Is It Friday Yet?

My new morning view.

What a week. And it’s not even quite over yet. We are in the midst of our first round of testing for the year. I have only had to proctor one test even though I teach Language and Reading to two grades (= 4 possible tests to proctor). I've had a lot of down time due to the testing schedule, but I'm still feeling glad tomorrow is Friday.

Maybe I'm still adjusting to the school year... Or maybe I'm just in sync with my students and feeling a smidge of what they must be feeling during their first of three  testing sessions throughout the school year. Or you know, it could be that I attended the funeral of a former parent on Monday and stayed up late last night to watch a soccer game.

I can't say it's been a bad week. Or even that Monday was awful. Okay - it wasn't good. The former parent who passed away was seriously the smileyest human being I've ever met. I taught fifth grade to both of his kids, the grade that is the mushy middle of the K-8 system, the grade where kids really become adolescents before, during, or quite shortly after. I have taught fifth grade classes with students losing teeth every other day. I have taught fifth grade classes with several girls getting their first periods on my watch. It's an interesting age to be sure. I ran into him on the baseball field (my son was practicing flag football) and in the grocery store. And I still can't recall a time when I saw him without a smile. I hope someone can someday say the same of me. I know I'm not there yet, but it's something to aspire to.

The funeral was hard. His kids were too young to have to deal with his death. He made a positive impact on his community in many ways, including a myriad of ways I never knew. I had to ask my new co-workers to cover my responsibilities at my new school and ate my lunch (a peanut butter sandwich and banana) in the car as I drove between my new school and the old one where the funeral was held. I ended up with a pre-migraine in the early evening, and sent myself to bed at 7:00pm as a result. Monday was hard.

But it was good too. Three of my new co-workers covered for me without pause or question. They were happy to help me and glad that I was able to attend the funeral. I saw several former co-workers and students who seemed as grateful to see me as I was to see them. I am grateful to feel that I am already part of my new community. I am excited for the year ahead with kind, compassionate people who have welcomed me into their community and so very blessed to still feel a part of the community I have left.

My principal came into my classroom for his first informal walk through of the school year this week too. I was trying to engage eighth graders in a lesson on the different kinds of pronouns. Did you know there are personal, possessive, reflexive, relative, interrogative, and demonstrative pronouns in an eighth grade textbook? So, yeah. Yay pronouns! In the afternoon. The eighth graders are a great group of kids. Not hard to engage, but hard to focus. In the midst of my lesson, one of my students who shares my first name, said, "I like your hair." I could and should have brought her comment into my lesson - after all there were two pronouns in her statement - but all I said was, "How is that relevant now?" Of course her friend said, "It's relevant to her! She likes your hair!" At least the kids are comfortable in my room, right?

We had a fire drill this week too. It was my first one at this school, and I did not have students during the drill due to the aforementioned testing schedule. The sixth graders did well. Very well. They were more quiet than their neighboring classes and were patient with the cross traffic out to the field, letting younger students pass in front of them.

Can you see how wet my shoes are after the fire drill?

I've emailed parents regarding their students' progress and consulted the counselor. I have been working with the marketing director to get my webpage operational. I am not feeling overwhelmed with my workload... which feels weird on some level, but is also quite liberating.

I know I made the correct decision in coming to this school. I already feel like I'm home.

Curriculum Night

I know it sounds crazy, but I had a blast at Curriculum Night. I was kind of dreading it, being that it was the first time I was presenting as a middle school teacher. I had to write handouts from scratch - not that I didn't have models to follow, but I had nothing already ready that just needed a tweak or two. I had to create a PowerPoint presentation to show parents, mostly to keep myself on track, and not forget to say something important. I had to present to two different sets of parents (8th grade and 6th grade) at the same time, in three back to back sessions. And before all that, I had to introduce myself to every parent that attended the pre-meeting. With a microphone.

I had a cup of coffee at 5:00pm, which I think helped tremendously. Being at work from 6:30am-8:30pm, with a brief run to dinner with a few other teachers, is very wearing.  But apparently I didn't present as tired. I was told parents in the pre-meeting were happy to have teacher who is excited and passionate about middle school humanities, that I appeared to be really enthusiastic during the third session, and that I seem to be a "college track" teacher. I'm not quite sure what that means, but I'm pretty sure it was meant as a high compliment.

I began each session with a joke. I projected a slide of basic professional info about myself - where I got my degrees, how long I've been teaching, where, and at what grade levels. I got my Bachelor's from U.C. Davis, so I opened with, "I got my Bachelor's from U.C. Davis, don't hate me because I'm originally from California." The next slide had pictures of my family, including one of my boys standing next to the 12-angled stone (discovered by my Dad's uncle) in a wall in Cuzco, Peru. I told these parents, the most ethnically diverse I've ever presented to at Curriculum Night, "Soy media peruana, pero no hablo español muy bien." Both lines got a laugh. I'm sure I won't have any problem working with these parents... at least not the ones that showed up and heard me talk about when, where, and how student work should be turned in. "If they tell you they didn't know where to turn something in or that they didn't know something was collected, they are lying to you."

I had all the sixth and eighth graders work to create my newest display. I led a discussion about what makes a great leader, and each class came up with their own definition, which students had to copy onto a worksheet. Then they were asked to name three "great leaders" known outside their immediate community. Then they wrote a short explanation, that connected back to the class definition, of what makes each one a great leader. Finally, they had to find a quote from one of these leaders and put it on a document in a fun font and sized to take up the entire page, being sure to attribute the words to the great leader who spoke them. It was a great activity to start off the year, and I was able to cover a wall with work generated by students in time for Curriculum Night.

I hope the energy carries forward into the remainder of the school year, and that I can replicate the same enthusiasm and connection to parents at next year's Curriculum Night.

First Week Interactions

How we were greeted the first morning.

The first week of school is officially behind me. As always it's been a long week, and my back, legs, and voice are all sore. It was crazy, chaotic, and I am not yet used to my new schedule. But I can genuinely say that I am enjoying my new co-workers and am happy to be in this building.

I had some fun/funny interactions this week:

When the middle school teachers were filling me in on the rules and expectations that were going to be presented to the students:

Me: And telling them the expectation is their warning. They don't need another one if they break the rule.

Fellow teacher: I like how strict you are!

A seventh grade student came to introduce herself to me even though I don't teach seventh grade. As she was eyeing the Harry Potter book ends that are on either end of the series she asked, "Do you like Harry Potter?" I motioned to the corner where I have five Albus Dumbledore quotes on display and she responded, "That's a yes!"

8th grade student A: Are your outfits always going to be so color coordinated?

Student B: Yeah, your earrings, even your eyeshadow and toenails match.

Me: Probably not every day.

Student A: You even have purple in your hair!

Student B: You got it going on!

Student A (singing): Stacy's Mom has got it going on.

The next day:

Student A: You said you wouldn't always be so color coordinated. I feel lied to.

Me: It's only the third day of school.

Student A: But it's been every day!

8th grade student (working on a first day getting to know you worksheet): How do you spell             ?"

Me: It doesn't matter. Get all the sounds in there and I'll know what you mean.

Student: You are my favorite teacher ever!

The year is off to a great start! I can't wait to see what next week brings.

'Twas the Weekend Before the Start of School

I live and work where most schools still don't begin a new year until after Labor Day. My new students will arrive for their first day tomorrow (Tuesday), and my own kids don't have their first day until Thursday.

As one of eight (nine if you count the principal) new staff members in the building, I had an extra meeting the first week of the school.  I sat next to the new school counselor. My new school has a full time school counselor! That is exciting enough, as I have never worked in a building where this was true. But she also has two years of experience working for social services and two years building a positive culture back into a school where students had been told there were "no rules". She has a solid plan for how to help social emotional learning in the building, and is going to be teaching an advisory class once a week to every middle schooler. This is an amazing amount of support that I've never had on the social emotional side of working with kids. I like to think I've done more than okay with it on my own, but I can't wait to see what's possible with all of the above in place.

Before and after the meetings scheduled for last week I put together my new space, and tried to get to know a few of my new colleagues. I am proud of my new space and how it came together, although I am a little concerned that I might walk in tomorrow morning to find literary device posters or positive character trait adjectives all over the floor... Both of which needed re-affixing over the past week. I finally started using larger than what I thought were necessary strips of gaff tape. 

Ah gaff tape... I had forgotten how amazingly useful gaff tape is. I used the stuff regularly back in college when I worked for the university's theatre department. It holds beautifully and comes off clean, with no residue. In theatre it's used to hold down cables for the duration of a show.  When the wrong tape is used, say duct tape, coiling the cables during the strike, is annoyingly sticky. When one of my new co-workers told me we have to use gaff tape on the painted walls so the paint won't peel off, it was an epiphany. Really, why on earth had I never thought to use it in my classroom before now? But I digress...

I came home on Friday and made a list of everything I needed to accomplish this weekend. I tackled the syllabi first. I needed three - one for sixth grade ELA, one for eight grade ELA, and one for eighth grade history. 

Several threads about syllabi had come through the teacher groups I've joined on Facebook, so I did a search, and quickly found links to editable infographic syllabi. Since I'm new to this role, and didn't have a model of what previous teachers have handed out, I decided less is more. I also know that no one really wants to read paragraphs and paragraphs of information about my classes; the best I can hope for is a solid skim from students or parents who know they *should* read it, but get distracted from reading it closely. Infographic seemed like the best format. I started editing one of the versions I had downloaded from Teacher Pay Teachers, but wasn't totally happy with a quote that was not editable: "If you want to learn no one can stop you, if  you don't want to try no one can help you." The words were in quotation marks, but not attributed to anyone, and I didn't want one of the first impressions I was giving students and parents to include the words "no one can help you." The negative connotation I felt upon reading it was not something I wanted to pass on. I didn't like the pictures as well on the second one I downloaded. Noticing both of the downloads were created in PowerPoint, I started playing around and discovered it was easy and fun to create my own infographic syllabus. I spent more time than necessary tweaking my syllabi, but I loved every minute of it, and get a little thrill of excitement looking at the printed copies I have ready to handout. I have also saved them as .pdf files for uploading to the school's website when I get access.  

I was so proud of my first syllabus that I posted a .pdf of it to one of my teacher groups on Facebook and immediately got requests from teachers wanting to buy an editable version. It was still quite difficult to edit, as the pictures were not static, and I promised them I would look into fixing it up for others to edit sometime after school started. But I was having so much fun playing around with my syllabi that I took the time to figure out how to make all the pictures one background image, and posted it to TpT for $.95. Supposedly I can do one better, and make the pictures part of a "master slide" so they can't accidentally be deleted, but I haven't figured that part out yet... so I'll have to upload a revision when I get that done, because people have already started to purchase it.

I moved on to writing out lesson plans for the first week of school, gathering documents I had previously created, and creating new ones for use during the first week. I think I've used a whole ream of paper for the first week!  I made a student schedule to hand out to my homeroom kids.  I found a great list of questions to ask on the first day of school and created a list of questions to rotate on the chalkboard in the back of my room ala #parkwaycares. 

I'm as ready as I can be without going into school to do the three things I want to do there before the kids walk in: put student names on planners, label the turn in slots with numbers, and write up the first question on the chalkboard in the back with my nifty new chalkboard markers. 

This is when the nervous energy kicks in for me. I'm ready, but there's still time to do more! That's why I'm blogging this morning. Maybe I'll find time to write a poem or two later today. "'Twas the Night Before the Start of School" could become a poem title, right?