I was now living in a one-bedroom near the University of Southern California, teaching in Los Angeles at Rise Kohyang Middle School. I taught two courses, 8th grade history and mixed-grade-level technology class.
Kohyang means “hometown” in Korean. Despite this, I never felt at home my first year at Rise. The reasons? I had an overzealous department chair and grade level chair that gave us anxiety through constant nitpicking of my lesson plans, and putting on our plates so many things to simultaneously do in addition to teaching. In retrospect, this was probably not solely her doing, but partially the fault of Bright Star Schools, always making teachers do more (at the expense of their well-being).
As a charter school, the hours were longer, the work was harder, and we were definitely micromanaged more-so. So much so that one of my best buddies in the technology department quit after only a month on the job. As a “Technology” department, we essentially had to come up with our entire curriculum from scratch, and so when things were criticized, it was hard on us to find alternative and creative lessons.
The previous year, I believed my management was struggling mostly because of the students. And this was partially true with CCSD being one of the worst school districts in the country…. that being said, my mentor teacher woke me up and made me realize that perhaps I was the problem, my management solely lacking at the time. It takes a lot for a teacher to acknowledge when their management is weak. I still see teachers today that claim their management is “strong”, when in reality it is not. Still, I owned up to it, and in the last month of school I tried my best to become more stern as a teacher. It was “too late”, but with this realization I knew I would have the opportunity to start anew the following year. Thank you Christine Snyder for introducing me some great techniques I still use today.
One strategy of course involving ringing chimes to grab the attention of my students, which when trained, works very well, especially on middle schoolers.
If there’s one thing that made RKMS special, it was the field trips. Taking students to trips like Disneyland and Captain America: Civil War (to teach them vocabulary) reinvigorated my teaching, if only slightly.
Still, I felt my Kohyang was still Orange County, not realizing it would take me nearly 3 more years to get back there.
Summer camp was fun as always, where I now had the opportunity to teach summer school science to campers. It was fun, and I especially loved teaching them the behind the head double dab.
