To say that I successfully survived the first quarter of the school year would be like giving someone credit for having invented walking just because she knows how to take some steps. I made it to November mainly by not completely goofing, and at least in general, giving the aura of someone who knows what they are doing and why on a daily basis. I’m being honest. I think that’s hard for a first-year teacher to be. Especially since I seem to be surrounded by a building full of people who, if not in fact, at least in appearance, seem to have much more of a handle on things than I can ever hope to have. I’m still amazed when students say something about what we had learned the month before in true and correct context, or bring up a story we’ve read as a connection, as if it’s a miracle of nature that something of value has ever occurred in those four walls that I call my classroom. I’m still baffled by it.
I’ve realized just in this past week that the corners of my classroom, especially the corner behind my desk, are beginning to look like they’ve grown model sized cities, complete with skyscraper high paper piles and walls of binders (many of which I’ve forgotten the exact contents). Add to that my unfortunate plant, which thankfully a student has taken upon herself to manage for me unrequested, mostly because she noticed one day that I had forgotten to water it since let’s say the first week of October, though it could have very well have been September when I last remembered it was there. I try not to see that as being symbolic of my classroom in general; I’d like to imagine the reason for my piles and life-supported plant have more to do with how much more attention I’ve been trying to pay to the other living things that happen to wander in and out of my life daily, than with the fact that I’ve forgotten what the words, “has it all together” actually mean.
Also, and again I don’t take this as being a sign of my ineptitude, but I feel as though I’m constantly running around in between periods trying to paste up holes (not literally, my classroom is quite sound), reconfigure lessons and get the right papers and emails to the right place and people before the next bell rings. Only to breath deeply and start again. When I get a minute to just take everything in, I almost have a hard time believing it. It’s as though someone else, has somehow or other been keeping things together for me when I wasn’t looking.
Even with the piles and running around, I guess is what I’m saying, it’s been kind of amazing to see things sort of come together. I, in no way, feel so overwhelmed that I can’t imagine getting through another quarter, or even another quarter after that. I guess I imagined that my first year was going to be painful, as in horrifically painful with not a moment to breath. I imagined that the horror stories would eventually all come true, and that absolutely nothing would go right. Organized chaos, in comparison to that picture, seems kind of nice, almost just as it should be.
Some really great similes and metaphors got written this week, but so did some horrible ones.
I don’t know how many times I read about something going as fast as a cheetah. Are cheetahs the universal animal of choice for quickness? Where are they getting this from? And why are clouds always marshmallows or fluffy pillows? I can almost see the elementary worksheet. It says creating a simile on the top, and it has some sort of a picture of a cheetah and a boy running, or a pillow shaped cloud. I want to erase their memories of these connections, somehow.
My favorite piece of writing this week was written by a boy who wrote about his notebook falling down the stairs. His binder exploded open on impact with the final step, and papers oozed out like blood from an open wound. The binder rings broke away like shrapnel flying through the air, hitting anything in their way. It was absolutely the best thing. There were others too who surprised me with what they ended up with in terms of description.
How do I get more students to make those connections and not just the marshmallow clouds and fast as cheetah run to the bus stop connections? Do I ban generic similes and metaphors, or should I be content enough in knowing that they’ve added some sort of description to their writing?
I guess I’ll just keep sharing examples of unique description and hope they move away from bland at some point.
I’ve written before about the tricky double-edged sword that is school progress reports, and I still struggle with their usefulness. On the one hand they are a great way for parents to stay informed about student progress, at least in a limited way. You can argue that the uber-scheduled family just doesn’t have the time or energy to stay up to date on how their child is doing in school or what they are actually learning about on a weekly basis. On the other hand, if it takes a sheet of paper with a list of grades to inform a parent that their child is already close to failing in the first month of the school year, than who has dropped the ball: the student, the teacher, the parent?
The focus is also too strongly placed on student grades rather than on what a child has gained or not gained from their journey thus far in 6th grade. A student could walk home with a list of A grades having learned close to nothing. The parent is informed about little more than the fact that their child has handed/or not handed in valid work, that he/she has participated (or not participated) in some designated way in classes, and that he/she has either passed or failed tests, quizzes, projects, or written assessments.
My struggle with progress reports is this focus. The information it provides is so limited that it is almost useless, and yet I know there are parents who will take it very seriously. I cringe to think of any student who will come home with B’s and C’s, if not lower grades, on their progress reports only to be haggled by parents about their lack of effort, or lectured about what privileges will be removed until they can raise their standing.
When did “progress” ever start at the top? When did learning ever come without mistakes and uncertainties?
I encourage parents to use progress reports as the roughest of guides: if their child is failing they should of course find out why (if they haven’t already), but otherwise they should set it aside, throw it out even. The greatest indicator of a child’s progress won’t be found there. They will undoubtedly gain more from a few solid conversations with their child about what they are learning, what they’re having trouble with–academically or socially, and what they wish they could learn more about or do this year in any or all of their subjects.
It looks like I didn’t get the whole story yesterday. Today we had a quick review of both types of conflict and I was surprised to hear students bringing up things that other people had written/drawn on the board. In one class when I did a quick review of internal conflict students mentioned the drawing one student had done with a person pulling hair out of his head because he’s so torn on what to do he’s going crazy. This had brought out a laugh yesterday when we reviewed the board, as had the person with steam shooting out of his/her ears, and it brought out another laugh today in the remembering. Another student mentioned a connection that a student had made between internal conflict and Jekyll and Hyde, which I thought was interesting, but I didn’t think it had made a lasting impression. Most students didn’t know the Jekyll and Hyde story, so I let the student share the story with the class. It looks like the story stuck.
The value of chalk talk took a day of ruminating to come to the surface.
We did a “chalk talk” today in class, actually in this case it was a “marker talk” because I had them write on paper so I could have some sort of hard copy of what sorts of things students added. And to be honest it only went so so. I was expecting it to go much better, but it is the first time we did anything like that, so I’ll call it a work in progress. To be fair, I might have left it a little too open ended, it may work better next time if the students have questions before hand that I can add to the poster, making it more of a focused writing activity than I had originally hoped for, but also maybe more productive. Maybe at some point I’ll try it again with certain questions that I know will draw a bit of debate between students…a “what would you do in this situation” sort of a question.
It was hard to get the “write it, don’t say it,” rule down with several of the classes. Not that I don’t want them to talk, but this was an opportunity for the less vocal students to share. And an opportunity for them to write, obviously. Unfortunately, it was still the more vocal students who were most willing to add to the poster. I also got a lot of repetitive comments on each poster, even after reminding students to look at what others had written before adding their own thinking. Maybe I should have put a variety of posters around the room, and had students walk in small groups around the room and do it that way? Maybe I could have had them stop, read what the previous group had written, then add? I guess there are many things I could have done differently. Leaving it as a whole class activity worked against me this time. Students weren’t taking the time to read what others had written, or to add to what others had already written…sort of eliminating one of the goals of written discussions.
I’ve been having some success with students working in groups of three of four, more so when I randomly pick groups literally out of a pile, than the one time I decided to let them choose on their own. I’m always worried that when I have them choose groups there will always be those one or two kids that don’t fit into any group and then I have to play mom and gently push them into a group, reminding the already semi-formed group that one more person is always better. That always for some reason makes me feel very uncomfortable for the student. I’d much rather just randomly select groups so there isn’t that 30 second span of time when some poor kid is kinda looking around confused and kinda upset that no one bothered to look in his direction when group time came. I’m much too empathetic to those sorts of situations and the feelings they inevitably bring up.
Anyway, some great things came up about “conflict” today. We were talking about internal and external conflict in a story, and when we were looking over our poster–where students had written everything they could think of, connect with themselves, or draw about conflict– I commented on the fact that most people focused on external conflicts, things for the most part outside of their control: War, Bullying, Fighting, Arguments…or the Nature/Weather type conflicts. Very few people had mentioned the sort of the inner turmoil type of conflict that we all experience, and that many characters experience. This is something to talk about next time. In fact, most of the novels we are reading have some sort of inner conflict, especially the social action novels, so I’m sure we’ll be talking about this a great deal.
“Chalk Talk”, I haven’t given up on you just yet, but definitely need to rework you a little before I use you again.
I’m sure I’m not unique in having a variety of wants that are often fighting for my time and attention, that are even working against each other more often than not. That’s definitely often true of my weekends.
On the one hand, I want to have the opportunity to have a full weekend not bombarded by thoughts of what I’m going to be doing in the week ahead. On the other hand, I want to have a well planned week, so that I’m not scrambling every night to plan, and so that I know, in a general sense, what I hope to accomplish with students before the week ends. Even if we don’t necessarily get there, or even if I mid-week realize that we’re aiming for the wrong goals and we try for something different; it’s something with which I want to start the week because it’s kind of hard to reevaluate, when you’re not sure what you’re expecting in the first place.
This weekend I went out of town…out of state even. And it was nice, because I know that it’s easy for me to fall into 24/7 nagging thoughts about what I need to do next. I’ve realized that teachers are expected to have extraordinary organizational powers, but that shutting off for a day, though difficult, is important. I can’t say that in that entire day/night span I at no point thought about what the week ahead would hold, but I think I did do a good job of not letting it take over. Now that I’m back home, I can spend time getting ready for the week without thinking about what I’m missing out on, or where I could be instead.
It’s really a win win this weekend.
The week ahead is I think the most important one so far. I think I’ve done a fairly good job of creating classroom expectations, and all that good stuff, but I think for the most part the kids are just following along and hoping they’re doing it right.
One thing I’ve done a not so good job with is the start of classes…especially the 20 minute class periods that I have all in a row. One 20 minute class ends, in comes another group; that class ends, in comes another group. For the first group, I’ve already seen them first thing in the morning for 45 minutes, so it’s not so bad. But the other groups are seeing me for the first time for a quick in and out. I know changing classes is new for these students and I want transitioning into English class to be as simple and straightforward as possible. I think it’s going to take ME half the year to get these 20 minute periods down. So, how do I get the kids to get used to it? How do I get used to it?
The hardest class for me has been the group I see once in the morning for 20 minutes and then don’t see again until the almost end of the day. That group poses several challenges. The first challenge is that the space between both periods is so large, making it more difficult to continue something we’ve started. The second challenge is that their longest class period with me comes at the end of the day….always the most challenging time of the day in terms of energy and attention levels. The third challenge is that even though this is my smallest class, they are also seem to be the most quiet, the least willing to risk sharing in front of their peers. Getting them to open up and share is going to take something a little extra.
This week I think I’m going to work on those two things: Making the transition into English class better for myself and the students and working on making my smallest group more comfortable with sharing.
I’m not going to lie–I was nervous my first week. Confident, but nervous. I guess it’s possible to be both in some ways. I mean I was confident that the week would go smoothly, but nervous about getting papers mixed up (so much paper the first week), names mixed up, locations mixed up. I was confident about the big picture…nervous about the details. That hasn’t really changed in the second week.
There are students in my classes who I can instantly name…there are others whose names still elude me, even when they are simple as an Emma or a Katie…even when they are much harder names than those. It bothers me that I can’t remember because I’m pretty big on names–remembering them and using them. We’ve done the getting to know you stuff, and I hope that’s made everyone semi-comfortable with English class, but I know names are the next step.
So far, I’ve been writing with my students. Everything they’ve done, I’ve done along-side them. I’m not sure if I can keep that up, but I hope I can…or at least I’m going to try my best to continue that. I don’t want the class to be a “you write, I correct” type of class. I want it to be a writer’s workshop type of class, or as close to that as I can manage with an odd split schedule. Today the class had a lot of fun revising my poem. Thanks to my camera projector they were able to do that without me having to re-write the whole poem on the board, and without my making a transparency. In the meantime, I was showing them how to use proofreading marks, add details, and add more description to my intentionally bland poem. (And the majority of kids love to write on the board!) Hopefully, that willingness to revise will carry over to when they work on revising their own poems later in the week. I’m not really worried about grammar and spelling at this point, which I think was a huge shock to them. I’m more interested in having them see writing as a process, something they can play with and manipulate, more then anything else at this point.
Somehow, somewhere, we’re going to have to talk about reading as well. Besides independent reading books they’re choosing and reading on their own, we haven’t started reading anything together as a class. I don’t think that’s going to happen until next week.
One thing at a time.
I survived new teacher orientation.
I got to meet another newbie who’s teaching 8th grade english this year, unfortunately not in my building, but yay for technological communication!
My room is looking good, I must say…although that’s probably because it has yet to pass the- classroom full of students coming in and out- test.
I have some sort of organizational system in place for the massive amounts of paper…something I didn’t have the last time around, and came to regret mightily.
My activities are ready for the first three day week, and second 4 day week.
I’m feeling confident. (I almost wrote “pretty confident”, and then realized that would be an oxymoron of sorts ;0) )
I’m excited to get started.
I had such a incredibly relaxed day yesterday. I’ve been back and forth to school, and next week will be more of that, and the week after that more…until finally school starts and I’m on full-tilt. So, it was nice to just go out, no real plans, and not feel at all like there was a need to be somewhere and do something. It started out with my mom and I talking about how we had not been to L & J yet this year, and what a beautiful day it was.
So we made a very vague plan to take a drive and eat there for lunch, and then just see what the day would bring. On the way there we ran into a random local fair that we knew nothing about, and decided once we finished eating we would just stroll through and see what was being sold in the arts and crafts area. That’s always fun for me. I almost never buy anything, but I like to see what people can actually make with their hands when they have the time, creativity, and motivation to try. There were fun and funky magnets that I almost bought, but decided against it after touching almost every piece at least twice.(I should have bought at least one!)
More and more I’ll see things now and say, hmm…that might be nice for the classroom. I have to reign myself in or I’m very likely to spend my first paycheck on things more experienced teachers have realized are not really that important. Not that some decoration is not important, just going overboard is very easy(for me anyway), and there should be some time spent on function as well. Sixth grade classrooms are so much on the border line. High School teachers seem to care very little about what their classrooms look or feel like. Elementary school teachers spend a great deal of time on making their classes colorful and appealing. Middle school teachers are kind of 5o/50….some do and some don’t. I’m a bit selfish when it comes to what the classroom I’m in for most of the day looks and feels like– I’m as much thinking about myself and my own sanity as I am about the kids.
Anyway, after we walked through the fair, we saw a sign that said the farmer’s market in town just happens to be on Friday, and just 5 minutes from opening. So we went there. Bought a few things…including 2 fairly large cookies, and sat on a park bench until we got tired of eating and strolling and eating some more, and we made our way back home.
I have to say that not having any set in stone plan, besides what direction we were heading in, turned out great…though I’m very much aware it could have been otherwise. Note to self: more vaguely planned outings/days should be part of my future.
