so much has changed

i haven't written much in awhile--and i think it's because my life is calming down a lot and doesn't feel as dramatic. school is pretty even-keeled, and my students are just going on being their cool, weird, sometimes annoying selves. when i say so much has changed, i mean inside me. i am no longer a big, messed up ball of stress that can't get anything done around the house and can barely deal with my life. in contrast, i am feeling more like a normal person who has a very busy job. it doesn't hurt that this is a 3 day weekend (it's friday and i have the day off today) and spring break is in one more week!!!

this is going to sound random, but i finally got a printer in my classroom a few weeks ago and it has actually revolutionized my day and teaching. i can now design and print things at school, photocopy them, do seating charts at school and print them, help my kids out with research in the classroom if they need something quickly like a poem for their project. all of the little minutes saved and energy saved by having this machine seem to add up to a lot every day. anyways, that is a good, random, helpful thing.

i was actually going to write an entry on tuesday, which was our school climate day which means there were assembles and we taught these pre-written climate lessons. when i say pre-written i mean written by the committee that i'm on, so i wrote one of them which lot of teachers told me went well. (yay!) but none of that is the noteable part of tuesday.

the great part of tuesday was two different interactions with my students. i have two students who are part of a group that is recording rap songs. they are two really sweet students who i've liked all year long. they have been sharing their recordings with me since they started, also--the first time, they came in at PE and asked to use my CD player to listen. of course i let them and i was really excited so now they always come in to listen, and hang out. students are not allowed to take cafeteria food out of the cafeteria and they're not allowed to eat in the classrooms, but i let my kids eat in my room--i always tell them that unless it's class time, they can eat as long as they clean up after themselves. so this group of four kids who are recording the rap CD come in, and i have gotten to know the other two rappers a little bit because i always chat with students who are in my room even if i don't have them in my classes. i love watching these kids come in and listen to their music. it often draws in other students who are also listening. truly, it is pretty impressive--they write their own lyrics and beats and they are really quite good. i think i like it because it is somethign that they are very successful at, and that they really like, that's not school, and i am so glad to see them doing it and not messing around and getting into trouble. they are also really sweet and respectful which i don't always get from my middle schoolers. i can deal with kids who aren't respectful but of course, it's not my preference.

so it's always just enjoyable to have them come in and enjoy their music, and for me to get to hear it.

after school on tuesdays and and thursdays, all the teachers offer tutoring for students who need it. i had two kids come in for test prep tutoring on tuesday, at the end of the day. they were really earnest and hardworking, and i basically decided that whoever showed up, i was going to re-teach the lesson that they had missed and i would just do it and if they weren't paying attention that was not my problem. as usual, i had extra kids come in to hang out with the ones who were in for tutoring--some of them were helping, some of them were just hanging out. they were all kind of low energy and trying to focus. one of my girls was saying that she was hungry and she was going to the corner store to get food, but i didn't want her to leave because she was being really helpful to the other kids. so i said "if i give you a granola bar, will you stay and help?" she stayed and all of a sudden a little light went on in my head and i thought "omigod, study snacks--why did i never think of this before???" i happened to have a bag of trail mix that had some chocolate and nuts and raisins in it that i hadn't opened yet, so i asked if they wanted a snack. they said yes, i found a paper plate, and put the food out. they were of coures totally into it and ate it all. i'm guessing that it was at least a little bit healthier than eating flaming hot cheetos (better known as hot chips) or candy and a soda or some nasty fruit drink.

a lot of the time, my kids don't come to tutoring or come really late because they go to get food first. but, if i have food, they will probably be more likely to come, and to come on time. i am actually shocked that i didn't think of it earlier--i always advocate feeding people, especially if you are trying to get them to do something that they are not totally into/invested in. my administration often comes in and checks to find out if i have kids in the classroom for tutoring, and i often have nobody. but if i start having snacks maybe that will turn around. honestly, i am super hungry by that time of day, and i eat a healthy breakfast and lunch every day. my kids eat little or no food during the day, so it is not surprising that they want to get food instead of come to tutoring by the time school is dismissed.

anyways, the whole point of this post was to share that even though i had a sort of lame day last tuesday, these two little gems (about an hour of my day) made it all good. the lunch crowd (the rappers) and the tutoring crowd (the snackers) were fun and sweet and genuine and i just enjoyed it.

okay. i should go prepare for the week. i started this post on friday so it is long overdue for posting, also. i had just been wanting to share these little stories since earlier in the week. have a great week!!!

grading

so i don't like grading very much. i think that is typical of many teachers. the reason i don't like it is because it takes a really long time and it's tedious. plus, it is when i truly find the faults and mistakes in the assignments i've designed. my real dirty secret is that at the beginning of the school year, i almost never assessed my students because i didn't really know how to write tests and i didn't really know how to grade. i also didn't procure a grading program until almost a month into the school year, so if i had graded something, i wouldn't have had anywhere to enter the scores. (i use a grading program called easy grade pro which i love. my math skills are abysmal and it calculates everything for me.)

anyways, grading always comes up around the time of big tests or essays. it took me a very, very long time to grade all of my students persuasive essays. and i am really worried that i lost my 7th graders' essays. i can't find them ANYWHERE. that is not good! but regardless, grading takes FOREVER. and i have a lot of tests to grade before the day is over today. the 8th graders took a test on poetry, and i have graded most of them, but i have a few more to do. the 7th graders took a test on theme--it compared "The Highwayman" and a short story called User Friendly, as well as testing vocab and reading comp for User Friendly. User Friendly is this weird but also entertaining story about a boy who is friends with his computer. it's kind of cool.
UPDATE: the 7th graders didn't really understand the comparison part of the test. they did fine on the rest, though. they will freak out tommorow if they get their tests back with bad grades. i was chatting with a few of them--i can't remember who--and i commented that the culture of their class was that everyone wanted to get an "A." the students i was talking to agreed with me. the thing is, i didn't set up that culture in the class, they just showed up and started acting like that. it makes me laugh sometimes.

i am off to finish my grading and entering grades into my program. have a great week!

sadness

i'm not going to go into details because i don't think it's a good idea, but one of my student's fathers shot and killed a man over the weekend. it's a complicated story and i don't want to make the student or father identifiable, but there was an element of self-defense involved. the newspaper story was very brief.

on monday, this student (he's in my strategic class) asked me if i had seen the news. yesterday he asked me again, and while we were in the computer lab he was trying to find an article on the newspaper website. (at this point, i still had no idea what was going on--i didn't even know that something had happened in his family.)

he asked to use the phone at the end of class yesterday. he got off the phone, and everyone else was gone, and as he was leaving class he told me the story. his dad is locked up, and my student's other family members who he is staying with won't let him go home and get any of his stuff. he's staying with his grandfather who is apparently very dependable.

his other teachers couldn't find the newspaper article but i found it last night. i can't stop thinking about it--this is the closest i've ever come to something like this, other than when i volunteered in the jail, but that was very different. i care a lot about my students and i can barely imagine how he is feeling. i know him pretty well and i'm worried about the effect this will have on him.

anyways, it's just on my mind. i didn't get a chance to post last weekend because all i did was grade papers and go for a long bike ride on sunday and a long walk on saturday.

more this weekend.

5th period

i had a really fun day with my 5th period today. truthfully, i had a fun day with all of my students, but period 5 really deserves mention.

we are studying different types of poetry and today we learned about the ode. we did a few notes on what it is, and then we read some odes. the first one was called "ode to a toad." it was written by a massachusetts high school student, and it's about a person who goes jogging and she sees a squashed toad on the road. she kind of philosophizes about this toad, and his life, and whether his family misses him, then she says "in the grand scheme of things, i must confess, what's one little toad more or less?"

i couldn't even get past the first stanza when my 5th period erupted into laughter and grossed-out noises about the squished toad on the road. it seemed like more of them reacted than didn't. while that might sound kind of immature, it was great for me to know that they were engaged and paying attention enough to have a pretty powerful reaction to this poem. i kept reading and at the end one of the musicians/rappers in the class said "that was tight, ms. bogie. you were spitting that." [translation: you read the poem well. i think he liked my exxagerated expression, which i used so that the poem could come alive for my students. i had a lot of fun read it to them, also.]

so after i finish reading that poem, we have another one to read. this same kid (the rapper) asks if he can read it. i was delighted that he had volunteered (no one had volunteered to read in either of my earlier classes) and said yes. as he started, another student, actually the one whose poem i posted, began echoing the last word of each line of poetry, like back-up singers would do with a musician. it actually sounded really cool. the kids were totally into it, laughing, cheering, smiling, and i was just sitting there with this huge grin on my face, loving my students so much. it was a really awesome day!

another thing that felt really cool was that i was using a literacy technique--i modelled fluent reading with my first poem, and then two students volunteered to read the next two poems. they did a good job, too. this is grade level material directly from the textbook and they read well. overall, good stuff.

off to finish the homework for my technology class that i have to take for credentialing. let's just say that i'm a few weeks...ahem...behind.

end of the marking period

honestly, i don't really remember these times from school. the frenzy of the end of the marking period, where grades are about to be due and the kids who don't do their work during the marking period are (justifiably) freaked out about their grades. i have several kids who come to class every day and never do anything and are moody and obnoxious. i also have several kids who never come to class and don't come in for their make up work. i also have kids who come to class and appear to be doing work but don't turn much in.

so there was a convergence of those kids on my classroom at about 2:40 today when school got out. there was a significant amount of drama--friends coming in and distracting the students who were working, a student who raised his voice at me because of his grade, another girl who often doesn't want to speak to me deciding that she was going to kiss up and make nice--like she has at the end of every marking period. i think i'm going to need to put some kind of time limit on make up work this coming marking period. i'm probably going to say that you have to make up your work within a week of it being due. that means that i have to stay more caught up on grading, which is difficult, but necessary. because this is total madness, plus i have massive piles of paper that i am recycling now. (shh, don't tell....)
grading is really hard. i collect at least 100 pieces of paper every day. i don't grade them all. but i need to be better about knowing what i am and am not going to grade when the week begins, because my current system is not working.

it's amazing how many structures i am constantly reflecting on and wanting to change. i have a lot of students with low grades due to missing work, but i think that it is partly my responsibility for not helping them stay more organized. they will sit in class and listen to me say that i'm collecting something and then not turn it in, and i'll find it in their folder a week later while i'm looking for something in the folder to help them out.

so yeah, grading kind of sucks. it's really not fun, mostly because i am not good at it. grades are due monday. but I AM NOT WORKING TOMMOROW!!!!!!! (tommorow is friday.) let's just say that i am a little bit happy about the long weekend--i need a little break and r & r.

i am off to finish grading and go to bed. until the next time...

First Day of March!

maybe it's the freshness of the month...maybe because it's thursday....maybe because it's not raining...maybe because i was pissed at them yesterday...or maybe, just maybe, it's because the activity that i designed was a good one. whatever the reason, i finally had a successful day with my strategic class.

all i wanted to do when i woke up this morning was stay home. it wasn't even that i was so tired--but the first thing out of my mouth was "is it friday yet?" i will admit, i did take a tylenol pm because i was so stressed last night that i couldn't sleep, so most likely that made me a little groggy this morning. all of that being said, though, i did not want to teach today. but of course i dragged my butt up and went along on my merry way to school, without any real lesson plans for the day other than for my 7th grade class.

i started brainstorming on the way to school about what i could do with my strategic class where they wouldn't have to be quiet and listen to me, because i knew they weren't going to be quiet to listen to me. i decided to try "stations"--where there are different activities set up around the room in various locations and students rotate in groups to each station. the ironic thing is, i designed the whole thing in 15 minutes and then on the fly. normally i type all of my worksheets and materials, but today i hand wrote them all. normally i have things more clearly planned, but not today--today was sort of fly by the seat of my pants. the beautiful thing was, it didn't matter. it all worked out okay. my kids totally got into the stations and were really successful, and i didn't have to talk for an entire hour, except to individual students and groups, mostly to tell them that they were doing a good job. i designed a really simple set of activities because i wanted them to get the hang of the system, rather than being focused on the content and having difficult work to do. In general, I was just really surprised and proud of them for focusing and getting their work finished. i think that all of my speculations above are related to why they were successful--but regardless, it was so great. it just set me up for a good day in general, although i didn't have a lot of stuff planned for my other kids. someone came in to do some presentations, which was nice,a nd the 7th graders did well, too.

i'll say more this weekend.