Thursday - the day not quite as awesome as Friday
During tutorial today, one of my students jumped up from her chair and covered her mouth. With her mouth still covered, she hurriedly asked if she could go the bathroom.
"Are you going to throw-up?" - Me, going to offer the trash can if she couldn't make it.
"No"
"huh?"
"I'm not sick, I just need to use the restroom" - (hand is still covering her mouth)
"What happened?"
"Nothing..."
"Her pen popped" - third student
other kids just start to notice the conversation
"My pen popped in my mouth" - first student
"WHAT? (barely containing myself). How bad is it?"
"Bad" - hand still on mouth
"Alright, go ahead. But if I had a camera..." - me joking around
"Thanks!" she laughs and rushes off, with her hand still on her mouth.
When she came back, she STILL had blue ink on her face and in her mouth. I sent her to the nurse to get it checked out. She laughed about it... and then continued to use the pen for her work.
My kids are hilarious.
The best/worst fight ever
In my eighth period today, I had to call security on two kids that were going to get in a fight over, of all things... a bookmark.
I had just finished letting the kids pick out a free "Reading is Fundamental" book (school funded) and one of the students picked a pretty hefty book - which was cool because he's not that strong of a reader, but wanted the challenge. He asked if the book was good, and I told him it would be tough, but should be interesting, and so he smiled, and said he definitely wanted it. He then asked me for a bookmark, so I went to my desk to get one. While en route, one of the other kids (also a struggling reader) I guess felt jealous, and made fun of the first kid in Spanish. They both instantly got up and started to take off their coats like they were ready to rumble. I had to physically get in between the kids as my teacher's aide also jumped in between them, and I told her to get a security guard. The instigator tried to push his way through me, which was hilarious as he's probably just shy of 100 pounds. Yeah, you're not going to get anywhere against my frame. Within two minutes both of them were escorted away separately.
At least the kid with the book was allowed to come back and get his work, during which time I stepped outside and talked to him about the situation.
Yep. A pen explosion and a fight over a bookmark. Just about par for a school day.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Tuesday Tuesday Today
Gold Day lived up to its name today. All of my classes surprisingly went off without a hitch. However, in my first class as students were shuffling in late, one of the groups complained that their team leader was gone on Friday and not in class presently. I told them they were a team (named after the absent girl), and they would have to pick up the slack. In response, one of my smart-aleck kids (a good kid though) promptly saw an opportunity to joke around, and said in a dead on impression of the absent girl "-----'s team! YAY!" Grumbles immediately came from the team with the missing member, and as if on cue, the girl walked in, and said "Hey team! I'm back! Didn't you miss me?" Smart-aleck kid says, "Yay! Go team!" Seeing as they are all friends, I didn't bring up the issue. It was also freakishly hilarious to witness.
I know my writing doesn't do it justice, especially trying to keep some anonymity, but I could barely contain my laughter.
The Ant War Continues
4:03 PM - I killed twelve ants today by hand. I've started to jab at them with pens or pencils during my planning period while I'm grading. I hope the kids don't question why there are random small marks of red or blue pen on their papers.
11:20AM - I think I found their home base. The ants seem to be coming from under the baseboard rubber strip, and conveniently congregated a few inches away from freedom where a bit of snack food had fallen from a child's backpack. I sprayed with abandon using Whiteboard Cleaner. They suffered.
Gold Day lived up to its name today. All of my classes surprisingly went off without a hitch. However, in my first class as students were shuffling in late, one of the groups complained that their team leader was gone on Friday and not in class presently. I told them they were a team (named after the absent girl), and they would have to pick up the slack. In response, one of my smart-aleck kids (a good kid though) promptly saw an opportunity to joke around, and said in a dead on impression of the absent girl "-----'s team! YAY!" Grumbles immediately came from the team with the missing member, and as if on cue, the girl walked in, and said "Hey team! I'm back! Didn't you miss me?" Smart-aleck kid says, "Yay! Go team!" Seeing as they are all friends, I didn't bring up the issue. It was also freakishly hilarious to witness.
I know my writing doesn't do it justice, especially trying to keep some anonymity, but I could barely contain my laughter.
The Ant War Continues
4:03 PM - I killed twelve ants today by hand. I've started to jab at them with pens or pencils during my planning period while I'm grading. I hope the kids don't question why there are random small marks of red or blue pen on their papers.
11:20AM - I think I found their home base. The ants seem to be coming from under the baseboard rubber strip, and conveniently congregated a few inches away from freedom where a bit of snack food had fallen from a child's backpack. I sprayed with abandon using Whiteboard Cleaner. They suffered.
Monday, December 08, 2008
Monday Funday
Today we had a fire drill. It was unannounced, and thus unprepared for. The kids did great, but I lost a few minutes of class time that I really could have used.
The kids are working on their video projects, but they are just in the preliminary stages, as no actually filming has yet accomplished.
Today, I found out that one of my Pre-AP groups that wanted to do a project about teen suicide and how it affects others (which could have been a very profound project) had a group member in it that had been affected personally by a relative's suicide. That group member originally did not like the project idea, but did not express his reasons why, and the rest of the group convinced him to do it. They were very polite in letting me know what happened today, (as the group found out today as well), and needless to say they have modified their movie goals/outline. At least they handled it like competent, intelligent adults.
The War on Ants
My teacher desk has ants - one or two at a time, but never that many during a day. The situation has gotten increasingly worse. I've killed them, used cleaning sprays, cleaned the desk, and even tried putting out piles of cayenne pepper as it's supposed to keep the ants away. (They stayed away from the piles, but congregated on everything else). I had to put in a work order to get the area sprayed professionally. My administrator's first RE: to the message while CC:ing others - "My office also has ant problems. Any room in the budget for an anteater?"
Yeah, he's that awesome. :) I feel like I should explain that he was indeed joking, and the work order was also submitted at the same time as the joke. Efficiency and a good attitude. It was the perfect way to end the week.
Today we had a fire drill. It was unannounced, and thus unprepared for. The kids did great, but I lost a few minutes of class time that I really could have used.
The kids are working on their video projects, but they are just in the preliminary stages, as no actually filming has yet accomplished.
Today, I found out that one of my Pre-AP groups that wanted to do a project about teen suicide and how it affects others (which could have been a very profound project) had a group member in it that had been affected personally by a relative's suicide. That group member originally did not like the project idea, but did not express his reasons why, and the rest of the group convinced him to do it. They were very polite in letting me know what happened today, (as the group found out today as well), and needless to say they have modified their movie goals/outline. At least they handled it like competent, intelligent adults.
The War on Ants
My teacher desk has ants - one or two at a time, but never that many during a day. The situation has gotten increasingly worse. I've killed them, used cleaning sprays, cleaned the desk, and even tried putting out piles of cayenne pepper as it's supposed to keep the ants away. (They stayed away from the piles, but congregated on everything else). I had to put in a work order to get the area sprayed professionally. My administrator's first RE: to the message while CC:ing others - "My office also has ant problems. Any room in the budget for an anteater?"
Yeah, he's that awesome. :) I feel like I should explain that he was indeed joking, and the work order was also submitted at the same time as the joke. Efficiency and a good attitude. It was the perfect way to end the week.
Blog what you can
So this blog experiment has officially been neglected. All of my concerted efforts to post regularly have failed, so I'll give it the old apathetic one-two. Here's some of what we were doing, as told by me to a colleague through an e-mail. Remember, if you're reading this, you're actually just reading an e-mail I sent to someone else. This is what my blog has become. :( The names have been deleted to protect some measure of anonymity.
E-mail is as follows - this was to a senior year English teacher
I completely understand the problems you had with the research paper, and the 2nd six weeks spilling over into the third, (ours was the same, as it was a shortened six weeks). Initially, the papers were supposed to be finished the first week of the 3rd six weeks, but I had to extend it into the second, and I still have kids coming in after-school to finish.
While I feel that the project itself failed miserably as only a few students came out with legitimate research papers, the skills and knowledge the students gained through the process should be more than beneficial to them as they reach the senior year paper. We pulled texts from other libraries as our own is woefully inadequate, but unfortunately we had to give the books back a week before the papers were due. As such, many of the kids did not have completed research, and our databases were not very 9th grade friendly for our topics (deforestation, endangered animals, global warming, alternative energy, oil spills, and chemical sprays/pesticides). I allowed the kids to use wikipedia for some of their papers solely because of the lack of resources. However, we spent several days learning how to properly cite information from a book or website using in-text citations. Almost all of my students were able to complete this aspect of the project, so at least in this, the project was a success. I did have a few that blatantly plagiarized though, and their grades suffered because of it. They have been given the opportunity to amend their papers and turn them back in for a better grade.
At least the project was a learning experience, and hopefully next year we’ll be teamed with social studies so that the papers can be a more cohesive team effort.
So this blog experiment has officially been neglected. All of my concerted efforts to post regularly have failed, so I'll give it the old apathetic one-two. Here's some of what we were doing, as told by me to a colleague through an e-mail. Remember, if you're reading this, you're actually just reading an e-mail I sent to someone else. This is what my blog has become. :( The names have been deleted to protect some measure of anonymity.
E-mail is as follows - this was to a senior year English teacher
I completely understand the problems you had with the research paper, and the 2nd six weeks spilling over into the third, (ours was the same, as it was a shortened six weeks). Initially, the papers were supposed to be finished the first week of the 3rd six weeks, but I had to extend it into the second, and I still have kids coming in after-school to finish.
While I feel that the project itself failed miserably as only a few students came out with legitimate research papers, the skills and knowledge the students gained through the process should be more than beneficial to them as they reach the senior year paper. We pulled texts from other libraries as our own is woefully inadequate, but unfortunately we had to give the books back a week before the papers were due. As such, many of the kids did not have completed research, and our databases were not very 9th grade friendly for our topics (deforestation, endangered animals, global warming, alternative energy, oil spills, and chemical sprays/pesticides). I allowed the kids to use wikipedia for some of their papers solely because of the lack of resources. However, we spent several days learning how to properly cite information from a book or website using in-text citations. Almost all of my students were able to complete this aspect of the project, so at least in this, the project was a success. I did have a few that blatantly plagiarized though, and their grades suffered because of it. They have been given the opportunity to amend their papers and turn them back in for a better grade.
At least the project was a learning experience, and hopefully next year we’ll be teamed with social studies so that the papers can be a more cohesive team effort.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
A Five week Six weeks
So our school has six separate grading periods, which are called "Six Weeks". Last year, this worked out perfectly, as each grading period had six weeks, with two of them having six weeks plus a few days here and there from holiday-shortened weeks. However, this last six weeks only had five weeks. It seems ridiculous, but I just spent several weeks telling students that our six weeks only had five weeks. For students struggling to read, I can only imagine how their minds dealt with such an abstract and inane concept. Clearly our establishment couldn't cope as progress reports reached parents the week of our finals testing, and as such parents were trying to drop students from classes in order to keep them from failing. It doesn't really help, but I guess they figure they should be doing something because their students are failing, and heaven forbid the kids actually try to make up work and bring up their grade the proper way.
Nevertheless, I had 6 new students the last week, and as such I need to figure out how the heck I'm going to calculate their grades. My common sense radar started blaring after I noticed 3 new students in one class, and promptly e-mailed the counselors asking for no more schedule changes to be made until next week. It's absolutely baffling how people expect the new teacher to get a kid up to speed and PASSING with 1-3 school days left in the grading period, testing being conducted, all while attempting to navigate the grading system and merge the student's new grades with their old teacher's. It's actually brilliant work on the part of the parents, as I'm sure most teachers just give the student a 70 so that they are passing. It backfires quite a bit though, as I know several teachers who refuse to give the student a passing grade, and they are forced to come to Saturday school to make-up their grade (something the kid would have been forced to do anyways).
Anyways, I should get back to grading. Wish me luck.
----
At least I'm conducting diagnostic tests tomorrow and Tuesday. That's right, I said "diagnostic testing", and it's almost halfway through the year. More on that story in my next post.
So our school has six separate grading periods, which are called "Six Weeks". Last year, this worked out perfectly, as each grading period had six weeks, with two of them having six weeks plus a few days here and there from holiday-shortened weeks. However, this last six weeks only had five weeks. It seems ridiculous, but I just spent several weeks telling students that our six weeks only had five weeks. For students struggling to read, I can only imagine how their minds dealt with such an abstract and inane concept. Clearly our establishment couldn't cope as progress reports reached parents the week of our finals testing, and as such parents were trying to drop students from classes in order to keep them from failing. It doesn't really help, but I guess they figure they should be doing something because their students are failing, and heaven forbid the kids actually try to make up work and bring up their grade the proper way.
Nevertheless, I had 6 new students the last week, and as such I need to figure out how the heck I'm going to calculate their grades. My common sense radar started blaring after I noticed 3 new students in one class, and promptly e-mailed the counselors asking for no more schedule changes to be made until next week. It's absolutely baffling how people expect the new teacher to get a kid up to speed and PASSING with 1-3 school days left in the grading period, testing being conducted, all while attempting to navigate the grading system and merge the student's new grades with their old teacher's. It's actually brilliant work on the part of the parents, as I'm sure most teachers just give the student a 70 so that they are passing. It backfires quite a bit though, as I know several teachers who refuse to give the student a passing grade, and they are forced to come to Saturday school to make-up their grade (something the kid would have been forced to do anyways).
Anyways, I should get back to grading. Wish me luck.
----
At least I'm conducting diagnostic tests tomorrow and Tuesday. That's right, I said "diagnostic testing", and it's almost halfway through the year. More on that story in my next post.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
A stressful time
Immediately after saying I would post twice a week, things decidedly got more hectic at school. Last week, I only taught one day of class as I was out sick on Monday and Tuesday with food poisoning (I lost ten pounds. Great diet, huh?). Wednesday and Thursday I was out for training so that I could create the NEW Todd website (yes, this is different than last year's). So that just left Friday, Halloween, as the one day of the week where I would be teaching. Needless to say, not much was accomplished and I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to get my kids ready for their six weeks exams AND get them to finish their 5 paragraph research essays. It's a stressful time.
I don't know how to really bring this up, so here it is
Also, on a more serious note, we lost one of our former students a few weeks ago in a shooting. This particular ex-student (he had withdrawn) was riding bikes with one of my students when they got into a fight with some OTHER students from my school. A gun was pulled and the ex-student was shot in the head and killed. I didn't really know the victim, although I had broken up a fight that he was getting into a week before he was killed. Regardless of who this boy was and what kind of person he was, he didn't deserve to die.
My student that was with him has since withdrawn from school, and I doubt I'll ever see him again. He was having lots of behavior problems and I had met with his mom several times to discuss it with her and the principal. I had even called his mom the night of the shooting. It's a shame, because I really don't know how this is going to affect the rest of his life. He wasn't in a good place before, and I'm sure seeing his friend shot and killed traumatized him. At least his mom cares - maybe she can help him come out of this and turn his life around so he doesn't end up like his friend.
Since the victim and the killers (4 students were arrested) were students or former students, just about everyone on campus was connected somehow to the event. It was an absolute mess that week at school, as we weren't aware of family or friendship ties, news media was covering the shooting, and a text message threat was sent out to coincide with the funeral and promised retribution against the killers and their family. Unfortunately, one of the killers' sisters is a great student: a cheerleader, honor student, very well-put-together person. Because her brother was an idiot, her life was turned upside down and she had to worry about her own life. Luckily, nothing happened, and a cadre of police officers and vehicles was there to make sure of it.
Ugh. I'm sorry. I'm just not really in a typing mood tonight. Hopefully just getting this post out will allow me to write more about the event and my thoughts later.
Here's a few news links about the shooting.
4 Juveniles Detained
Residential Reaction
Calling all commenters!!
Since this blog is specifically on the internet to serve as an account of my life as a teacher and share it with all of you, I'm sure you all would like me to update more often. However, I'm finding myself very lackadaisical in this pursuit, partly because it often seems like I'm typing only for myself. Please, please comment. I don't care if your comments are insightful, but if you just post something, then I can start a discussion WITH all of you, and my blog will seem like less of a chore and more of a way to stay in touch with everyone.
Immediately after saying I would post twice a week, things decidedly got more hectic at school. Last week, I only taught one day of class as I was out sick on Monday and Tuesday with food poisoning (I lost ten pounds. Great diet, huh?). Wednesday and Thursday I was out for training so that I could create the NEW Todd website (yes, this is different than last year's). So that just left Friday, Halloween, as the one day of the week where I would be teaching. Needless to say, not much was accomplished and I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to get my kids ready for their six weeks exams AND get them to finish their 5 paragraph research essays. It's a stressful time.
I don't know how to really bring this up, so here it is
Also, on a more serious note, we lost one of our former students a few weeks ago in a shooting. This particular ex-student (he had withdrawn) was riding bikes with one of my students when they got into a fight with some OTHER students from my school. A gun was pulled and the ex-student was shot in the head and killed. I didn't really know the victim, although I had broken up a fight that he was getting into a week before he was killed. Regardless of who this boy was and what kind of person he was, he didn't deserve to die.
My student that was with him has since withdrawn from school, and I doubt I'll ever see him again. He was having lots of behavior problems and I had met with his mom several times to discuss it with her and the principal. I had even called his mom the night of the shooting. It's a shame, because I really don't know how this is going to affect the rest of his life. He wasn't in a good place before, and I'm sure seeing his friend shot and killed traumatized him. At least his mom cares - maybe she can help him come out of this and turn his life around so he doesn't end up like his friend.
Since the victim and the killers (4 students were arrested) were students or former students, just about everyone on campus was connected somehow to the event. It was an absolute mess that week at school, as we weren't aware of family or friendship ties, news media was covering the shooting, and a text message threat was sent out to coincide with the funeral and promised retribution against the killers and their family. Unfortunately, one of the killers' sisters is a great student: a cheerleader, honor student, very well-put-together person. Because her brother was an idiot, her life was turned upside down and she had to worry about her own life. Luckily, nothing happened, and a cadre of police officers and vehicles was there to make sure of it.
Ugh. I'm sorry. I'm just not really in a typing mood tonight. Hopefully just getting this post out will allow me to write more about the event and my thoughts later.
Here's a few news links about the shooting.
4 Juveniles Detained
Residential Reaction
Calling all commenters!!
Since this blog is specifically on the internet to serve as an account of my life as a teacher and share it with all of you, I'm sure you all would like me to update more often. However, I'm finding myself very lackadaisical in this pursuit, partly because it often seems like I'm typing only for myself. Please, please comment. I don't care if your comments are insightful, but if you just post something, then I can start a discussion WITH all of you, and my blog will seem like less of a chore and more of a way to stay in touch with everyone.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Name one way to ruin a weekend
-Have a major project due the same week that grades are due. Added bonus: bind said project for all classes into "class anthologies".
It worked out great for the kids, but if I didn't have help from Alexia with correcting papers, formatting anthologies, and binding them, I would have pulled a few all-nighters.
I'm really looking forward to next weekend when I can actually get some rest.
Be on the lookout for "highlights" from the projects.
-Have a major project due the same week that grades are due. Added bonus: bind said project for all classes into "class anthologies".
It worked out great for the kids, but if I didn't have help from Alexia with correcting papers, formatting anthologies, and binding them, I would have pulled a few all-nighters.
I'm really looking forward to next weekend when I can actually get some rest.
Be on the lookout for "highlights" from the projects.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
What a difference a few days makes
This week I both succeeded and failed at creating lesson plans around "stations" or "rotating centers". I had budgeted 2 instruction days for centers in order to allow students time to type, but since I only have 5 working computers, I had to split up the students into groups of 5 or less. This required me to have at least 4 activities happening concurrently, each for a total of less than 20 minutes. On Wednesday and Thursday, it worked like a charm, (except in my last class, which seemed exhausted). Friday, however, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut-off, trying to make sure students completed their work and that all students had a workable final draft to turn in. I was hoping for 100% of my students to have their work completely finished and with no spelling or grammar errors. What can I say, I aimed high. This didn't actually work, but the papers (at least at first glance) seem light-years ahead of the "average" paper from last year, due mostly to my time management. I say this because the changes stem directly from what I taught the students, and I've seen all of them put my teachings into practice through the writing process.
I'm actually teaching them.
Now, if only I could teach them to take personal responsibility and meet all their deadlines.
Bad USB, Bad! ...*gives it a treat under the table*
I left my USB drive with all the student papers at school on Friday by accident. My goal was to grade half of the papers this weekend, along with the mountain of station worksheets from class this last week. When I came home on Friday, my emotions were mixed when I realized my mistake, but I figured that I could always pick it up on Saturday when one of my fellow teachers went in to grade (as a department head, she has a key to get in the main doors, while I do not). However, when I called her on Saturday morning, I found out that she was not in fact going in to school, so I would have to wait until Monday. Instead of freaking out, I quickly decided that this would free-up a good amount of my weekend time, allowing me to destress and enjoy some peace and quiet. I still had the mountain of papers to grade anyway. I can tell you right now that this week is going to be busy: 6 weeks exams, final drafts of papers, and ALL THAT GRADING. Can't I just sleep and wake up next week?
This week I both succeeded and failed at creating lesson plans around "stations" or "rotating centers". I had budgeted 2 instruction days for centers in order to allow students time to type, but since I only have 5 working computers, I had to split up the students into groups of 5 or less. This required me to have at least 4 activities happening concurrently, each for a total of less than 20 minutes. On Wednesday and Thursday, it worked like a charm, (except in my last class, which seemed exhausted). Friday, however, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut-off, trying to make sure students completed their work and that all students had a workable final draft to turn in. I was hoping for 100% of my students to have their work completely finished and with no spelling or grammar errors. What can I say, I aimed high. This didn't actually work, but the papers (at least at first glance) seem light-years ahead of the "average" paper from last year, due mostly to my time management. I say this because the changes stem directly from what I taught the students, and I've seen all of them put my teachings into practice through the writing process.
I'm actually teaching them.
Now, if only I could teach them to take personal responsibility and meet all their deadlines.
Bad USB, Bad! ...*gives it a treat under the table*
I left my USB drive with all the student papers at school on Friday by accident. My goal was to grade half of the papers this weekend, along with the mountain of station worksheets from class this last week. When I came home on Friday, my emotions were mixed when I realized my mistake, but I figured that I could always pick it up on Saturday when one of my fellow teachers went in to grade (as a department head, she has a key to get in the main doors, while I do not). However, when I called her on Saturday morning, I found out that she was not in fact going in to school, so I would have to wait until Monday. Instead of freaking out, I quickly decided that this would free-up a good amount of my weekend time, allowing me to destress and enjoy some peace and quiet. I still had the mountain of papers to grade anyway. I can tell you right now that this week is going to be busy: 6 weeks exams, final drafts of papers, and ALL THAT GRADING. Can't I just sleep and wake up next week?
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Wacky Wednesday
I'm going to have a heck of a lot of grading to do this weekend. I've gone through about two reams of paper for this week's assignments and it's only Wednesday. My students are in the process of revising their papers, and instead of dealing with forgetful students and a lack of resources (which was the norm last year), I set up stations and set in motion enough back-up plans that not even Mr. Magoo could mess up.
Last year, my students spent 9 weeks learning about Personal Narratives, writing 3 rough drafts, and taking one of those through the revision process to the final paper. First off, 9 weeks is WAY too long to work on Personal Narratives, and secondly, I had about 40-50% of the students misplace or just simply not start or finish a single one of the three rough drafts. This made editing incredibly hard, which threw me out of whack, stressed me out, and lead to failing grades.
This year, I cut the unit down to 6 weeks, and the paper segment down to about 3 and a half, which on the block schedule amounts to about 6-8 days spent working on the paper in some capacity while also reading and learning about other English techniques and strategies to add to their drafts.
This week is being spent on "Stations" as my students break off into groups of 4-6 and work on peer-editing, finding $10 words in the thesaurus and through group discussion to replace commonplace phrases, introducing the new novel, and typing on one of 5 working computers in the classroom (one of those 5 is my teacher computer). I made sure that every student who typed up their story in the library lab saved it so I could come around with a USB drive and like a magic computer fairy collect every single story and copy it to all of the computers in my own classroom. I've completed this update process every day since last week so that no student has problems getting their most updated copy.
For the more tech savvy, you might be asking why I didn't just network a drive and have all the students save to that harddrive. Well, that would just be to easy, wouldn't it? Due to admin restrictions, three of the five computers wouldn't be able to write to the drive unless someone from Technology comes by and sets it up with an admin key. One other computer is currently not hooked up correctly to the school network and as such has allowed me admin privileges and the ability to install and use programs that are quite useful and vital to my class and afterschool clubs. Technically, I'm supposed to remind technology that they should hook up this computer and remove the admin privileges, but it's the only real leverage I have over the other three student workstations (two of which are riddled with viruses, and I can't even update virus scan without admin access). Also, I can't just host the stories on a web server as the students don't have internet access keys yet, and if they closed the window for any reason, I would have to go over and type in my user passcode again. Not exactly time efficient for a teacher.
Aside from making sure a digital copy of each piece of student work was made available on all machines, I also took a stack of paper to the library with my USB drive and printed out a copy of EVERY SINGLE STUDENTS' paper. This was indeed a wasteful act for the 11 children that did not misplace their latest copy of their paper or had printed it at home. For the rest, it saved me a great deal of whining, complaining, and lost time. My students worked, worked, and worked some more, and it was worth it. So they're in 9th grade, and I shouldn't baby them. I get that, I really do. I just don't think I should be so foolish as to think that they are all ready to be relied on as adults. This week... I was right.
Visual Media Club
I love this part of my job. Only 5 students could show up today, but we filmed part 1 of a two part homage to Ronin by creating a short scene with a clarinet case (briefcase) and a laptop bag. The students were excited, energetic, and most stayed until 5:30 just to see what they filmed. We're also going to be featured in the school newspaper.
Crazy Kids
During stations today, a group of students proposed a hypothetical situation: If I were a philosophy teacher and gave the students a journal assignment asking the question "why?", would I give a student a 100% if they wrote "why not?". After a confused look on my face and a few questions later, I told the students "sure". I still don't know where that one came from, but at least I got a "cool" sticker out of it, and they hurried back to work afterwards.
I'm going to have a heck of a lot of grading to do this weekend. I've gone through about two reams of paper for this week's assignments and it's only Wednesday. My students are in the process of revising their papers, and instead of dealing with forgetful students and a lack of resources (which was the norm last year), I set up stations and set in motion enough back-up plans that not even Mr. Magoo could mess up.
Last year, my students spent 9 weeks learning about Personal Narratives, writing 3 rough drafts, and taking one of those through the revision process to the final paper. First off, 9 weeks is WAY too long to work on Personal Narratives, and secondly, I had about 40-50% of the students misplace or just simply not start or finish a single one of the three rough drafts. This made editing incredibly hard, which threw me out of whack, stressed me out, and lead to failing grades.
This year, I cut the unit down to 6 weeks, and the paper segment down to about 3 and a half, which on the block schedule amounts to about 6-8 days spent working on the paper in some capacity while also reading and learning about other English techniques and strategies to add to their drafts.
This week is being spent on "Stations" as my students break off into groups of 4-6 and work on peer-editing, finding $10 words in the thesaurus and through group discussion to replace commonplace phrases, introducing the new novel, and typing on one of 5 working computers in the classroom (one of those 5 is my teacher computer). I made sure that every student who typed up their story in the library lab saved it so I could come around with a USB drive and like a magic computer fairy collect every single story and copy it to all of the computers in my own classroom. I've completed this update process every day since last week so that no student has problems getting their most updated copy.
For the more tech savvy, you might be asking why I didn't just network a drive and have all the students save to that harddrive. Well, that would just be to easy, wouldn't it? Due to admin restrictions, three of the five computers wouldn't be able to write to the drive unless someone from Technology comes by and sets it up with an admin key. One other computer is currently not hooked up correctly to the school network and as such has allowed me admin privileges and the ability to install and use programs that are quite useful and vital to my class and afterschool clubs. Technically, I'm supposed to remind technology that they should hook up this computer and remove the admin privileges, but it's the only real leverage I have over the other three student workstations (two of which are riddled with viruses, and I can't even update virus scan without admin access). Also, I can't just host the stories on a web server as the students don't have internet access keys yet, and if they closed the window for any reason, I would have to go over and type in my user passcode again. Not exactly time efficient for a teacher.
Aside from making sure a digital copy of each piece of student work was made available on all machines, I also took a stack of paper to the library with my USB drive and printed out a copy of EVERY SINGLE STUDENTS' paper. This was indeed a wasteful act for the 11 children that did not misplace their latest copy of their paper or had printed it at home. For the rest, it saved me a great deal of whining, complaining, and lost time. My students worked, worked, and worked some more, and it was worth it. So they're in 9th grade, and I shouldn't baby them. I get that, I really do. I just don't think I should be so foolish as to think that they are all ready to be relied on as adults. This week... I was right.
Visual Media Club
I love this part of my job. Only 5 students could show up today, but we filmed part 1 of a two part homage to Ronin by creating a short scene with a clarinet case (briefcase) and a laptop bag. The students were excited, energetic, and most stayed until 5:30 just to see what they filmed. We're also going to be featured in the school newspaper.
Crazy Kids
During stations today, a group of students proposed a hypothetical situation: If I were a philosophy teacher and gave the students a journal assignment asking the question "why?", would I give a student a 100% if they wrote "why not?". After a confused look on my face and a few questions later, I told the students "sure". I still don't know where that one came from, but at least I got a "cool" sticker out of it, and they hurried back to work afterwards.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
And now, a word from our sponsor
When I began this blog, I was determined to chronicle my experience as a teacher so that I could share it with my friends and family, and one day look back on it and remember the good and bad times. However, my weekly updates have been few and far between this year, mostly because I'm not as motivated to blog on the weekends. I've been much more time-efficient at least in these first few weeks, and the transfer to a block schedule at school has left my weekends with a surprising amount of free/me time. As was my custom last year, I would post on Sunday night after a long spent afternoon and evening of grading papers. Tonight was really the first Sunday night that I've used to grade papers, and that's mostly because I planned on doing it while watching the Emmy's. To get to my actual point, my blog posts have become somewhat of a burden because I spend quite a deal of time thinking about the week and what I want to say. I still type the post in one sitting, so there isn't a great deal of revision in the process, but there is a certain amount of thought put into what and how much information I put into each post. Ultimately, it leads to me spending an hour or two sitting and contemplating, and some days it seems like more of a burden than a pleasure. I'm hoping to start updating two times a week with smaller posts so that my blog never does reach that point where I "just don't feel like posting," because that's close to my sentiments right now. For now, the goals are Wednesdays and weekends.
Let's see if it sticks.
Visual Media Club
This year, I started a Wednesday night club dedicated to all types of visual media, from Photography to digital imaging, videography, and stop-motion animation. So far we've met twice and I spent the first day giving my group members the basics for composition, safety, and guidelines. This week, we started filming so that the students could begin practicing a few skills. I have the students using 3 of the 7 digital video cameras (I received them from grant money) to film a cheesy fight scene. I'm not expecting too much in terms of quality, and we're not even worrying about lighting, but the kids are LOVING it. We only filmed the intro to the fight, and we'll film the second part this Wednesday, but the students are taking to my suggestions and teachings like fish to water. It's so refreshing to be able to get kids out and doing things that I know they are interested in and I feel I'm well qualified to teach them.
To be honest, I've always somewhat questioned my ability to teach English. I've done well in all of my English classes, had a perfect score on my ACT Reading section, and easily passed the pedagogy and content tests Texas requires of me before I could receive my teaching certificate. However, I didn't major in English. I majored in Media Convergence Journalism, where I spent more time writing solely to support my video and audio elements.
Could I really teach English? I guess at this point, I've fooled enough people that I'm starting to believe it. I still feel like I have more to offer my students in Visual Media Club than my students in my actual English class, but I hope to blur those lines this year.
What a difference a year makes
I'm really surprised at how much different this year is compared to last year. I'm not stressed, I have free time at night, and my students seem like they're from a different world. Instead of having one Pre-AP class, I have two, and I only teach three classes a day, for 90 minutes each. I'm not going to say that my students are smarter this year, as I had very, very talented students last year. I do, however, think that I'm using and providing instruction for these students in a much more confident and concise manner. Having 90 minutes of class allows me to spend more time developing lessons and making sure my students understand the concept. Instead of worrying about students not fully understanding a concept and then forgetting what little they learned by the next day, I can confidently end a class and know that my students have mastered the day's objectives. I've stressed homework more, and have already received more completed homework assignments than I think I got all last year combined.
I really can't downplay how vastly different the start of this year is compared to last year. It feels like I'm teaching on the same level as the end of last year when I knew my students and already developed a year of trust with them. Some of my students are brothers, sisters, and cousins of my students from last year, so I already have a connection with them. They seem more trusting this year, and I'm sure that has a lot to do with the fact that I probably seem like a stronger, wiser teacher who cares about what he does. Confidence and experience as a teacher seem to be two of the biggest factors in becoming a better teacher, and now I have at least a year under my belt. I've already left school several days looking forward to the next day and the next big thing, rather than worrying about what I'll teach or all the problems from the day.
Sad News
Several of my students from last year did not pass on to 10th grade, and a few of them are back in my class. The ones that are in my class again are showing a greater sense of responsibility and are actually trying in class, something that took nearly a year to get out of them. It's great to see them actually achieving in my class and contributing to class discussions rather than sitting in their desks refusing to do work.
On to the actual sad news - the students that I don't have in class again have been showing up on the in-school suspension rosters... with increasing consistency. I know that in the valley, most students that drop out don't make it past 9th grade, and I wouldn't like to see my students contribute to those numbers. Last year, I was a little soft on discipline, which worked for me since students eventually came around and did work, or they screwed up in other classes and were expelled. I addressed issues as they came up in class, but I tried not to send my students to in-school suspension, relying more on pulling students out of class for stern talking-to's. I hope that my old students will turn around, pass to 10th grade, and eventually graduate. But I have to say - there's a sick feeling churning in my gut, and I can't do much more now than cross my fingers and hope one of my fellow teachers connects with them.
Monday, September 01, 2008
We're Back... a
*Sorry about the crude Photoshop. I'm tired.
So I'm officially in week two of teaching, and although today was labor day and most of America is spending its Monday filled with Gustav updates, TV marathons, BLTs and cans of soda, I was at school teaching a group of kids how to write personal narratives. Yeah... I'm a little concerned that my PUBLIC SCHOOL doesn't follow national holidays, but I did just come off of a 2 1/2 month long summer break, so I'm not complaining.
This year is a very big change from last year's setting. I'm still in the same classroom and still teaching 9th grade, but I have a year of experience under my belt, I'm teaching 2 Pre-AP English classes, I helped designed the curriculum over the summer, and our school is on block schedules. Block Schedules, if you don't know, are an ELA teacher's dream. Even though I still teach for the same amount of time during the day and I have the same amount of time off, it's all roughly in the same time slot, so I normally have 1.5 hour to 2.25 hour off periods depending on the day. I can grade, plan for the next day, make copies, and catch up on the news while making parent phone calls and meeting with the administration. I've never felt more productive as a teacher than coming home and knowing that I have absolutely nothing to do at night in order to get ready for the next day.
The Kids
I'm really enjoying this new group of kids. There have been some minor behavioral issues, but the students seem genuinely interested in learning for the most part, and as long as I acknowledge that they want to hang out and talk with their friends and give them assignments that allows them to do just that but with guidance and a purpose, they're all ears. I've also not had a problem adjusting to the block schedule either. I feel that some of the kids get done early and have 5-10 minutes of free-time for the longer projects, but this frees them up to do peer tutoring while I am performing one-on-one instruction to the students that need it. Basically, the same type of kids that would get their work done are still getting their work done, and those that struggle or goof off are doing roughly the same, but they often have a teacher or peer to guide them back on track, which was often lacking last year due to time constraints (hey, I can only help so many people in 45 minutes and have it be meaningful).
Bad News
It looks as if my dad has finally proven karma right, and my years of getting up late have come back to bite me. Last year, I used to get to school 30-40 minutes early until the end of the year when I realized it just wasn't necessary. This year, I left at roughly the same time as last year, which would put me at school about 5-10 minutes early and provide me with about a half-hour more of sleep. It worked out well for the first two days, and then the amount of traffic on the roads exploded into numbers that could only be matched by New Orleans evacuees, ballooning my commute to about 30 minutes. I was late two days in my first week, both times by less than a minute. Now, in each of these situations, I was still there before students made it in the building, as teachers are supposed to show up 15 minutes before school starts and the kids are let in 5 minutes before. I already had all of my materials ready, so the students were not affected in the slightest. However, this year the school is cracking down on tardies, as in previous years a few of the teachers would show up 10-20 minutes into class that was only 45 minutes long. So, if any teacher is late by even a minute, they get an e-mail and a note put on their record.
The first day I was late, I immediately e-mailed my administration apologizing for the tardiness, and met with them after-school informally to again seek forgiveness. I promised that it wouldn't happen again, and the next day, I left 5 minutes earlier (still thinking traffic could in no way be worse). I got to school on-time, but apparently did not sign the attendance log before it was sent away, and as such received a second letter until the principal vouched for me. (I had spoken with him when I first came in the school, and had gone to my room first with an armful of materials instead of signing in). This transgression on my part was taken off my record, but I still apologized and felt truly ashamed. I left the next day 5 minutes earlier than the day before.
For those of you keeping track, I'm now leaving 10 minutes earlier than the time that used to get me to school 10 minutes early. School was pushed back from 7:50 start times to 8:00 this year, so I should be getting there about 30 minutes early. Well, since I'm rounding with averages, really it's more like 20-25 minutes early. On Friday, however, I managed to be late by about oh... 15 seconds, receiving my second official letter. I felt, and still do feel like I'm letting down my school and my administration, as they were also shocked to see that they had to send me any warnings. Luckily, it doesn't look like they have lost much faith in me, and I was at school today a solid 30 minutes early. On Labor Day. When no one else has to work.
I feel as if this one week of bad luck is going to turn me into the guy that is consistently early despite all reason. I'm becoming my dad. (Not a bad thing, mind you).
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Times up, please put down your pencils
I had to proctor the Math TAKs on Thursday, followed by a Science benchmark on Friday. As a student, I was indifferent towards testing days. There was always the anxiety and the pressure of knowing that you had a big test coming up, but once I actually started taking the test, all that pressure just went away. I'd finish the test and read a book while I waited for everyone else in the room to finish, and then maybe read some more until time was called and we'd go to the next class.
Things are different with the TAKs. These students have ALL DAY to test if they need it. From 8 AM until 2:15, students were testing solely for math. There's not really an obscene amount of problems either (less than 100). I think Texas really just wants to make sure test anxiety is not an issue for their students and that they can "truly" gauge a student's learning. I appreciate the thought, and I'm sure the kids enjoy the extra time as well. But geez... if they finish early and double check their answers and still have 4 hours to go... that's a LONG day. I feel for the kids, and I know exactly what they're going through, because I had to actively monitor the rooms (walk around and stand, no sitting) for the entire testing period. I thankfully got a half-hour lunch in which the school provided sandwiches and snacks, but I usually get 45 minutes to eat and two planning periods during the day. I'm not complaining about the amount of planning time that I lost, because it's a test and those things happen. I was just dying on test day because I'm not talking, I can't read, draw, or really do anything other than look at the kids and make sure they aren't cheating. I felt like a prison guard. Did I mention I also got to monitor on Friday as well for the Science Benchmark? At least that one was only until 11:30
Migrants
Since the TAKs test is all done and there are only 4 weeks of school left, a lot of my migrant kids are starting to head out for the summer to work. It's really sad because I'm losing a lot of the kids that I've grown attached to and had really seen improvement with over the year. I had a few leave on Friday after the tests were done, and most of those didn't tell me they were leaving until that day. I think that they've gotten used to telling their teachers that they are leaving early and have had too many teachers give them a disappointed look or just get plain emotional on them. I'll be honest - I got a little emotional too. It's just going to get worse as the month goes on. Too bad they're leaving right as we're getting into our Media Unit that I've been looking forward to teaching.
I had to proctor the Math TAKs on Thursday, followed by a Science benchmark on Friday. As a student, I was indifferent towards testing days. There was always the anxiety and the pressure of knowing that you had a big test coming up, but once I actually started taking the test, all that pressure just went away. I'd finish the test and read a book while I waited for everyone else in the room to finish, and then maybe read some more until time was called and we'd go to the next class.
Things are different with the TAKs. These students have ALL DAY to test if they need it. From 8 AM until 2:15, students were testing solely for math. There's not really an obscene amount of problems either (less than 100). I think Texas really just wants to make sure test anxiety is not an issue for their students and that they can "truly" gauge a student's learning. I appreciate the thought, and I'm sure the kids enjoy the extra time as well. But geez... if they finish early and double check their answers and still have 4 hours to go... that's a LONG day. I feel for the kids, and I know exactly what they're going through, because I had to actively monitor the rooms (walk around and stand, no sitting) for the entire testing period. I thankfully got a half-hour lunch in which the school provided sandwiches and snacks, but I usually get 45 minutes to eat and two planning periods during the day. I'm not complaining about the amount of planning time that I lost, because it's a test and those things happen. I was just dying on test day because I'm not talking, I can't read, draw, or really do anything other than look at the kids and make sure they aren't cheating. I felt like a prison guard. Did I mention I also got to monitor on Friday as well for the Science Benchmark? At least that one was only until 11:30
Migrants
Since the TAKs test is all done and there are only 4 weeks of school left, a lot of my migrant kids are starting to head out for the summer to work. It's really sad because I'm losing a lot of the kids that I've grown attached to and had really seen improvement with over the year. I had a few leave on Friday after the tests were done, and most of those didn't tell me they were leaving until that day. I think that they've gotten used to telling their teachers that they are leaving early and have had too many teachers give them a disappointed look or just get plain emotional on them. I'll be honest - I got a little emotional too. It's just going to get worse as the month goes on. Too bad they're leaving right as we're getting into our Media Unit that I've been looking forward to teaching.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Murphy's Law
So scant more than a day after I posted how awesome my kids were, they decided to go bat crazy on me. Monday was littered with students who were not prepared, unwilling to do work, and being genuinely disruptive. I felt like I taught for a total of 5 minutes, then spent the rest of the day repeating those 5 minutes of teaching so the students who were "behind" could get caught up. It was easily the most frustrating day of teaching I've had so far. Needless to say, I took Tuesday off for a much deserved personal day, which I spent doing work for school as well as playing video games to de-stress. I find it funny that I can handle what other people would call "big problems" like gang-related violence with no trouble at all, but when it comes to the little things piling up, that's where I surrender. It's always the little things.
It felt good sticking it to my students on Tuesday though (I'm not saying this if I get off yelling at teenagers... but I've given my students lots of chances to show their responsibility and individuality, and they took advantage of my good graces). It's the first time I've really shown any real anger in class, but I was honest with them, told them why I was absent, what was wrong, and what they need to do to make things right. The rest of the week went swimmingly.
Monologues
The end of the week was actually really, really fun. The students have been working on monologues for several weeks, and I performed a short monologue on Thursday to give them an example of what a performance might look like. My performance was about a 20-something who lost his job and was forced to move in with his parents. Depressed, he spent his time playing video games. Let's just say that I didn't stretch too much on this character, but I need a good example as a teacher so all my kids can connect with it. The kids loved it, and started performing on Friday. I was quite impressed with several performances, and proud of ALL my students. They were all SO nervous to stand up in front of the class and perform. It's really odd, because these kids seem so much different than what my friends and I were like as teenagers, but they really are very much the same. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the performances at the start of this week.
Oh yeah - Math TAKs is Thursday. I really hope my students do well. At least we're almost done with it all, and I'll be able to get back the English TAKs grades in a few weeks.
So scant more than a day after I posted how awesome my kids were, they decided to go bat crazy on me. Monday was littered with students who were not prepared, unwilling to do work, and being genuinely disruptive. I felt like I taught for a total of 5 minutes, then spent the rest of the day repeating those 5 minutes of teaching so the students who were "behind" could get caught up. It was easily the most frustrating day of teaching I've had so far. Needless to say, I took Tuesday off for a much deserved personal day, which I spent doing work for school as well as playing video games to de-stress. I find it funny that I can handle what other people would call "big problems" like gang-related violence with no trouble at all, but when it comes to the little things piling up, that's where I surrender. It's always the little things.
It felt good sticking it to my students on Tuesday though (I'm not saying this if I get off yelling at teenagers... but I've given my students lots of chances to show their responsibility and individuality, and they took advantage of my good graces). It's the first time I've really shown any real anger in class, but I was honest with them, told them why I was absent, what was wrong, and what they need to do to make things right. The rest of the week went swimmingly.
Monologues
The end of the week was actually really, really fun. The students have been working on monologues for several weeks, and I performed a short monologue on Thursday to give them an example of what a performance might look like. My performance was about a 20-something who lost his job and was forced to move in with his parents. Depressed, he spent his time playing video games. Let's just say that I didn't stretch too much on this character, but I need a good example as a teacher so all my kids can connect with it. The kids loved it, and started performing on Friday. I was quite impressed with several performances, and proud of ALL my students. They were all SO nervous to stand up in front of the class and perform. It's really odd, because these kids seem so much different than what my friends and I were like as teenagers, but they really are very much the same. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the performances at the start of this week.
Oh yeah - Math TAKs is Thursday. I really hope my students do well. At least we're almost done with it all, and I'll be able to get back the English TAKs grades in a few weeks.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Monologues
My students began writing monologues this week. They created their own characters, conflicts, relationships, and settings, and genuinely came up with some impressive stuff. Whereas at the start of the year students needed their hands held for a good 20 minutes just to come up with character traits, just about everyone took to the project almost instantly. I'm really happy to see that they've come this far (or, at the least, have become accustomed to the assignments). With 6 weeks left, I'm starting to see my students as actual high schools and not "newbies" or freshmen. The majority of the students are stepping up in class, becoming more confident, and caring about how they do in class. I can't wait to see how they do when they perform their monologues for the class this next week.
Grades
Since it's the end of the 6 weeks, I just submitted grades. This is the highest passing rate I've had all year, and I'm stoked. I tried something new for this grading period, and gave each student a free 100 point assignment to start off the 6 weeks. In the end, this counted for less than 2% of their final grade, but it got the kids hyped because they saw really high grades and wanted to keep them up. I can't tell you how many students came to me and said, "Sir! I've got an A? I've never had an A in this class before!" Eventually, the grade would decline, but instead of the students taking it as an inevitability of school, I had a surprisingly large amount of students asking to make up work and ACTUALLY TURNING IT IN. I could attribute some of this new interest in work to the end of the year, wanting to pass to 10th grade, and TAKs, but I'll still count it as a victory for my grading system. Homework for this 6 weeks also had the highest turn in rate for all classes. I decided that I would give the kids an assignment every Monday and make it due on Friday. It's a supplement to what we do in class, not too much effort is required, but the assignments always allow for creativity so the kids can get invested and turn in some real gems. It's working.
I'm happy.
Softball
I'm putting this in as almost an afterthought, but I'm coaching our faculty/staff softball team. Our first game is in two weeks. It was great being on the field again. I didn't even realize how much I missed playing ball, but dang... I'm going to have some fun weekends coming up, as long as I remember to wear sunscreen. :)
My students began writing monologues this week. They created their own characters, conflicts, relationships, and settings, and genuinely came up with some impressive stuff. Whereas at the start of the year students needed their hands held for a good 20 minutes just to come up with character traits, just about everyone took to the project almost instantly. I'm really happy to see that they've come this far (or, at the least, have become accustomed to the assignments). With 6 weeks left, I'm starting to see my students as actual high schools and not "newbies" or freshmen. The majority of the students are stepping up in class, becoming more confident, and caring about how they do in class. I can't wait to see how they do when they perform their monologues for the class this next week.
Grades
Since it's the end of the 6 weeks, I just submitted grades. This is the highest passing rate I've had all year, and I'm stoked. I tried something new for this grading period, and gave each student a free 100 point assignment to start off the 6 weeks. In the end, this counted for less than 2% of their final grade, but it got the kids hyped because they saw really high grades and wanted to keep them up. I can't tell you how many students came to me and said, "Sir! I've got an A? I've never had an A in this class before!" Eventually, the grade would decline, but instead of the students taking it as an inevitability of school, I had a surprisingly large amount of students asking to make up work and ACTUALLY TURNING IT IN. I could attribute some of this new interest in work to the end of the year, wanting to pass to 10th grade, and TAKs, but I'll still count it as a victory for my grading system. Homework for this 6 weeks also had the highest turn in rate for all classes. I decided that I would give the kids an assignment every Monday and make it due on Friday. It's a supplement to what we do in class, not too much effort is required, but the assignments always allow for creativity so the kids can get invested and turn in some real gems. It's working.
I'm happy.
Softball
I'm putting this in as almost an afterthought, but I'm coaching our faculty/staff softball team. Our first game is in two weeks. It was great being on the field again. I didn't even realize how much I missed playing ball, but dang... I'm going to have some fun weekends coming up, as long as I remember to wear sunscreen. :)
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Spring Break-est
I realize that I have neglected my blog duties as of late. Actually, this seems to be a pattern of abuse and neglect that I hope to change. Mostly, I stopped blogging simply because I was caught up in everything ELSE that needed to be done. I've started a new drama unit with my regular students, and my Pre-APs are reading "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin. I feel as if I'm finally coming into my own as a teacher, seeing as I'm confident enough to completely bypass the curriculum for my Pre-APs and plan a unit that I feel will be much more entertaining and enlightening for them. As reward for my endeavors, the new head of English Language Arts/Social Studies for the district has asked if I would help rewrite the curriculum this summer and get it online so it's much more user friendly. It sounds like a daunting task, but I'm up for the challenge, and it'll certainly make me more invested in my teaching next year.
Austin - the weekend after Spring Break
I've really grown to enjoy teaching, and the weeks pass fairly quickly. My school sent me, as well as 3 of my ELA colleagues, to Austin for a weekend training. Going to the training helped me reconnect with my fellow teachers, become re-energized and reinvigorated, and gave me good, solid materials that I can use in class this year. If I wasn't before, I'm now a HUGE fan of work trips and workshops that might take a good drive/flight to get to: it's worth it.
TELPAS
Since Spring Break ended, I've been rating my LEP (Limited English Proficient) students on their writing, speaking, and listening. For most teachers (elsewhere in the country), this is not too hard of a task, as LEP students make up maybe 10% of their students, if that. However, I had a daunting 68 LEP students to rate, which is over half of my students. Only one other teacher had more LEP students. As far as rating the students, it's on a scale of 1-4, or Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and Advanced High. Once they reach Advanced High in all three of the major categories (Listening, Speaking, and Writing), they are no longer classified as Limited English Proficient, and are seen as fully competent English, or bilingual students. A few of my students have reached that stage, but a good number still have a lot to work on. Heck, it's hard learning another language, and I'm dang proud of my students. I sure wouldn't be "Advanced High" in Spanish, or even "Advanced".
Other News
I was sad to hear that one of my students was jumped outside of school on Thursday by a group of girls from another school. I had been on the other side of the school and didn't know it was happening until 15 minutes after the cops left to chase after the car. Amazingly enough, the victim was back in class the very next day and was volunteering to act in one of the scenes for the drama unit. These kids are really resilient, and I'm learning quite a lot about life from them.
I've also grown accustomed to the normal ebb and flow of student enrollment at my school. I thought that all of my students that would leave and come back had finished their migratory ways back in the first semester, but I have recently started seeing some of my old students show back up on my roster. I even have a few new ones.
Parents
I'll be the first to admit that I have not done the best job of getting my parents involved at school. I tried sending home letters at the start of the year, and I keep in good contact with some of them, but if it wasn't for my team teachers, some of the parents I would probably never get in contact with. I'm really doing my best to relearn Spanish, and my ability to comprehend WHAT is being said is quite good, but I turn into a bumbling mess when I try to speak on the phone with a fluent adult. It takes me a few seconds to think about what I need to say, and I know my grammar is horrible. At least I have friends and neighbors to help.
Oh, and it REALLY doesn't help that the records of phone numbers is not nearly as current as it needs to be. If a parent changes a phone number, they should call the school immediately, in case there is an emergency. Do they? No. Do we get neighbor's numbers and no actual way to contact the family? Yes. Geez...
I realize that I have neglected my blog duties as of late. Actually, this seems to be a pattern of abuse and neglect that I hope to change. Mostly, I stopped blogging simply because I was caught up in everything ELSE that needed to be done. I've started a new drama unit with my regular students, and my Pre-APs are reading "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin. I feel as if I'm finally coming into my own as a teacher, seeing as I'm confident enough to completely bypass the curriculum for my Pre-APs and plan a unit that I feel will be much more entertaining and enlightening for them. As reward for my endeavors, the new head of English Language Arts/Social Studies for the district has asked if I would help rewrite the curriculum this summer and get it online so it's much more user friendly. It sounds like a daunting task, but I'm up for the challenge, and it'll certainly make me more invested in my teaching next year.
Austin - the weekend after Spring Break
I've really grown to enjoy teaching, and the weeks pass fairly quickly. My school sent me, as well as 3 of my ELA colleagues, to Austin for a weekend training. Going to the training helped me reconnect with my fellow teachers, become re-energized and reinvigorated, and gave me good, solid materials that I can use in class this year. If I wasn't before, I'm now a HUGE fan of work trips and workshops that might take a good drive/flight to get to: it's worth it.
TELPAS
Since Spring Break ended, I've been rating my LEP (Limited English Proficient) students on their writing, speaking, and listening. For most teachers (elsewhere in the country), this is not too hard of a task, as LEP students make up maybe 10% of their students, if that. However, I had a daunting 68 LEP students to rate, which is over half of my students. Only one other teacher had more LEP students. As far as rating the students, it's on a scale of 1-4, or Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and Advanced High. Once they reach Advanced High in all three of the major categories (Listening, Speaking, and Writing), they are no longer classified as Limited English Proficient, and are seen as fully competent English, or bilingual students. A few of my students have reached that stage, but a good number still have a lot to work on. Heck, it's hard learning another language, and I'm dang proud of my students. I sure wouldn't be "Advanced High" in Spanish, or even "Advanced".
Other News
I was sad to hear that one of my students was jumped outside of school on Thursday by a group of girls from another school. I had been on the other side of the school and didn't know it was happening until 15 minutes after the cops left to chase after the car. Amazingly enough, the victim was back in class the very next day and was volunteering to act in one of the scenes for the drama unit. These kids are really resilient, and I'm learning quite a lot about life from them.
I've also grown accustomed to the normal ebb and flow of student enrollment at my school. I thought that all of my students that would leave and come back had finished their migratory ways back in the first semester, but I have recently started seeing some of my old students show back up on my roster. I even have a few new ones.
Parents
I'll be the first to admit that I have not done the best job of getting my parents involved at school. I tried sending home letters at the start of the year, and I keep in good contact with some of them, but if it wasn't for my team teachers, some of the parents I would probably never get in contact with. I'm really doing my best to relearn Spanish, and my ability to comprehend WHAT is being said is quite good, but I turn into a bumbling mess when I try to speak on the phone with a fluent adult. It takes me a few seconds to think about what I need to say, and I know my grammar is horrible. At least I have friends and neighbors to help.
Oh, and it REALLY doesn't help that the records of phone numbers is not nearly as current as it needs to be. If a parent changes a phone number, they should call the school immediately, in case there is an emergency. Do they? No. Do we get neighbor's numbers and no actual way to contact the family? Yes. Geez...
Sunday, March 09, 2008
TAKs - or - the standardized test that means everything to the school but can't ever really accurately measure someone's intelligence
This week was far less stressful than I would have imagined. I had been drilling the kids on TAKs skills and giving them practice stories and short answer questions for about a week and a half because I really, really want the kids to pass. It's almost ridiculous how influential this one test is on a kid's school education. They need to pass the test to graduate, but I have had a good amount of my students fail one or all of their TAKs tests. And when you fail "the big test" it's easy to get distressed, depressed, and not try anymore. I won't get the scores back for several weeks, but news from all of the other proctors is that my kids looked to be practicing reading and test taking strategies (namely summarizing and previewing) that we had been working on all year and I stressed this last week. The proctors couldn't actually tell me what the kids wrote, and I couldn't either, as we're not supposed to look at their tests unless the kids asks us to read a question for them out loud so they can clarify what the question is asking. It seems ridiculous, but it's just one more way to keep test proctors from unknowingly (or knowingly) give students answers to test questions.
The feeling I got was superb when my students came in the next day and said they had summarized all the stories and did everything we were practicing in class. The confidence they showed after taking the test was something literally out of this world. Here's to hoping that the confidence was well-founded and I really did teach them something this year.
As for next week, our English department is going to be having a "Poetry Gallery" for all of the students. We're going to post all of the poems around each of the classrooms and all the kids will get to visit the other rooms in the department and read each other's poems. Some of my kids are really ecstatic about the gallery, while others... not so much. Personally, I just don't want to rush their poems, but I know that they will be since I spent more time preparing them for the test (and since I was gone for two days due to True/False). I might not have the best poems, but if I have a greatly improved test passing rate, I'll consider it more than a fair trade.
This week was far less stressful than I would have imagined. I had been drilling the kids on TAKs skills and giving them practice stories and short answer questions for about a week and a half because I really, really want the kids to pass. It's almost ridiculous how influential this one test is on a kid's school education. They need to pass the test to graduate, but I have had a good amount of my students fail one or all of their TAKs tests. And when you fail "the big test" it's easy to get distressed, depressed, and not try anymore. I won't get the scores back for several weeks, but news from all of the other proctors is that my kids looked to be practicing reading and test taking strategies (namely summarizing and previewing) that we had been working on all year and I stressed this last week. The proctors couldn't actually tell me what the kids wrote, and I couldn't either, as we're not supposed to look at their tests unless the kids asks us to read a question for them out loud so they can clarify what the question is asking. It seems ridiculous, but it's just one more way to keep test proctors from unknowingly (or knowingly) give students answers to test questions.
The feeling I got was superb when my students came in the next day and said they had summarized all the stories and did everything we were practicing in class. The confidence they showed after taking the test was something literally out of this world. Here's to hoping that the confidence was well-founded and I really did teach them something this year.
As for next week, our English department is going to be having a "Poetry Gallery" for all of the students. We're going to post all of the poems around each of the classrooms and all the kids will get to visit the other rooms in the department and read each other's poems. Some of my kids are really ecstatic about the gallery, while others... not so much. Personally, I just don't want to rush their poems, but I know that they will be since I spent more time preparing them for the test (and since I was gone for two days due to True/False). I might not have the best poems, but if I have a greatly improved test passing rate, I'll consider it more than a fair trade.
The last week of February
The last week of February went by incredibly fast, except for Thursday, which happened to be the same day I left for Columbia, MO and the True/False Film Festival. I really only had three days of actual teaching, as Thursday was the math benchmark test that I helped administer. I don't know why they scheduled the math benchmark less than a week before the English TAKs, seeing as the TAKs scores are a huge deal for the school and the benchmark is, well, just a test to see how well the kids *might* do on the actual TAKs.
I made a big push on TAKs skills this week and got these big 15 page packets for the kids to do in class and for homework. Gambling, I made the packet worth 35% of their grade so that even the kids who had done next to nothing could potentially pass the six weeks by trying their best on the packet. On the flipside, any kid who had an A could potentially NOT pass if they didn't turn in their work. Really, I just wanted to make sure that everyone, and I mean everyone, did their assignments for once. You couldn't believe how happy I was to see that work taken home actually made it back into my class and students were actually taking their work seriously.
The last week of February went by incredibly fast, except for Thursday, which happened to be the same day I left for Columbia, MO and the True/False Film Festival. I really only had three days of actual teaching, as Thursday was the math benchmark test that I helped administer. I don't know why they scheduled the math benchmark less than a week before the English TAKs, seeing as the TAKs scores are a huge deal for the school and the benchmark is, well, just a test to see how well the kids *might* do on the actual TAKs.
I made a big push on TAKs skills this week and got these big 15 page packets for the kids to do in class and for homework. Gambling, I made the packet worth 35% of their grade so that even the kids who had done next to nothing could potentially pass the six weeks by trying their best on the packet. On the flipside, any kid who had an A could potentially NOT pass if they didn't turn in their work. Really, I just wanted to make sure that everyone, and I mean everyone, did their assignments for once. You couldn't believe how happy I was to see that work taken home actually made it back into my class and students were actually taking their work seriously.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
"We're waiting..." aka Awkward Stares and Power Struggles
This weekend is crazy, and I don't know how I blogged this. Time continues to go by faster than it should as I'm currently in the process of making a TAKs packet for my kids so that hopefully they all can pass with the added help. Who knows if what I'm doing will help, but I'd sure like to think so. 7 school days left until TAKs - 4 until I leave for True/False.
I had a long week this week, especially since I picked up a bacterial infection on Tuesday and was out on Wednesday. I sent 30 kids to the nurses office on Monday and Tuesday, half of them having to go home because of fevers. When I came back on Thursday, I was doped up on so many medications that I had to ask my kids to bear with me and realize that I'm not 100%, but I would do my best and hope that they would to. This worked out WONDERFULLY, except in one of my classes where I blew up at a student. I blame the medicine, myself, and actually, I blame the student quite a bit. I should have written him up and kicked him out of class, but instead I addressed the problem in the middle of the class.
You see, I had just started class and told the students I was sorry for having been absent the day before, when this kid interrupts me with "YEAH! You SHOULD BE SORRY!" which I let slide, continuing with my short introduction of how I'm still sick and working through the cold, asking the students to be considerate. I took attendance, then started the lesson by putting notes on the board. I give the class a certain amount of time to copy the notes, and go around the class making sure everyone is on task. This certain student was not, so I reminded him to copy the notes, which he started doing, but at a very leisurely pace. When it was time to go to the next slide, everyone else in the class was done except for him, and he screams "WAIT! I didn't FINISH" so I told him I'd give him an extra 30 seconds, which I did. He was still not done, so I told him he would need to look at a friend's notes or stay after class to finish. He complained about that too, but finished writing his notes. He pulled the same stunt on the next slide, so I didn't give him the extra 30 seconds to finish writing (I have slow writers in the class too, and they had all finished).
I was midway through the lesson on Tone and Mood and had directed my students to a vocab list of good Tone/Mood words. I told the class, like all my others, to spend 30 seconds and circle any words they don't know, as it was higher level vocabulary for the most part. After circling these words, I was taking 6 words from the class to use as vocabulary words that they would write down in their notebooks and use during the class. When the class was told to volunteer words, some students were raising hands and calling out words like "Nostalgic" and "Reminiscent" that I wrote on the board, but this one student felt the urge to scream out the words "ANGRY!" and "SAD!"
At first, I ignored the child's outbursts, as he neglected yet again to follow classroom procedure in order to be "funny" though no one else laughed. He screamed out "ANGRY" again, to which I said "Do you really not know what angry is?" (He had a big smile on his face at this time). "It means that you're mad. I know you know this though [student]. I want you to focus on words that you don't know, because we're doing this as a class to help you." I asked the class for more words, and he screamed out "SAD!" with a huge smile on his face.
I stopped the class and just nailed this kid because I had addressed his behavior more than once and he thought it was a joke. "[student] I am NOT going to call on you or listen to you without your hand raised. You are wasting our time in class and disrespecting me and your fellow students." (At this point a classmate said "Quit being a jerk [student]," which I let slide, because this seemed like a good time for negative peer comments.) I continued with my tirade for about a minute, and finished with "When you're ready to act like you can learn, I'll get this class started again. We're waiting... and we'll wait until after the bell if we have to." I sat for the next 30 seconds, (which seemed like an eternity), staring directly at this kid while his peers made chide remarks about him needing to "stop being a jerk" and "do your work. You're making us all suffer." He realized that he was not going to win his little power-struggle, and with a blank stare of "did Mr. Johnson just tell me off?" picked up his pencil, and started writing down the definitions we were discussing as a class. I immediately continued the lesson, but was forced to keep kids afterwards to finish their assignment, and told the class I would not write passes to their following class. I apologized to the on-task students at the door for their classmate's behavior, but they reciprocated the apology. It was a great thing to know that I wasn't the only person annoyed by the student's raucous outbursts.
I still felt dirty about yelling at the kid, but it was effective, and it was my last resort for a day where I was already on a short rope. Nevertheless, he came in the next day with a smile and didn't act up. Crazy teenagers.
This weekend is crazy, and I don't know how I blogged this. Time continues to go by faster than it should as I'm currently in the process of making a TAKs packet for my kids so that hopefully they all can pass with the added help. Who knows if what I'm doing will help, but I'd sure like to think so. 7 school days left until TAKs - 4 until I leave for True/False.
I had a long week this week, especially since I picked up a bacterial infection on Tuesday and was out on Wednesday. I sent 30 kids to the nurses office on Monday and Tuesday, half of them having to go home because of fevers. When I came back on Thursday, I was doped up on so many medications that I had to ask my kids to bear with me and realize that I'm not 100%, but I would do my best and hope that they would to. This worked out WONDERFULLY, except in one of my classes where I blew up at a student. I blame the medicine, myself, and actually, I blame the student quite a bit. I should have written him up and kicked him out of class, but instead I addressed the problem in the middle of the class.
You see, I had just started class and told the students I was sorry for having been absent the day before, when this kid interrupts me with "YEAH! You SHOULD BE SORRY!" which I let slide, continuing with my short introduction of how I'm still sick and working through the cold, asking the students to be considerate. I took attendance, then started the lesson by putting notes on the board. I give the class a certain amount of time to copy the notes, and go around the class making sure everyone is on task. This certain student was not, so I reminded him to copy the notes, which he started doing, but at a very leisurely pace. When it was time to go to the next slide, everyone else in the class was done except for him, and he screams "WAIT! I didn't FINISH" so I told him I'd give him an extra 30 seconds, which I did. He was still not done, so I told him he would need to look at a friend's notes or stay after class to finish. He complained about that too, but finished writing his notes. He pulled the same stunt on the next slide, so I didn't give him the extra 30 seconds to finish writing (I have slow writers in the class too, and they had all finished).
I was midway through the lesson on Tone and Mood and had directed my students to a vocab list of good Tone/Mood words. I told the class, like all my others, to spend 30 seconds and circle any words they don't know, as it was higher level vocabulary for the most part. After circling these words, I was taking 6 words from the class to use as vocabulary words that they would write down in their notebooks and use during the class. When the class was told to volunteer words, some students were raising hands and calling out words like "Nostalgic" and "Reminiscent" that I wrote on the board, but this one student felt the urge to scream out the words "ANGRY!" and "SAD!"
At first, I ignored the child's outbursts, as he neglected yet again to follow classroom procedure in order to be "funny" though no one else laughed. He screamed out "ANGRY" again, to which I said "Do you really not know what angry is?" (He had a big smile on his face at this time). "It means that you're mad. I know you know this though [student]. I want you to focus on words that you don't know, because we're doing this as a class to help you." I asked the class for more words, and he screamed out "SAD!" with a huge smile on his face.
I stopped the class and just nailed this kid because I had addressed his behavior more than once and he thought it was a joke. "[student] I am NOT going to call on you or listen to you without your hand raised. You are wasting our time in class and disrespecting me and your fellow students." (At this point a classmate said "Quit being a jerk [student]," which I let slide, because this seemed like a good time for negative peer comments.) I continued with my tirade for about a minute, and finished with "When you're ready to act like you can learn, I'll get this class started again. We're waiting... and we'll wait until after the bell if we have to." I sat for the next 30 seconds, (which seemed like an eternity), staring directly at this kid while his peers made chide remarks about him needing to "stop being a jerk" and "do your work. You're making us all suffer." He realized that he was not going to win his little power-struggle, and with a blank stare of "did Mr. Johnson just tell me off?" picked up his pencil, and started writing down the definitions we were discussing as a class. I immediately continued the lesson, but was forced to keep kids afterwards to finish their assignment, and told the class I would not write passes to their following class. I apologized to the on-task students at the door for their classmate's behavior, but they reciprocated the apology. It was a great thing to know that I wasn't the only person annoyed by the student's raucous outbursts.
I still felt dirty about yelling at the kid, but it was effective, and it was my last resort for a day where I was already on a short rope. Nevertheless, he came in the next day with a smile and didn't act up. Crazy teenagers.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Countdown TAKs/T/F
I think I should apologize for not blogging this weekend, but after submitting grades, I distinctly remember looking at my computer to make sure that it was actually Sunday, and not Saturday night as my body hoped it was. The weekend felt altogether much too short, but looking back on it, the week should not have been that taxing. Monday was a "Staff Development Day" which is always a humbling experience because I get to put on my student cap again and see what it's like to sit around in the same room for 8 hours with nothing but my imagination and some type of learning objective. Yes, I doodled, and no, the trainer didn't get on my case about it. I brought work to grade in the break periods, as grades were due by the following Monday. I felt like I wouldn't have gotten away with my behavior in my class, but when I think about it, I don't really bother my kids too much. I try to keep them on task, but if they really don't want to work, I don't force it. I have a few students that work the best when they doodle, so I make sure that they have enough paper to learn and to play. I'm not a big fan of angry kids, and I don't see a point of making kids angry if they don't see the point of an assignment. It's usually not their fault they don't see a purpose to an assignment, it's mine. So if they give me attitude, I try to give them purpose, and more times than not, the attitude goes away. It works surprisingly well. I said usually because sometimes kids can be kids and really just not care at all and feel a need to rebel even if it's in their best interest NOT TO DO SO. At least I know the feeling and can empathize.
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I've put a large countdown on my board, showing the amount of school days left until TAKs, counting the current day. On Wednesday, the kids will be on 15. I feel more than a little bittersweet that I will be leaving for 2 of these days to go to the True/False Film Festival. Yes, I will be leaving the weekend before TAKs, and I will only have one day with the kids, but I had already booked the trip and I had told my administration about the trip before I was even hired and they didn't have a problem with it. I still feel like I'm letting down the kids, but at least I'm doing my darndest to make sure they are super-prepared well before the day I leave.
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I've got too many funny kid stories to count from this last week. I really felt like I enjoyed my job more than usual, and I only have the kids to thank. I don't know if it's because of the countdown and the greater "sense of urgency" but they seem on-task, or at least are more entertaining when they are off-task. Well, I'll tell one story...
So I have 68 Limited English Proficient or "LEP" students, and in one class that has a majority of LEP students, we were reading a poem called "Skinny Tomboy Kid". I was having the students focus on descriptive words, specifically those that pertained to the character. When we came to tomboy, my non-LEPs understood, but one my LEP students thought "tomboy" meant "lesbian" and said so in class. He was not joking at all, it was just an honest to goodness misunderstanding. As you might imagine, I had to clear up the definition of tomboy for the student, and told the class that "tomboy" was not the same as "lesbian" because a tomboy was a girl who liked to do boy things, like play sports, games, and maybe fight. When I said this, one of my athletic LEP girls gasped, got really red, and the whole class burst into laughter, because clearly she thought that by playing sports, everyone thought she liked girls instead of boys. I quickly recovered by asking every girl in the class if they have P.E., which they do, and asked them if they played sports. They all said yes, and I said, "well, technically you all are tomboys. The word doesn't have the same meaning as it used to because it's more acceptable for girls to play sports and do anything boys do without being judged for it." The class stopped its giggles as they finally understood, but I still crack myself up if I think about the whole situation again.
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I leave you all with one last nugget of awesomeness. I urge you to check out the website www.freerice.com. It's an amazing website where you are given multiple choice questions asking you to determine the correct meaning of a given word. There are TONS of words, so it's great to build your vocabulary, but the best part is that for every word you get right, the website donates 20 grains of rice to feed hungry nations. I checked it out, and the site is legitimate, as it takes the ad revenues generated from each ad (at the bottom of each question) and uses them to buy the 20 grains of rice. It's the absolute COOLEST idea I've ever heard of. Being able to enrich your own mind while helping to feed the hungry is probably the most worthwhile internet minutes you could spend. So check it out, test yourself, and get to feeding some hungry nations!
I think I should apologize for not blogging this weekend, but after submitting grades, I distinctly remember looking at my computer to make sure that it was actually Sunday, and not Saturday night as my body hoped it was. The weekend felt altogether much too short, but looking back on it, the week should not have been that taxing. Monday was a "Staff Development Day" which is always a humbling experience because I get to put on my student cap again and see what it's like to sit around in the same room for 8 hours with nothing but my imagination and some type of learning objective. Yes, I doodled, and no, the trainer didn't get on my case about it. I brought work to grade in the break periods, as grades were due by the following Monday. I felt like I wouldn't have gotten away with my behavior in my class, but when I think about it, I don't really bother my kids too much. I try to keep them on task, but if they really don't want to work, I don't force it. I have a few students that work the best when they doodle, so I make sure that they have enough paper to learn and to play. I'm not a big fan of angry kids, and I don't see a point of making kids angry if they don't see the point of an assignment. It's usually not their fault they don't see a purpose to an assignment, it's mine. So if they give me attitude, I try to give them purpose, and more times than not, the attitude goes away. It works surprisingly well. I said usually because sometimes kids can be kids and really just not care at all and feel a need to rebel even if it's in their best interest NOT TO DO SO. At least I know the feeling and can empathize.
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I've put a large countdown on my board, showing the amount of school days left until TAKs, counting the current day. On Wednesday, the kids will be on 15. I feel more than a little bittersweet that I will be leaving for 2 of these days to go to the True/False Film Festival. Yes, I will be leaving the weekend before TAKs, and I will only have one day with the kids, but I had already booked the trip and I had told my administration about the trip before I was even hired and they didn't have a problem with it. I still feel like I'm letting down the kids, but at least I'm doing my darndest to make sure they are super-prepared well before the day I leave.
-----
I've got too many funny kid stories to count from this last week. I really felt like I enjoyed my job more than usual, and I only have the kids to thank. I don't know if it's because of the countdown and the greater "sense of urgency" but they seem on-task, or at least are more entertaining when they are off-task. Well, I'll tell one story...
So I have 68 Limited English Proficient or "LEP" students, and in one class that has a majority of LEP students, we were reading a poem called "Skinny Tomboy Kid". I was having the students focus on descriptive words, specifically those that pertained to the character. When we came to tomboy, my non-LEPs understood, but one my LEP students thought "tomboy" meant "lesbian" and said so in class. He was not joking at all, it was just an honest to goodness misunderstanding. As you might imagine, I had to clear up the definition of tomboy for the student, and told the class that "tomboy" was not the same as "lesbian" because a tomboy was a girl who liked to do boy things, like play sports, games, and maybe fight. When I said this, one of my athletic LEP girls gasped, got really red, and the whole class burst into laughter, because clearly she thought that by playing sports, everyone thought she liked girls instead of boys. I quickly recovered by asking every girl in the class if they have P.E., which they do, and asked them if they played sports. They all said yes, and I said, "well, technically you all are tomboys. The word doesn't have the same meaning as it used to because it's more acceptable for girls to play sports and do anything boys do without being judged for it." The class stopped its giggles as they finally understood, but I still crack myself up if I think about the whole situation again.
----
I leave you all with one last nugget of awesomeness. I urge you to check out the website www.freerice.com. It's an amazing website where you are given multiple choice questions asking you to determine the correct meaning of a given word. There are TONS of words, so it's great to build your vocabulary, but the best part is that for every word you get right, the website donates 20 grains of rice to feed hungry nations. I checked it out, and the site is legitimate, as it takes the ad revenues generated from each ad (at the bottom of each question) and uses them to buy the 20 grains of rice. It's the absolute COOLEST idea I've ever heard of. Being able to enrich your own mind while helping to feed the hungry is probably the most worthwhile internet minutes you could spend. So check it out, test yourself, and get to feeding some hungry nations!
Monday, February 04, 2008
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
This past week was a bit stressful. The kids had to finish their short stories, which, after 5 weeks of off-and-on work, a little over 2/3rds of the class had drafts ready to type. As you can probably tell, this made life very stressful for me as I had to repeatedly ask students why they didn't have anything to type after several days of inclass work for the rough draft (5 weeks ago now), 2 days of revision two weeks ago, and reminders every day since that they needed to have their drafts ready to be typed. I even told the kids that anyone who brought in their draft for me to look over would get comments and edits the VERY NEXT DAY. I had 6 kids take me up on my offer out of 140 students.
Luckily, the only lab my students are able to use has this fun setup where the computers will delete all of the local files when they are restarted, which happens every evening. The computers are also not properly cloned, so none of them are hooked up to any type of network drive to make things easy to save. So aside from going around to help the kids that didn't have drafts brainstorm ideas for a hopefully passing paper, I spent my afternoons on Thursday and Friday, as well as Friday morning getting every single Microsoft Word file from all 34 computers. At the start of each class I gave all the students clear instructions on where to save the files, and had everyone do this at the start of class to avoid confusion. Apparently, confusion is harder to avoid than an elephant charging you down, because files were saved multiple times, and all over the place. Like a good teacher, I dealt with this and used my tech sense (and recent documents) to pull every file necessary, and even double checked ones that looked suspect. However, I still had 3 students lose their work, which made me feel absolutely horrible. Anywho... the week is done with, and I spent the weekend zoning out to episodes of "Lost" streaming from ABC's website, going to the batting cages, and performing first aid on my friend's badly cut thumb at a party on Friday night. He's ok, but I'm definitely glad I had a first aid kit in my car, since it came in handy.
I leave you all with a video that my mentor teacher told me about. The music is from Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" and I have no idea who the girl dancers are. I would say that this is my message that as it gets closer to TAKs, I will be "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" in every aspect of my teaching, but I don't think that's really going to happen. I'm just going to have fun and get these kids as prepared as possible, and work on getting my grades on a routine schedule for this semester.
This past week was a bit stressful. The kids had to finish their short stories, which, after 5 weeks of off-and-on work, a little over 2/3rds of the class had drafts ready to type. As you can probably tell, this made life very stressful for me as I had to repeatedly ask students why they didn't have anything to type after several days of inclass work for the rough draft (5 weeks ago now), 2 days of revision two weeks ago, and reminders every day since that they needed to have their drafts ready to be typed. I even told the kids that anyone who brought in their draft for me to look over would get comments and edits the VERY NEXT DAY. I had 6 kids take me up on my offer out of 140 students.
Luckily, the only lab my students are able to use has this fun setup where the computers will delete all of the local files when they are restarted, which happens every evening. The computers are also not properly cloned, so none of them are hooked up to any type of network drive to make things easy to save. So aside from going around to help the kids that didn't have drafts brainstorm ideas for a hopefully passing paper, I spent my afternoons on Thursday and Friday, as well as Friday morning getting every single Microsoft Word file from all 34 computers. At the start of each class I gave all the students clear instructions on where to save the files, and had everyone do this at the start of class to avoid confusion. Apparently, confusion is harder to avoid than an elephant charging you down, because files were saved multiple times, and all over the place. Like a good teacher, I dealt with this and used my tech sense (and recent documents) to pull every file necessary, and even double checked ones that looked suspect. However, I still had 3 students lose their work, which made me feel absolutely horrible. Anywho... the week is done with, and I spent the weekend zoning out to episodes of "Lost" streaming from ABC's website, going to the batting cages, and performing first aid on my friend's badly cut thumb at a party on Friday night. He's ok, but I'm definitely glad I had a first aid kit in my car, since it came in handy.
I leave you all with a video that my mentor teacher told me about. The music is from Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" and I have no idea who the girl dancers are. I would say that this is my message that as it gets closer to TAKs, I will be "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" in every aspect of my teaching, but I don't think that's really going to happen. I'm just going to have fun and get these kids as prepared as possible, and work on getting my grades on a routine schedule for this semester.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Kids Make Me Laugh...
So in class today, I was sharing the poem/song "Imagine" by John Lennon to help describe how poems use powerful messages and themes. One of my kids asked who John Lennon was, so I said he was a member of The Beatles. Most of my classes knew who The Beatles were, or at least acted like they did. However, one class didn't have a clue. Here's how the conversation went:
"John Lennon was a member of The Beatles" - me
"Who were The Beatles?" - student 1
"The Beatles were a very popular band from Britain during the 1960s." - me
"Oh wait... I think I heard of them at church. The pastor said The Beatles were going to hell."
I couldn't help but laugh a little bit as I had to then tell the students that we would listen to the song.
So in class today, I was sharing the poem/song "Imagine" by John Lennon to help describe how poems use powerful messages and themes. One of my kids asked who John Lennon was, so I said he was a member of The Beatles. Most of my classes knew who The Beatles were, or at least acted like they did. However, one class didn't have a clue. Here's how the conversation went:
"John Lennon was a member of The Beatles" - me
"Who were The Beatles?" - student 1
"The Beatles were a very popular band from Britain during the 1960s." - me
"Oh wait... I think I heard of them at church. The pastor said The Beatles were going to hell."
I couldn't help but laugh a little bit as I had to then tell the students that we would listen to the song.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
"I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date!"
I felt a little bit like the rabbit from "Alice in Wonderland" this week. Grades, which I submitted while in Austin, were supposed to be a quick verification on Tuesday when I returned to school. However, the entire internet system was completely down, and by down, I mean just by having an ethernet cable plugged into your computer made it freeze. The whole thing was completely bonkers. I didn't have verification sheets until Wednesday, and then was only able to verify my grades by using my internet connection at home (our school gradebooks are online). Unfortunately, putting in a little extra time at home was not the only problem, as several other teachers had errors in their grades and thus every teacher was asked to verify all of their grades by hand. Not wanting to screw up the grades of a kid who could pass/fail because of a computer error, I went ahead and verified all of my grades just like I was asked. Three times. I had virtually no problems, with the only grade changes being required for students who turned in work late or for those who transferred into my class after the 1st six weeks and did not have all their grades. When I originally sent in my grades, I double checked all of these students, but still went ahead with the hand verification. It wasn't THAT bad, but I did feel like I was doing quite a bit of busywork.
The school's internet --- geez... where do I even begin? I wasn't able to submit attendance, print out grades, or even check grades at school for kids that were freaking out thinking they didn't pass or wouldn't be able to play sports, etc. It was a HUGE headache, and I'm just hoping the scheduled internet "fix" on Monday will solve all of the connection problems.
Observations
I was observed several times this week, but never really thought twice about it. One of the observations was a fairly important one, seeing as a bad observation could mean that I don't have a job next year. Frankly, I didn't care if my observers were in the room or not. I figured that I'll teach the same way for my kids when there is or is not another adult in the room. Apparently this attitude carried over with the kids as well, since they mostly ignored the observers without me even having to mention it. This did cause a bit of a double-edged sword though, as students were as active as ever, but some also felt the urge to talk... as they usually do. They didn't feel the need to put on a performance, and I appreciated it. It was nice to know that all of my kids were doing all their work and they didn't even know they were being observed until after the class was over and I was thanked by my many visitors.
UIL Competitions
I judged a UIL (University Interscholastic League) Competition this Saturday at the High School. None of my kids competed, which was a little disappointing, but I did get to read a good 60 papers in the "Ready Writing" competition. "Ready Writing" is basically a competition where students are supposed to write more or less expository pieces about one of two prompts they are given. The kids have 2 hours to crank out an interesting, structurally and grammatically correct essay while bringing in as much of their knowledge as possible. Most of the students were Juniors or Seniors, so it was great to see some near-college level writing. I love teaching my 9th graders, but I can tell that the majority of them have not found their individual voices yet. Their writing lacks the type of intellectual personality that they will undoubtedly develop over the next 3 years. Don't get me wrong, I can still pick out any of my students papers just by hearing it, and every one of them has greatly improved this year, but it's just not the same when you compare it to a student who is about to enter into their own world of self-driven learning.
These kids definitely had some personality. I wish I could share some examples with you all, but I'm sure that's against some type of UIL guideline. At the very least I'd be given quite the stern look next time I show up to a competition.
Anywho... I'm off to bed so I can power on through another 5 days of excitement, turmoil, and unexpected new tasks.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Found this little thing earlier. It's a code that tells you your current computer's IP address, internet provider, and nearest location. I thought it was pretty neat. Check it out!
Sign by Dealighted - Dealighted
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Coming Back
Getting back to teaching after two weeks of virtually no-stress (well, some...) up in Colorado with the family and friends was a little tough. I only really had to teach for 3 days, since the first two days of the week were training and inservice days. I do love those inservice days.
The kids were pretty calm, and I was happy to take advantage of their rejuvenated spirits. We got back to reading our novels, recapping the stories, and getting set for next week's Six Weeks/Semester Exam. It's very strange, down here, with a winter break BEFORE the semester is over. I don't know why that happened, but I'm not going to ask too many questions.
Over the break I got to thinking about how much trouble I could have gotten into at school, yet didn't. I know that I was a good kid, but there was the occasional day where I would goof off a little in class, or make up new games to play while getting work done. I tried to compare my 9th grade year to my students, and felt like I should cut them a little bit more slack in some areas, (namely certain types of behavior), but still find myself in awe of the differences. If I assign homework, I have to spend the next two weeks reminding the students and collecting assignments just to make sure my students don't fail for having not turned in work. I can have a completely orderly classroom where 95% of assignments are completed and turned in, but homework assignments are treated like junk mail. The story is the same in all of their classes too, and for just about all students. I get the feeling that homework was never really stressed early on, and it's now somewhat of a joke. The only problem is... I don't see it as a joke, and I do my best to make sure my kids know that in education, they should ALWAYS be learning, not just in school. If they have to get a few zeroes and make up class credits because they fail to turn in classwork/homework projects, then that's a lesson that they need to learn. Ugh... I just wish I didn't have to sound like a broken record to get things in three weeks after they were due... (Seriously, I NEVER missed a homework assignment, and to the best of my knowledge, my friends didn't either.)
Getting back to teaching after two weeks of virtually no-stress (well, some...) up in Colorado with the family and friends was a little tough. I only really had to teach for 3 days, since the first two days of the week were training and inservice days. I do love those inservice days.
The kids were pretty calm, and I was happy to take advantage of their rejuvenated spirits. We got back to reading our novels, recapping the stories, and getting set for next week's Six Weeks/Semester Exam. It's very strange, down here, with a winter break BEFORE the semester is over. I don't know why that happened, but I'm not going to ask too many questions.
Over the break I got to thinking about how much trouble I could have gotten into at school, yet didn't. I know that I was a good kid, but there was the occasional day where I would goof off a little in class, or make up new games to play while getting work done. I tried to compare my 9th grade year to my students, and felt like I should cut them a little bit more slack in some areas, (namely certain types of behavior), but still find myself in awe of the differences. If I assign homework, I have to spend the next two weeks reminding the students and collecting assignments just to make sure my students don't fail for having not turned in work. I can have a completely orderly classroom where 95% of assignments are completed and turned in, but homework assignments are treated like junk mail. The story is the same in all of their classes too, and for just about all students. I get the feeling that homework was never really stressed early on, and it's now somewhat of a joke. The only problem is... I don't see it as a joke, and I do my best to make sure my kids know that in education, they should ALWAYS be learning, not just in school. If they have to get a few zeroes and make up class credits because they fail to turn in classwork/homework projects, then that's a lesson that they need to learn. Ugh... I just wish I didn't have to sound like a broken record to get things in three weeks after they were due... (Seriously, I NEVER missed a homework assignment, and to the best of my knowledge, my friends didn't either.)
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