Things They Sometimes Teach Me

Seeing Improvement is a Wonderful Thing

D___ is a student who is taking my class for the second time because he failed SOPH LA last year. An extremely likeable person, his quick wit often helps him make friends but does little to keep him on task in class. Until the very last few weeks of school last year, I thought he would turn his grades around. He has the intelligence to do well, but lacked the motivation. So far this year, however, he is doing MUCH better. He is one of my top participants in class, he is consistently turning in his assignments, and he is doing high quality work.

The other day, D___ came to class and said, "Ms. Greene, there was a show on NAT GEO last night about Gilgamesh. They wre comparing his story about the flood to Noah in the Bible, and were doing a test to see if he could really build a boat using the measurements from the story and if it would work."

"We're going to be comparing those two stories, too! Did you watch the whole program?" I replied and asked.

"Yeah, Miss. It was pretty interesting."

If D___ finds it interesting enough to watch the entire program, then I think it will be good to show the rest of the class. I went on National Geographic's website and found the program: Search for Noah's Ark. It's on again tomorrow (9/31) and the Media Center is going to tape it for me so I can view it and hopefully use it in class during our study of the similarities and differences between these two stories of the flood. I was so impressed with D___'s motivation that I gave him extra credit for watching and telling me about this program. :)

Teacher Tip

My singular most important purchase for the new school year was my first-ever E-Z Grader! I haven't had one before this year because I always forgot to purchase one with my "Sonny Money" purchases and would never go back to get one since I resent spending my own money on school supplies. After wishing I had one many times last year, I made up my mind to get one this year. At the end of July, I went to The School Box, and made one purchase: my new E-Z Grader. This $6.99 investment has made grading a breeze! If you don't have one, get one!

Reflection

I'm noticing that my students in LAII (level 2 English) are anxious for more opportunity to practice their spoken English. I need to foster that motivation in them. Most of them actually have very good English pronunciation, and can read in English very well. There are 2 or 3 students who are quite far behind the others, but that's true in every class. Hopefully, they'll be inspired to work harder. This week, since we've been reading stories about challenges, I think I'll have these students write a short story (with a graphic organizer of course) about a challenge they've faced. I'll hook them up with partner to practice reading their stories out loud. Then, they'll have to read in front of the whole class.

As for my SOPH LA class, we are continuing our study of Gilgamesh and, as noted above, will be moving toward a compare/contrast essay between flood stories. On a very good note: my 6th period class is not as evil as they were a week or so ago. One of the most disruptive students in that class has separated herself from the rest of the class to the table in my room. ...a step in the right direction! I'm starting to warm up to them a little, though I did have to call one of the students out on copying work and then lying about it.

The hardest part of this year so far: trying to stay organized and ahead of the game while trying to keep up with 4 preps. I feel overwhelmed and confused sometimes trying to keep so many different classes straight. Making sure I have all of my copies, class notes, assignments, activities, quizzes and tests, and supplements in order is never done; and I usually forget 1 or 2 things. I don't like that. :(

I Hate My 6th Period!

The Class from Hell

I'm sure that I've had issues with a class period in the past, but none of that matters when I feel the frustration that I do towards my 6th period SOPH LA class. This class has a variety of age groups in it (one of the poor souls is a very mature senior), but the majority of the students are new sophomores. Until recently, they were rambunctious freshman who ran their teachers ragged with all of their energy and lack of focus. I am definitely not used to dealing with such immaturity and expect my students to conduct themselves like young adults. So, I've been trying to figure out what to do about this particular class that doesn't seem to know how to stay on topic, focused, or quiet.

Today, I'm rearranging their seats for the 2nd time to see if that will help. I've made notes about which students seem to get off task and talk to each other. Those students will be separated. I've also put out a stack of detention forms, ready to fill out if I have to speak to any one student more than once. Since they seem to have difficulty staying on task during our daily grammar warm-ups, I'm going to tell them that if they don't stay quiet and get it done, I'm just going to count that day wrong on their weekly grade.

This class has made me so upset that I don't even want to talk about school when people ask me how it's going. When my 7th period class arrives at the end of the day, they look at me and ask things like, "Miss, what's wrong? Is it your 6th period again?" I am visibly worn out and upset to my 7th period students! That is not acceptable, and I need to change it.

Other Things...Happier Topics

Some thoughts I had last week:
1. I need to stop lying to myself when I think I'll do grading or planning over the weekend. It's just not going to happen, so I need to be sure to get all of this done by Friday before I leave for the weekend.
2. Dr. Scholl's inserts are a miracle. For the first time in 2 weeks, my feet aren't killing me; and I can move my toes without my foot going into a cramp! Thank you, Dr. Scholl!
3. I must make all of my copies for the following week by Friday before I leave for the weekend. Oftentimes, I'll leave them until Monday morning thinking, "No one else will be at the copy machine." Inevitably, there is always something to do at the last minute on Monday morning, so I need to limit the number of factors as much as possible.
4. Now that I am only teaching ESOL classes, I can move at a little slower pace. I used to have to rush my ESOL students to somewhat keep up with my regular students (for my own sanity). I need to remember things like: don't try to give verbal information while they are copying notes--they can't process both at once; and stop more frequently while reading text out loud in class to assess comprehension and ensure understanding.

Individual Class Activities

SOPH LA: This week, the students were introduced to Ancient Middle Eastern Literature. They did comprehension questions for the unit introduction, looked at some picture books for ancient Mesopotamia and Sumeria, and viewed a Ms. Greene original PPT that introduced the Epic of Gilgamesh. I feel like I rushed through my beautiful PPT, though. I must remember to take it a bit slower. Maybe next year, I'll have the students read the slides aloud before I embelish.

JR LA: We read all 4 of the Native American origin myths in the text and had some great conversation about them. To help them pay attention to the details of the Navajo Origin Myth (see a similar version here), the students worked for 2 days on storyboards of the myth. It was pretty difficult for many of them because of the specific colors, directions, and movements. In the end, though, I think they saw how important it is to focus on the details. Some of them have some great artistic ability, too!

LDC III: For speaking day this week, we played Talking Cards. The students loved the game, and I learned a lot about each of them through it. They asked if we could play again sometime, and I promised that if we had free time one day, we'd play it again. This class also went to the Media Center to choose their silent reading books. To my surprise, many of the students were excited about picking their own books! A couple had never checked books out from a library before, and that's always a special experience to witness. :) On Friday, we started reading the parallel text of Romeo & Juliet. Some of them had already read it last year (and were bored), but each of them had a part to read aloud, and we made it through Act I, Scene i.

LA II: This class is pretty easy because I just follow the schedule laid out by Visions. This week, we read a story about a journey through Antarctica. We've been learning new vocab words, practicing grammar, learning writing skills, and pronouncing words aloud. This group seems especially interested in improving their English, so I think I'm going to have to veer off from the Visions curriculum sometimes and do more verbal activities. I picked up some flashcards from the $1 section at Target. They are for phonics, sight words, and rhyming. I gave each of the students 2 phonics cards each and they had to pronounce all of the words on each card. They did this with very little effort. So, I'm going to have to kick it up a notch somehow.

The Beginning of a New Year

In General

This week has been a whirlwind of paperwork and getting the students on a routine. I know I've probably said this before, but when teachers complain about paperwork, we are NOT talking about grading papers. We are talking about other paperwork that would keep an assistant busy while we did all of the things that people normally associate with teacher work. Despite the chaos, I've had the best start to a new school year of my career!

World Lit

It's my goal to correlate my world lit class with the world history curriculum so my students have a better collective and individual store of prior knowledge of the cultures we study through the literature. My dept. chair, Ms. W, is the sheltered world hist teacher; she gave me a copy of that course's curriculum and a student copy of the textbook. As I started planning lessons for the class, I flipped through the first unit in the world hist book and saw that they learned about cave paintings as they began their study of the world's earliest civilizations. I thought: "What better way to start our unit on ancient literature than to have the students reenact the earliest form of story-telling!" So, I asked my students to think of a story that is passed down from parents to children in their culture, and to write down as much as they could remember of that story. I borrowed some transparencies of cave paintings from Ms. W--the same ones the students had seen in her class the day before--and we discussed what stories the pictures might be telling. I even mimicked some caveman grunting to illustrate for them that pictures were probably the most effective form of communication for these people. :) For the following 2 days, the students worked with acrylic paints, sponges, and paint brushes to recreate the message of the traditional story they chose. Next week, I'll post pics of some of their creations! They'll present their pictures to the class and tell the stories that go along with the pictures. After that, I'll use their stories to discuss oral tradition: stories that are passed through the generations by telling and retelling through spoken words.

So far for this course, my 1st period is doing well and are actually a lot of fun. They've been working hard, have cooperated, and have had a great sense of humor all week. My 6th period, though, saw Mean Ms. Greene today as I told them off for their immature behavior (a culmination of their misbehavior during the rest of the week. I actually had a student in that class come up to me and say, "Ms. Greene, you should do to these immature people what you did to me last year."

To which I jokingly asked, "What, A___, you mean take them outside and yell at them some more?"

"Yeah, Miss. Seriously. I'm glad I'm not like these kids anymore. When you explained what I was doing, I changed." I never gave him credit for it, but he did change. I guess it was a good lesson for him to learn.... (score 1 for discipline!) :)

LDC III

I've never taught this class before and am glad I'm not alone. Ms. W is teaching it also, and we've been collaborating on what to do. We've set up a schedule for each week: writing day, speaking day, vocab day, reading day, and Romeo & Juliet Friday. The LDC classes are meant as companion classes to the LA classes and LDC III goes with FR LA. However, the shelter teacher for that class found last year that she didn't have time to fit novels and plays into her schedule, so she asked us to pick up the slack. I can't teach these texts as I would for an LA class (frankly, that's not my responsibility), but this does give me the opportunity to make learning Shakespeare all about having fun. :)

This class has good kids in it. There is a nice mix of cultures, and it seems like everyone knows each other already and get along well. There's one boy who says he's probably the only Chinese student at our school. ...I'm pretty sure he might be right. LOL

LA II

This class is the 2nd level of English for our ESOL students. In the beginning, the most important thing I can do in these types of classes is assess the students' English ability. We've been working with simple past tense verbs, and I'm seeing that most of them are good with conjugating, but they are still having a bit of difficulty with sentence structure when it comes to making sentences negative past tense and asking questions in the past tense. So, we'll continue working on this next week before we move on to the next lessons. I was told that this class might be a handful because of a few particular students, but those students have been very sweet so far. A couple have actually been very helpful (collecting folders, putting books away...)!

American Lit

The curriculum for this class begins with Native American origin myths: stories that try to explain the how and why of natural phenomena. So, before we begin our study of these works, I had the students work in small groups to create their own origin myths for well-known natural occurrences like the Grand Canyon, Amazon River, and Sahara Desert. They worked on these for a couple of days.

One cool moment happened when I walked up to one group in the middle of what looked like a heated debate. I was worried that their creative differences would stall progress, so I went over to mediate. As I walked up, C____'s head whips around and she asks, "Miss! Wasn't it in Gilgamesh that the gods were so mad at humans that the sent a flood?!" (She studied Gilgamesh with me last year in World Lit.)

"Yes! It was!" I replied with a huge smile on my face.

"See, Miss! I remembered." Then she told her group, "We can't use that idea because someone already did." She was so proud of herself. This particular student has struggled with staying focussed in her classes and hasn't done as well as she could. I think this year will be different for her, though. :)

To start our study of Native American lit, I picked up a couple of illustrated books from the Media Center that show many aspects of N.A. life. I'm going to put together an activity this weekend so the students can use our textbook and these other books to become more familiar with the cultures from which these origin myths stem (a scavenger hunt or something similar). Then, they might appreciate the stories' themes and subjects a little better. I'm sure that they're learning about N.A.'s in American history, so this should build on that prior knowledge.

Final Thoughts

This first week has been tough: my feet are killing me, I am exhausted by 2:30PM, and I feel like there is only enough time in the day to move from one priority to the next before falling into bed at night. However, I know I am where I belong for now. When my students from last year and the year before (this is only my 3rd year at this school) come to visit me with smiles on their faces and ask if they can be in my class again, I know that everything I put them through while I have them (lectures about life, constant essay writing, taking tests that rival those given to honors students, and reading literature without giving in to complaints that it's just too hard or too stupid to read) is all for the best. They know I do it because I care.

This seems to be the secret ingredient to being a successful educator. Not only do you have to know what you are doing in your subject area. You have to care...with your whole heart. And, as stated above, sometimes you have to show that you care through stern words and a little harsh discipline. :)

Preplanning: the to-do list that never ends

This week, we had 3 days to prepare for the start of the new year. That's a whole lot to pack into 3 days!

1. Faculty, department, and team meetings

2. Unpacking and organizing classroom

3. Updating and copying class syllabi

4. Homeroom and 1st period paperwork

5. Textbook retrieval and scanning

6. Decorating classroom in a way that is stimulating for but also appealing to students

7. Legal briefings and training

8. What to do on those first few days

That's only what I can think of off of the top of my head. For every task we finish, there are at least 3-5 other items that are spur-of-the-moment requests from someone else: "Could you send me...?" "Will you email...?" "Can I get your help with...?" Not only are we getting ourselves ready, but we are also taking care of colleagues. It's what we do.

My Classroom

This year, I moved from my sweet little trailer way out yonder in the trailer park to a small classroom inside. I'm convenient to pretty much everything now, which makes me (and my feet) very happy. No longer will I have to plan an afternoon trek to make copies the next day, or make sure I have water and snack to tide me over during the long hike to the front office. I'll be in the middle of the action!

It took some rearranging of the furniture that was already in the room, but I think I've set up

my class in a way that will suit my teaching style. 3 of the rows of desks are facing front, and 4 of the rows are facing the door. This set up is a trick I learned from a colleague at my previous school to help make the room seem bigger. I've also set up a "creativity table" for those who aren't suited to traditional desks.

On the board are 4 taped boxes for my various classes. As always, I'll put daily assignments and reminders here. Even with the 4 boxes, I still have plenty of space for notes and activities! It is a big board!

I've also already posted my rules. I've found that these few rules have helped me manage my students' behavior and activity better than anything else. 6 simple rules:

1. Be prepared for class: Brain, Materials, Supplies

2. Absolutely no sleeping

3. Take responsibility for your actions

4. Don't make excuses. Create solutions.

5. Never mak

e fun of someone for not knowing something

6. Stay on task and on topic

I've found that all I have to do is give "the look" to a student, and they know that they've probably broken one of these 6 rules. I'm pretty easy like that, and it truly helps students to

know what your boundaries and expectations are. If I need to add a rule, I will. These 6 have worked for 3 years, though. :)

My Space

This will be my 6th year teaching, and I have never felt more confident about beginning a new school year. I truly feel like I can handle anything that comes my way because of my experience and my flexibility. I haven't made copies of my syllabi yet...but I'll get to it! I forgot to make seating charts, but I can do that when I get to school

early on Monday! I already have assignments ready and waiting for the students, and that's my main concern right now. I know how to prioritize the rest of what needs to be done.

As you can see, I've created a little fort for myself in my "teacher corner." :) I don't like students touching my stuff or invading my space, so I do what I can to clearly set up a "no-fly zone." I've already made myself comfortable, though, and am ready to get to work! Notice "Piggy" on the book shelf for Lord of the Flies, and the raven on my media cabinet for our study of Poe's poetry. These things are fun because when students look at them, they have an association with the literature we studied. I like it when something tangible can help them create stronger links to the reading. (On a side note: this is undoubtedly the neatest my desk will be ALL YEAR. LOL)

Student Space

Letting the students know that I have high expectations for them to be productive as well, I've set up a little "productivity corner" for them. Here, they can type, study, read, or take a break from the rest of the class while they think about how to make better choices. (I just thought up that last bit, but it fits with the corner set-up.)

The calendar on the board is for students to announce their birthdays and special events. One of my SOPH LA students from last year has a birthday coming up in 3 weeks! He will be in my JR LA class this year, so I will get to wish him a happy birthday! :)

Well, that's just some of what I've been up to in these past 3 days. When I arrived at school on Wednesday, I was a little overwhelmed with everything I needed to do. Unpacking all of my boxes and setting up my classroom was a priority, though. When my surroundings are in order, my mind is at ease, and I am better able to focus. So, it looks like the year is off to a good start! I'll be making weekly postings about my 4 different classes (LA II, LDC III, SOPH LA, and JR LA), so stay tuned if you want to know more about what goes on in an ESOL classroom! :)