Rocketship Alma Academy 

I teach at Rocketship Public Schools in San Jose, California. My campus is Rocketship Alma, one out of thirteen Rocketships in the San Jose area.  Rocketship is a charter school that has campuses in Bay Area, Milwaukee, Nashville, Texas, and Washington D.C. Rocketship Alma has k-5th grade, with 508 students currently enrolled. 

RSA Student Profiles - Demographics

   Race

• 83.3% Hispanic

• 8.7% black 

• 4.7% Asian 

• 2.3% white 

Special Services

• Special Education 10.3%

• English Language Learners 59.8%

• Special Education 10.3%

• Social economic disadvantaged 78.3%

• Homeless 1.6%

Gender

• 51% female 

• 48% male 

Our school is broken down into Humanities and Stem. Humanities is Reading, Writing and History. While Stem is Math and Science. Classroom sizes are 20-30, and each classroom has a co teacher to assist students with accommodations. Rocketship creates their own Humanities curriculum, which consists of Close Reading, Thematic Unit, and Guided Reading blocks. Stem has recently shifted to using Eureka Math as the curriculum.

Every morning the entire school engages in Launch. This is a time where as a school we come together to go over school wide announcements and celebrate students who have been meeting and exceeding weekly academic and social goals. We end Launch with a dance, and our Daily Creed. 

Below is our Daily Creed.

I believe that the purpose of education is to bring students to the awareness of their power within society, and to liberate them from unfavorable circumstances, as each student is able to learn and grow into independent learners. As a 5th grade reading teacher, I am anchored on invoking curiosity of the world to my students through reading while providing each student with the skills and confidence to act upon their curiosity. I currently teach 100% black and brown young girls and boys in the city of San Jose, CA. The history of this country tells us that black and brown students should not exceed, especially in science and reading. According to Halpern, (2007) the ability of students of color are greatly underestimated (Halpern, D.F. 2007).  As a reading teacher to this population, I am intentional to bring my students' lived experiences into the classroom. Doing so eases students' anxiety and frustration around reading and writing and Instead provides a learning experience of joy and growth. My approach to teaching is to first learn what my students are curious about and what my students want to learn so we can co create together vs just teaching to my students a set curriculum without their interest in mind. With this, my launch part of my lesson typically has to do with a current event that is happening within our community or in the world. My lessons are also anchored in emphasizing student voice, limiting my teacher voice and power. Lastly, I believe that my job is to form educational alliances with my students to allow each student to become independent learners that lean on their character strengths, and skills when engaging in productive struggle. 

   I have been heavily influenced by the work of Miller, K. R., & Levine, J. S. (2005), from when I taught science in which Miller writes about the habits of mind skepticism, open-mindedness, creativity, and curiosity. (Miller, K.R. 2012.) The work of Freire P. (2000), and Shor, I. (1995), have also greatly influenced my teaching style to ensure my classroom has more student voice then my own, as I co create with my students (Freire, P 2000; Shor, I. 1995.) My teaching approach of bringing my students interest and lived experiences into the curriculum within science has been influenced by Wiggins, G.(2005), and Basu, S.J (2007.) For example, within the first week of school I create surveys that allow my students to share with me what they are interested in about the world. I found that for one class they held a great interest in trains, thus for our launch to poems that I intentionally chose poems about trains.

A quality teacher is one that shows genuine care and concern for their students, which was made clear to me through the work of Whittaker, T. (2020) and Hammond, Z. (2015.) In which, I learned steps a teacher can take to form these relationships such as trust generators (Whittaker, T. 2020; Hammond, Z. 2015.) Bringing this to life within the classroom looks like sharing stories about myself to my students and following up with my students after they share a personal situation with me. For example, I have a student whose mom passed away two years ago in a car accident. To further connect with this student, I shared that when I was in school my mother was in a car accident before and I shared with this student how I felt.

Another two points to my teacher philosophy are the notion of positive teacher talk and seeking feedback. Anderson, M. (2019), discusses the language of war that teachers frequently fall into and the danger of this. Within my school, I see this language of war between my colleagues on a daily basis. For example, in the morning I hear, I can not do this, only eight more hours, and stay strong soldiers. I myself have fallen to this negative talk and poor attitude towards the day as it becomes the norm and sets the negative tone for the day. However, I have made the decision that how I wish to show up for my students, I also want to show up around staff. Drago-Severson, E. (2017) & Gates, B (2013) talk about how teachers need feedback as well, feedback that is frequent, quick, and with opportunities for reflection. Thus, I will continue to actively talk with my coach for feedback.

   Being a quality teacher changes with every year, with every new group of students, and a teacher must reflect on strategies that will work and reach their current students. There is no clear one way to be a quality teacher, rather it is a belief and a grounding philosophy that a teacher anchors themselves in that is brought to life with each student and each class. As one of my colleagues pointed out, even though classes and students change, a teacher can hold true to their values, and goals for all students. For example, from class to class I hold the goal of highlighting student voices while limiting my own and empowering students.

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