Posts Tagged “teacher blog”

Welcoming Spring with a Few Funnies

Spring Fever has hit the students in a large way. They have become bouncy and loud and though we attempted to corral them in the classroom, their minds are really outside in the sunshine. I have to admit, I’m kind of out there myself, it’s pretty contagious. So, just in case the fever hasn’t hit you, here are a few funnies to help lighten your mood.

In 4th grade, Mrs. K’s student “Jeanette”, who receives special ed services, had been helping to sort papers after she finished her assignment. She was still diligently working away when the Guidance Counselor, Mr. E., entered the room for his class lesson. Mrs. K remarked to “Jeanette” that she could put that work down for now, so she could pay attention to Mr. E. Jeanette turned and with a huge smile on her face said, “It’s ok Mrs. K, I can still do it cuz I’m MULTITASKIC! You know, that means I can do more than one thing at a time!” And she continued to sort, occasionally glancing up at Mr. E. (I do believe Multitaskic needs to be entered into the next edition of Webster’s. )

Also in 4th grade, Mrs. S had been working individually with “Maya”, reteaching a math concept that “Maya” was really struggling to understand. It was just about time for lunch, so Mrs. S invited “Maya” to get her lunch and bring it back to the room, so they could continue to work while they ate. Since eating in the room with the teacher is a pretty cool thing to do in a 4th grader’s mind, “Maya” was all for it. As she left, Mrs. S told her to think about any questions she might have that they could work on when she returned. A few minutes later, “Maya” returned with her lunch, sat down and looked at Mrs. S. Mrs. S. had the math work ready to begin where they had left off, and before she returned to it, she looked at “Maya” and said, “Did you think of any questions we can start with?” “Maya” looked at her very seriously and said, “Yes, Mrs. S. I have a question.” Mrs. S asked what that question might be. “Maya” looked at her very intently and asked, “How does the bus driver get on the bus?” Mrs. S has determined that next time, she’ll clarify that questions should be about the subject at hand!

And from my own Title group of second grade girls, “Denise” looks at me one day and says, “Mrs. R you look like my aunt “Sandy”. “ I smiled and jokingly said, “Oh, is she old too?” “Denise” said, “No, she’s not old, she’s DRUNK!” Really, I promise…..it’s just SPRING FEVER!

Professional Development

It’s part of every teacher’s life, professional development. In the past, in our district you had two kinds, the piece the district chose for everyone to follow and your own goals, that you chose(you know the one that really pertained to your teaching). Recently, in our district this has changed. The personal goals are now tied to the district wide goals (in other words, they are choosing both).

Since this change, we have embarked on a few new “next best thing that will increase student performance and test scores” adventures. First the focus was on vocabulary. All grade levels developed a list of pertinent vocabulary word and determined their importance to the curriculum. These lists were compiled, dispersed and I am sure filed. It was a bunch of busy work that is now on a shelf or in a drawer. Strategies for teaching vocabulary were also taught. That piece of the instruction was relevant and teachers are continuing to use it. Personal goal for this district wide goal – put an example of a vocabulary lesson you use in your portfolio. (Um, ……I already had one actually)

There was supposed to be more to the vocabulary adventure, but it was cut short. For some reason it was imperative we move on to Reading Comprehension. Again we were told it was the next most wonderful thing to improve student achievement and test scores. Seemed logical to us, so we shelved the vocabulary materials, and willingly grabbed the new reading materials. The trainer informed us that we would be learning a series of strategies that can be utilized with all students, no matter their reading level to improve their comprehension and lead them to using print. Let’s see…..we learned a total of……you guessed it…..ONE. The read aloud, is the only strategy we learned before the next switch was made. Personal goal for this district wide goal – put and an example of a read aloud lesson plan in your portfolio. (Ok, so I didn’t have that one.)

There was supposed to be much more to the reading comprehension adventure, in fact at the beginning we were told that it would take a few years to complete. BUT….the next year, we were on to the gold seal lessons of CORR. It was also touted as the next most wonderful thing, something that would be part of our professional development for more than a year. (is anyone else no longer hearing “RAH RAH RAH”…..but instead “BLAH BLAH BLAH”) Of course the personal goal was to create a lesson and get it gold sealed (and guess what…..you could put it in your portfolio!) I wrote up and submitted a lesson I do every year with my students, without any changes. It was gold sealed and my world was happy. (and yes, it was already in my portfolio) BUT WAIT – everyone did that….and now we are moving on again.

This time the professional development is “differentiated instruction”. We are just getting started; the first meeting was the prerequisite pep rally. “It’s not a strategy, it’s a philosophy! You won’t complete an assignment and put it on your shelf (or in your portfolio), you will integrate it into your teaching. This isn’t something we can cover in a year, this will be a long term journey, lasting 3 to 4 years. It will benefit students, improve their performance and in turn, improve test scores.” Wait, I have heard this before, and not just once or twice, but EVERY TIME WE START! I am afraid, now, my enthusiasm is not what it should be.

As a teacher, I really do want to learn whatever strategy or philosophy I can to help my students be as successful as they can be. I think every teacher does. There has to be a better way. If your professional development has been spectacular, please share! Those of us in mediocre land would love to hear about it.

*pulled from the Los Angeles Times and written by By David Kelly

Dictionary definition raises ruckus at Menifee school

The school district pulls the Merriam Webster 10th Collegiate editions off classroom shelves for study by a newly formed committee after a parent complains about explicit definitions of sexual terms.

It may be the last word in spelling bees and Scrabble, but Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary now faces a new if unlikely notoriety: being too sexy for its own good.

That was the verdict from at least one parent in Menifee last week who called the principal of Oak Meadows Elementary School to say that entries describing oral sex in the dictionary were too explicit. The books were immediately pulled off the shelves and “temporarily housed off location” until a committee could determine their suitability for children.

NASA to fly high school experiments.

-Pulled from UPI.com

NASA is inviting U.S. high school students to design and build an experiment or technology demonstration to be flown into the stratosphere.

The space agency says it will send the experiments into the near space environment of the stratosphere — an altitude of 100,000 feet. The Balloonsat High Altitude Flight Competition will be launched on a NASA weather balloon May 25-27 in Cleveland.

“To participate, student teams in grades nine through 12 must submit a research or flight demonstration proposal to NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland by Friday, Feb. 19,” the space agency said in a statement. “Teams of four or more may pursue a wide variety of topics in this competition, including science and weather observations, remote sensing and image processing. A panel of engineers and scientists at Glenn will evaluate and select four top-ranked proposals by Friday, March 5.”

The top four teams will be awarded travel expenses and up to $1,000 to develop their flight experiment or technology demonstration. Teams will participate in three flight days to release, track and recover their experiments.

NASA will host an informational webcast about the competition Wednesday from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. EST. A link to the webcast and additional information about Balloonsat High Altitude Flight is available at http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/balloonsat.

Girls’ math fears may start with female teachers.

Teachers who are worried about their own skills may pass it on, study says.

**To see this complete msnbc news article, click here**
 

No H1N1 this time!

It’s been a long strange school year. Earlier in the fall my district had about with the respiratory type of flu, and we did see some H1N1. There were times when over 20% of the student population was absent. In fact there were classrooms with as few as 6 students in them for days at a time.

Well, this week the “pukin’ flu” (as one student put it) hit my building, with a vengeance. It started with just a few, but just a couple of days in there were students lined up in the office sharing garbage cans as they waited for their parents. In every classroom the upchuck has hit the floor/desks/rugs, causing all teachers to have the “if you are going to be sick, just GO! - You don’t have to ask permission” speech. Students are being made aware of the location of every garbage can, and every bathroom. Again, hand washing is being stressed and the use of hand sanitizer is on the rise. However, I have come to the conclusion this is to no avail – those “pukin’ flu” germs are going to infect us all, they are on a mission.

This is why I feel that way. On Wednesday a guest teacher in a first grade classroom was trying to get students ready to go home about 2:45, so they would all be ready to board their buses at 2:55. During this time it’s really just managed chaos as snow pants, hats, mittens, scarves, boots, and coats get layered on and backpacks get loaded. In the midst of all of this, one little girl tells the teacher she doesn’t feel very good, then she immediately punctuates her sentence by vomiting all over her shoes and the floor. The rest of the children immediately start reacting with “EEEEEWWWW!”, “That’s GROSS”, “Why’d ya do THAT?”. The guest teacher holds her composure, and calmly stops a teacher in the hall to take the ill child to the office, and send a janitor back to the room. As the regular teacher is taking the ill child from the room, another student (yep, in the same room) vomits all over the floor and another student’s backpack. At this point, in desperation, the guest teacher asks the remaining students if anyone else is feeling ill. The second ill student is shipped off with another teacher as the janitor makes his way into the room to try to clean up the damage. (There is not enough money to get me to do that job.) While this clean up is going on, the guest teacher manages to get the rest of the students in line and starts down the hallway to the buses. On the way this class has to dodge 2 more “puddles” of vomit, deposited by students headed home. I don’t know if this guest teacher will ever return, perhaps in the spring after the “pukin’ flu” is gone!

Seriously, some days, I feel like I work in an ongoing Monty Python movie…….. “There’s always room for a thin mint.”

Is it really all about the “class” ?

As a teacher, you know there are differences in “classes”….not just in a classroom, but the class as a whole. It’s hard to explain to those outside of education who think all students show up for the first day of Kindergarten knowing their alphabet and how to write their name. It’s hard to understand just how much that is not reality; how you can have a class with a child who has never held a crayon and a child who is already reading.

At my elementary, last year’s 5th grade class was a tough one. There were many students with some pretty serious behavior issues, many with very poor home situations and many who were receiving special education services. We knew this class was going to be challenging when they arrived in kindergarten, so many of the students were at risk. Over the 6 years that they spent with us, we tried to build them up, give them strategies and tools, and set them up for success as they moved on to Middle School.

A few years ago I was talking to the social worker at our school after a student in my daughter’s class committed suicide by hanging himself in his parent’s garage. They were juniors at the time. Mrs. K. said something that has stuck with me. She said, “That class has been edgy and intense from the beginning. They want to push the envelope and change things.” She went on to compare that class to the “over-achievers” in the Senior class that year; the “clowns” in the sophomore class and the “socialites” of the freshman class. Mrs. K. went on to say that by the time a class gets to HS, they have developed a “class” personality and it seems to stick - even after graduation. I have often thought back on that and wished she was not so prophetic.

Today my daughter got a call that a young man from her class had shot himself and died. He is the fourth to commit suicide, from her “edgy, intense” class. (This class graduated 3 years ago.) This is a small town folks….4 kids from a class of 120ish. She and her classmates will now come together again, hold one another, attempt to understand and then go on as best they can. I will hug my daughter, tell her I love her and how important she is to me and those around her. I will try to help her get through another loss - too many for one so young.

As I go through this with my child again today - my mind wanders to last year’s class of fifth graders, who are struggling through their first year of Middle School this year. I think about some of the tender hearts, insecure souls and how hard they worked to get as far as they did. Those students, “my kids” that I really didn’t want to send over to Middle School. The hard ones, seem to touch you more than the easy ones. I pray that they do not find this answer….the adolescent years are so cruel, so hard, ……I pray they will all find the strength they need. I hope against hope that Mrs. K will be wrong, and this weak challenged group of students will turn out to be the class of “survivors”.

Holiday Funnies

There are many “extra” activities that go on around the holidays. Due to this, the normal daily schedule gets massacred and that is a recipe for chaos. In this chaos are always a few humorous moments….

#1 Mrs. Mc., the Kindergarten teacher, was trying to get her students lined up in the correct order for their music program when one of her students called her over. When she got there he motioned for her to bend down, like he needed to tell her something in confidence. As she bent down, he quickly put his hands on her chest and then turned to the student beside him and said, “Yup, she’s a girl! I told you.” Mrs. Mc. is now considering new hairstyles, clothing choices and perhaps even some plastic surgery.

#2 Mr. K is now under suspicion……he was walking by a group of (yes again) Kindergarteners when one of them said, “Yeah, that’s my dad.”
Mr. K said, “Who is your dad?”
The student said, “You ARE!”
Mr. K smiled at the student and said, “No, I’m not your dad.” and walked away.
As he was walking away another teacher saw the student turn to the one he had been talking to and say, “He really is my dad, but sometimes when he’s drinkin’ he forgets.”
And we all thought Mr. K. was the proud father of only 2 children, now we are wondering how many others may be out there and whether or not we need to do an intervention.

#3 In 5th grade this time (they are really no better than Kindergarteners) I stopped in to Mr. K’s room (different Mr. K.) because he always does a big gingerbread house geometry project. As I walked around the room and talked to many of the students about their houses I was amazed at the creativity. Some students were having no problems building while others were really struggling. One girl had been attempting to get a roof piece on for quite some time when Mr. K. took pity on her and fixed it. I asked the student what she was doing and she blithely answered, “Watching Mr. K. do my work. Isn’t he doin’ a good job?”
The look on Mr. K.’s face was priceless. He then removed the piece he had just secured and handed it to the student. She then hurriedly said, “No, I meant, I was watching Mr. K. help me so I could do my work better!!!!”
Mr. K. just smiled at her and walked away.

If you had any holiday laughs….please share….

In the Spirit

This time of year, students have a difficult time concentrating on academics, to say the least. Music programs, special events, secret projects for their parents, and parties fill their minds….well it fills the holes around the big event – SANTA! I am normally a big holiday spirit person….big on finding the little things that make people happy, baking, wrapping, and decorating. One year though, the whole school was lacking the spirit – that was the last year we knew we would be in our building. The following year we would all be consolidated into one building. This was not a move anyone was particularly looking forward to because we enjoyed our small building, close working relationships and collaborative freedom. The Polar Express saved that year for me (and a few others too I think).
That was the year that the movie for The Polar Express came out. Our local movie theater made it possible for all the students to attend a showing of it. So we did lots of preteaching and extending activities to get ready for it. On the day we were scheduled to go, the students were just vibrating. I was assigned to go with a first grade class. This particular class had a high number of at risk and special education students. Some of these students had behavioral issues. I was seated between two of these students.

“Molly” was normally unable to stay in her seat. She had no impulse control, sensory issues, and few social skills. She sat on my right and “Tristan” sat on my left. He too lacked social skills and struggled with impulse control, but he also dealt with a home life that was chaotic and impoverished. In fact, so much so that attendance was often and issue. I envisioned spending much of the movie in the lobby.

As we waited for the movie to start, we talked about the book and their favorite parts. We talked about trains, snow and bells. Then the lights went dark and the magic began. Both sat mesmerized by the screen. Halfway through the movie, “Molly” snuggled into my arm, sighed, smiled up at me and settled in for the remainder of the film. Complete satisfaction, contentment and happiness very evident on her face.

“Tristan” pulled up his legs, and chewed on his cuffs. Every once in awhile he would lean over and say something to me. Most of the time I could not understand him, however, on one occasion, he was very clear. When the little “poor” boy was frantically looking for his present after he fell into Santa’s sack, “Tristan” leaned over and clearly said, “I bet I could find a present in there for me, too.” I assured him, he could.

When the movie ended, the theater was silent for a few minutes….the spell lifting……for my little charges, but not for me. I walked out of there under their spell…..the spell of their innocence, their hope, and their wonderment carried me through that season. Each year since then, I carefully re-open that gift.

Merry Christmas – Happy Holidays – and a wonderful, hopeful New Year!

SNOW DAY!!

Since I live in the Midwest, snow days come with the change of season. As a teacher, snow days are a double-edged sword. There are times when you pray for that morning call telling you that you can stay in bed and not fight your way through drifts, slick roads and bone-chilling temperatures. But even as you roll over to go back to sleep, you realize it just means the end of the year is another day away. It also plays havoc with lesson plans, and schedules. Time has changed your perspective, because as a child, snow days were only one thing……GREAT!

As a child I remember lying quietly in bed listening intently to the radio for the words, “Ottumwa Public Schools are closed.” Once those words were heard, the day opened up to endless possibilities. I lay there a bit longer, planning the ways I could use an entire EXTRA day free from the classroom. Of course, layering on all the warm clothes we could handle and still move, so we could head out into that pristine glistening snow, was first on the list. We lived on a block full of children; so snowmen, snow angels, snow forts and snowball fights were everywhere. We stayed out until the call of hot cocoa was too strong to ignore.

Frosty and covered in snow we traipsed into the house. “Straight to the basement! Hang everything wet up on the line!” my mother would yell from some unseen corner of the house. Down we went, struggling to be free of the layers of now soaking wet, cold clothes. Most of them did get hung up…most. Racing back up the stairs we knew we would find steaming cups of extra chocolate hot cocoa with as many miniature marshmallows as we could cram in the mug. Scalded lips and burnt tongues were all part of the magic as we sat and regaled my mom with our snow adventures.

The remainder of the day was spent with a book in a warm cozy corner of the den. Or maybe, we could coax my mom into a game of Monopoly, and waste the afternoon trying to become millionaires. But at 4:30, the race was on to find enough try pieces of dry clothing to go back out with my dad when he arrived home from work. We knew if we could get the driveway and sidewalk shoveled quickly with him, we might get a sled ride around the block.

That was magic, a sled ride around our neighborhood in the dark. There would be no traffic; the world seemed so silent, so peaceful. The snow glittering under the streetlights, our breath hot and moist under the scarves we wore. My mom pulled my brother, my dad me, through the streets of our neighborhood. I felt safe, loved and content.

Last week, after two snow days, I listened as my students told their snow day stories, shared their snow adventures and magic moments. There are many things that have changed since I was young, but snow days….they are same.