It's all in the numbers

I'm convinced that having fewer students really makes a big difference in the classroom. I'm down to 26 students and the difference between 31 earlier in the year, and 27-28 more recently is noticeable. For one, there are fewer bodies to keep track of. For another, I now know all my students, I know their voices and can figure out who yelled out the obscenity when my back was turned and can figure out if they're playing with each other or about to fight, and can tell when they're lying or telling the truth (for the most part) so things are getting better.

For one, I'm able to do all the "student centered creative" lessons that I've read about in my classes. Today, after a field trip (yes another one, more on that later) I had my students write down what they learned on a post it note and then come up one by one and tell the class what they wrote and stick it on a poster. It sounds like a fairly simple idea, but when I tried similar things earlier in the year, it was disasterous. The pedagogical post-its became "kick me" signs, paper ball missles, or got used to pass notes instead of getting used for academics. When students got up to post their note, others would heckle, or yell out unrelated requests about needing to go to the bathroom or asking if there was an assembly on Friday. Basically, I would try the lesson, but it would end after only one or two students posted their notes and I would have to collect the notes and post them myself. Not really a "student-centered" lesson. But today, we had success. Several students came up to post a note, we were only interupted 6 times during the lesson, and we ended up with a poster reflecting some learning. Only 19 students, but a successful day.

In a lot of ways, the year is getting easier. One of the reasons, I think, apart from the mad bonding that's been occuring between me and my students, is that we've been going on field trips. Lots and lots of field trips. Last week we went on two--Tuesday to Akeelah and Wednesday to the Field Museum. This week we had one--to a health sciences musuem. Next week, there is no school Monday, and we have a trip to the Shedd Aquarium on Tuesday and a trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo and a picnic on that Friday. No wonder things feel easier--we're rarely in school!

At first I was really critical of this plan--I've never heard of people going on so many field trips in such a short span of time--but I've seen that its been really good for our students. They haven't had recess all year and so they've been hungry for opportunities for social interaction and the chance to play in a time slot longer than our 20 minute lunch break. They're now a lot calmer during class because they've had, and know they will have, the chance to have fun with each other and relax.

Its also been really good for teaching them about the world. We just finished a unit on the Holocaust--and before the unit only 1 student had heard of Hitler and almost no one knew what it meant to be Jewish. But last Wedneday, on the bus to the Field Musuem, my students called out excitedly, "Ms. D we see Jews!" Being a little startled, I asked them what they meant, and they said they saw a bus with a star of David. Not wanting to squelch their excitement, but seeing this as a good "teachable moment" to talk about race, ethnicity, and difference, I explained that probably people wouldn't like them to call that out. They kind of said, "oh, okay" but a few minutes later got a better lesson in why they should be more sensitive, when a few students in a class of white students from another school were staring wide-eyed at my students. "Ms. D, why are they staring?" I explained that just like my students didn't see many white people or Jewish people on a daily basis, these students probably didn't see too many African American students on a daily basis. So, they're learning about race and identity and how to talk about it--perhaps in baby steps, but still moving forward.

I feel like I could write forever about all this! (But I won't). The highlight from today--we went to the Health Center and none of my parent chaperones showed up so my dad and my sister came at the last minute to chaperone the trip. My students loved getting to meet their teacher's "daddy and sister" and the boys especially loved being in the "men's group" and getting to do all the activities boys especially like, like crawling through pitch black mazes and learning about the science of burping (though the girls all enjoyed these same things too=). So the day ended up well--a great trip and a successful lesson at the end of it.

Akeelah and the Bee

I'm not generally one to post about movies..but, wow. This movie is amazing. We took 16 classes from our school to see the movie today--the whole theater was packed with our students. I had expected a sort of feel-good-this-is-a-nice-change-of-pace sort of movie, one that I was glad to see with with my students, but might not see otherwise. What I didn't expect was to laugh, and cry and watch my students laugh, cry, cheer and then become inspired to learn how to spell.

The premise of the movie--a middle school student from Crenshaw in LA who is naturally good at spelling, Akeelah, goes to the regional bee and then the state bee, despite issues at home with her mom not wanting her to participate and several obstacles along the way. One of those is that she's black and almost everyone she sees on the spelling bee videos is white--and she gets teased for knowing how to spell from kids at school. The story is about her preparing for the spelling bees and learning she can do more than she thought at first.

My students LOVED the film. I loved the film. It was awesome to see a main character that's relatable (sp?) to them. Case in point--at the beginning of the movie, before they found out where Crenshaw was, I heard a few people say, "I think that's on the south side of Chicago." And it was cool to see their reactions, and see how they rooted for Akeelah and then talked about making a movie about themselves "Shawan and the Bee" or "Deandre and the Bee." I haven't seen them that interested in school in a while.

In the movie there is a great quote from a Nelson Mandella speech that just blew me away, about fear:

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate,but that we are powerful beyond measure.It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?Actually, who are you not to be?You are a child of God.Your playing small does not serve the world.There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.It is not just in some; it is in everyone.And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously giveother people permission to do the same.As we are liberated from our fear,our presence automatically liberates others.

That's it for today...just random thoughts. Any thoughts on your side??

Is it okay to lie?

That was the prompt for a recent journaling assignment for my class. Of course the responses for this assignment were amazing. One was hilarious:

"No, but if it is to make sure someone feel better it is sometimes okay life if a woman was preganant and she asked how does she look and a man says honey you look great your glowing but if he would have said she looks like a cow it would have hurt her feelings."

There are some days that I love sixth graders in all their unfiltered glory.

I've been learning a lot recently. Things like, my students really respond well to being called honey. They realize that I'm here to help and I care about them. Also, that my class, who has been horrible in "line" in the hallway really cares about respect. And if I talk to them about walking in the hallway correctly in terms of earning peoples' respect, they respond. So there's that. Two good things from the last two weeks.

justice

Today I got a random-looking piece of mail that said "important legal matters" on the outside, which of course made me curious, and a bit afraid. The first thought that ran through my head was, shoot, someone is sueing me. (Its not uncomon for students in my school to tell their teachers they will sue. So far I haven't heard of anyone following through).

But then I realized that something like that would probably come in an important-looking envelope with fifteen last names in the return address. This was a glorified pamphlet with a "Claims Adjustor" in the return address, reminding me of the many credit card offers and "free" trips to the Bahamas that I win everyday. But on the off-chance that it actually was someone sueing me or someone offering me the big bucks, I opened it.

It turns out that there is a class-action lawsuit against Epson, the printer and ink-cartridge company. Having reading lots and lots of John Grisham novels I feel like I know something about class action lawsuits and what I know about them leaves a bad taste in my mouth (lots of lawyers getting rich on sketchy premises). However, Epson also leaves a bad taste in my mouth, so I felt it might be justified. The reason that Epson leaves a bad taste in my mouth is that first, my printer that I paid pretty good money for, stopped working after about two months. Second, the printer is really bad with ink conservation. After printing about 40 pages, the printer tells me the ink is all gone. When I shake the cartridge I can tell that there is still lots of ink in there, but the printer refused to print and you have to get a new cartridge. Apparently, lots of other people were having the same problem and decided to take the matter to court.

So now, I am the recipient of a $40 credit on Epson's online store, that or $20 in cash and a $25 credit for the online store. Not exactly the big bucks, but it does make me feel a little bit better. Epson made ink-guzzling printers to make us buy more and more cartridges and something is going done. Maybe justice is a strong word for something involving printers. Maybe not.

As always, I haven't posted for a while because the last few weeks have been a whirlwind. I had spring break two weeks ago, which was a much-welcomed chance to rest and recharge. I went to Iowa with Dave for an engagement party in his hometown and it was wonderful. Dave comes from a small town, or at least what I would consider a small town. There are 30,000 people, the population of the neighborhood I grew up in, and the kind of place where his dad still hangs out with his best friend from first grade (isn't that awesome?). Apparently its one of the five largest cities in Iowa. Semantics aside, its small, and cute, and the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, or at least a lot of everyones. I got to meet neighbors, golf buddies, former teachers, former neighbors, hair stylists, and buddies from various community organizations.

I also got to see pictures and read old Christmas letters. And both are amazingly precious. You see, Dave's mom wrote the letter for many years, and then somewhere in his high school years, she decided that she had written the letters long enough and someone else needed to step up to the plate. So Dave volunteered. And when he did, the letters took on a new twist. In addition to family vacations and individuals achievements, letter recipients learned of the passing of Kurt Cobain. They got a top five list of the best movies of the year and a recommendation for albums they should buy. They were asked to send their spare pennies to the "Dave Sandell college fund" and did. And probably the most amazing thing to me is that his parents read the letters in all their unconventionality and sent them. I have a lot of respect for that. Giving your kids creative freedom like that takes a lot of guts, and a lot of love. Similar to the courage my own parents must have had when they sent me to school wearing three different types of plaid because I dressed myself and I insisted that it matched.

Those are a few of the teachable moments from the past few weeks. More to come.

Math is everywhere!

Ok, I'm officially a nerd. For my grad school class on mathematics teaching methods I had to make a folder of articles from the newspaper and magazines about math. When I first heard about the assignment I thought it was sort of lame, blew it off, and procrastinated working on it until the night before. But now that I've done it, I'm really excited. I just found ten articles and blurbs from the paper about math. I found graphs about the weather in March, graphs about the auto industry in China, and an advertisement that can demonstrate lines of symmetry, to name a few...and I think that its really neat that math really is everywhere and its really useful in our lives.

On the classroom front, I had ten students absent today, and as much as I might be ashamed to admit it, it was kind of nice. I finally was able to teach lessons and students actually LEARNED! I did a read aloud out of Artemis Fowl, a science fiction book about a 12-year old genius who dabbles in high-tech illegal activities with help from friends in the fairy world. It sounds weird when you hear about it, but it was one of those books I could barely put down when I read it. And the students loved it! They were actually telling each other to be quiet so that they could hear. We also started a project writing character sketches, which I'm excited about because students are buying in because they can write about anyone they want to write about and they get to choose their own format. I told them they could write an essay, poem, rap, or even spoken word. I'm looking forward to what they write.

I'm also on a mission to reduce negative language, hitting, and disrespect and its going okay. I made student contracts today--basically saying the need to follow the rules, or accept the consequences if they want to go on our class trip. I've had trouble with finding meaninful consequences--I've tried in class punishments and detention, but they don't work too well when parents don't make their kids come to detention. My new system is a mixture of bribery and consequences. I was kind of against bribery at the beginning of the year, but if Starburst and raffle tickets bring order to the classroom, so be it.

Well that's all for today. I've had more late night steam because of daylight savings time, but I need to hit the sack to be ready for tomorrow...

Prayer rocks

Its been a while since I've posted...its been a busy month. Being engaged is wonderful, but what I didn't quite realize is that it comes with a whole bunch of planning that needs to be done. And teaching has not been a cake walk recently, so I've been somewhat out of touch because of that.

But today was a great day and I wanted to write about it. It didn't start out as a great day, in fact it was set up to be a really crummy day. I couldn't sleep at all last night because I have this big project due in a grad school class Monday and I had planning and grading and all that to do as well. Plus, I was sick most of last week and when I did make it back Friday it was somewhat chaotic. So I dreamt of children throwing things and yelling and other weird things and I didn't get much sleep in. This morning, the last thing that I wanted to do was get up and go to church. I wanted to stay in my pajamas and watch silly teen movies all day and work on my lap top.

Somewhere around 10 am (when church starts) I realized that I could stay at home and work myself into a ragged mess worrying, or I could go to church, sit with my friends and have people to pray with. I chose the latter, made it to church late, but because its also the first day of daylight savings time I sort of fit in and in some ways was early. After the service some friends prayed with me. And it was one of the most profound experiences I've had in a while. It wasn't that they said anything fancy, it was that as they prayed the power of God entered into my life in a more real way. The stress and anger and bitterness started melting away and I could breathe again. Then, this afternoon when I got home, instead of my usual Sunday pattern of trying to get stuff done but really accomplishing nothing, I got alot done! I finished my teaching portfolio, I wrote a grant application for a project for my classroom, and wrote a letter to the parents. It was a very productive afternoon, and I wasn't stressed out as much.

So the things that I've learned today is that prayer works, God is awesome, and having friends to pray with is one of the most amazing gifts you can get.

Engaged!

It's been a crazy week...I got engaged on Saturday to the absolutely wonderful Dave Sandell and was supremely happy despite sad events from the week before.

God has been so good--thank you to everyone who has been praying for my class since Clay died. There has been a definate change in the room. And on Friday the students created small memorials with pictures and poems...and I think that helped them a lot.

Today I went to the funeral. It was packed with probably about 200 people--and it was neat to see the outpouring of love for the family...don't really have more words to put to it.

And in the meantime...a new chapter is beginning...

Sad Day

I guess you hope that this never happens...losing a student. Butwe live in a fallen world.

Today I got to school and found out that a former student of mine had been stabbed to death earlier that morning. They're not quite sure who did it or how it happened (at 2 am)...and investigations are underway (for more info check out local news websites) He was in my class from September to October and then transferred to another school. He was probably the most challenging student I've had, pushing me to the limit in a lot of areas. But he was a kid. Only 11, and it feels awful to know that he's gone.

It makes me realize even more the harsh reality that my students live in. Needless to say, today was a rough day. Generally, days can be hard with students not paying attention/getting into it with each other. But today emotions were running especially high.

Right now I'm still a little stunned...and trying to figure out how to meet my students in all of this.

Discipline

On Wednesday I nearly quit. Why you might ask? Despite the fact that the year has been going swimmingly, Wednesday was the hair that almost broke this camel's back.

After science I was bringing my class through the hallway at the same time that the three other sixth grade classes were bringing their students through the hallway. A student from another class ran through the hall, hit one of my students, and they got into a fight. Then one of my students goes after the first kid and another fight breaks out. I try to break it up with the help of another teacher, and finally two security guards break up the second fight and bring the students downstairs to the dean's office. Five minutes later the two students come walking down the hall, saying that everything's okay.

Let me recap. There were two separate, full-on-rolling-on-the-floor fist fights and no action was taken. It was enough to drive me crazy.

I realized this kind of stuff happens all the time. But this time, I realized it had to stop. I had just come back from a meeting with one of the boy's parents in which she said that her son said he played around in school because he could get away with it. And she was right. So I took down the students from my class who were involved. The dean had heard that it was a classroom on classroom fight (even if it were does that make it okay?) I had to explain everything that happened and basically advocate for some sort of punishment. I left frustrated, but relieved that something was happening.

But at the end of the week not much had changed. I had sent letters home with both boys. Neither parent came. One mother's phone number had changed (since the day before). The other mother said she got the letter but that she was tired of coming up to the school. One student was recommended for in-school suspension (which is supposed start Tuesday). He was already supposed to be there this last Monday but they kept putting off the start of in-school (or the Focus Learning Center as we like to call it). Nothing has happened with the other student whose mother would not come up. What is frustrating about this despite that fact that students are getting away with fighting in school when they should be learning, is that, if their mother's had come, the students would be suspended. Because the mother didn't come, they get off scott free. It doesn't make sense.

And another hard things is realizing that what my students really need most is structure. But if I'm unable to provide significant consequences for big things like fighting, then off course things are going to get chaotic. And that doesn't serve the rest of my students either.

I find out later that that same day a seventh grade teacher with several years of experience leaves in the middle of the day because she's tired of the lack of discipline. She doesn't come back the next day or the next and no one knows is she's officially quit or not.

So after all this (and another situation with a fellow teacher getting threatened) I felt pretty justified in quitting if I needed to. I'm doing the best I can but have no support from the school. The school is not taking a stand in discipline and its making the school chaotic. In a staff meeting, instead of discussing wasy to improve things, our principal chastises teachers on Friday for their lack of classroom management.

I call up my TFA program director and tell her I'm on the verge of quitting. I don't want to, but I need some help. I end up talking to her for 45 minutes in which she doesn't give a lot of answers, but asks some good questions, including:

"What would you do if nothing changes on the school level? "

What would I do? I don't know. Actually, I do: stick it out. I realized that there's very little I can do to change the school. Sure I can say that this is an unreasonable situation and that I am completely unprepared to be in it. Its not fair--to my students or to me. But it is what it is. My quitting is certainly not going to make anything better.

Then today I talked to a fellow corps member at another school. Believe it or not her situation is probably worse. 34 third graders in a class, no consequences from the school for fighting. Two students pushed the principal and nothing happened. Wow. It really put things in perspective for me. No, these situations are not right and should we have to deal with them as teachers? Probably not. On the flip side, its not fair to these students either. I feel like there are lots of system-wide things that need to change and also if I (or other new teachers) were amazing classroom motivators, things would probably change. But for the time being I need to focus on planning the best lessons I can, calling the parents who do care, pushing ahead, and praying. Actually, make that lots of praying. Perhaps this summer there will be more time for a major re-haul of my classroom, and time to re-evaluate my placement.

Calling mom (or grandma or auntie)

So...I'm posting twice in the same day, a way to make up for lost time and also to break it up. Maybe a blogger faux pas, but oh well...

I promised to write about my school before...I teach in a predominately African-American school on the west side. Most of the students come from low income households, many living in a single parent household or living with a relative (aunt, grandmother, grandfather) who is not their biological mom or dad. And culturally, my students and I come from very different backgrounds. When I was in grade school, if a teacher told me that my behavior made my parents look bad, I wouldn't have cared a bit. But for my students, the strongest statement I can make about their behavior, good or bad, is that it reflects on the way they were raised. And they don't want to make their parents look bad. For that reason, parent phone calls have been a pretty effective classroom management technique.

Yesterday, I found out just how effective parent phone calles could be. A student "Derek" was messing around in line on the way to computer. At first I was going to pull him out of his computer class, but let him fix his behavior and have a second chance. When he got back in line he started messing around right away, so he lost his computer time. He came back to the class and had to write a letter of apology to his mom. The letter kept getting longer and longer because he wanted to complain and talk back. Eventualy it was ridiculous, he had to write six pages and he was still messing around. So I called his mom.

Derek didn't like that. After I got off the phone he said, "Ms. D, you're always calling my mom. Why can't I call your mom?" "Well, do you want to call my mom." "Yeah," he said a bit defiantly. I immediately dialed my mom, at which point his eyes got big and I could see he didn't quite know what to do. As I said hello and told my mom what was going on, he actually closed his eyes and plugged his ears to avoid having to talk to my mom. But I made him talk. The conversation was short as the phone hit bad reception right after he started talking, but after that the damage was done. He was really sheepish and I think he was a bit freaked out realizing that I'm a real person with a real mom. For the rest of the day he did his work and he stopped messing around. And it definately gave me something to smile about.

Now, read on...

Understanding

After I posted "Rollercoaster" several people e-mailed and called to share their concern and sympathy...it was a hard week. Thanks to all of you I talked to. It was also amazing to me that several people who hadn't read the blog came up to me at church and said, "you know I was thinking about you a lot this week. How was your week?" Its incredible to me how God really provides for us when we need him, and I appreciate how he uses all of us to do his work.

Its been a while since I last posted, probably because these last two weeks have been a rollercoaster in their own right. But along the way have been some highlights. Two weeks ago we had our regional "walk through" where officials from the region came by to check that we had everything up on our walls and talked to our students to see what they were learning. It was a good day. Stressful, but good. That week I stayed really late, working on my room and planning lessons. And it paid off--when they came into my room we were doing guided reading the way the lit specialist had wanted and when they asked a student a question, she answered well. Earlier this week I saw my lit specialist and she gave me my second compliment of they year, "you did a good job." Short and sweet, but from her, it was a big deal.

Another plus is that I'm finally starting to understand my students...last week I was driving home and found myself angry, really angry. I realized that I've been angry for a while--angry with my students that they're not behaving, with my school for its lack of organization and discipline, and angry in general that things are so darn hard and it seems there's nothing I can do about it. I realized that if I was angry, my students probably were to. So the next day, I gave them a journaling assignment in the morning. "What makes you angry?" was the question. Here are some of the responses:

"What makes me angry is when some one come up to me and just say something out of order."

"When people grap me face. If hurt when people grab my face."

"What makes me angry is when somebody lie on me and do something I don't like I can't stand when someone hit me."

"Siting in the class and classmates disobeying the teacher, that's what make me angry. Can't get through a lesson in school without someone talking through it. What's what make me really angry."

"The stuff that makes me mad is ignorant kids that ain't got no sense. I'm talking about the kids that cuss outrageously wrong in front of adults. I mean I'm talking about the kids that want to fight for no reason. P.S. they want they but wooped, they aka P_____."

I realized that my students are alot like me, they get angry for the same reasons (and p.s. some of these were hilarious, I didn't edit them except to take out that last name=) They want to learn, they want to be respected. I also realized that they've been angry. Despite some spelling and grammatical errors, this is some of the best writing I've gotten. Almost all of my students remembered to restate the question in their answer and they stayed on topic. I realized they can do well when they care about what they're doing. My challenge now is to tap into what they care about.

Since that revelation, things have gotten a little better. My patience has expanded a little and I've been quicker to realize that maybe there is something bigger behind their misbehavior than mischief. My classroom is a work in progress, but at least they're progressing.

But even with that revelation things have been hard--this week brought up issues with students dealing with sexual abuse, domestic violence, ADHD, and violent behaviors and led to several meetings with the counselor, social worker, and parents. And a friend reminded me that many of these "battles" are spiritual and I need people praying for my students, the school, and myself. If you would like to join my prayer team by choosing a day of the week to pray, please shoot me an e-mail and I'd love to send you regular prayer updates.

Rollercoaster

Remember what I said about the first two weeks being Golden? In many ways this week was anything but. It was more like a rollercoaster...

On Monday, two people came to observe my classroom unannounced. Whereas the first two weeks had been going well, Monday was close to a disaster. Students weren't paying attention, and I had to constantly move students around the classroom and threaten to send them to an undesirable classroom in the school (A teacher I'll call Ms. K, who I'll talk about later). To make it worse, one teacher sat in the back discussing everything I was doing wrong in a voice loud enough for me to hear and incidentally, loud enough for my students. So not only was I having basic management issues, but now the students felt the right to question my competancy. When they left a student shouted out, "You're getting fired!" And it was all I could do to remain calm and not burst into tears.

Not only did I have the observation, but I had to meet with both of them later that day. In the meeting one asked if I knew anything about teaching reading and said some other harsh things about parents potentially needing to call the superindendent of schools. It was hard to hear, but ended much better as we came up with an action plan to improve instruction. So Monday was pretty awful.

But Monday night I worked my butt off planning, and came in excited on Tuesday. I brought in artifacts from China to help students to connect to a story on Chinatown, I had a fun math activity, and I was determined to have a better week. My lessons went well, and I felt great. But then I had a student write a threatening note about wanting to be a murderer...which nearly ended in a fight.

Wednesday, while I was tutoring a student after school, the student found a small, yellow plastic bag on the ledge of another student's desk. It was about one inch by one inch and had no other purpose than to hold drugs. After she found that, I looked in the students desk and discovered another bag, this one holding white residue and a few small rock-looking things. I brought it down to our dean of discipline who said it was probably residue from crack. He called the parent, and 15 minutes later the child was at school with the grandparent. The students denied everything and said it was planted on him. A conference with the parent was schedule for the next day.

Thursday, in the morning the dean of discipline was having conferences with both the "small plastic bag" student and the "murder note" student. Meanwhile I was being observed by my university supervisor (from my grad school). The morning wasn't perfect, but we had a decent vocabulary lesson. I met with my supervisor later and she said I had improved a lot from the beginning of the year and was making improvements. Yay!!

But later in the day, both the students who had met with the dean were sent back to my classroom. They decided that the "crack" was actually chalk (like writing on the board chalk) and he was given a two day suspension for lying and for having a look alike drug substance. But the suspension didn't start until the next day. The murder note student, who had tried to stab another student with a pair of scissors was sent back and said to only need personal counseling.

As you might expect, the afternoon turned somewhat disasterous. I was interupted while introducing a reading lesson when someone came to the door, which gave the murder note student and another student the chance to get into a brawl and made it difficult to have good lessons from there on out. Thursday ended up to be not the hottest day.

That's what I mean by rollercoaster--lots of ups and downs and up agains and down agains. In the course of the week, I was told I was both a horrible teacher and a wonderful teacher, I had a student threaten to murder another, another who brought what was either blackboard chalk or crack to school, and a number of smaller incidental issues thrown in along the way. There some great lessons and some bombs....and hopefully in there, a few teachable moments where they learned.

In upcoming posts: more about my school, for reals, and a little about "Ms. K."

Freestyling

Its been a while since the last post...I'm constantly thinking of post ideas, but then never feeling like I have time to write. So incidentally, when I have a paper due tomorrow and a bunch of lessons to plan, I find the time. Go figure.

Its been two weeks since we started school back up again. The first two weeks were GOLDEN. They were so quiet when they came back. Veteran teachers had said something about a difference after break, but I guess I didn't believe it--calming down after break? But it was true, my students entered and sat down in their seats and started doing their work without too much prodding. It was great--until today. Something clicked over the weekend and it was back to testing limits.

Some highlights from the last two weeks:
An Assembly--The first week back we had an assembly to kick off a tutoring program getting students reading for the ISATs (Big HUGE standardized test in March). They brought in a DJ from WGCI, one of Chicago's main R and B stations, a state congresswoman and some other influential people to speak. They played educational games, gave great talks about working hard in school, and then, had a freestyling contest. I remember assemblies being full of homemade constumes, celebrating a day from the "holiday of the month" club, or hearing my principal babble on. There was definately no freestyling going on. But here, they didn't even tell the kids why they were calling them up, they picked some students at random, gave them a topic, and they ran with it. Or at least most of them. A few of them reacted the way I would, take the microphone and put it as far from your mouth as possible and hope that if you were a persistent mumber, they'd leave you alone. But most were excited, and honestly, pretty good. It blew me away.

Paperclips- great documentary about how a small town learns about the Holocaust. Great movie and inspiring, especially if you're in education. A must see.

Okay folks, that's all for now....

I love my mom

For so many reasons...all of you who have met my mom would probably agree that she is a wonderful woman. But today, the reason I'm writing about her is a wonderful gift she gave me yesterday: organization.

Since I moved into my apartment in August, my room has been one chaotic, disorganized nightmare. I basically would just sleep there and spend as little time as possible in there. In the beginning I'd make it my goal every weekend to spend time cleaning it. But each time I would pretty much look at the mess, rearrange it, and then do my laundry. As you might expect, it just got worse and worse. Soon the goal got pushed off for various breaks and long weekends. Finally, when my roommate was out of town, I took to sleeping on the couch so I could avoid it and it became a WINTER BREAK goal.

Winter break came and started dwindling away. Everyday I'd look at the room but got so freaked out I couldn't start. So eventually, I called in the reserves: my mom. My mom is a great person to call on for help in this situation because she has overcome several organizational hurdles as one might find while raising six children. And, in the course of that she's read a number of organizational books and could share some best practices with me.

So, after an afternoon of "put it in a file folder" and "let's clean off that desk, you need some inspiration" my room is now pretty much under control. Its not quite a done deal, but its not the monster I was dealing with before. I'm now ready for the next items on the to do list: plan, plan, plan and grade, grade, grade.

Thanks mom for helping me out!

The Plunge

Okay, so I've been saying FOREVER, "I really should have/start/actually write in a blog" and today, sitting here with a pile of papers to grade and a to-do list miles long, I've decided that the time has come. I am now officially a "blogger."

The original idea for the blog was a "diary of a first year teacher" of sorts. Yes, I know, its a Completely and Entirely original idea for a blog (or a book or even a documentary). No one in the world has ever done anything like THAT. I think the cheesiness of that idea kept me from writing.

But now I'm realizing that A. It's really practical...people are always asking how its going. And B. it doesn't have to only be about teaching. I'm going through a re-evaluation of my life right now where I'm realizing that I care a lot about teaching, education, and my students, but I don't want that to define me.

So the blog--its called Teachable Moments because this summer when I was in teacher boot camp we talked alot about "teachable moments"--opportunites that randomly arise to give students/people an object lesson of sorts. I assumed that I'd be having a lot of these for myself and wanted to share them. That's been true. What I didn't realize is that these moments pop up about six times a minute...but that's another story for another posting. I'm going to post things that I encounter in teaching and just in life in general. There will be a lot of stories, some thoughts, maybe even questions. Feel free to read at your leisure, and pass the link along to friends, but I have to be honest, I LOVE COMMENTS. If something makes you smile or sparks your interest, please let me know. I love the dialogue.

That's enough for today. In upcoming entries: where I teach, what I teach, and other factoids about life.