Forgive Me, For I Have Been Watching Baseball

Yep, I supported my team for the last few nights. I watched every painful minute of it. We were so close in games 2,3, and 4. (There was no chance with game 1). Because of this, I'll update tomorrow night after watching Heroes and carving pumpkins. Hope that doesn't ruin anyone's day.

Sad thing is, I found myself remembering how much I liked baseball when the cameras would pan to the Red Sox and they would be goofing around in the dugout. The coverage was a little Red Sox heavy, but there aren't that many teams that goof around in the Post Season. I still wanted them to lose though.

Tick tock tick tock

I picked up a stop watch at Wal-Mart a bit ago and recently started using it in class to keep things on-time. It certainly is nice for me to see how much time I'm spending on different parts of the class, but the kids are complaining. "Sir, why do you have to time EVERYTHING?" Well, part of it is because I was running out of time at the end of class and not getting things done. The other reason was that some students would do nothing until I said they had 1 minute left (and it was mostly arbitrary) and then would not finish the task.

I taught similes, metaphors, personification, and figurative language this week as well as some basic leads. The kids really understood the leads, which was the lesson I taught on my first day back from a 4 day break. I'm sad to say it but I'm glad that I got sick. The sinus infection sucked, and I'm still taking pills, but it gave me a few days off to just NOT teach. I was feeling burned out, but I still don't really know what it was that was burning me out. I think it's the same thing that burns out other teachers... I'll take a guess that it's a "highly promoted" curriculum that is somewhat vague when it comes to the actual content. Anyways, I've been taking small liberties with the curriculum and it's really making me feel better about my classes in general.

One of those liberties was my class on similes and metaphors. The original reading material our department was going to read was a short story called "Cut". The story had a lot of examples of metaphors, similes, personification, and imagery, but it was about a kid who was dealing with depression and cut himself. As a teacher, the material seemed a little adult for my kids. Well, "adult" might not be the best word - "too real" would be better. The day that I was supposed to read the story, I noticed that one of my students had carved "loser" into her arm, (didn't look like it would scar though), and I didn't see any reason to egg on some of my more unstable students. Yes, I have a few cutters, but they tend to be the smarter children. Strange how that works. I also didn't want to read the story because I was selfish. With a hyperactive Vagus nerve, the imagery used when the kid cut herself was enough to make me a little queasy. I didn't want to think about having to read through it with 6 classes and have the kids asking "what happened" as we discuss the imagery used. Instead, I found a much more lighthearted story called "The Cricket War" at Eastoftheweb.com. I found the site this summer and I'm a BIG fan of it. It shows reading levels, pages, and all the stories are free to use. Plus, I was able to have kids draw the personification of crickets waging war. Some of these kids were pretty good artists, and drew battle lines and crickets with rifles and helmets. I'll have to scan one in when I get a chance.

In other news, I've definitely been spending more time working on the whole "work-life-balance" thing. Being sick for four days gave me some time to play some new video games (namely Halo 3 and Beautiful Katamari), call friends, and catch up on the news. I remembered how much I liked being able to just relax, and for a while I didn't feel stressed at all. However, the stress eventually comes back. It has always been like that. I'll have some type of project or responsibility, and I just throw myself into the project 100%. The only problem is that I eventually lose my fervor, need time off, and then feel like I've just been neglecting what I should be doing. Right now, that "what I should be doing" is fixing up the school website (it's mostly done, but I need to add some images and fix up pages that some of the departments have not sent me material for). I could also be planning out my second unit, since it's coming up oh... next week. It's just so tough to stay motivated throughout the week and then on the weekend. After grading tests and papers for hours on end it I just don't feel any real drive to get ahead and plan out more things that I'll eventually have to grade again. It's a vicious cycle. meh

Updated: A Little Notoriety

Just wanted to give you all a quick news update. One of the girls from my school is speaking in a panel at the UN. She's not my student, but it's still cool.

Check out the article here.

There's also a video of her at the UN. It's a lot less impressive than I would have expected from a UN conference, but I guess they keep the big rooms for the big wigs.
Click here for The Monitor's page that will allow you to download the realplayer video file.

Gimme a break, Gimme a break, break me off a piece of that ...

This last week, including the weekend, was less than stellar. I took my first sick day on Friday since I had not been feeling well and needed a refill of my allergy medication. The doctor was very helpful, and gave me a couple prescriptions, so I was finally able to use my new medical plan that certifies me as an adult. Unfortunately, the sub again had problems with the class, and I really am starting to believe that I should only give worksheets when a sub is needed. It wasn't even that tough of a class... The students were supposed to take a quiz, then work on their revisions of their drafts. Apparently, many of the kids complained that they did not have their rough drafts even though I specifically told them that they would be given in class work time and needed to bring them. Maybe it's a testament to my teaching that I don't have these mishaps, or maybe I do and I just downplay them. Eh.

To be honest, I was glad I got a sick day. I really needed a break, if only to recharge. That might be the stress talking, that might be the sinus infection (or the E-coli that I could apparently have from contaminated burgers I bought at Sam's CNN Article here). Two of my kids got in a fight in class on Thursday. It was my smallest class too, and I even have an aide, but neither of us saw it. It happened in the last 5 minutes of class. The two boys were horsing around, just pushing each other a little bit, and one pushed the other one in the face and cut the kid's lip. The victim promptly punched the offender in the eye. They were both REAL quiet about it too, as the punched kid quickly put down his head and covered his face with a hood. I honestly don't know how only ONE other student saw this. I constantly move about the room, so the whole altercation must have taken at most 30 seconds. But nonetheless, it happened right under my nose. After telling the class what they needed to do before they could leave, I looked back to the kid with his head on the desk and his hood pulled up. I tapped him on the head and asked him if he heard what I said and if he was going to take his work home for homework (he had done next to nothing in class). He muttered something, so I said again, "You didn't do much in class today. Are you going to take your work home?" He looked up as tears streamed from his eyes and I quickly sat down to see what was wrong. The bell rang and the rest of class left, as he finally managed to say that the other student had punched him. Sure enough, he pulled back his hood and he was going to have a pretty nice shiner. I immediately told him we'd go to the nurses office and get ice, and that I would be writing up the other student (both of them ended up getting written up since they were egging each other on). I found the other student in the hall near the office after dropping off the punched student with the nurses, and told the quick-fisted child to come with me. He instantly knew what was happening, and had the gall to say, "You're bringing him in too, right?" Didn't really care about his own situation, just wanted to see the other kid also punished. Yeah, ok, you have a cut lip now. Why the heck did you punch him in the eye in response? Needless to say, I was frustrated, and it put a damper on my already dismal day, which was peppered with sneezes, reports of bad student grades, and many schedule changes for athletes.

We got our six weeks grades back on Thursday as well. My students performed almost on all categories below the average of any of the other English classes. Aware that I'm a new teacher and realizing I probably have not put in the amount of effort I should, I was worried. I ended up talking to my department head/mentor for an hour or two after school about the scores. Maybe it's not that bad. They were only off a couple of percentage points (averaged) on one 20 question test, and many of the other teachers have more than one Pre-AP class. I also have the greatest number of "mod students" (special needs that usually are lower performing. I say usually because some are VERY bright in certain areas). I felt better after the meeting, but I'm still not really happy.

I don't know what my main problem is. I'm happy when I'm teaching, and it's great to be with the kids. I just get extremely frustrated when they just decide that they want to not do ANYTHING at all. When they don't really care about their lives at all. I dunno. Maybe I can relate to them, because that's how I felt this whole weekend. I didn't want to do anything and school/work was the last thing on my mind.

I'm pretty sure that I don't want to teach after my two years are up. I really despise getting up before the sun, I feel like my creativity is really confined (thank goodness I got to design the school website), and I don't really see a long future of teaching in my life. This isn't really news, per say, since I joined TFA with the intention of getting two years of an experience out of it and then going on with my life. I'd help out for two years, say I did my part, and see if it changes anything about my life. I can already tell that it's going to keep me organized differently, appreciating solid teaching skills, and able to explain myself in as few words as possible. Time will tell. As for now, I've got a splitting headache and I don't plan on taking tomorrow off since I have nothing ready for a sub, so I'm going to bed.

Many Apologies

I neglected posting to the blog last night as I was working on the school website. I was actually doing the same tonight, and possibly tomorrow night as well, but I will try to post sometime tomorrow evening.

Update

Well, it seems that more than just the teachers noticed that I was breezing through the trainings. I received an e-mail today requesting that I do not attend training on Saturday and instead read a Gifted/Talented book and write a 5 page summary. The e-mail was cordial, though there seemed to be some slightly snide undertones. They said that I seemed quite "knowledgeable" on the subject to the point of being "bored".

I promptly sent back an e-mail that was equally amiable and snarky, with my principal and one of the district administrators CC'ed. Basically, I said that I hoped the e-mail was in response to me being informed on the topic rather than a disruption to the training seminar. Then I asked whether they would like my paper to be double spaced or single, and if it should be a formal paper with footnotes or if it is a more informal reflection-based summary. Either way, I don't have to go to training this weekend, and thus saved 8 hours of my life. Sure, I'll have to read a book and write a 5 page paper, but I think that I'll learn a lot more from a material-heavy text than a 48 size font powerpoint that is about as general as you can get.

I'm still wondering if I was sent the e-mail due to me questioning the purpose of a half-hour activity, or if it was in response to me trying to get the group back on task. Either way, I think I just fought the man and won.

Man: 0
Me: 1