Ok, here goes! My friend Heather started Week in the Life of a Teacher and I'll do this week. It wasn't the best Monday...Thanks for listening, friends.
Monday, March 20, 2017
Sunday Night – I have about 12 notebooks to grade so I settle in after the UNC game and grade and watch basketball. I was out of town this weekend. I have a backpack full of other things that need to be graded or planned out, but at 11:30 I go on to bed.
Before School 7:20-8:00
I wait with my daughter in the hall until her bus comes. I update the SSR reading sheets that I need to handout today and run copies. As Nikèl said, copier etiquette is pretty important. One copier is jammed, but I don’t fix it. I use the one that’s working and head in to my room. About half of my kids are eating breakfast and looking at phones. Chillin.
I wait with my daughter in the hall until her bus comes. I update the SSR reading sheets that I need to handout today and run copies. As Nikèl said, copier etiquette is pretty important. One copier is jammed, but I don’t fix it. I use the one that’s working and head in to my room. About half of my kids are eating breakfast and looking at phones. Chillin.
1st Period 8:00-9:30 English 2 Inclusion
This class is small (14 kids) and 4 are absent. Inclusion classes have students with IEPs grouped together so they can get extra support. I have a co-teacher Mr. P all class which is unheard of at my school. Just a lucky scheduling moment. Mr. P helps out and keeps all the kids on track. We have been working a lot on independent reading. It’s my favorite. I want kids to read for pleasure and to enjoy books. Most everyone has finished a book, if not two. As we head in to spring break, we need to get current books finished, though, so we can begin All Quiet as a class after we get back. I pass out the SSR Planning Contract and students calculate how many pages they read in a 20 minute period. They find out how many pages they have left in their books and map out a plan or how much they need to read each day to finish on time. They sign their contracts and turn them in. We read in SSR for about 15 minutes and students record their pages on their chart. During SSR I help a girl find a book. She checks her list of “someday books” and I pull a few of those for her from the class library, but she actually goes for one I just threw in as a possibility: The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart. It’s funny and she gives it a try for the day. I also talk with another student who finished his book After by Francine Prose today. He liked the book but not the ending.
This class is small (14 kids) and 4 are absent. Inclusion classes have students with IEPs grouped together so they can get extra support. I have a co-teacher Mr. P all class which is unheard of at my school. Just a lucky scheduling moment. Mr. P helps out and keeps all the kids on track. We have been working a lot on independent reading. It’s my favorite. I want kids to read for pleasure and to enjoy books. Most everyone has finished a book, if not two. As we head in to spring break, we need to get current books finished, though, so we can begin All Quiet as a class after we get back. I pass out the SSR Planning Contract and students calculate how many pages they read in a 20 minute period. They find out how many pages they have left in their books and map out a plan or how much they need to read each day to finish on time. They sign their contracts and turn them in. We read in SSR for about 15 minutes and students record their pages on their chart. During SSR I help a girl find a book. She checks her list of “someday books” and I pull a few of those for her from the class library, but she actually goes for one I just threw in as a possibility: The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart. It’s funny and she gives it a try for the day. I also talk with another student who finished his book After by Francine Prose today. He liked the book but not the ending.
Friday we did one of three character prediction organizers, so today we are just finishing up those activities. I pass back notebooks (these are the ones I graded Sunday night) and kids check their grades and also read the little notes I wrote to each of them on inside. They are happy with the notes. I made them all sweet, positive, and encouraging. We paste in some old work (we use interactive notebooks in this class so we use A LOT of glue sticks). Students get the new prediction organizer and work on it in groups. A few groups just sit NEAR each other and don’t interact like I want them to. Other groups get to it and have lively discussions. Small class size is great, but 10 is hard sometimes. You never know who will or will not be present and so some days the dynamic is off. All kids get the chart done and we discuss it. They have made inferences on their papers, but we keep reading more into the text and asking questions. I roll with their ideas and it’s good. Then, they have one more prediction organizer to do on their own. I will look at these and see where the kids are on this skill/activity. Some finish, some don’t by the time the bell rings. It’s all good. I collect their papers and will look at them this evening. Good class, a little rushed at the end but that’s ok.
2nd Period 9:40 – 11:10 AP Literature
So…these kids got a fun movie Friday as a treat and we finished watching the end of it first today in class. They were appreciative and happy. We go over our review term for the day and tone word of the day. We assigned parts for Act 3 of Hamlet and read 3.1, pausing to discuss and look at passages as needed for understanding. We watched as much of 3.1 in the Branagh film version up to the bell. They like Kate Winslet’s Ophelia and the drama of that version. We will keep working through Act 3 tomorrow. I’m not really feeling Hamlet at the moment with them. They are into it and we are working through it quickly, but since the AP exam is nearing, I also have this need to work on the things they want to improve. I am sort of ready to move on to Hamlet and get back in to poetry. I feel like they have enough major works under their belts. Not sure why it’s not clicking this semester. Act 1 was awesome but the play is long and sometimes it drags…maybe it’s just me. Not my greatest class. I am tired from staying up too late.
So…these kids got a fun movie Friday as a treat and we finished watching the end of it first today in class. They were appreciative and happy. We go over our review term for the day and tone word of the day. We assigned parts for Act 3 of Hamlet and read 3.1, pausing to discuss and look at passages as needed for understanding. We watched as much of 3.1 in the Branagh film version up to the bell. They like Kate Winslet’s Ophelia and the drama of that version. We will keep working through Act 3 tomorrow. I’m not really feeling Hamlet at the moment with them. They are into it and we are working through it quickly, but since the AP exam is nearing, I also have this need to work on the things they want to improve. I am sort of ready to move on to Hamlet and get back in to poetry. I feel like they have enough major works under their belts. Not sure why it’s not clicking this semester. Act 1 was awesome but the play is long and sometimes it drags…maybe it’s just me. Not my greatest class. I am tired from staying up too late.
3rd Period English 2 Inclusion 11:15 – 12:45
Same lesson as first but this is a bigger and rowdier class. I assign new seats. They aren’t happy about this. After the last notebook check, I have a few who need to be closer to instruction, so I move everyone to a new spot until spring break in three weeks. One student immediately puts his head down in his new seat. He isn’t happy about being moved closer to the front and he pretty much is off/on for the rest of class. Most of the rest of the kids are ok.
Same lesson as first but this is a bigger and rowdier class. I assign new seats. They aren’t happy about this. After the last notebook check, I have a few who need to be closer to instruction, so I move everyone to a new spot until spring break in three weeks. One student immediately puts his head down in his new seat. He isn’t happy about being moved closer to the front and he pretty much is off/on for the rest of class. Most of the rest of the kids are ok.
We do the reading contracts and SSR also. Even sad-about-having-to-have-a-new-seat boy reads and starts his second Dean Hughes book today.
We do the same prediction organizers but this class isn’t as engaged. If we are talking, they are good, but they don’t like to write as much. I ask questions and walk them through the first organizer and they respond and copy from the board. When I have them work on the second organizer, they are a mess. Some kids are just writing single words down. Others are dutifully working and being thoughtful. Many just want me to come by and walk them through and tell them what to write which I don’t want to do. It’s dragging and I feel frazzled. My co-teacher in this class only comes in for the second half. When she joins us, it’s good and she can help kids, too. But at the end of class I have some kids who have complete the work in the time provided. I have others who have written maybe one thing. The range of effort is really wide in this class. They are ALL capable in this class, but they are all over the place in demonstrating it. We go over the second organizer and they are shuffling and talking and someone threw a glue stick and so for the first time EVER at all this semester, I raise my voice and tell them we are not going to lunch until I have finished going over the chart. I give a little talk about completing work to the best of your ability. In the past with this class, I’ve passed work back until they completed it. Might have to go back to that. They leave a little late for lunch.
After they go I talk with my co-teacher. She agrees many who didn’t get finished would find it much easier to just copy from the board, so they are wanting to not do it on their own and just wait until we go over it and copy. She suggests maybe if they had to put the answers up, they’d be put more on the spot and have to make sure their work was on track. We chat for a minute and she goes. I sit and think about what to do to fix this lesson for next time. It’s one of those things that worked well with a previous group, but just flopped a bit today.
Lunch 12:45 – 1:25.
I must brag on my school here. We told admin we needed longer lunches if they wanted PLCs to meet. We don’t have common planning or anything. They answered. Instead of 4 lunches like last year, they combined all kids into three longer lunches. So we actually have time to heat up food and breathe during lunch. It’s great. We meet as a department on one day a week and PLC another. Also, and I know some of you will scream….we have no lunch duty. At all. Our administrators do it. All lunches. Our kids can only be in one place, so there’s no huge area to monitor, but by golly they watch the kids so we don’t have to. Lord bless them.
I don’t go to lunch. I’ve been in a papers-piled-up funk lately and today’s lesson didn’t really help. I just get my books out and get to work.
I must brag on my school here. We told admin we needed longer lunches if they wanted PLCs to meet. We don’t have common planning or anything. They answered. Instead of 4 lunches like last year, they combined all kids into three longer lunches. So we actually have time to heat up food and breathe during lunch. It’s great. We meet as a department on one day a week and PLC another. Also, and I know some of you will scream….we have no lunch duty. At all. Our administrators do it. All lunches. Our kids can only be in one place, so there’s no huge area to monitor, but by golly they watch the kids so we don’t have to. Lord bless them.
I don’t go to lunch. I’ve been in a papers-piled-up funk lately and today’s lesson didn’t really help. I just get my books out and get to work.
Planning 1:30-3:00
I work on Text Dependent Question for lines 1-100 of the story we are reading. I am drained and tired. I didn’t bring enough food for lunch so I am just pooped. I update attendance and check my book with Power School because our attendance makeups begin this week and I need to let kids know who are over in days. I have about 10 kids who are over on days. One is already at 15 days absent and another 13. I punch in some grades. I keep working on the TDQs but am pretty much finished. I will clean up and head home here in a bit.
I work on Text Dependent Question for lines 1-100 of the story we are reading. I am drained and tired. I didn’t bring enough food for lunch so I am just pooped. I update attendance and check my book with Power School because our attendance makeups begin this week and I need to let kids know who are over in days. I have about 10 kids who are over on days. One is already at 15 days absent and another 13. I punch in some grades. I keep working on the TDQs but am pretty much finished. I will clean up and head home here in a bit.
After school 3-4:00
My daughter comes in off the bus and she and two of her other teachers’ kids buddies get to playing. I make notes about how to fix the lesson that flopped for next time. I ponder how I want to set the kids up tomorrow: individual, groups of 4, or 3? I need to keep thinking.
My daughter comes in off the bus and she and two of her other teachers’ kids buddies get to playing. I make notes about how to fix the lesson that flopped for next time. I ponder how I want to set the kids up tomorrow: individual, groups of 4, or 3? I need to keep thinking.
And there’s the rub…I’m a thinker. Days like this I feel like the world’s slowest teacher. I can’t just whip up fabulous lessons/seating charts/activities/assessment like it’s nothing. I’m a pokey little puppy. Once I figure it out, I’m good, but time is something we don’t have a lot of…so this is something that constantly causes me frustration. I want more time to think about a lesson/plan it, but it doesn’t exist, so I either pull it together as best I can or stay up late or….I’m hard on myself but time is the one thing I always need more of.
I’m feeling a bit defeated today. Not sure if it’s that I’m tired or what. I just didn’t get in a good groove/pace. I hope it’ll turn around. I think I will go punch things at 9 Round and head home.
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