Savannah - Day 1 (3/20)

I was inspired by Robbie Richwine to write out my week as a teacher. Here's day 1!

8:40-8:55 - Before School
As a general rule, I don't offer tutorial on Monday mornings. I usually work doubles all weekend at my second job, so Monday mornings are hard for me personally. After being on my feet running around a restaurant for 20 hours in two days, my aching feet protest even the simple act of standing up out of bed the next morning! Also, I have learned that even though kids tell you they'll be at tutorial on Monday mornings, about 85% of the time they don't show up because they have not thought about school once over the weekend. So, I don't like breaking my back to get to school extra early on Monday mornings for no kids to even come to tutorial.

Even though I don't offer tutorial every morning, students always come in my room anyway. Sometimes it's just to vent about something, sometimes they need to borrow materials or supplies, sometimes they just want to come talk. This morning a student came in to sit in my room and do her Biology homework. She was out of town all weekend visiting her dad and she forgot her backpack here in town. She is an excellent student and was a bit stressed about having forgotten her schoolwork.

8:55-10:25 Planning
Today I got caught up on the 3 safety modules I had outstanding: Bloodborne Pathogens, Safety Data Sheets, and Fire Extinguisher Safety. Riveting stuff. I make sure to print out my Certificate of Completion of all the courses, because I've seen it happen in the past where the system doesn't remember you already completed a course. I don't want to redo anything. (Side Note: I had no idea there were so many different types of fire extinguishers.)

I am in an email thread from a teacher at the middle school who is planning her first EF educational tour. She came with me as a chaperone over New Year's and is getting ready to take her own tour!! She is having a meeting tonight and had a list of questions people have asked her so far about Costa Rica and tour logistics, so I tried to give some input into the process.

Now I need to make my copies for the rest of the week. My system is that I make all the copies I need for an entire unit before the unit starts. Then, I don't have to go back to the copier until it's time for the next unit. We only have 2 copiers in the teacher workroom in my building. and something is always broken or malfunctioning. It's a giant headache to try to get copies so I go in there as infrequently as possible! I am starting a mini-unit this week. We will be testing on Thursday, so there aren't too many copies to make. I got the unit planned and paced on Friday with my originals all organized so I'm ready to head to the copy room. But first, I am going to eat this Quaker Peanut Butter Breakfast Square thing I brought for breakfast. Fingers crossed it's good and filling. (Update: It is not good.)

I got most of my copies made. I left a few things in the copy room for our PTSO volunteer to finish making for me. We are so fortunate that we have volunteers to help us with things like that! I usually leave my tests or review packets to be copied so I don't have to stay in the workroom waiting on the copiers to do large jobs. Now I'm going to eat something different for breakfast. I bought a small pack of powdered donuts in the teacher workroom. Not the best choice, but better than this gross peanut butter thing.

10:32-12:02 First Period Spanish 1
Today we are beginning a miniature unit on the verbs Ir (to go) and Ser (to be) in the preterite. I do a quick unit like this to introduce the preterite (past tense). I do it this way so students can get acquainted with preterite trigger phrases and the concept of speaking in the past while only using one new verb chart. Then I slowly start introducing different types of regular and irregular verbs in the preterite tense. We began today by reviewing the verbs Ir and Ser in the present tense. Students did a short reading about the places Juan likes to go around town and answered questions about the passage. Then I introduced Ir and Ser in the preterite tense. Students were thrown off by the way the preterite looks different from regular present tense, but they caught on quickly. My second block tends to work quickly, so I was thrown off when they got finished with all our new notes and practice with 20 minutes to spare. My plan was to let my classes watch a movie in Spanish on Friday since they will have just finished two quick back-to-back mini units with tests. (I only give 7 tests in a semester, but when we have these mini-units it works out so they have 3 of those tests in a 2 week period!) For 2nd block I quickly printed off a packet of follow-along activities for Finding Nemo in Spanish and decided to let them start the movie early.

12:08-12:50 Third Period Spanish 1 (before lunch)
I had to run to the teacher workroom between classes to make more copies of the Finding Nemo packet just in case my other classes get that far too. My 3rd block likes to congregate around my windows at the start of class so we usually take the first 60 seconds or so to talk about everyone's day and let the kids say what's on their minds as they get to their seats. I also took my attendance and realized I forgot to do it in second block so I entered that in the computer as well.

I have a student who had to leave early on Friday during their test, so he comes and asks me at the very start of class if he can finish it. I am glad he remembered to ask me, because I had completely forgotten. It took me a minute to figure out where I had put his test (in the folder to be graded, in the folder to be made up, or just on my desk waiting for him) but I found it and he got done in the first 5 min. My 3rd block is a little more chatty and they also are starting to get hungry around 12:20 so we move a little slower than my more motivated 2nd block. They are doing a pretty good job of staying on track and collaborating about the right things today, so that's awesome! They got done with the new info before lunch so now we just have some practice to do to help it sink in after lunch.

12:50-1:20 Lunch
I eat with the rest of my department for lunch. Today we talked about some students in their classes who were causing issues and also just took some time to relax and talk about our weekends. It was a nice little break.

1:26-2:12 Third Period Spanish 1 (after lunch)
The kids are WAY less focused after lunch.They ended up getting it together and finishing our notes and practice with about 15 minutes to start Nemo, putting them on pace with second block.

2:20-3:50 Fourth Period Spanish 1
This class is my most talkative. They all just want to talk to each other about everything because they're good friends outside of class. It usually takes a lot of coaxing and frustration to get them on task, but once they're working, they work faster than my other groups do. One student looked at his new vocab list today and looked up at me and said, "This looks like another language!" ...yes.

Some of my kids in this class are either crazy talkative or asleep, depending on the day. There's no in-between. I can wake someone up all day long and I can teach my best all class period but I can't make someone learn. That's the discouraging thing about this job. I can't learn it for them, and to see kids who just don't care about the language or their grades or their academic future is disheartening. I ended up having to send two students to ISS instead of letting them watch the beginning of Nemo. It's the first time I've had to do that this semester. I hate doing it and I hate ending my day on notes like this.

Now it's time to quickly go home, eat something, feed the animals, and go to Outback. I am so exhausted.