The Learning Curve

(1) Don’t plan until 3am and expect to be useful the next day.

(2) I’m never going to plan the way my supervisor makes me do it.

(3) Yoga is a necessity.

(4) A masseuse would be awesome.

(5) First graders are smarter than most give them credit for.

(6) Breakfast would be great, if I had the time.

(7) School lunch isn’t vegetarian friendly, but it’s not that bad on the occasions I can eat it.

(8) I pick favorites. But I don’t treat them differently, I just adore them more. Though, these favorites change on a weekly/daily/hourly basis.

(9) Parents… aren’t so bad, sometimes.

(10) Insurance in this country is pretty fucked up. Sorry for the language, but it really pisses me off when a single mother working 2 jobs with two daughters in elementary school gets denied Medicaid coverage for her daughters and the person handling her case can’t tell her why.

(11) I love this job. So much. It’s almost painful, but in that good way.

Tonight there is a special event at school, so I’ll be pretty dead tired at 8pm when I’m headed home. I think I’ll just crash when I get there. I hope to start updating more regularly, now that I’m kind of in a routine. Hopefully that routine will shift a little so I can get more sleep, but that would require me to actually plan ahead… and who does that??? I have lots of good things to share, though…

I do apologize for not being very good at updating. I doubt I have any regular readers (it’s hard to have regular readers when you don’t have regular contributions), but in case you are out there, I am sincerely sorry.

My hope was to update weekly with my student teaching escapades for the week, but that hasn’t happened because… well, because life happened, instead.

My mother passed away in September, and I’ve been trying to catch up from that. I’m okay, and things are generally fine with school and teaching and all, but updating this journal has been rather low on the priority list as a result.

There are so many things to share, though – I’ve taught a lesson that went really well (I want to post the lesson plan), I’m working on a special case study that is both heartbreaking and eye opening, I’m getting ready to teach another lesson on Wednesday, my methods courses are proving tedious and only slightly useful, and I went to a math conference that was simultaneously boring and helpful and extremely crowded.

I’m growing as a teacher, and I can feel some exciting changes taking place in the way I think and plan and work with children. I am starting to feel like a responsible adult, and teaching is more and more becoming second nature to me.

Please, if you haven’t given up on me, yet, don’t. I truly appreciate your interest and input, and am anxious to offer what little knowledge I have, as well.

Thank you.

So, last week, I spent pretty much every day in the classroom for at least a few hours getting ready for the First Day of School, 27 August.

Quick and dirty:
Monday the 20th, I helped the Teaching Assistant and another student teacher* paint these lovely crayons on our closets!

There was also a staff meeting, in which we discussed money (or lack thereof), students (and their overabundance), and teachers (or lack thereof).

Tuesday: More meetings. They sure do love staff development at my school. Last year, they started a new system referred to as a Professional Learning Community or PLC. Essentially, it increases collaboration between teachers and grade levels, and focuses more on learning than teaching – instead of dissecting what you’re doing, you dissect what the student is doing. I also painted this wall:

Wednesday: all day staff development. All. Day. Staff. Development. It was useful, but looooooong. At the end, I felt like I was about to die… but I really love the staff at my school, so it was bearable. Better than some of the Teaching Fellows meetings I’ve had to sit through (sorry, Gladys).

Thursday: Meet & Greet. About 20 of our 27 students came in with their families to meet us, fill out paperwork, and ask questions. Apparently we had a really high turnout, and I was able to use some of my Spanish (which needs MAJOR work, but was very useful). We have 8 Spanish speaking students in my class. I haven’t looked through all their files to see how proficient they are in English, but the few I looked through showed pretty high writing and vocab, but low reading levels. All in all, an excited group of people.

Friday: A sad attempt to plan for the first week of school. There was so much distracting stuff going on, my teacher and I didn’t get much done. She’s doing all of the planning, of course, as I’m only going to be there once a week until January, but she didn’t even have Monday finished when I left at 4. Hell, we didn’t even have an updated class list! I’m sure it’ll all come together, though – it always does.

Amongst all this craziness, I’m taking my methods courses. From now through December, I’ll be going in once a week on Wednesdays. I won’t go full time until the spring semester, but I am supposed to teach at least three lessons this semester. The other days of the week, I’ll be taking my five other classes, and pulling out my hair. It’s going to be busy, busy, busy – but I’m already loving it. So far, everything I’ve done has been useful and felt productive… instead of last year when I felt like I was doing busywork that had no purpose.

My plan for tonight and tomorrow (besides do reading for my methods courses), is to put together some short lesson plans that I can teach anytime this semester. I also need to review the teacher’s guide to Handwriting Without Tears, which is the handwriting program my school adopted last year.

I can’t believe the first day is Monday. There’s still so much to do!

* For a while, there were two of us – she goes to another college, and was to be full-time student teaching this semester. This proved to be a bit much for all of us, so she was placed with another teacher (in the same school). She did help us out pretty much all week, though – and was awesome.

In less than a week, I will be sitting down with my teacher, planning for the coming year. I am very excited about this. Summer camp was a classroom management nightmare, so I hope to pick up a lot of tips from classes and my student teaching experience.

What I know so far: I’ll be student teaching in first grade, with a fairly experienced teacher. Based on the Kindergarten class from last year, the class size will be large (possibly 26 students!), but they had less behavior problems than the first graders last year, so it might not be too bad. My teacher seems eager to help me, and willing to let me take over where comfortable. I’m glad I’ll be with her in the beginning, since it will make the class feel a bit more like mine.

So, there will probably be many posts on my actual experiences in the coming year, and I’ll likely be begging for advice on occasion. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do some current-event type posting, as well… my intention for this blog was never to be completely about me, but about the world of education in general, too. I’ve got lots of things I want to write about, I just have to find the time to sit down and write about them. Feedback would be awesome!

In 286 days, if all goes as planned, I will be a real teacher.

Summer school went well. Two A’s and one B. In case you’re counting.

So, I have to get a physical before school starts in August to prove that I won’t give the kids TB or some other disease. I understand that, and I don’t mind doing it – they even have a form to take with us to make it easier to get proof and make sure everything gets done. Hooray for the student teaching physical.

Of course, I wait until the last two weeks of summer school to schedule that appointment – *cough*procrastinator*cough, cough*. I call, today, to schedule (just got off the phone, actually), and she actually knows what I’m talking about when I say I need a student teaching physical – which surprises me, because they didn’t last time I did this (remember, I was supposed to do my student teaching in 2004, but became temporarily retarded and dropped out of school) and it took me forever to get the appointment right. This excites me.

For about ten seconds.

UNFORTUNATELY, they only do appointments in the MORNINGS.

Sounds like I’m being a whiny bitch, right – “oh, wah, I don’t wanna get up in the morning, boo-hoo”. While that is entirely possible, my main problem is that I have class from 8am-1pm all summer – wouldn’t you know it, the exact times they have appointments. *grumble* And I have to come in on two separate days, 3 days apart, due to the TB test.

I don’t fault the woman making the appointment. She even said at one point, “I don’t know why they do this – they need to have afternoon openings…” after I told her I have class every day from 8-1 (as is the nature of summer school). She was very sympathetic, and I (luckily) had time free during the reading day before exams, and during what is supposed to be the end of my tennis final (we have a take-home, so I should be fine).

Some people might wonder why I didn’t go in the beginning of the summer, before I had class. Well, my friends, UNC student health only covers you for the semesters/sessions in which you are enrolled full-time. Thus, since I was not enrolled in classes last summer session, I would have had to pay $50 just to get an appointment. So, it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d called at the very beginning of the summer to schedule an appt, the only time I could have come in would be next Wednesday at 9 and next Friday at 10:15.

I’m just glad they weren’t closed on the reading day… lucky me, I suppose.

Oh, and a PS – I really hate needles and physicals, what with the pain and the stupid questions and all. At least with a tattoo, I get something pretty to show off later. The only thing I’ve ever gotten from a vaccine is a scar that everyone assumes is a hickey… *sigh* (Oh, and maybe protection from bygone diseases…)

Something I meant to write about a while back, but the craziness of the semester prevented it:

Last semester, there was a grad student in one of my classes. She is really interested in social justice, and led a few lessons on the topic (some of which were enlightening) – I really enjoyed having her in the class.

Because she is a grad student, she had a research paper to write. She interviewed all of us about our perspectives on social justice: how it affects our lives, our teaching, where our opinions originated, etc. It was an interesting interview, and I should be receiving a copy of the paper soonish. It’s all anonymous, of course, but I really want to know what the some of my other classmates had to say about some of their experiences/opinions on the topic, as I think my views often differ from my peers.

In any case, she asked me (and other students, I presume) if I would mind her following me next year when I get into my student teaching and possibly my first year of teaching. I have to say, I am extremely flattered that she would find my views on social justice and teaching interesting enough to follow me, but I’m also incredibly curious about what she discovers in her research. I think it’ll be a really good experience for me, and will get me thinking about the issues. I mean, we all consider issues of social justice, but I think being part of her research will help me think about topics before they come up in my classroom, and perhaps allow me take a more proactive approach to such issues with my students.

I’m sure there will be more about this in the future, but I wanted to mention it for those who might be keeping up with the blog somewhat regularly.