New School, New Year

I am teaching at a new school and it is a new school year. I think right now I am averaging one blog post per 180 days of school so I'll get this one out of the way.

We are three weeks into the new school year and I think I like my school. I know I like my students. Some of them are real smart and I don't think they realize how smart they are.

I'm using a new curriculum and I am wondering how much it is helping. It is called Agile Minds. It has a heavy focus on teaching math through problem solving, which I like. It also is a heavy dose of pre - made powerpoints and more or less scripted lessons, which I don't like. My next unit I plan on varying from the prescribed powerpoints more than I have so far. After three weeks I hope i am getting a sense of what these lessons are like and whats good and bad.

I am wondering how I am progressing as a teacher after 5 years of doing this. I am definitely better at this now then I was 5 years ago. Kids listen to me. I am learning more and more how to be an authority. I can be an asshole when I need to be. I guess that is an improvement. I am still not as organized as I need to be. Maybe if I stay at a school for more than a few years I could accomplish that.

Oh well. I guess my goals for this school year are to plan interesting and useful projects for each unit (already missed this on the 9th graders first unit, but hopefully I ca make up for it in the second) The tenth graders have a pretty good data analysis project - I need a rubric for it though....

Second Goal - get organized (ideally I would have done this before the school year started, but now I am going to have to take some afternoon or morning and seriously catch up. (mini - goal in this goal - make sure I turn back student work in a timely fashion. That has always suffered because of my lack of organization)

Third Goal - Talk less - let students talk more - always a goal of mine, and the better I design activities and projects the better this becomes.

Maybe I'll write something come December to let you know how I am doing on these goals.

Pants

I awoke this morning in a rush with a million things on my mind, least of all was what I should wear on this first day of school. At a certain point though I did get dressed and as I looked through my clothes I realized I only own two pairs of pants that I could wear to work and neither of them fit to well.

So rather than spending tonight setting up a grade book, planning lessons or making an answer key to the diagnostic I will give tomorrow I went to the pants store.

First day of school eve.

Tomorrow I start I new job at a new school after taking a year off from teaching. I am very excited about the school, but feeling overwhelmed and under prepared. I'm imagining those feelings will last until around June with slight reprieve over Christmas break.

Today has started out rocky and is ending frantically. I woke up this morning not feeling so well. At first I thought it was nerves, but after my third or fourth trip to the bathroom I decided I must have had some bad food. My intestines seem to have calmed down, but it is not how I would have liked today to be.

This year I will be teaching 2 classes of 7th grade math, 1 class of 8th grade math, one class of Algebra and one class that is being called bridge. I've taught Algebra before and I know where I want to go with that, but the other classes are going to require quite a lot of prepping if they are going to be interesting courses.

My goal was to be in bed by 9 tonight. It is 9 now. I still have more work to do. I need seating charts, problem sets, example problems... The list keeps going.

I have realized in the last few days how easy it is for me to romanticize this job when it is not going on. In the time I had off I spent time reflecting on all the things I enjoyed about this job. I didn't spend much time thinking of the stressful evenings, lack of sleep and unruly children that defined almost everything I did for 10 months out of the year.

I suppose there is nothing to do, but get back to it. As stressed out and exhausted as I am sure I will soon become I am still going into tomorrow excited about the possibilities this school year holds.

New Year

I went back to work after 2 and a half months off. After that much time without working it is an exhausting transition to get up early and actually work. The exhaustion aside I am excited. I get to teach kids math. How cool is that.
My goals for the new year are this:
1. Establish good routines in my classroom.
2. Be firm and consistent with rules.
3. Focus on students ability to think about math.

How I will measure my success:

1. Students will enter and exit the room in an orderly fashion.
2. Amount of time spent arguing with students.
3. I'm not sure exactly how to measure this. I am going to have to think about this.

2 Hour Delays. Professional Development. Testing.

Got a two hour delay this morning and didn't really know what to do with myself. I really didn't expect this at all. It doesn't feel like this really counts as a two hour delay because we have professional development today anyways. All I had to look forward to was grading some notebooks and hanging up some posters. Its really a fluke that I even found out about the delay.
I had heard it might snow, but when I woke up there didn't seem to be anything on the ground so I didn't worry about it. I even started to bike to work . I didn't get very far though. While riding past the Blockbuster in Waverly I heard a hiss come from my tire. I stopped and looked down to see a piece of glass stuck into my tire. I was dismayed, but not far from home so I called around to look for a ride.I reached another teacher from my school and she was like " What? You're going to school now? We have a two hour delay."
I guess its nice. I don't know. I'm frustrated with work right now. Not all aspects of it. I like the students . I still like the challenges they bring to my classroom. I'm working on getting the class under control. My real frustration is coming from things that are out of my realm of control.
I'm pretty fed up with hearing about the HSA. I really could probably write a lot of things about why its wrong to do this. Maybe I'm just scared that I'm not doing enough to get my students to a point where they could pass it. But to be honest I think this test is wrong. I don't want to feel like I'm teaching my students how to pass it, but this is how the Algebra curriculum is designed. That is how my performance and the performance of my students is being measured. It's bad. I don't think this is what is needed to raise student achievement.
The frustration comes because I don't feel like I'm in a position to do anything about the test. Yes its my classroom, but I am powerless to do anything about this. I can't just say I'm going to teach math the way I think it should be done. I have to have my students ready for this test or they won't graduate. I'm sure with more experience I can take the curriculum and prepare my students for the HSA without feeling like I'm teaching students for a test, but right now that just isn't happening.

Potential

All my students have potential. I tell their parents that. I think that is the most clichéd line ever. "Your son has so much potential. He just...." I think this New Year I'm going to quit saying that. I'm going to have my students live up to their potential in my classroom. I can't help what happens to them when they aren't in school. But I need to make my classroom an environment where students can come and learn.
This year has potential. My resolution is to live up to it. I need to establish discipline in my classroom. I have ideas. So far I haven't put them in to practice because I haven't established any consistent system that creates order in my classroom. My goal is to create structures that clearly let students know what is expected of them and what is going to happen if they don't behave accordingly.

10 and one half days until...

I hate to say I'm counting down the days, but I most definitely am. My troubles at school seem to be growing, but my support is as well. Two of my math classes are pretty much out of control. I can't get students to be quiet long enough to teach anything. Its a mess. In Freshmen Seminar students have stopped listening to me. There is a total lack of respect. All of this is making teaching very difficult.
Hope is not lost. I work with very excellent people who are willing to help me out in so many ways. From pulling kids out of my room to daily keeping me on track. Most of all I gotta be more stern. That's what it really comes down to.
Today I visited the Crossroads School in Fells Point. This is an excellent middle school. The school follows the expeditionary learning model . This school is the way I wish my middle school had been. The culture of the school at first seemed so radically different from any school I attended and a world away from my current job. The students were actively engaged in so many things that my students are apathetic to. I saw students engaged in a discussion of how they could have resolved a conflict better. Group norms seem consistently well established. The students seemed very conscientious of the typical teacher language that is being used. Discipline and order were not something established din some mythical way.
The quality of work these students were capable off blew me away. The math class I observed had students engaged with the work and thinking about and discussing math. The class talked about why you have to switch an inequality sign around if you multiply or divide by a negative. That was a level of thinking going on with the students higher than simply having them memorize algorithms and much higher then what I am getting in my class.
My goals currently are to improve the structures in my classroom so that more order and learning can occur. One thing I took from today was the importance of making it clear to students what is expected of them in both behavior and in quality of work. More concretely I plan by Christmas break to have structures in place so that students will enter my room, begin there work and know what we are doing for the period. Additionally I am going to instill the habit of leaving the room clean and the desks ordered. I've got 10 and one half days....