Wed 9/23

Today was a lonnng day. It was my first staff meeting since the school year started. There is nothing worse than getting through a full day of school AND THEN having to sit through a meeting where everyone bickers about every teeny tiny detail. But, oh well. It is mostly neccessary bickering, I just wish it wasn't in the afternoon. Morning meetings would make me much happier.

The school day was good. However, I still can't get over how little time our students have for recess. Their first break isn't until 12:30, where they run out for 15 minutes of recess and come in for a whole 15 minutes for lunch! 15 minutes for lunch!?! The poor kids never have enough time to eat and end up throwing half their lunch away. In the afternoon, they get another whole 15 minutes of recess, most of which is spent cleaning up the classroom from the last activity (science, art and social studies are just before recess). And then today, to top it all off, the Head Teacher took up 10 minutes of their 15 minute recess to discuss 'playground safety'.... poor kids. Where along the way did we decide that 7 year olds don't need to have any time to run around and get their wiggles out? I swear, we had the longest recess ever! 20 minutes in the morning and 35 minutes in the afternoon. Now? Gah, it just doesn't seem fair.

Monday 9/21 and Tuesday 9/22

Monday, Monday, Monday! Aw, I was finally feeling much, much better yesterday and could actually perform at my full potential for the first time in nearly a week. Mondays are still a super shocker for me. Not seeing my kids for 3 days seems like an eternity when I'm trying to learn everything about everyone of them. It's not like I am 4 month into a job and cherish the time off yet, I'm still scrambling to learn the ropes.

Tuesday, however, was rad! Like super-duper rad awesomeness. I showed up at 8:45 to discover that our math teacher was not going to be able to teach the first period math group... our second graders. Elaine jumped at the opportunity and volunteered us to take up the loose ends. Luckily I had gone over the lesson the night before (completely by chance, I usually am not that prepared). Elaine and I kind of took rounds, teaching the lesson one section at a time. It was rocky at first, mostly becuase we didn't know their routine and we didn't know all the students (each of us knew 1/3 of the kids).

But once we got into the new material, it was really a lot of fun! The math cirriculum is pretty scripted, so it's not like we had to think outside the box much (or really make any creative decisions at all). But, it was still awesome to feel in control of the material and run a lesson with fairly decent success considering we were thrown into it less than 30 minutes before.

We did some of the mental math practice as warm-up, then reviewed how to tell time of the clocks (this was the rocky part). Then we had them sit in the seats, which really helped the social control of the classroom. Elaine taught a song that would help us count by 2's and then by 3's. Then I handed out a number grid and we colored in the patterns of 2's and 3's. It was interesting to see how quickly some kids picked up the patterns, and how completely abstract the patterns were to other students. Once everyone finished their patterns, we filled in our own number grids from different starting points (1, 101, 201, etc) so that as a class we would count to 1,000. It was pretty successful and I feel like all but 2 kids walked out of our classroom with a much better understanding of number grids, with nearly half mastering the skills covered today.

Aw, now I am just itching to do more!

3 Things I Know About My Students

Okay, so after reading the article from last week about the “two minutes, two times a week” theory my usual casual chit-chat was given educational value. I tend to get distracted my small talk conversation with a student when there is downtime (like walking in line down to PE), but now I don’t have to feel like it’s distracting from their education.

On the first day of school, I noticed one of my students was a bit of an ADHD candidate. He’s a sweet kid, but he can’t stay still for the life of him. I was talking with him on the second day of class on our way to the playground. I asked him what he likes to do outside of school. His eyes brightened up as he told me all about his electric bass and how his favorite bands are REM and The Cure. At this point, I totally understand him more. He’s the kid with the “cool parents” (read: Laissez-faire) and when he makes comments like, “I have no rules at home,” I really do believe him… for better or for worse.

Another thing I learned about my students is that you cannot judge a book by its cover. One of our new students, a little girl named ‘Soharia’, instantly seemed to be a “below level student”. My MT had me do the reading and math assessments with her to see where she was at within the school-wide assessment program. She was an amazing reader, at least two arbitrary levels above “normal” for her grade. An hour after her test, I learned that she is an ELL student as well. There is no English spoken at Soharia’s home. With such a disadvantage with the English language, she is still ABOVE grade level—and to think I thought less of her?!

One other thing that I learned about my students is that small groups really are more effective for some students. I was able to take 3 students to the back of the class during reading time. These three, normally very low performing students proved to be very interested and connected to their reading. They benefited so much from slowing the lesson down and really dissecting each page of the reading. It was their pace and they were taking ownership of their learning.

Thursday 9/17

I went to school yesterday. I lasted exactly one hour. Then my MT suggested that I head home, and used me as an example to the kids that sometimes we cannot always do our job and that sometimes our job is to take care of our bodies and get extra rest so that we don’t get others sick. It was kind of embarrassing for me, but I adore how she can turn any unexpected moment into a teachable moment. The rest of my day consisted of me, in bed, clenching my tummy in the fetal position.

Today sucked just as much. My tummy felt like it was in a vice grip. But, I missed yesterday and I didn’t want to be publicly embarrassed in front of a bunch of 7 year olds again. So I popped a painkiller left over from my last trip to the dentist and headed off to school. It helped, but I still desired the fetal position. I was pretty useless in the classroom today, but the kids totally understood. They kept coming up to me and asking if I felt any better and giving me ‘feel better’ hugs. It was kinda cute.

I left 30 minutes early so I could get into the doctor’s office ASAP. Yay for Tina, I have a kidney infection. My doctor says it’s the one thing that doctors, truck drivers and teachers all have in common. I’m taking it as learning moment. Even though you are a teacher and you cannot leave your kids alone in the classroom, your health is important. Athena suggested that I should have a partner teacher that I can ask to cover my classroom (and vis versa) when I really got to go. It seems so silly, but oh my god this is the greatest pain I have ever experienced. Aw, my first experience of the real world of teaching.

Tuesday 9/15

So, I had my first meeting with my field instructor today. He is a silly man—I think we will get along just fine. He reminds me a bit of that old guy sitting at the bar, just dying for someone to sit next to him long enough to share his stories of the good old days—and those guys are some of my favorite experiences of turning 21. He’s a wealth of stories, and he loves to have someone to share them to. But, on top of that, a lot of what he has to say is really meaningful and helpful. It’s a good mix between silly and helpful.

Okay, and then the big moment—my first reading to the entire 2nd grade class, all 90 of them, 180 eyeballs dissecting my every word and every nervous body movement. Okay, okay it really wasn’t that bad. In fact, it was a ton of fun. I picked out my super most favorite book ever, I Stink!, an in-your-face, action packed story about a garbage truck. I used to read this story to my toddlers all the time, both via story-tape and the old fashion way. Although I’m not a big fan of story-tape reading, they are amazing tools when you’ve read too much poetry the night before or if you want to hear how wonderfully animated a story can become.

So, I got really into this story. The kids totally helped me out with all the cool onamonapeas and made me look like the best story-teller in the entire world. All day, the 2nd grade teachers kept coming up to me and complimenting me on my job well done. Yes, I am awesome. Ha ha, it was fun. I feel ridiculous that I made such a big to-do about it yesterday.

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not, but my MT also asked me if I wanted to help instruct part of the math lesson for tomorrow. She is cute whenever she asks me to help out. We are both kind of control freaks—She’s trying her best to share her classroom, and I am trying my best to stay inbounds of my role of an observer, a learner. She offered me two choices, “Do you want to help talk them through the mental math or go over the problem of the day?” Both options take about 5 minutes or less of instruction, but I understand, its all about baby steps.

Monday 9/14/09

Today was a big leap for Eileen and I. For the first time since our September Experience started, my MT asked us if we wanted to read the story time book. She asked each of us to choose a favorite book of ours and read it to the entire 2nd grade (one today and one tomorrow). I was a bit intimidated --which I am kind of mad at myself for-- so I urged Eileen to go first. As soon as she started reading, I was immediately jealous that I let the opportunity pass me by. But, lucky for me I get a second chance tomorrow.

It was a good lesson learned by yours truly. This wasn’t an end all of intimidation because I have all day tomorrow to buckle down. But what if this wasn’t the case? What if my MT asked me to do a math lesson for her one morning and I shied away from it?! That would just solidify her belief that I should be there to do her photo-copying and paper passing out.

She always says things like, “Oh, thank you so much. It’s so much easier to teach the class with all your help.” Translation: “Thanks for doing all my busy work, now I get to go home at 4pm.” I understand that I am not supposed to be ‘teaching’ yet, but it’s killing me! And if I chicken out to something as silly as reading a story, then I am never going to get anywhere.

I’ve got it figured out for tomorrow though. I’ve got this one in the bag!

First day of school! 9/9/09

I have spent the last 5 days completely terrified of meeting my students. I had this grand expectation of my classroom being stuffed full of 27 students who speak 20 different languages at 27 different educational levels. I was expecting a sneak peak into the hardest classroom to teach within the Seattle School District. I spent the last 2 days trying to learn 27 faceless names from the class list, which neatly categorizes each student by race (wtf, right?).

As the students piled in today, my fears of classroom management worries quickly dissipated. Although the classroom is a crazy mosaic of multicultural-ness (yes, that’s my personal academia lingo), it is totally less scary than I thought it would be. The school intentionally groups students with common languages, but at different levels of English knowledge. The idea is that the Korean/Somali/Hispanic/Ethiopian/etc students will not feel isolated and alone, and at the same time they will also have a built in support group educationally and emotionally.

My kids are all so awesome. We have a couple crazy boys, but not too crazy. We have two new kids that are expectantly quite nervous. There are a couple kids with super hard names to pronounce, and I catch my self avoiding having to say their names. But one thing that I noticed across the board was how quiet and well behaved everyone was in our class, and the entire school for that matter. Every teacher kept asking me, “So, how’s your first day?” I kept responding, “I didn’t expect them to so well behaved.” And every teacher replies the same, “Wait until the second week!” Ha ha, we’ll see…

Classroom Management and Arrangement

Classroom management is hands down the number one aspect of teaching that I was simply terrified to face. 30 students, 1 teacher--- and that one teacher being just little 'ol me all by my self was just the scariest thing I could ever imagine. Lesson planning? Got it. Assessing students? Easy enough. Planning big elaborate projects and end of the unit field trips to places totally awesome? Love it! But getting 30 little squiggly guys and gals to sit quietly and want to listen to me? Yikes!

A year later, I am much less terrified. In fact, I know it will still be difficult, but I am excited to be able to run my own classroom management plan. I have run my own preschool classroom for a year now, but that was mostly assisted with my very hands on boss. It was a step in the right direction, but I am ready for the big challenge.

At Kimball Elementary I am a little bit closer to the real deal. My master teacher, Carrie Hale, has it down to a tee (I'm only a little jealous). She requires her students to be very well behaved in the sense that they must use very quiet voices (our classroom is right next to the library in an open-space school) and she is super against answering questions more than once. At the same time, she respects her students enough to allow them to get up and walk about class on their own. Students can get a drink of water or go to the bathroom without having to ask first, and kids with the jitters are allow to take a quick walk to the other side of the room.

On the first day of class, Miss Hale had her students meet up on the rug ("circle time" rug) for a class meeting. She helped her students create a list of classroom rules. She said that she puts all the ideas on the list, even ones like "We should get extra recess every day" (which, sure enough was one of the first answers). After she gets the looong list compiled, she talks to them about which rules were fair, which ones could work in the classroom and which ones can be combined by a bigger rule (ie no name calling and no fighting becomes 'treat others with respect'). By the end of the exercise, the kids have created and defined the same rule set that is seen in every classroom, but becuase they came up with the rules, it is more personal and effective.

Our classroom arrangement is pretty traditional. My MT has her room set up in 7 tables of 4 (one table is a bit bigger to fit all the students). Her media table is at the front, with the screen behind her. I think it works well, as most classrooms take this look.

What makes this set up work especially well is the way my MT uses her space. There are no walls in our classroom, so space is very precious. She has sight words around the classroom, hanging from the ceiling in posters. When I went in June, the sight words were everywhere. Vocab words were also strewn on everything possible. When I walked in the classroom in Sept, there were none. My MT introduces the words throughout the year. They have an ability to learn the word in context and then keep them in memory by posting them around the classroom.

My First Week and 1st Day Tips

View of the Cedar River Watershed reservior

I officially met my MT over the past week. Last June I thought we were a perfect match, but now I think that we are almost too much alike to be a perfect match. We are both strong personalities that work better on our own, and don’t necessarily like sharing our role with others. I’m trying to be very unlike my usual self this past week, trying to eat lunch with my ‘colleagues’ and show up early to chit-chat before meetings. My MT behaves very much how I usually do. She takes off for her lunch break, shows up just before our meetings and jets out just as they are over. She has been here one day over the paid days—the day before the first day of school! I find myself socializing with a lot of other teachers to learn the ropes and then help my MT when she’s around and willing to put me to work.

On Wednesday, we had this crazy literacy summit out in North Bend at the Cedar River Watershed educational center. It took ages to get out there, but it was pretty and they fed us a nice little box lunch. The talk was nothing special to the location, but it was explained to me as a “welcome back treat” to all the teachers. We got an overview of the school-wide reading assessment. It was really useful as a new teacher, because it definitely caught me up to speed on all of their testing protocols, which are ever so important these days.

Thursday was a “nuts and bolts” meeting. It had really nothing to do with the student teacher interns. It was a lot about teacher committee decisions that we could not vote on, schedule changes that we could not vote on, etc. But it was a good chance to see what I’ll be in for, the behind the scenes of teaching.

Then we had a nice 3 day weekend thanks to labor day, which my MT informed me that she was going to take full advantage of and suggested that I do the same. On the day before school, my MT and her dad were getting the classroom all put together. I kept offering to help with these creative artsy things which is where my talent shines (think: job board, name tags, table numbers, etc), but she kept me mighty busy with her busy work… the things that required no intelligence at all. But yet again, I am trying to be open-minded and take in as much as I can. It is difficult to know exactly what my role is as a student teacher. I know we are supposed to be ‘just observing’ but my principal told us directly that she wants her interns to active participants in the classroom. And then on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, my MT treats me like the room mom. I guess I have a month to figure it out :)

I am pretty scared for the first day of school becuase I have been told by all of the teachers that our school has such a diverse student population. It is quite possible that half my students will not fully understand English, and within those 10-15 ELL students about 6 different languages could be represented. I worked with ELL students in Northern Ireland and I have seen how hard it is to teach a class with at least 5 ELL students that have only months' practice at their new language.

My MT keeps reasuring me that it will be just fine. She is incredibly calm about the first day of school. In fact, she came in just 5 days before the first day of school. Compared to all the other teachers running around the school, I feel like she either has it down or we are really in for a whirlwind once school starts!

My MT says that the first week will be a 'celebration.' She likes to make it fun and the entire 2nd grade won't be running on their usual schedule. One thing that I thought was cute was how my MT was saying how she always plans her first day, then wakes up in the middle of the night terrified that she hasn't done enough! So she usually over prepares and over prepares just in case the lessons go quicker than she expects. She says its better to have more than not enough.

Round 2: Learning to be a student [[teacher]]

An object that describes me? Just one? Hmmm, more difficult a task than one would think.

A sheet of music.

Why would a sheet of music describe who I am? I don't even know how to read sheet music. In fact, I have difficulty even playing music on any kind of instrument, vocals included. It is a bit more symbolic for me.

The first symbolism is the music that is created from the notes on the page. Music represents a huge part of my life. Most of my friends are in local, grimy punk rock bands or (like me) they love the thrill of going to a local show to hear the reverb of guitars and the screeching poetry set to music. These friends have influenced me in many ways, always steering me towards our three golden rules: respect, unity and equality.

In a more abstract form of symbolism, sheet music represents the complete opposite side of my character. Sheet music is taught and learned; it is constant and true. You can teach one piece of music to ten kids and let them add their own flair -- play it faster, play on a up-right bass instead of a traditional bass, or perhaps upstroke on the chorus. But at the end of the day, it still communicates a common idea.

In short, sheet music represents my character because I love the idea of counter-culture rebellion, but it is ultimately important to know and understand the world around us in order to form our own ideas.