working on friday nite!

i think this is what it means to have a job that you really love….the fact that i am sitting here at 10 pm on friday night writing long term plans for my 7th and 8th grade english classes. i mean, come on—in college, i refused to work on fridays for almost my entire college career. by the time i was writing my thesis, i could sometimes be found in the library or the coffee shop on a friday night but that was an exception, not the rule. and i could barely do anything on the weekends for any of my other jobs, let alone on a friday night. but now it is nothing that i worked 7:30-4 and then came home, relaxed for a few hours, and started on work again around 8:45 pm. pretty amazing!

i am also super motivated to work right now because the work that i’m doing has a direct benefit for my students and especially for me—it will help to maintain my sanity for the rest of the year. i am putting my work together in 4 or 6 week units (mainly 6 week units, corresponding with the grading periods) and that way before each unit starts i can look over my materials, break my standards down into objectives, and plan more in-depth for the 6 weeks. it’s pretty exciting. i’m not doing this for anybody else—i’m doing it for myself (and i do what i do for my kids, bottom line).

they are so smart! i was working on summarizing with them and they were totally getting it. i realize that i can pick up the pace with some of them and just get moving along on our work, which is really exciting. they were breezing through the work today on summarizing, which was cool to see. so next week it will get harder. we’re reading “flowers for algernon” and i’m struggling with how to ensure that my students are understanding what they’re reading when i can’t go point by point through the story—i have to be doing assessments that determine comprehension, without all of our class time being devoted to surface-level comprehension. it’s a hard task, because we can’t move forward if they don’t understand the story, it’s a grade level text, and they can’t all read on grade level so….what do i do?

on a less pleasant note—i had to refer 4 girls to the office today. they left in the middle of class to go to the bathroom, even though they didn’t have permission to do so. not so fun. but i can’t let stuff go, otherwise kids will walk all over me.

one super funny thing that happened today is that i got to announce my new policy on “lending” (i.e. giving) pens and pencils to students: i will have crayons for them to use if they forget their pen or pencil to write with. they got a total kick out of that one!

okay, back to long term planning. this was just a little diversion.comments always welcome!

it's almost friday

so i started the story flowers for algernontoday with my most challenging class. i'm not sure if i've explain this yet, but my school is tracked in some ways and some students who have standardized test scores below a certain cut off have to take double math or double english classes. i teach one of the double english classes (8th graders) as well as two single 8th grade english classes and one single 7th grade class. anyways, let me try to link this together because i realize i seem unfocused so far. basically, the reason i brought up flowers for algernon is that i started playing the CD for my double 8th grade english class today, and i am trying to put together lesson plans for the coming few days/weeks that will be relevant and interesting for all of my students, for the story. i am thinking about doing a portfolio-type project for the story (we are not reading the whole book, just the short story). so my double class is by far the most challenging and frustrating, and i have started to realize that while i'm planning, i am always thinking about them, whether something will work for them, how it will work for them, if they will like it and respond and want to focus and how i can help make that happen. basically, they are my most frustrating class but i also wouldn't want to teach without teaching them also. it's odd because even within my teaching assignment i have a significant achievement gap--so the idea of closing the achievement gap is very interesting to me because it's within my own classroom--my school has a whole range of skill levels.

anyways, just pontificating.

had a lot of parent contact yesterday. it resulted in one parent coming in for a conference this morning, and another one is visiting a class tommorow afternoon. should be interesting.

i think that the best thing that happened is that i put books into the hands of two different kids during SSR who often aren't engaged readers--they sit and flip through books for the 20 minutes a day of silent reading. i have a black boy who often asks to sit outside and read. i have been letting him, but i've noticed that he's not reading much at all. he had a book with a black family on the cover, and when i asked him why he chose it he said "i don't know--the cover...." i guessed that he related to the pictures on the cover and decided to choose that book. unfortunately, it was a somewhat high-level book and also started off really abstractly. i asked his permission to help him find a new book--i figured i could find something more appealing. he waited for me to find him something. i went into a book box that i had in my room, which i got from the librarian, and found a book whose summary said it was about a girl in the projects and about some of her experiences. it didn't explicitly say that it was about a black family, but it was implied. the print was pretty big and it looked at a glance like a more manageable reading level for my student, so i figured i would give it a try. i was really up front with him about the topic, and he was into the title. he spent about 10 minutes reading it, and when i came outside to find him at the end of the reading time, i asked him how it was. he said he liked it. i asked if he wanted to take it home, and he said that he did. wow!!! that was so exciting. he is apparently a really hard kid to work with so who knows what will happen with him, but he was great today. maybe it is just those little things....yay for books!

well, it's time to go work on my flowers for algernon lesson plan for tommorow...thanks for listening as always.

one day into week four

well, i promised that i would be good and actually post so that you will actually come and read my posts. so this is a day late but hopefully not a dollar short, and here i am. week three was off to a hectic but good start today as we prepare to do a schoolwide writing prompt in every english class in the whole school. it's a baseline measurement for students for the year. interesting concept, but it's just making it hard to really get into the curriculum content. that will be coming up soon--although next week we have a lot of wackiness in the schedule.

i did a ton of planning this weekend. some of you may be wondering what that actually means. well, i teach three different classes at two different grade levels. so i can either go through the week in two ways. one: plan for each day the night before. this involves being stressed out at the end of the day every day because i know i have to go home and construct a whole thing for the next day. two: plan out the week, at least on a basic level, over the weekend. this means i still have work to do during the week, but somehow my sanity is significantly maintained if i do it this way. (i did this last week, and it was great.) so on saturday of this past weekend i made a detailed plan for each of my classes for the whole week. that is 20 hours of teaching time. i teach five 50 minute blocks each day. i only have four groups of kids, though--one group is a double period of 8th graders. then i have two single periods of 8th graders, and one single period of 7th graders. i finally found a joke that the seventh graders were into:
question: what does snoop dogg use to keep his whites white?
answer: bliotch

they are always asking for jokes so finally i found them one that they liked. i have a few more for tommorow!

a highlight from the day: we are reading this short story about a mexican-american migrant farmworker family in california. the main character is a young boy, and the story basically talks about the places that his family lives and his experiences there. they are constantly moving just as he gets settled in and starts to meet people. the kids are pretty into the story. so, i have this one seventh grader who is kind of the class clown. he participates and asks good questions, but also tends to be very disruptive. he is latino, i think mexican, and as we started reading this story he got really into it. i began reading the story out loud to them and left them to finish it silently on their own. however, they all groaned and said that they would like to read it out loud themselves, or listen to me read. they agreed to read it themselves because i didn't want to read more. (i had been talking a lot with a brief bout of very loud, stern talking first thing in the morning.)so my student named angel volunteers to read where i left off. he reads well, loud enough for everyone to hear. there are spanish names and also spanish words in the story, and he pronounces them with ease. he is clearly really into reading. so when it becomes another student's turn to read, as that student approaches the next spanish phrase i say "would somebody who speaks spanish please pronounce that for us and tell us what it means?" angel enthusiastically volunteered and did a great job. it was exciting to see him get so into the material. it was like all of the moments where i saw firsthand the truth in the theory (and my intuition) that tells me that reading culturally relevant literature and affirming students' language and culture really help impact achievement. it's not that i doubted it but it was pretty cool to see it in action!

okay, it's 10:30, i still haven't written my little parent memo for back to school night, and i have to say that i am getting better and better at doing things a little bit on the fly--but that doesn't mean that it's a good idea. i will try to post later this week also, but don't count on anything til the weekend.

week two accomplished!

last weekend i was away in monterey (seeing the great white shark) so i never fully finished the post like i intended. but sometimes it's like that. now, some of you may be thinking "she'll never really post--she didn't use to post regularly when she had her blog before. i'll believe it when i see it." that's a very reasonable thought and in fact i would say that i have my doubts on whether i'll actually keep this up. however, i would also argue that the difference will be that i feel like i have something interesting and specific to talk about.

it's been such a busy summer, between being away at summer institute and then more program stuff and curriculum training and new teacher training and a staff retreat once i got back. i've had to intentionally sit and rest a little bit, but there hasn't been much time. but somehow, in the moment when i'm teaching my kids, i have the energy that i need. my credential program has not yet proven to be too much work--and i just found out that i passed the test that i needed to pass to test out of the majority of the credentialing work. it basically gets me out of a lot of reading, writing papers, and attending hours and hours of class. my credentialing program is 2 hours of class per week, a pretty minimal amount of reading, four project-based assessments, and 16 observations during the year. it was very satisfying to pass that test! i took it about a month ago, and just received my score.

so something you probably know about me is that i LOVE to read--i am totally obsessed with books. of course, it makes perfect sense that i'm an english teacher, since part of english is reading books. and i am just a big supporter of reading in general. starting over the summer, i began building my classroom library, with a beginning goal of just having lots of books of all different sorts for my students to read. at my school there is a 20 minute block built in after lunch called SSR, or sustained silent reading. (i am not totally sure why the word "sustained" has been added since i was younger, but anyways.) so i have my little angelic 5th period class for an extra 20 minutes of reading. part of SSR is that teachers read, so i get to read 20 minutes in the middle of the day, too. it's great. anyways, i already knew that my school had SSR when i was away this summer and preparing for school, so i knew that i wanted to have books and magazines for my students to read both for SSR and also for any of my other students. i decided that i wanted to be the kind of teacher where kids can check out books, and take them home--i want them to know that if they want a book to read at school or at home, they can always come to my classroom to borrow one.

so, all of that being said, something really cool happened on friday: two different kids from different classes came up to me and asked if they could borrow a book to take home and read. of course i enthusiastically agreed and inside i was jumping up and down excitedly. already, only two weeks into the school year, and kids are starting to want to take my books home. whoo hoo!! that was definitely a highlight of the day on friday.

on another note....my darling boyfriend is being an incredible support to me. he makes me dinner and listens to me talk about my kids and has been infinitely patient with my moods and exhaustion and ups and downs all summer, and especially the past two weeks since school began. he has always been these things for me, but somehow he has been notably even more amazing the last few weeks. so props to him.

school was kind of disjointed this week, as i had a consultant work with me on thursday (she is working with all teachers this year, for some reason the 8th grade english teachers were the first ones that she was scheduled with), so we co-taught one period and i was released by a sub for two other periods to plan and then debrief. on friday i also lost two classes to assemblies. plus i had to sit through the same assembly twice. this coming week is diagnostic assessments galore and balancing classes. i am resigned to the first 3-4 weeks of school being a little hectic--that's what people have pretty much told me. i've started some content, it's mainly review, and my students really like listening to the stories read out loud. i have a lot of them on CD which is really nice and kind of let me off the hook for the classes that did meet on friday. i was pretty exhausted.

i've realized that i need to take a break between the time i'm at school and the time that i do my work at home--otherwise i totally burn out. i have been swimming twice in the past three days and that is therapeutic and very much needed. today is saturday and i'm pretty much taking it easy, mainly doing things like washing my car, writing my blog, working on the house and then i am seeing friends this afternoon and evening. also bike riding. tommorow is hardcore work day. (that would be sunday.)

well, this is just a random smattering about my life but hopefully it is entertaining. leave me a comment if you like.

my first week

hello to anyone who might be reading my blog...hopefully friends and family!

i decided to renew my blogging--or at least attempt it--to keep some kind of record of what my first year of teaching is like. so far, it's been great. i just finished my first week. every day was exhausting--but i never knew that i was tired in the midst of teaching. it was just by the end of the day every day that i realized that i was bodily and mentally tired. plus, i had after school commitments monday, tues and wed--school, district, credentialing stuff. it made for a slightly hectic week. and my busy life is only beginning, as i am balancing school commitments (teaching, meetings, supervision, reform work, committee work, etc) and credentialing work (seminar, reading, reflections, assessments) and TFA (reflections and observations, a few saturday conferences, monthly wed meetings.) so yeah...i'm a little bit nervous about balancing all of that stuff but i have successfully navigated many other things, so i figure this one is manageable as well.

so the first week of school: it's basically learning names, learning about students, building classroom culture (easier said than done), introducing rules, consequences, motivational systems (extrinsic--think earning parties), teaching kids classroom procedures. every day when my students walk in the door they shake my hand and look me in the eye and respond to me when i say "good morning" or "good afternoon." there are a few with attitude and they refuse, but we move on. my huge smile elicits a big smile from them, too, and i get to acknowledge and check in with them individually each day. they sit down and begin the "do now" which is a journal assignment or other writing assignment, or a set of sentences to correct for spelling and/or grammar and/or punctuation.

[NOTE: i started this a week ago, after my first week ended. then i never came back to it. so i'll post it as-is as a record of my first week, and my next post will be about week two.]