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.

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.

"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.

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!

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.

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.

"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.

To be posted

I've not forgotten about this blog, not at all. I unfortunately did not have time to post this weekend as I took off Monday and went to Austin over the MLK weekend for some R&R, (and to see Austin).

Coming up... getting observed and writing team referrals! Stay tuned.

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

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.)

Super Survey Day! aka Opportunity Cost

So while I was on the flight to Colorado from Texas I pondered a slightly questionable teaching situation that I would like some feedback from all of you on.

In one of my classes, I have three students that are CONSTANTLY misbehaving, don't do work, and don't seem to care about their grades. I've had a few cases of limited success in getting them to work. I've already given them seating charts, but everyday they test the limits by sitting together until I remind them that if they don't move I will send them to ISS (In-School Suspension). They have always moved, so it hasn't been a problem, but I have sent them to ISS before for other reasons. These are smart kids, capable of learning, and they are actually pretty good kids... when they aren't in class. What I'm wondering is...

Would it be a horrible motivational strategy to tell them that the best of the three (participation-wise) will get $20 a month if I never have to warn them about their behavior in class? If they manage to make it ONE month, it will be worth the $20 for me (or even $60 if I gave each kid a $20). I know that offering kids cash, straight up just for not messing around might not be the best message, but perhaps the fact that they get practice in being good tips the balance of the scales in the direction of it being a potentially good thing... This was merely a thought after talking to a fellow teacher about chronic behavior problems. Let me know if you have any ideas.

-----Author's Note-----
I know that I haven't blogged for the last two weeks. It'll be up, I swear. I just got backlogged and then sick. Whoops!

Connecting Counts

For those of you who read this blog weekly, I apologize for not updating last week. I'll give a quick recap:
1. I spent the whole week looking forward to the Big 12 Championship game.
2. I spent the WHOLE week looking forward to the Big 12 Championship game.
3. On Thursday, I realized that San Antonio had Chipotle.
4. Friday, the kids could have stabbed me and I still would have been happy.
5. We read through the novels and I had the kids working on their short stories.

Unfortunately, Mizzou played the worst game of the year, so the trip was less than stellar. However, San Antonio was TONS of fun and made me realize just how much I miss living in a place that makes me want to get out and enjoy the culture. Don't get me wrong, the RGV has its own culture, but it's not the same as a college town or the River Walk in San Antonio. Maybe I still need to adjust to the culture down here...

This week went by incredibly fast. This was mostly due to the fact that our team (about 140 students and 4 core area teachers) went on a field trip on Friday to see Texas A&M Corpus Christi and Texas A&M Kingsville. We didn't have enough spaces to take all of our kids, unfortunately, so our team toiled over rosters for several weeks in order to determine which kids should not be rewarded with a field trip. It was an incredibly tough decision, made even harder by lack of funds and certain program requirements, but in the end, things turned out ok. It was a whole heck of a lot of stress put on all of the 4 core teachers and me specifically as I was the one handing out the permission slips or the "you're not allowed to go" slips. It was not fun telling 40 or so students they couldn't go because of their grades, behavior, and attendance, when really it was more a lack of funding. Oh well. The kids that did end up going enjoyed the trip and I felt rejuvenated because I was once again able to see my students in a different role. They're a really good group of kids and have some really interesting personalities. I'm lucky to have them. However, things do tend to change when I'm actually making an effort to teach them, and some have that tendency to turn-off their more compassionate, driven sides and feel the need to sit around and distract others. I'm not saying that all of my students are trouble makers, but some of them can have quite petulant behavior when they feel the need. Really, I saw the whole experience as an eye-opener, since on some level I was beginning to see my students as less and less of 'people who happen to be my students' and more just 'students'. It's always good to remember that every day these kids bring a thousand things to the table and I can't begin treating them as if they will come in each day exactly how they left the day before.

Oh drat. I meant to put up my Christmas tree tonight. I guess I have a project for tomorrow.

Student Gems
From the field trip -
"Why is your bag wet?" - girl 1
"What?" - girl 2
*Girl 1 smells handbag*
"Oh no! The pickle juice!" - girl 1
"Oohhh..." girl 2 as girl one pulls out a jar of pickles from girl 2's handbag.
-Surprisingly enough, both girls seemed quite alright with the ordeal, and just accepted the fact that the handbag was now soaked in a layer of pickle juice. They were quite confident that "it'll dry"

Ahh! I meant to update last night and then again tonight! Egads, it did not happen.

Short Week, Easy Street

This week was absolutely amazing. Well, actually the last two weeks weren't too bad. Two weeks ago we had our second round of 6 weeks testing so aside from having to grade 135 papers all in one night and get my gradebook all set up and ready to go, the week was low stress and very little actual lesson planning/teaching. Proctoring tests is about as close as you can get to being paid for doing next to nothing. I spend the entire time walking around the room making sure the kids don't cheat and that they stay on task. I answer questions without giving hints at answers, and the kids are almost deathly quiet except for the sound of pencils digging into scantron bubbles and erasers rubbing back and forth every now and then.

I have a lot to be thankful for this week, but I'm mostly thankful that I finally got a chance to recharge physically, emotionally, and mentally. I was able to show the kids parts of the movie versions of their books (Of Mice and Men and The Outsiders) on Tuesday and gave a quick enrichment lesson on Friday to the few classes I did have since it was a half day. Geez, I still can't believe that I actually had 4 and a half days off. I do have to say though, I'm surprised that we had school on Wednesday. I don't ever remember having school the day before Thanksgiving, but I guess now adays students come in as much as they can. Unfortunately for the high school students, a benchmark exam was scheduled for the Thanksgiving week even though they just took the 6 weeks exam the week before. Two weeks of straight testing, school the day before Thanksgiving... no real breaks. Luckily our students didn't have their benchmark test because my department requested it be rescheduled for December. It just makes more sense to space out tests so that the kids don't get burned out.

Well, I think this about does it for this week's post. While I may be slightly recharged, I'm still not 100%. The last few days let me fix up a LOT of things at home so that I feel like my life is more or less in some type of order, but my car is not fixed, and I still have things to get ready for tomorrow. With that being said, goodnight all, and have a great week.

Spring Cleaning

So it's not actually Spring, but this far down in Texas it's really hard to tell the difference. The birds have all come south for the winter, followed by the winter Texans, but it's still hot as the dickens. I am putting up a VERY short post tonight as I've been fixing up my apartment and getting everything ready for school since grades are due tomorrow by 9 AM. I did have a good weekend though, and it was quite productive. More about the week tomorrow.

FYI - I love 2 1/2 day weeks!

A November to Remember

After grading papers all weekend, I felt it appropriate to reward myself with a few episodes of "Scrubs: Season Six". Unfortunately, I rewarded myself with the worst episode of the entire series, since it was twenty excruciating minutes of flashbacks from other episodes in the series. If you watch Scrubs, make sure to skip "My Night to Remember" as you'll be a much greater fan of the show knowing it never pulled a stunt like a Japanese anime and thought it ok to recycle material wholesale. I'll try to use this as a springboard for my thoughts though, and hopefully come up with something.

Springboard Training

Friday I went with two other English teachers to learn about "Springboard", a curriculum that our district purchased and we can now use. I'm a little at odds, however, since our department already has a curriculum that is based on the New Jersey method and only one of the other teachers is currently using Springboard. I think I'll try it out though, seeing as I have almost enough workbooks for every student in my class.

The training was nice, and quite relaxing, at least until I found out that my students were hellraisers for the substitute. I don't think I've ever been angrier as a teacher when I heard that the sub never wants to teach at my school again, and it's because of MY students. Maybe it's my fault- I told them that if I got a bad report from the sub for a class, the entire class would have a test. I'm thinking that once one of the kids screwed up the whole class decided it was useless to play nice and just went nuts. I'm just hoping the weekend has calmed them down enough to help them get through this week of testing and two and a half days next week so they can gorge themselves on turkey and tryptophan and ride out the rest of the semester with good spirits.

I know that I'm making a difference in at least some of these kids lives, and hopefully I'm a positive figure for all of them. It's just been very tough lately, with attitudes going through the roof, assignments not being turned in, and kids just not paying attention to the lessons. I let it slide for some of the students, at least when I know they understand the lesson and don't really need a refresher. It's very tough to work with such a diverse group of students. Their ability levels are ALL over the board, and it's sad for me to say it, but it looks like it's better to teach to the lower-end students and occasionally have my high ability ones be bored. I try my best to give assignments that allow the students to work at their ability levels but on the same class lessons.

I'm finding myself continually impressed with how well my teachers performed their jobs when I was a student. Maybe I'm just seeing life through rose colored glasses, but I feel like they had their lives MUCH more organized than mine. I know I'm a first year teacher, but I don't think I can use that as an excuse when my job can impact 130 people's lives so much. The stress just seems to get to me at times, and it's possible that it's behind the recent back pain I've been having, but I'll just have to deal with it. Here I go for another week.

Student Gems
-From an essay a student wrote about his first girlfriend and his first kiss.
"I knew what to do, but I felt that love was transferring through our body like a Bluetooth connection transferring songs."

So far English seems to be the best subject for grading, even though it takes forever. None of the math teachers ever get as many one-liners as I do. :)

On a More Positive Note

I realized that while posting on the blog, it seems that I have emphasized the negative aspects of teaching down here more than the positives. That was never my intention, but nevertheless, I have left out a lot of the "good stories". For that, I apologize, as I am not living in a pit of despair, but I do have my own set of problems for being a first year teacher. I apologize to all of you who read this since you may have gotten the wrong idea about my life down here and teaching in the valley in general. I am doing just fine. Yes, I get very stressed and sometimes I feel like I made the wrong decision, but I'm not packing up and leaving. Teaching is very rewarding, and I had to relearn that this week and last week. I'll try to do a better job of balancing the pros and cons of life down here, but just be aware that I still do not intend to sugarcoat things. Writing on this blog is as much a time for me to reflect on what I did incorrectly as it is a chance for you all to read about my life. I just need to also reflect on what I've done well...

Relearning That Teaching is Rewarding
The Friday before Halloween our school had a party. I made a point of staying after school to attend said party so that I could hang out with the other teachers and not feel like I had to prepare anything for the students besides my personality. I had a plan though, and it included a board game: Blokus. I asked my UIL team if they wanted to stay afterschool to play the game, and two of the girls said that it would be fun. So we played the board game for about an hour and a half, after which time the girls left, I walked to the cafeteria and the party, and was immediately stopped by two boys who were intrigued by the game. Mind you, I didn't say anything to them, I just had the game in my hand as well as my bag of work I was taking home to grade. Another two students came up and I spent the following hour just hanging out with students, teaching them how to play a game that is incredibly addicting and quite intellectually challenging. (It's a "Mensa Select" game). Interestingly enough, when I told my two UIL girls that it was a Mensa game and asked them if they knew what "Mensa" was, they laughed at me. I assumed that they were laughing because "why wouldn't they know what Mensa was?" but when I asked them, they just said, "Of course we know what mensa is... but that's kinda mean." I greeted this comment with a dumbstruck face, because clearly I was not on the same page as my students. I asked again, "Do you know what Mensa, the ORGANIZATION, is?" They looked at me with blank stares. I explained to them that Mensa was a group for the world's geniuses, to which they bursted out laughing. "What? What's so funny?" I asked. "Mensa means 'stupid girl' and menso means 'stupid boy'." said one of my students. I hadn't heard of that, but I guess it's slang down here, and it's absolutely hilarious.

Anyways, I felt a whole lot better about my entire situation down here just by bringing in a board game to play with students after school. I had been feeling disconnected with the students and found myself becoming more and more of a teacher rather than a recent college graduate. Now, normally becoming a teacher since I AM a teacher would seem like the right thing to do, but I felt like I was getting more work out of my students and having a better time doing it when I was the "recent graduate who is also a teacher" rather than just a "teacher". One of my strengths in motivating the students is my relatively similar age, and I don't want to forget about that.

This week
The week literally flew by. I spent two days introducing the short story unit, Halloween was a "themed" day with candy and spooky short stories, and the last two days of the week the students were in the computer labs typing their papers. I was very happy to finally be using some technology with the students, even if it was only Microsoft Word. All the students were working, I was able to go around and edit papers, and I helped out students with technical problems. The only problem was that one of my students definitely caught me off guard when his spell checker was in Spanish and he needed it in English. I haven't fixed up language settings in oh... I dunno... 10 years? It took me about 2 minutes to find it, but while I was looking for it, the kid, (granted, he's one of my more rambunctious ones) would say really loudly "What are you doing? You're just clicking on things! You don't even know what you're doing? Ha ha ha!" Ooh... he really got under my skin with that one, but I don't think he really knew it. Still, I managed to fix it, and had to do it about 10 more times throughout the day on other computers. EVERY single other question I had was much more in-depth and I guarantee other teachers would not have known how to bring back corrupted Word files, but I did. The students were not delayed in their work, I was on top of things, and I had the class running smoothly. But dang... if that one student didn't find something that I didn't instinctively know how to fix in the first 10 seconds. Just because I had to read through the menus (Word has that fun "auto-hide" menu feature which bugs the heck out of me because you never know what each menu holds unless you "un-hide" the entire menu. WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LEAVE IT UP THERE FOR ME TO READ?!). Anyways, the students worked hard, I was able to give a whole bunch of editing comments to students, and had at least 12 that I sat down and put detailed comments on and then had the students respond to the comments, fix up their writing, and hopefully get A's. Sure, my students might not have that many computers at home, and some of them are slow at typing, but hot diggity if I was able to give instructions and have students understand them instantly. Well, some of them didn't instantly get it, but a friend would lean over and help. Sigh... if I only had more than 2 working computers in my classroom, the things I could do...

The Positives
I got a note from two of my students. One was from a student who received detention and wanted to apologize to me about missing class. The kid's a great kid, and it takes a heck of a lot of motivation to write a letter to a teacher saying you'll miss class and include all the work you were supposed to turn in. That's the only time I've EVER heard of a student doing something like that... and I wasn't the teacher that sent him to detention. I also received a letter from one of my mod students, who asked me to let him pass the class, but wrote my name as "Mrs. Johnson". He tries hard, but that letter had me laughing so hard, I was just glad I didn't read it while students were there. I told him the next day that it wasn't up to me to let him pass, it was HIS decision, to which he smiled and said "I'm going to get 100% on the paper".

Other Updates
I was working on the school website again. Feel free to check it out. http://todddonnaisd.sharpschool.com The header will change, but I had to send in the new header to the company that owns the servers (I can't change it from my computer). Most of the pages still need to be updated, but I had training sessions a few weeks ago with all the department heads, and told them that if they sent me what they wanted, I could post it for them. Reminder e-mails went out again today, so hopefully the site will look more "finished" shortly. On the bright side, the Todd site is one of the more "finished" sites, and I think it's one of the more comprehensive. :)

I'll be starting novels this week, and I'm hoping to have my students work on a wiki page. It'll be interesting to say the least.

Forgive Me, For I Have Been Watching Baseball

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

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

Tick tock tick tock

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

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

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

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

Updated: A Little Notoriety

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

Check out the article here.

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