I HEART My Class

I really do.

They are a bit weird, not totally on top of this learning thing, and a bit immature.  We’ve had two fights and two death threats uttered in two weeks of school.  I have a handful of known special ed problems and a handful of “concerns” about some kids.

We’re still feeling each other out, but I’ve gotten a couple love letters and a couple parents have approached me to say their kids talk about me all the time.  They know who their teacher is and they are being pretty respectful of my rules.

So far, so good.

PD Week

Every fall before school starts we have three days of professional development meetings.  Three SOLID days of professional development meetings.

This is the time when highly trained professionals become children.  I apparently become that kid who talks to much and constantly gets out of their seat for “very important” reasons like finding a better pen or fishing out the charger to my laptop.  I am also the kid who whines about when lunch is and talks to her friends when she should be focusing on Common Core Curriculum bingo or the finer points of data analysis as it pertains to reading scores.  Or whatever it is that actual children learn.

New teachers are here and almost done with their classrooms.  New students will be in for orientation tomorrow.  The first big parent meeting is tonight.  It is all rolling right along.

 

It’s Coming

So, as I may have mentioned I live in a East Coast city near some water.  And the only thing that is on t.v. today is hurricane coverage.

I have been getting a kick out of all of the Irene references people have spray painted on their storm shutters and plywood.  Anyone else secretly love Dexy’s Midnight Runners? “Come on Irene…”

In other new, the school year is coming up quick.  My classroom is close to done.  I’m just hanging on for a class list and planning to do a little more labeling.  And tidying.  Here is what it looks like now.  (Go back a couple posts to see what it looked like then…)

  

I’m particularly pleased with the little reading corners.

My jobs for this weekend include:

making word wall cards for that big word wall

making locker tags and chair tags for the classroom

printing labels for binders, portfolios, folders, and workbooks so I can stop writing every kid’s name 15 times

figuring out a scope and sequence for reading, science, and social studies

All boring, indoor activities that can mostly be accomplished without power.  So, come on Irene…

 Sara

Found Bits of Rhyme

Criss-cross applesauce,,,,

Pockets on the floor…

Hands in your lap…

And wiggle no more!

 

AND MORE…

Criss Cross Applesauce (make X on baby’s back)
Spiders climbing up your back (tickle on back)
Cool breeze (blow on baby’s neck)
Tight squeeze (give a hug)
Now you’ve got the shiveries! (tickle on back)

Balancing Act

I recently found out that I have Type 2 Diabetes.  Combined with recent concerns about my blood pressure, anxiety that has been through the roof in the last few months, and the special challenges of last year’s crazy class, I’m pretty significantly out of balance and it is affecting me physically as well as emotionally.

Always one to find the irony in something, I realized quickly that this is my issue d’jour:  balance.  As in I’m not.

I’ve been working really hard over the last couple of years and sometimes I have loved my job.  Other times I have hated my job.  Most of the time it has taken most of my emotional and physical energy to do it and sometimes it has not been done well enough to meet everyone’s needs and expectations.  In one ear I have parents complaining that the work is too hard or coworkers quipping that they don’t do X, Y, or Z because it is too much work.  In the other ear, I hear administrators railing about test scores or the press talking their talk about “accountability.”

No balance.

There are moments when I honestly do just see kids as the scores on an assessment or the growing stack of office referrals filed under their names.  These moments are short, but destructive.  I know this.  Sometimes lesson planning really feels like an annoying task on an ever growing list, not an opportunity to come up with a brilliant strategy or solve a problem.  Sometimes I spend 45 minutes trying to get the Internet to work in my classroom.  Sometimes I spend 45 minutes standing outside someone’s office door to deliver 3 minutes worth of news.  Sometimes I spend 45 minutes driving to Target to get out of the building and wandering the school supply aisle with no intention to buy.

Recently we were told that we should not be absent from school.  Ever.  For any reason.  Not to care for your personal health or the health of your family.  Not to attend an important event in your life.  Not to improve your professional understandings or deal with a crisis.  A coworker was told not to attend a family member’s wedding because it would put too much strain on her coworkers.  Another was dressed down for being late because she had to stop at a clinic and address a uncomfortable rash on her FACE.  Seriously.

No balance.

But my job is all about balance.  I am supposed to balance the needs of the school with the needs of the kids (remember, I’m not supposed to have needs, so my needs don’t need balancing).  I’m supposed to balance time spent on community building with time spent on academics.  I’m supposed to balance whole group instruction with independent work, direct instruction with inquiry based approaches, respecting home community with teaching the fundamentals of middle class success.  Every book I pick up, every seminar I listen to, every “master teacher” whose voice is humming in my head echoes the message of balance.

Yet, schools seem to be some of the most imbalanced places I know.  Expectations are high enough to be unatainable in some things, low enough to be inconsequential in others.  People are expected to spend hours in one room, mostly sitting, without leaving to pee or eat or do any of the things normal people do.  Physical activity is limited to 30 minutes a day (for the lucky).  Teachers and students alike are expected to be universally calm, quiet, and conflict free despite being paired with people you didn’t pick and sometimes don’t like for hours at a time.  Students have little or no say in what they do with those hours and minimal control over even small choices (like what color pencil to use).

I’m not sure how to bring things back into balance.  I truly enjoy some of the aspects of my job that take time and in some ways my job has become a hobby and a social outlet, so it isn’t as simple as shutting the classroom door at the end of a school day and leaving the papers ungraded on my desk if need be.  Perhaps it is about giving myself permission to do that if I want to.  Certainly it is about prioritizing the care of my body, eating well, exercising, and finding time for health care.   It’s about taking the day off for good reasons (and once and while maybe just because I know I’m overwhelmed and I’m going to be a crappy teacher if I don’t get a break.)

It’s also about being 100% present in the moment, speaking my mind, and advocating for the “right” thing.  In and out of work.  It’s about consciously choosing that balanced approach when others advocate imbalance (“No, that can’t be done by Friday.  I only have 10 minutes of planning time before then.”)  It’s about dealing with conflict, not avoiding it.  It’s about respect.  It’s about resisting the temptation to be carried away by the culture of crisis in most schools, the last minute need it now, too much work to0 little time, put out the big fires first energy of it all.

It’s also about centering my students in the process of their education and listening to their (and my) honest instincts about what they need.  Debbie Miller talks in her book Teaching With Intention about the the luscious feeling of endless time.  To me that reflects balance. It takes grounding to really focus on someone, to hear them, and to carefully choose your own words to them.  To let them know that they are your consideration at that moment and make them believe that you have time to give the help they need.

Teaching is in fact a balancing act.  It shouldn’t feel like one every minute of every day though.

This year will begin with balance and calm.  My health hangs in the balance and it is pretty important that this job doesn’t kill me.

Lunchboxes

This is my new lunchbox.

Every year I buy a new little kids’ lunchbox to bring my lunch to school in every day.  (I work in the inner city.  The closest Starbucks is 15 minutes away.)  It amuses me and the kids love seeing me carrying it around when I drop them off at lunch.  Every year I outdo myself to find the cutest box, but really kids’ lunchboxes are perfect for me.  They are designed to be used in exactly the environment I work in, are insulated to be used without refrigeration, and aren’t too big or too small for one days lunch.

It makes me think about all the other weird affectations elementary school teachers develop.  For instance, I have a huge collection of stickers.  No person over 8 who isn’t an avid scrap booker has any need for the amount of stickers I buy and use each year.  I also have had a lot of weird earrings over the years (candy canes, ghosts) for holiday wear, sweatshirts with handprints all over them from past classes, and jewelry made out of wooden beads, plastic beads, or macaroni.

 

Ready, Set, Go…

School starts in 9 days.

I’m going for a new feel in my space this year.  I want my classroom to make kids say:  ”Yes, I know I have attention deficit disorder, but this room makes me feel a sort of zen-like calm.”  Baskets instead of plastic bins, real wood, texture and definition over bright color, flow-ey curtains and diffuse light everywhere.

This is how far I have gotten:

You will note flow-ey curtains.  Flow-ey curtains that need hemming.  And very little else.

I have a ways to go.

I spent 2 of the last five days sorting books.  They don’t mention that in books by Debbie Miller.  There isn’t the chapter called Incessant Maintenance of  Your Classroom Library or Why That Kid Put The Pretzels in the Fairy Tales Bin. Nope.  In Debbie Miller-land she seems to have elves that take care of these things while she writes brilliant books about reading workshop.  (The really are brilliant BTW.  Reading With Meaning changed my life.)

What I did do, I did around the new staff orientation that was also happening in my classroom.  They were calmly discussing the ins and outs of Expeditionary Learning while I was pounding the stapler into my thumb during bulletin board assembly.  Then, as if ownership of my space wasn’t enough of an issue, the preschool program asked if they could use my (half finished) classroom as the children’s space for their new parent night.  (They are being moved to portables this year and can’t access any of their space.)  So somehow I have to make it kid-safe by Tuesday.  So the industrial staple gun and the really, really hot glue will need to be completely put away so that a bunch of three year olds can invade with crayons and playdoh.

I’m kind-a working myself up into a real stress frenzy.  I’m supposed to be facilitating new staff training a couple days and learning how to use our new computerized assessment, while simultaneously unpacking 4 boxes of new science materials, creating a compelling parent orientation packet, and writing a scope and sequence for three different subjects (one of which is reading.)  I need to label lockers, sharpen about a zillion pencils, figure out my new homework policy, and find a good, short article on first grade child development that is written at a third grade reading level.

And I’m supposed to be on vacation.

Every year I come in a week or two early thinking that it will help me start the school year on track, calm and centered, and ready for kids.  And every year I am going out to buy industrial velcro after a six hour PD meeting the night before the night before kids come.  And then I realize I mispelled little Tykevonda’s name on EVERYTHING and didn’t buy an extra set.

Somehow I always make it.  And the people who came in the first day of professional development are always somehow magically ready for kids too.  My room might be a little cleaner or cuter or high concept, but the kids don’t really seem to care.  (I do get props at parent night though.)

Still, I do give up a lot of my vacation to prep.  But (shhh…don’t tell anyone) this is my favorite part, when all the notebooks are neatly labeled, my planbook is free of coffee rings, and it is all so full of promise.  I know how to do this.  This year will be a beautiful year.

Checking Back In

So, it was about this time two years ago that I wrote my last post.  I’m still here.

My principal keeps using the words “positive change” in meetings a lot lately.  This is what she means:

• 3 coworkers are leaving, including 2 of the 4 people I likemost on staff and the only 2 people I have managed to have an outside of school friendship with.
• My principal, the founder of the school, is going on a year’s sabbatical and will return as director of the non-profit associated with the school.
• As a result, we have a new principal, who, while very nice, has a radically different set of background knowledge, education experience, and administrative experience than the current principle.
• All current initiatives at the school are put on hold for a year or more, including building a second building to alleviate overcrowding.
• Two new teachers have been hired for critical classroom positions (k and 3rd).  These two are both out of the box brand new teachers with NO teaching experience at all.
• Our state is becoming an early adopter of common core state standards, which means a lot of revision to how we teach (though I think we really are ahead of the game at Wonderful Charter School, since we already use a lot of inquiry based strategies.)

And these things are not changing:

• I am still teaching first grade.
• I’m still in the same room.

That’s about it.

In the past 2 years, I mentored the (old) kindergarten teacher, created a new report card for our school, finished my National Board portfolio and assessments (waiting for scores still), and learned how to teach writer’s workshop.  This last class was the most challenging group behaviorally I have ever taught and the brightest.   The teachers passed a crazy “ground breaking” new contract and I got a raise while teachers around the country got pink slips.  I just finished my TENTH year of teaching in the classroom (gasp) and my 5th year at my current school.

I’m on vacation, but I’m gearing up for another year.  I intend to blog more often.  I promise.

Too Many Cooks

One recent Monday morning I had 4 extra adults in my room.  I was assigned a “summer worker”, a high school student who uses our school as a summer job.  I was assigned an “assistant”, a student of divinity who is interning at the church we are loosely partnered with.  Our SPED teacher was trying to work with a student, pull in.  The school psychologist was trying to observe the same student.  If you add onto that the math specialist and reading specialist who both popped in to pull multiple groups throughout the morning, there were people coming and going like Grand Central.

I felt overwhelmed and overcrowded and I knew what was going on and what everyone’s role is.  The kids went nuts.  They suddenly couldn’t do anything on their own.  They needed help to get the easiest stuff done.  The noise level was off the charts as kids talked to various adults at the same time. By lunch time, I was losing patience and my temper.

I realized I am very alpha when it comes to my classroom.  I want things my way.  And when they aren’t it unsettles me.  And what unsettles me, unsettles everyone.

I started out the session with a plan.  I thought, final session, more independent work and more conferencing.  Back off on pulling groups, focus a little more on math.  It’s clearly not happening.  After a couple days of well intentioned, bored summer workers laying around my room and distracted, argumentative kiddos, I realized we all need to be doing the same thing and we all (grown-ups included) need to be engaged in that thing.  (This is a huge step back for me.  I have carefully nurtured the ability in my kids to have multiple things going simultaneously and engage themselves in whatever their assigned role is.  Unfortunately, I did not do that with my summer workers.)  Otherwise, I was going to spend sixth session listening to a constant whine of “I want to be in your group” and “can I read with…”

On top of all of that, I had to find something for my two non-teacher summer workers to do that felt meaningful to them.  The teenaged worker proved quickly that clerical work was well beyond her ability and the adult worker was promised that she would “work with kids.”  My adult summer worker (a divinity student) is very analytical and well intentioned, but she doesn’t yet have the little kid instincts that allow her to figure out the quick and easy way to do stuff, so she spends a lot of her time engaged in dead ends with kids.

So, I created the mother of all behavior systems.  Each child has a “passport” with behavioral rubrics for each part of the day.  (For example, independent reading says: Read the whole time.  Read in a whisper voice.)  There are 25 pts for the whole day.  Each student gets a sticker for each thing they do successfully.  (They get a prize if they can meet one of two daily goals and I’m doing a Friday lunch with the teacher for the weekly goal.)  I divided the class into three groups.  Each of us is responsible  for one group at a time.  I rotate the groups each independent work session so I touch bases with every group in every subject a couple of times a week.

The summer workers feel empowered and productive.  The kids know which person to try first at any given moment.  (Though my diehard needy kids still sneak over to ask me first.)  With two extra people helping with management it is usually pretty chill in the room…plus my babies do love a good prize driven sticker chart, so they are pretty happy.  I set the goals low enough and give prizes frequently enough that they all feel successful at least once a day.  (Plus they are getting lots of math practice compulsively counting their stickers.)  Names on the board are down to zero and the only office referral we had happened at gym.

It is in so many ways everything I try not to do, don’t really think works in the long run, and thinks sends messages that are not super healthy to kids.  But we have three weeks.  It’s do what you gotta do to get through time.

Final Session

The last session of the year always makes me a little sad. It feels like this is the point where I know what’s what with the kids and now it is time to start preparing them (and me) for the transition to a new teacher.

This week the kids have been having a lot of conflict and have been really hard on each other, in addition to a field trip, a birthday party, and picture day disrupting our schedule. It will probably be like this until the end of the year.

I also have a student who has started SPED services this week (with no less than 3 specialists working with this one child). And I was assigned a parapro and an intern for various parts of the day. There is a lot going on.