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Why I Work At YES Prep by Katie Norwood

May 29, 2010 by Katie Norwood

I work at YES Prep because I get to change lives.

Although this may sound dramatic, I really believe it’s true. I believe that the work I do here at YES Prep will not only impact the students I work with directly, but will also impact their current families, future families, and the community around them. I know that my students will not remember everything I taught them. They may not even remember my name in twenty years. But I do know that the values and big ideas we instill in our students at YES Prep are ideas that will affect their lives and decisions forever. Even so, I often wonder if I alone can make a difference. Can my actions really change someone’s life? Although I may not revolutionize a student’s life in one year, I have come to believe that every action by every teacher at YES Prep is like a layer that we add to a student. Those layers pile on year after year until our work is complete, and collectively, we have changed a life. There is a song by Sara Groves I like to listen to while driving to school and the lyrics say, “It’s a little stone. A little mortar. A little seed. A little water.” This encourages me that all of our actions, no matter how small, are making our students into the people they were meant to be.

Every year I am charged with teaching reading and writing to about eighty four young adults. From day one, my goal is for them to love reading and writing and to be excellent at both. My classroom structures, assignments, and lessons are all centered around things that real readers and real writers do in the real world. This week, as the controlled chaos of the last days of school set in, I wonder if I really taught the kids enough. Did I get across everything I wanted to? Because now, time is up, and they are moving on to eighth grade. This week, I got a small confirmation that, yes, I did teach them enough. It’s not about test scores or rankings (although those are nice). It’s about what students have tucked away in their hearts and will use forever. Last week, students created "reading memory books”. The memory books included a section where students could make goals for themselves as readers in the future. I’d love to share some of their goals with you here. Some are funny, some are poignant, and some are downright adorable. They made me smile, and some made me cry. Do I change lives? The answer is YES.

Student future reading goals (original grammar and spelling kept intact!):

I want to be able to read during my job (like... a reading job.)
I will read 2 hours every day when I come home from work.
To teach my children how reading is awesome
I will have a whole collection of books of any type of gere.
I will search all the books I want and read them FOR SURE.
I will read in the mornings to start my day with energies.
I want to get at least two people interested in all the books I read.
I want to show my family that reading is a whole other world.
I want to critic a book.
I want to read 500 books.
Work on strategies I’m not good at.
I want to help young readers find just right books so they can enjoy reading.
I will fully understand the book’s message.
Read my entire life until I can’t read any more
I plan to have a bookshelf in my room.
Start reading books WAY over level Z
Do at least 20 post its a day
To try and be in a book club
To read enough to be a forensic scientist
To finish all the books on my “want to read” shelf on Shelfari.com

Katie Norwood teaches 7th grade English, Reading and Writing at YES Prep North Central. She has also been a grade level chair and the International Baccalaureate chair. She currently serves at the YES Prep Content Specialist for middle school English teachers, managing course leaders and ensuring that our students are on the path toward college graduation through rigorous instruction. Katie is originally from Houston and graduated from Texas A&M in 2004 with a degree in business.