Treading Water...

Yet another week down and I still can’t believe how quickly time is just flying by. I can’t tell you how  g-l-a-d I am to say that today is Friday, and my weekend has officially begun. I don’t know what it is about teaching that makes me so very tired by the week’s end, but by Friday I’m ready to drag myself home, plop myself on my favorite seat on my favorite couch, and promptly not remove myself from that spot until Sunday evening. Seriously.  I’m exhausted by (and all during) the weekend. My day goes by like a whirlwind and before I know it, I look around and it’s time to go home. Both the week and the weekend seem to go by the exact same way. … too freakin’ fast.

The good thing is that I’m not feeling completely overwhelmed like I was when things first started. I can finally say that I am (kinda) getting the hang of my day and of my kids and classes. I’m finally trying to get to the place where I can map out two weeks of planning at a time. Haven't gotten thee just yet, but I'm working on it.  I also started writing out the next day’s info on my board the night before, so that when I come in in the morning, it’s already completed and I can actually take my first hour of the day and get those little things done seem to completely elude your memory until the last possible minute.

What I haven’t quite gotten a solid hold on just yet is figuring out how in the world I’m supposed to plan so much stuff for so many classes (I have 7 total, in 4 different grades) in such a short amount of time. Planning takes me a long time. At least quality planning does. I know some other beginning teachers that can put a lesson plan together in a sec – they’re goooood. Me? Well, I can put together some really good plans, but it can easily take me hours to do it – and that’s just for one class. I haven’t learned the art of quick lesson planning just yet, but I’ll get there someday, I guess.  J  For now, I try to keep my head above water and plan when I can, while trying to juggle trying to actually have some family time to speak of (and sleep would be nice, too).

...add to that unit planning, record keeping, observations, data tracking, and oh yeah... EOG prep...
where in the world is the time supposed to come from????

Planning time? WHAT planning time??

Can someone PLEASE explain to me how in the world teachers are supposed to plan so much stuff  WITHOUT ADEQUATE PLANNING TIME???? I guess I’ll never really understand this part of the job. The little planning time that we do get is such a precious commodity that you eventually come to protect it against interruption with the threat of death or completely intentional dismemberment… DO not mess with a teacher’s planning time.

As it stands now, I get three half-hour planning times per week. It never ceases to amaze me just how quickly that time goes by. Seems like as soon as I sit down at my computer (I have three in my room now, YAY!!!), pull up my Lesson Planning template and begin filling in just one block for one subject in a day, it’s already over and it’s time for me to get back to my schedule with the kids. Which means, pretty much, that my actual planning time ends up taking place at home when I’m supposed to be off work and spending time with my family. Which also means that my supposed 8-hour a day job has now transformed into a consistent 10 or 11-hour day  easily. No wonder I’m so freakin’ tired every night. Slowly but surely, I’m learning the lot of a teacher. This job entails some serious self-sacrifice, for real.

I’m getting better, though. I’ve learned to set up general files for the crapload of papers that comes your way every week – emails, memos, reminders, schedules, revised schedules, master calendars, changes to the master calendars, etc. Until I set up several folders to help me organize this stuff, my desk was literally crawling with stuff. Papers everywhere. Looking for a pen? White out? Masking tape? Yeah, sure… I’ve got it! Somewhere up under all that paper on my desk! Three weeks in and it’s finally starting to look like a neatly organized desk of a teacher. I’m getting’ there!  

Time's a-flyin'...

Can’t believe we’re through the third week of school already. This time has flown by incredibly fast – literally in a whirlwind.

Seriously, dude. For all those teachers who manage to get up before the crack of dawn and go take care of other people’s children all day, only to come home and take care of their own families and homes, manage to steal away a few hours here and there to plan for the week’s instruction and then STILL update their blogs faithfully… I salute you.

I’d read in so many blogs before I started this journey where first year teachers said that this was the hardest job they’d ever done in their lives, and many of them had come from the corporate world in various high-level capacities. Now, however, I understand. I love my job. I absolutely love what I do, and I’m learning an incredible amount each day. But God knows, I am SO BEAT DOWN TIRED when I get off work and finally drag myself home that I don’t know what to do. No amount of sleep seems to be enough. No amount of planning seems to be enough. The next day still seems to come way, way too fast and I wake up exhausted and worn out and (still) dragging my umpteen, filled-to-the-brim-with-teaching-stuff teaching bags with me everywhere I go.

Through of the written wisdom of so many other teachers before me, I took special care to dedicate the first week or two to teaching rules, procedures and expectations so my kids know what to do. I’ve gotten them to the point where they come to my class on their own (my groups in the trailer starts with 3^rd graders), enter the room quietly and look on the board for the Do Now. They know to follow the steps and get busy. That’s when I take attendance and get myself and my handouts, etc. together for the lesson that’s about to start. The Do Now usually keeps them busy for a good ten minutes, so it’s a nice breather for me everyday – especially when I’ve prepared ahead of time and have their handouts, books, etc. already set out. It’s not the kids themselves that are wearing me out – it’s the paperwork and the data collection and the feeling that I’m still just treading water that’s exhausting. Just when I feel like I’ve caught up and I have the opportunity now to actually – oh I don’t know – Get Ahead?? – that’s when even more work comes. Even more assignments. Even more data collection. Even more requirements. And that little advantage of time that I saw rising on the horizon just begins to sink down ever so slowly into the quagmire of being swamped.  

I carry so much stuff and paperwork and lesson planning material home every night, planning to take an hour or two and get some serious unit planning done, to organize my never-ending pile of freeflowing papers. So far, though, it just hasn’t panned out the way I’ve planned. My back and shoulders hurt so badly sometimes that I end up popping more IBs than I care to admit to stay the throbbing pain and soreness that inevitably ensues. And even in that, I still end up leaving something very necessary in my room at school. I still find that, when I’m finally home and in my sweats and tshirt and sitting on my favorite seat on the couch, that I’ve left that one piece of paper or memo or curriculum book AT SCHOOL and don’t have what I need to get all the work I planned to get done. And so we repeat the cycle all over again… I lug those extra heavy, overly full bags right back to school, only to fill them with still more stuff, making them even heavier. Yeah. It’s not fun. When I finally put my bags down, they land with such a loud THUD that it’s startling sometimes. Guess it’ll get better soon, right? J

Three weeks down... can't believe it!

This week (the third week of school) is when I begin to actually work with my own set of students. Remembering my training, I’ve already come up with the rules, consequences and rewards that I want to use, and I plan to use the first few days of the week (at least) to have the kids come up with our rules and things as a group. I read about a “Rules Workshop” in Bill Cecil’s book, Best Year Ever! Book.  Definitely gonna use that. Because I have actual students now, my daily schedule has changed big time. Gone is the free-flowing flux time that I’ve had for the last few weeks. Now, my day is scheduled into blocks of time with each grade level, with very little ‘transition’ time in between. It’s all good… I’m just glad to have the job and be able to work with the kids… I’ve just got to get the schedule down so that I make sure I’m where I’m supposed to be when I’m supposed to be there, ya know?  For those of you that are about to go into a Resource Room kind of schedule and are wondering what that might look like, here’s my schedule as an example. Everybody’s is different, and yours will probably look very different once you start teaching. Just in case, though, at least you have a general idea of what to expect:

• 7:30 – 8:30          Arrival and preparation of classroom for the day
• 8:30 – 9:00          Inclusion with 5^th grade class
• 9:00 – 10:00        Resource room with Kindergarteners
• 10:00 – 10:25      Walk from the main building back to trailers and get ready for my next class
• 10:25-11:25         Fourth grade kids come to my trailer for resource services
• 11:25-12:25         Third grade kids come to trailer for resource services
• 12:25-1:25           Fifth grade kids come to trailer for resource services
• 1:25-2:00             Lunch
• 2:00-2:30             Grade-level planning meeting for either K, 3, 4 or 5
• 2:30-3:00             Inclusion with 5^th grade class
• 3:00-3:30             Planning or IEP meeting time, if needed       

               

During the third week (aka my first week with the students), I set up a Do Now on the board for each class, and taught them to enter the classroom quietly then look for the Do Now and get started right away. This way, the kids would know what’s expected of them on how they should come into the classroom (procedure), and they had some direction as well to help them get on task right away. And, I could take attendance silently while they were mid-procedure, so no learning time would be wasted with that later. They did okay the first few days. Most of them came right in and sat down on day one and two, then realized the Do Now was on the board and got up to get the needed materials and get started a few minutes after. By Thursday, they were pretty well acclimated with this process. On Friday, they nailed it. I WAS SO PROUD!!!  After introducing the process the first day, I walked into the classroom with them the rest of the days and stood off to the side near my desk and watched them to see what they would do. By Friday, they came straight into the classroom walking (yay), quietly (yay again), read the Do Now and got straight to work (Awesome!!!). I could see in that moment just how helpful our training had been this summer, and I was so appreciative. Now when we get down to content next week, they’ll already know the process and they’ll get themselves on task as soon as they come into the classroom. Yay… I’m a teacher!!!

I pretty much did the same thing with the rules and our other procedures.  We did a modified version of Bill Cecil’s Rules Workshop (modified b/c of the ages of my kids and the short amount of time I have with each group). It worked so well. We started out by talking about what rules we think we should have in our classroom and why they might be important. Then we narrowed them down into a concise list of 4 or 5, and kept them phrased In the positive. We reviewed and talked about them each day so they were constantly reinforced. About midway into the week, we began to act out the rules in skits. The kids LOVED this part! What does following this rule look like? What does NOT following it look like? They seemed to come alive when they were given the freedom to act out the do’s and don’ts of the classroom, and I so enjoyed their creativity in all this. I guess the greatest reward is that they’re remembering the rules (well, most of them anyway, lol) and that our group time is relatively controlled and everything. I see them self-correcting sometimes, too, which is great. When we get into content next week, we’ll have the expectations at least initially explained, discussed and practiced, so we could just do reinforcement throughout the year to keep things intact and our time purposeful.

I also took time out to explain our rewards system, because my intention is to really focus on the good and not harp so much on negatives, if that’s at all possible.  I introduced Scholar Dollars (for my little scholars, haha), our sticker chart and a series of other rewards that were simple but effective (like 10 minutes extra computer time, being able to do your work sitting at the teacher’s desk, an extra water break, etc.). That went well too. I guess we’ll see how everything pans out as the year goes on, and I’ll tweak things as needed once I see what actually works and what doesn’t. We’ll see!!

Days I’ve been a teacher with real live students:    4

Week Two ... the saga continues...

Second week of school starts, and things are in full swing for everyone else now. Teachers are practicing their rules and procedures with the students, and it’s great to watch and listen to.  From my trailer, I watch class after class practice lining up, walking on the right, practicing fire drills, etc. I still don’t know which grades I’ll have yet or even who my kids will be, but I watch them intently to learn from them so I’ll know how to do the same thing hopefully in a week or so. Because I don’t have my roster yet and don’t know which of the kids will be in my resource groups, my days this week don’t really have a ‘schedule’ to them. I come in at 7:30 and have a free-flowing day until it’s time to go home at 3:30. So I clean. I arrange the desks and chairs in my room. I run out to Home Depot or Lowe’s or WalMart and buy air fresheners and plants and stuff to help make the room look nice. I go to the teacher’s store (oh, my goodness… you could just get llllllost in there!!! Love it!!!) and purchase wall banners and character development posters and the like. And I can even go out and grab some lunch if I want.  Cool beans! J

I finally broke down and went to WalMart to buy some shelves, since we didn’t have any. So that Friday and Monday of the following week were spent hammering and nailing shelves together so that our library area would be presentable once we started pulling kids for resource services. I have to admit, it was really nice to have this ‘flux time’ to get everything cleaned up and presentable. The other teachers had a week or so of workdays to do this work when they came back for the new school year, but I missed out on that time because I was hired so late in the process. I’m thankful that the school thought enough of me to remember that I needed that time as well. All things really do work together for the good!

It’s finally the end of the second week, and I get my list of kids just before we leave school to begin the weekend. I finally have access to their IEPs, so I can also spend some of the weekend time reading them and familiarizing myself with their needs before I begin to work with them on next Tuesday. Can’t believe it’s time for me to actually have students. I can’t wait!!!

And we're off!!!

So, anyway! I’m in my first full week now at my new school. On my first day, it’s Open House. People are scrambling left and right trying to get ready for the parents that will soon be coming to meet their children’s teachers. I don’t have a home yet, so one of the staff takes me around to the classrooms and introduces me to the teachers. I’m absolutely loving all the creativity I’m seeing with the room setups, wall decorations, centers that are set up, etc. While they’re talking, I’m taking thousands of mental notes about which things I like and would love to use in my classroom, once I get it. At this point, I still don’t know which grade(s) I’ll be working with, but I’m taking in everything at every level, just in case. At least I have it narrowed down now to K-5! 

I get the key to my mobile unit (trailer, haha) in the afternoon, and go in to see what I’ll be dealing with in terms of cleanup and furniture needs and stuff. This place was in need of a serious clean-up. The trailer was used for storage for a good while, so although the walls were painted, they’re now scraped up and dirty and icky in many places because so much furniture has been pushed up against them for so long. Definitely gotta paint. In terms of furniture, I have plenty of desks and chairs for the kids, but no tables. One table in the whole room, and I’m holding onto it for dear life. If someone takes that one out, we’re in a world of trouble when we finally get our computers. We have a storage cabinet (yay) and one teacher’s desk, too. While the other furniture is on order for us, we scrub and disinfect and polish up everything we can… Comet and bleach are our best friends on these days.

School finally starts a few days later, and so does our painting. The other teacher and I work together to get the walls covered and have the room nice and bright and welcoming for when our students start spending time with us. For the next two days, although school is fully in session now and there are kids everywhere, I’m in jeans and a tshirt because my whole day right now consists of painting those walls so that that part will be behind us and we can move on to room arrangement sometime soon. So one day, I’m well into my painting, light yellow spots of paint all over my tshirt and jeans, hands covered in paint splotches, a fine spray of paint on the side of my face from when I pushed the paint roller too hard across the wall because my hands were starting to literally hurt from painting so much (and because the paint was starting to get low, so every little bit had to come out of that dern thing so the remaining paint would be enough to last)… and we get a fire drill. SERIOUSLY?????  I look a mess. No, scratch that. I look BEYOND a mess. My jeans are rolled up around my ankles, I just have on socks so my shoes wouldn’t get messed up, and my hair is in an I-don’t-care-how-I-look-I’ve-got-work-to-do ponytail kind of thing. And where do I have to go?? Out of my nice, private trailer into the parking lot with many, many (many) kids all lined up and clean and pretty, and tons of teachers who look clean and professional and who don’t know me or what the heck I’ve been doing for the last two days. Yep. Wonderful. I get so many strange looks from the kids and from the teachers who are around, but can’t say anything because during fire drills, we have to be silent. I’m soo, so glad to finally hear the announcement from the office that the fire drill is over and we can return to our classrooms that I don’t know what to do. I walk as fast as I can back to my trailer in an effort to minimize the number of other people seeing me looking such a mess … oh, my goodness. What a way to meet my colleagues!!

I'm MzNewTeacher! Nice to meetcha!

Things are coming together...

The first three weeks of school have flown by like a whirlwind, literally. I can’t believe that just a few weeks ago, I was brand new with no students at all, a dirty storage trailer that had just been emptied of all its (many) items, and no clue who was who and what was where. Looking back, it’s amazing to me just how quickly that time flew by, and how much has happened in such a short time. Let’s start with the very first week I arrived on campus.

I was hired very late In the hiring cycle for the new school year. Most of my counterparts had been hired by other schools weeks and weeks ago, and there was a group of us (maybe 25 or so) who still didn’t have jobs with the first day of school approaching less than a week and a half away. Scary business. It was so unsettling to get so close to the beginning of school and still not have a clue what school you’d be working at, what your hours would be, what your commute would look like (crucial in our city), and even what grade level you’d be working with. None of those questions were answered for us just yet, and everything was still very much up in the air. I mean, even though you’re waiting patiently and interviewing almost daily and trying to prepare yourself for the job as much as you can, how can you adequately prepare if you’re not sure you’ll work with kindergartners or seniors in high school? How can you begin to purchase materials for your walls and your classroom when you’re not sure whether or not your students will be old enough to read?

And how can you begin to budget your monthly (yes, monthly) paycheck so that you’ll know how much gas money you’ll have to set aside to get back and forth to work until the end of the month comes again? In our city, the bus doesn’t go everywhere. So some places, you either have to have a car to get to or you should plan on a very long and hot walk from the “nearest” bus stop to get to where you need to go. And how much time should you budget for that? Knowing which of our many schools we’d be at would have been a great first step, ya think? I mean, information like that could mean the difference between your getting up at 4:30 – 5:00 am in order to get a jump on the traffic to your (very far away) school, to being able to sleep till 6:30 or so and not have to be to school until 8 or 9 am. Our schools are on staggered opening schedules, so we have many schools that open at 7:30, others that begin at 8:30 and still others that don’t even begin their day until 9:30 in the morning. That’s a bigggg difference when it comes to planning your morning and knowing whether or not you’ll be able to be there to see your own kids off to school before you head on down to the job to take care of other folks’ children. So many things to consider, and yet so many unanswered questions for us. This was a very, very uneasy time.

The same day the remaining teachers without jobs were to be automatically assigned to schools, I got a call with a job offer to a great school. This was one of the interviews I had that went exceptionally well, and I felt really comfortable with my interviewer the whole time. Felt like I’d known her for years. Yeah… this was the right place for me. Looking back, I’m so, so glad that this is the school I ended up at. So many of my friends are at schools doing inclusion most of the day, in classrooms where the gen ed teacher doesn’t really want them there and shows it. I feel so blessed to have the assignment I have. I have my own space. The staff is supportive. The kids are great. I mean, seriously. The worst thing I have to be concerned with behavior-wise is that the kids talk out of turn (because they’re all so excited that they all want to share with you at the same time). Oh. And every so often, they’ll forget to raise their hand to let you know they need something. REALLY??? I thought I’d have so, so, so, so many other behavior issues that it’s not even funny. I spent my entire year of application and program training reading other teacher’s blogs so that I could see what it would really be like in the trenches, and let me tell you, they go through some rough stuff. In comparison, I’m just overflowing with blessings, and I’m really, really grateful. I so admire those teachers who have all those behavior issues to deal with on a daily basis and yet continue pushing through, not giving up but remaining determined to effect change and be the difference they want to see. Hats off to you guys, for real. You deserve it.

Catching up time!

Wowwww… so much has happened in the last few weeks. I’ve got so much to catch up on that it’s just crazy. I originally intended to update this blog every day, or at least once or twice a week, so that I’d have an accurate record of what my first year of teaching has been like. But… yeah… that didn’t happen. I knew teachers were busy. I knew teachers were some of the hardest working people alive. And I knew that they gave so much of their time to actually teaching students, then later planning for students and activities that they probably didn’t have much real time left over for themselves. But I had no idea. Teachers rock, dude. It still amazes me how they get up and do what they do morning after morning, exhausted or not, sick or not, and still manage to give their students their best and start each day with a smile. I want to be like them when I grow up. J

So now that I realize that expecting to be able to update this blog every day, or at least twice a week or so, is a little excessive for me right now, I’ve decided that what I’ll do is update it a few times a month, but just list several entries on the same day. Today, for example, I’m catching up (big time). Today’s post will have several different entries of different days, but all with today’s date (because I’m reeeeeeally late in getting this daggone stuff up, haha). Anyway, the content’s there. And you get the picture. So, here we go!