Learning with Experience: December 2013

I am lucky that I have had the past two weeks off for winter vacation. However, like my most teachers I have spent the first few days relaxing (trying to recover from the school year) and spending time with family. As the second part rolls around, I find myself once again thinking about school, my students, and what the remainder of the school year will look like. The past 4 years have been a true learning experience. I have learned more about myself, my style of classroom management, and my teaching philosophy than any grad-program could teach me.
My first year teaching could be titled Staying Above Water.
I had no clue what the curriculum demanded (I didn't know until 4 months in, where to find the pacing guide). I knew that I wanted to be the kind of teacher that made students love learning, no matter what....so my discipline was lack luster. I only spent 2 days on classroom management, and spent the rest of the year making up for that mistake. I had looped up with these students (I was a student intern in their 5th grade class the year before) so they knew me as a subordinate teacher. They knew me as the fun teacher. I spent all year creating HUGE projects for them to do and trying to teach too much in 1 lesson. I overwhelmed the students, and I overwhelmed myself. However, I can say that I truly had some successes that year. I had a student come to me on a 2nd grade reading level and leave on a 5th grade reading level. It wasn't because he couldn't do it when he came to me, I just showed him a reason to care. All of my students passed the Social Studies Standardized Test. And the thing I am most proud of, I still talk to three of students via email. They are in high school now and thriving. I put so much energy into my students that year, I cried so much about my students that year, and I spent 2 months in summer school that year, that I was not prepared for the next year.
My second year of teaching could be titled That Class.
My first year students were angels. That is not saying they were perfect. That is not saying they never misbehaved (see previous paragraph) but at the end of the day they were never mean-spirited toward each other. My 2nd year students were a group of students I will never forget because of the hell they put me through. I had 26 students, 10 were I.E.P. students. This was the year of the inclusion classroom. I loved my inclusion teacher, and without her I would have quit the second month of school. On the first day of school, I had a student flip me the bird and cuss me out over his lunch box. He would continue this behavior every day for most of the school year whenever I asked him to do something he did not like. On the second day of school, I had a desk thrown at me. I had a student that spent 1/4 of the year under his desk and every time I walked by the desk, he would bark at me. I had a student that bullied another kid so bad that she stole his glasses and broke them, constantly would yell horrible remarks across the class at him, and was just so mean I could not fathom how her parents could stand up for that behavior. The worst of it, was I had an administration that looked the other way. They did not acknowledge the bullying no matter how many times I referred the student. They did not support me and they made it clear to the students early on, that there would be no consequence for their behaviors. Despite all this, my classroom behavior management did improve. I was able to anticipate potential issues while lesson planning. I learned to be flexible and change last minute if I saw a behavior coming on. And the best part, was that the some of the students saw success for the first time. They saw what hard work could do for them.
My third year of teaching could be titled Why I became a Teacher.
Because of the long commute and the lack of support from my administration I changed schools. I was hoping things would get better. And they did...sort of. This year we departmentalized. I wanted to be the social studies teacher. That was what I was promised...but in public education nothing is guaranteed. I became the math teacher because I was the only teacher comfortable with teaching 6th grade and 7th grade math. This turned out to be the best move ever. I learned I was good at teaching math. I was able to help students that claimed to have hated math their entire life, see the purpose behind math. I was able to convert haters to lovers...or at least bearables. My first year teaching was full of projects, my second year teaching was full of worksheets, my third year teaching had to be different. I started adapting my classroom and learning about the flipped classroom model. I learned that technology could be used to enhance a lesson and help differentiate to meet the child's needs. I started teaching like I wanted. I started becoming comfortable with lesson planning and knowing how long I should teach something, and when to go back and when to just move forward. I became a data queen. I was giving tests, quizzes and performance tasks so that I could better understand where I needed to meet my students. It worked. That was my best teaching year I have ever had. As for my professional life, it was the worst. I had a teammate that I was constantly arguing with. He was the type of person to show up 5 minutes before the students and throw something together. He never checked his email, so he never knew what was going on. He wanted to be a friend to the students instead of a teacher and so his class was constantly out of control. I heard a lot of , "Why can't you be more like..." from the students. Now you may be wondering why I even concern myself with him since he teaches a different subject, well the problem was that at my school my other two teachers had to spend 30 minutes at the end of the day teaching math to a remedial group of students. And of course I had to plan and prepare all of the materials for them. I was in charge of 6 groups of remedial students each taught by a different teacher (only 1 of which had ever taught 6th grade math before). This was painful. I had to teach the teachers so they could teach the students. There were many times I would walk in and the students weren't doing the prepared lesson, or they were learning it incorrectly. I will never forget the fateful day of multiplying fractions...I still shudder.
So far my 4th year of teaching could be titled Learning.
I wanted this year to be different. I wanted to have to teach like last year but I have a professional relationship that was better than last year. I have all new coworkers (my school has a big turnover every year) and of course, none of them have ever taught 6th grade before. It has been a rocky year both with my teaching (trying to find my groove with the inclusion teacher) and with administration (we have new coaches that want to change how we do things.) So with this in mind, I wanted to make a resolution. For the remainder of this year I want to:
1. Stay positive.
I need to remember that if I stay positive this will help my students stay positive. They pick up on my body language and my mood and I want them to be happy and not stressed at school.
2. Trust my teammates.
They have all taught before...in some way. I cannot micromanage them. It only causes me stress. I need to have faith and prepare myself in case they do need me.
3. Love the messy ones.
I have 3 students that are always out of their seats. They always have a trail mess around them. They shout out, ask a TON of questions, and they drive me nuts. I like them personally because they are sweet kids but because we have to coexist in this classroom that is already too small, I often nitpick and publicly criticize their messiness. I need to make sure that they know that I do in fact respect and care about them. I need to help them tame their messiness but I also need to realize it is a part of them. It is their classroom too.
4. Get into the groove.
I need to advocate for myself and for my students. In order to keep the peace I have sacrificed how I teach because it makes my inclusion teacher uncomfortable. This is not fair for the students. I know my way is not always the best way, but if I know it works and works well then I should speak up.

I want this year to be a success, but I know it is up to me to make it one.

It is that time of year again in the elementary school where I teach. We are beginning a week long unit of sexual education. Every year we always have a handful of kids opt out and are required to complete an alternative health assignment. It is typically up to the teacher what to do, but it has to be along your health curriculum. Last year (see post titled: Integrating Technology Into the Health Curriculum) I had the student create PowerPoint presentations about different parts of the body and then create QR codes that linked to the presentations. This year, my challenge was creating a lesson that involved the math grant we received. How can I tie math into health and then display it on their math website?

I came up (with the help of my SPED IA) with a lesson that required the students to research the nutrition facts from their favorite foods. They would then take these nutrition facts and decide if they were healthy or not. They had to base their decision by calculating the percentage of total calories they were allowed in a day. For instance if they were looking up Cheezits, 1/2 cup has 190 calories out of the average 2,000 a day. This is 9.5% of the allowed calories in a day. Not bad, but not the best.

With the activity, the students read about nutrition facts, evaluate their food choices, and calculate percentages. They can then take pictures of the nutrition facts and their percentages and post them on their math websites. :)

When planning this lesson, I expected the students to struggle with calculating the percentages the most, but in fact they struggled with copying and pasting the nutrition facts the most. They were trying to paste into Google Docs, which is not the easiest thing to do sometimes. I had to show them how to snagit the nutrition label, save it, and then upload into Google Docs. Luckily one student was really good at this skill and was able to help the other students whenever they needed a reminder of what to do.