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?

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.

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.

We're Back... a dinosaur's teacher's story.
*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).