!  I guarantee it.

A Letter to My Younger Self

Dear Ms. Chapa,

This is your first year of teaching and you are a nervous wreck.  Don't be!  Those 23 first graders will love you and by the last day of school, you will love them more than you thought possible.  You will cry.  You will cry big crocodile tears the last week of school because you had no idea how much they would steal your heart, how you would realize that you spent more time with them each day than their parents, but yet may not ever know what will happen to their future.

Twenty-five years from now, you will still think about many of them and know them by name.  You will be friends with some of them on this crazy thing called Facebook.  It's social media and impossible to explain to you because you don't even know what email is.  But through this thing called Facebook, you will know that one of your very first students is successfully living her dreams in New York, others are getting married, earning their masters, or graduating nursing school.  How cool is that!

As you grow as a teacher, don't sweat the small stuff.  You will touch the lives of hundreds of students.  You will teach first grade, second grade, fourth grade, and pre-K.  You will be a Gifted and Talented Specialist and teach the most amazing kindergarten through fifth grade students, until one day you make a wild decision to teach high school English.  Can you believe it?  You will go full circle to where you thought you wanted to teach in the first place.  But the astonishing thing about all of this is that YOU.ARE.A.PROFESSIONAL.EDUCATOR and YOU make a difference.

Without even intentionally planning on it, you will develop into a master teacher. Not only will you influence your own students, but you will lead teachers to be even better.  You will make friends with parents of students, and they will thank you for loving their babies, challenging their babies, and accepting their babies, and then you won't.  You will have some parents, and some students, who don't get you at all; and that's okay.  When you become a high school teacher, some even may even want to kill you.  Don't dwell on the ones who don't appreciate you, because so many more will, and do.  And the rest of them, well, one day they will know  that every decision you made, you made with their best interests in mind.

Teach from your heart every day.  You will be rewarded.  You will be exhausted.  You will be grateful.  You will be grateful that you chose this career because it completes you.  One day, far into your teaching career, one of those exhausting days when you are questioning your decisions,  you will get an unexpected note from a former student revealing how you helped them believe in themselves, and their intelligence.  Another day you will be sitting alone contemplating how to reach the difficult ones, when a sweet former student will bring you a coffee.  And you will know.  You will know that no matter how hard it is, educating children is what makes you who you are.

Enjoy your first year.  It only gets better, but whatever you do, don't sweat the small stuff, and don't put your hands out when a kid complains of a stomach ache.  Teaching can be messy after all.

P.S.  You won't always be Mrs. Chapa.  You will become Miss Jobson again, and then Mrs. Pogue.  You will become a mom and find that the teacher/mom struggle is real!  Hard stuff will happen in your personal life, but no one will be the wiser.  You are stronger than you know.  You will get you through it.  And seriously, don't sweat the small stuff.

Why?

Why?  Why do I teach?

To be honest, I don't come from a highly educated family.  I have thirty-plus first cousins and I fall somewhere in the middle of the pack.  I absolutely adore all of them.  At one time, my mom, her four siblings, and my grandparents all lived in the same neighborhood.  It was a great way to grow up:  Dallas Cowboy games on Sunday afternoons at grandmas, summer picnics, fried pies, and cokes in a bottle were just a few of the things we all shared.  Going to school?  Not so much.  Well let's just say I was the book nerd of the family.

Although I fall somewhere in the middle, age-wise, I was the second grandchild to graduate from high-school, the first to graduate with honors, and the first to graduate college. Needless to say, growing up in a middle-class, blue color family, I didn't grow up interacting with many college professionals.

The majority of degree holders I encountered were the teachers I saw on a regular basis, or medical professionals I saw periodically.  It made perfect sense that I would gravitate towards teaching.  It was teachers that recognized and appreciated my zest for learning, and my academic successes.  It was teachers who helped me believe I could go to college, when no one else had gone before me.  It was a teacher who helped me get a semi-scholarship for my class-ranking. While it may seem I chose to be a professional educator by default, I do not believe this.  I believe being an educator is who I am.

I have had many jobs: baker, shoe sales, administrative assistant, jewelry sales, hotel reservationist, cosmetic sales, clothing sales, organizational store clerk, finance, and many more, but ... they. were. just. jobs.   From the time I set foot into my first role as a student teacher  in that first grade classroom at Buda Primary School, I felt at home.  Teaching didn't feel like a job, it felt like a calling.

So why?  Why do I teach?  I teach for our future . . .

• for other kids like me who may be first in the family college graduates
• for the first grade boy who used the f-bomb on the playground because he heard it from mom and dad
• for my student who spent the night in the car with her brother and sister while her momma turned tricks
• for the high achieving students
• for the struggling students
• for the athletes, the band, the drill team, the cheerleaders, the theater students, the choir, and the many others who are trying to find their way

I teach because it's who I am.  I may have a college education from the University of Texas at Austin that cost more than I made my first year of teaching.  I may be "smart enough" to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or an architect.  I may have been able to earn triple or quadruple my current salary, but that's not me.  I make a difference every day capturing hearts and educating the minds of our future, and it doesn't feel like a J.O.B.  What more could I ask for?  You see . . I AM AN EDUCATOR - it's who God called me to be.

Source:  http://quotesgram.com/gods-plan-for-us-quotes/

Image Source:  http://www.speakinglatino.com

Presenting . . .

me, Lisa, wife, mom,
sister, daughter, niece, aunt, cousin,
professional educator

Currently, I teach freshman English at Royse City High School, but this isn't my first gig.  I've taught first graders, second graders, fourth graders, and kinder through fifth grade Gifted and Talented students.  While it may sound cliche, I can't imagine not being an educator.  Teaching is my happy place, and I'm grateful that I found it.  

However, I'm not JUST a teacher.  I have a family whom I adore.  I am blessed that two pretty fabulous kids call me mom, and an equally amazing man calls me his wife.  My family and I love to travel; one of our goals is to hit all of the Major League Baseball parks in the U.S.  It's a fun goal.  

In my free time, which I don't have a lot of, I enjoy reading and serving with children and youth at LakePointe Church.