not always so fun

lest you think it's all fun and games and a happy teacher, i will tell you that my first and second period class today caused me to break down later in the day. i didn't cry in class, but i did cry later when talking to an administrator about them. one of our assistant principals had walked in to talk with another new teacher and me about supporting us. i think that hearing that he wanted to know what kind of support we could use motivated me to bring up my discipline concerns with him during that 1st/2nd period class. there are several students in there that talk when they shouldn't be, the whole class won't get quiet when they are supposed to, and there are a few students with serious, serious attitudes that are very disruptive in class.

my assistant principal and i decided that i would go back to basics with them tommorow, in terms of expectations and policies. they will be in rows, sitting alphabetically. they will not be happy--especially because it is halloween. but the best part of the whole thing is that he is going to come in and give them a lecture, also. and i can refer them to the office if i need to (he does discipline with the other assistant principal). so--not such a fun day today. hopefully tommorow will be better. it is halloween, the last two periods of the day are cut off and there is a dance instead. i ahve to supervise. apparently it will be sweaty, sticky, smelly, and my post is inside the cafeteria where the dance is. the students are very excited! we shall see how it goes...

chilly day

it's sunday evening about 5:30 and i haven't done much work this weekend. i'm currently sitting in front of the tv with my laptop, trying to find some good narrative beginnings to have my kids look at. they are writing personal narratives based on an event in their lives, and i want them to follow the elements of plot structure that we've been discussing--exposition, rising action, have a conflict, climax, falling action, resolution. this is something that has been very hard to teach, though, so i'm trying to go one step at a time (which i didn't do a good job of when we started learning it) and guide them through writing their papers. i saw a few attempts at a first paragraph, and a lot of them started with "hello, my name is ________ and i am goign to tell you about the time that my grandfather died." a lot of them don't read very much and so any time of creative beginning to an essay has to be scaffolded and guided. i think that i have an idea that will work pretty well and i'm excited to get started.

i was just sitting here on this chilly day in my cozy house with my sweatshirt and fleece blanket, and almost looking forward to the winter which will give me an excuse to be indoors working all the time, like i've been doing since it got sunny this year. we're staying home tonight, making mini raviolis and salad and getting ready for the week. it is so wonderful being in a home where i feel comfortable and cozy and where the living room (and the mess....) is mine. well, both of ours.

lots of good stuff coming up: this week is spirit week at school and tommorow is twin day. i am planning to wear matching clothes to the two math teachers close to my classroom. many of my students have one of the two of them for algebra (actually, some of my 7th graders also have one of them). our "twin" outfits aren't that exciting, but no one can say we didn't try. tuesday is halloween and there is a dance at the end of the school year, so there are only classes in the morning. the following week is a 4 day week! and the following week is regular. and then we have a whole week off for thanksgiving!!!! nine glorious days!! i am so excited, i can't even imagine how nice it will be. after those 9 days, i have 4 more weeks of school and then winter break.

it's hard because i LOVE teaching and being at school, and yet i'm dying for some time off just to revive. yesterday was a great day because i didn't do any schoolwork, just spent time with friends, watched the beginning of a movie, took a walk, did a little birthday shopping for a friend. i swam both days this weekend, and didn't start my work until about 1 pm. oops! oh well, it was a much needed break. the weeks aren't really getting easier, but planning is getting a little bit easier which feels like a relief. my trusty mentor teacher aka boyfriend also helps to remind me that sometimes students need to do book work and i need to have routines where they do certain things (like test prep or news articles) on certain days of the week, just to give myself some structure and relief from the insanity of planning and work!

well, i should get back to scaffolding the narrative introduction. halloween should be fun--i'll try to write a post about the hilarity that will be the middle school dance at 12:55 pm.

getting late....

it's 8:15 pm and i am just starting to plan for tommorow. well, that's not true at all. last saturday i planned out my whole week, and i've done a decent job of sticking to it. yesterday, i planned out today and tommorow. earlier today at school, i planned most of tommorow. but now i have to plan for second period, when my assistant principal (my supervisor) is coming to observe me. i'm starting the kids on their second writing assignment, which i'm calling an autobiographical essay. there are 6 writing standards for 8th graders, and the first one is "students will write a narrative, autobiography, biography, or short story" or something along those lines. my goal is to do one major writing assignment (with the whole writing process included) for each writing standard. there are 3.5 weeks left in my unit so at the slow pace i normally work at, it will probably take almost that long to get through the entire thing. or maybe we'll go really quickly and it will go fast--who knows! and then we could write another narrative!!!

anyways, kids love to write/talk/think about themselves (don't we all) so i have narrowed that broad standard to an autobiographical narrative (think creative non-fiction. seems like that's the latest popular thing). tommorow we begin brainstorming for what to write about. i think it will be a lot of fun.

it's my first evaluation and i am actually hoping that my AP will be able to offer me some good advice for classroom management issues with this group of kids, because they are behaving like monkeys this week and it's really hard. it's just one of my classes--my most challenging and most rewarding. i have them for two classes per day, since their test scores from last year are low. and those are two hard periods.

so today they were monkey-o-rama and they knew that i was getting frustrated so they just kept going. students do this incredibly infuriating thing which is that you get them quiet, you think they'll stay quiet long enough for you to talk, and then as soon as you start talking they start talking also. omigod it is so annoying! i can't even begin to tell you. and that was happening today. i know it sounds like an odd pet peeve, but it is a serious one. i definitely launched into the "i'm not a kindergarten teacher" thing today.

so a few of the students (read: girls) who were giving me tons of attitude and saying things like "this is stupid. why are we doing this?" in front of the whole class came in after school today, ostensibly to "help"/check on their grades/say hi/they were bored and waiting for their parents to pick them up. even though it's manipulative that they come by, it still makes me feel better. i always say "okay, redeem yourself" because it is exactly what i think they're trying to do, but they don't know what the word actually means when i say it so it is a little bit of entertainment just for me. you know those kinds of inside jokes that only the joke teller understands but s/he laughs anyways? it's that kind of thing.

so this one girl, with a serious attitude problem in class, comes in to do her homework at about 3:30 pm. i was just happy that she was going to do her work, because she is getting a bad grade from not doing homework and she said she normally gets 2.5 or 3.0 GPA. the double classes are such a crappy deal for them--i think that kids who would be successful in a different environment do not fare as well with 1 hour and 45 minutes of english every morning at 8:15 am. so this girl comes in to do her homework but she can't find it. we look in her backpack....and it turns out that her organizational system is putting papers in her backpack in date order. literally. there are some binders, notebooks, and folders in there, but not a single teacher has actually had an organizational system that they have effectively imposed on her. it made me feel a little bit less bad for that. all of the teaching programs and books and everything tell you to teach your kids how to be students, including how to keep all the stuff from your class organized, but it's easier said than done for a first year teacher. i had all of these grand plans for my kids and my class when the year started, but most of them didn't get implemented. so i have some kids who keep themselves organized, and other kids who REALLY need help.

luckily, this particular student with the royal attitude (in class) and the sweet personality (outside of class) had a few empty 3 ring binders in her notebook, so we got one, put some dividers in, and took all of the papers out of her backpack. we recycled stuff from the last marking period, punched holes in everything else, and i showed her how to divide things up in piles and put them in the binder. i hope it was satisfying for her--it was sure satisfying for me, and we found a bunch of stuff from my class that she needed, even one thing that she had previously gotten a zero on. so in a way she did redeem herself. it was kind of amusing and sweet. and then one of my other biggest challenges came in to chat and also got some of the homework that she hadn't done. hopefully she will do it. and hopefully i can save my kids from organizational doom before their grades suffer too immensely.

i should get back to planning my lesson for tommorow, so that i can go to bed at a reasonable hour and successfully deliver my lesson tommorow. i'm looking forward to bed! i plan to be there in about 2 more hours (it's 8:30 now).

i know a lot of you have said that you enjoy reading my blog, and please keep your comments coming. it motivates me to post, knowing that people are checking and care that i write and are interested and excited. if you're out there reading this and you haven't told me that yet, just leave me a comment to read. i would really like it. and, if there's anything you really want to know about, ask me and i will write about it in another post.

there is always more to tell but...planning beckons.

a tiny break...

happy saturday! i'm sitting in my credential class taking up my valuable saturday (last weekend another conference, oh well) so i thought i would put in a little post.

last week i had like a mini-break--check out how sad this is that this felt like such a big break. friday was a professional development day at school, so the break that i am referring to is that i didn't have to plan on thursday night. i didn't work thursday night or last night (friday) because i just needed a bit of a break. thursday night i had the treat of dinner with my dad and a little jazz music, and last night i watched an inane but totally entertaining movie called "stick it," sort of the gymnastics version of a "bring it on" type of movie. it was idiotic and TOTALLY entertaining. i loved it. it was just a nice relaxing evening.

PD yesterday was marginal at best. it was too long and so many of us were really checked out pretty quickly, which was a shame. but i did learn some things. thus is life.

well, i started this post on saturday but it's brought me to sunday night and i am grading quizzes and getting ready to crawl into bed.

unlike last weekend, this weekend has not been high stress which is a treat. i am actually surprised, but i guess i was just in dire need of a break so i gave myself one. of course i haven't finished everything that i meant to, but i am ready for tommorow and i have been since about 6 pm tonight. that is progress for me!

another week begins tommorow...week #8

New Ideas

wow. last week was a long one, for a myriad of reasons. we had a number of emergency drills, or emergency evacuations (gas leak), a lockdown, etc. it was a bit draining. i also heard from veteran teachers at my school that they have never experienced a week with so much drama like that.

yesterday i spent the entire day at a conference in east palo alto. in some ways i was dreading going, because it meant spending my whole saturday not working, yet working. but as it turns out it was incredibly helpful. i went to three workshops:
1. teaching writing with the force of 10,000 fires
2. wielding the grammar hammar
3. tips and tricks for micro and macro investment learning

(#3 probably doesn't make much sense. i will say more later.)

today has been a little bit trying. i am starting a new unit tommorow, i am also start table groups tommorow (named by colleges), i am starting grammar tommorow....i showed a movie in one of my classes last friday. basically, it is a big day tommorow and i really want to be ready for it. so i have been planning all day today and i am starting to get really zoned out from looking at the computer. my computer has also gotten very hot--maybe a sign that i should take a break from it. oh well.

so i had a slow start this morning, probably owing to the fact that i spent yesterday at the conference, worked for about 2 hours last night before going to a friend's birthday party, and then started working at 9 am today. suffice it to say that i'm going a little bit slowly.

but, i finally got going after talking with a friend at the cafe where we were this morning about a good story to use. i chose a story called "the streak" by walter dean myers and i will be showing a section of the movie "Juice" to give an idea of characters and setting in the movie. "Juice" is set in Harlem, and "the streak" is in a book of stories called "145th street" and they are all set on that street in harlem.

so tommorow we are working on proper and common nouns and their associated capitalization rules; previewing and starting "the streak"; and some teamwork exercises. i have a goal of not talking "too much" which i should probably quantify but i am not ready to do that yet. i made a lecture sheet and a graphic organizer that the students will take notes on, so my mini-lesson on grammar should be pretty brief.

oh, the reason i mentioned the conference earlier is because out of the three workshops, i am using like 7 things in my classes tommorow. that is amazing! i don't think i've ever been to such a useful workshop. how cool, eh? some of the helpful ideas were "hooks" for lessons--just little things that get the kids engaged right at the beginning. if you show or do something cool at the beginning of the lesson, often they will stick with you and pay attention and be pretty into it. it just takes a little jumpstart. so that is kind of cool. i am using two hooks tommorow--one is a clip from "Juice," and the other is a bag of objects that are all nouns.

well, this is a little bit of a mixed up post but i will just say that i worked all weekend, i learned a lot, i still have more work to do, i'm tired, but i have to do grades.
grrr.

signing off....hopefully i will have more updates soon.

don't give up on me!

i will post, i promise.
soon.
yes, it's saturday night and i'm working.
:-(

entering week 6

wow....it's been quite a weekend! i wrote long-term (year) plans for my 7th and 8th graders. i wrote unit plans for the next grading period (weeks 6-12 of school), graded my reading diagnostics for 30 students (and discovered they are all at a 6th grade or lower reading level), and now i am writing detailed plans for the coming week for all three of my classes. i still have grading to do, and then prep for tommorow.

i was very productive over this weekend--i also cleaned up the house together with jesse; we had friends over for dinner; i swam 2 miles this morning, and had three other social engagements/work dates with friends. i am currently at a cafe working with a childhood friend. well, she is grading and i am planning. writing in my weblog is sort of my little break.

back to work work work. more later. wait, did i tell the story of the girl who got arrested out of my class last week? yeah. it was a hectic week!