GAH.

There is no other word. I wish there was - I wish there was some beautifully uncomfortable-in-your-mouth kind of word that even looks pressured and anxious sitting here on the page, but all I have is "GAH."

(please feel free to contribute any word possibilities - I'm more than willing to have a vocabulary lesson)

Today was the last day of DRP testing.

GAH.

I definitely don't have a grasp on 8th grade yet. So many of them only see through their apathetic hipster glasses to conclude that school is this irksome and monotonous chore that gets them nothing in return. I know it's not my job to make them fall in love with school, or even English for that matter, but each moment I spot that apathy, the eternal student within me aches.

How do I get through to them? I started this internship thinking that if I acted like I knew where they were coming from - that I understood them - that I was once one of them - they would connect with and respect me.

Nope.

GAH.

So picture 4th period. Eighth grade. Right after lunch.

They were so not in the mindset to be quiet and take a test. Why would they be? Most of them just got all hopped up on sugar and sugar drinks - I would even have trouble sitting still.

Then half of them started making excuses about why they didn't have their reading books in class (after I've been reminding them about it for the past 4 days, warning them that there would be no excuses today).

GAH.

When I asked those students what they were going to do to remember it for tomorrow, I only received shoulder shrugs - the universal sign for "I'm trying to kill you with frustration, Mrs. Brown."

GAH.

And then they all had to go to the bathroom at once.

GAH.

So I might have lost it...not completely...but partially.

One student approached me and tossed me his planner (which is also the universal hall pass at the school) and just grunted, "I have to go to the bathroom." Offended by his disrespect, I just stared at him. I motioned to his planner and responded, "Um, it's your responsibility to fill that out, and I don't appreciate you throwing it at me. Please fill out the information in your hall pass log and then I'll sign it."

He raised his eyebrows at me, grabbed the planner and hunched back into his desk while he filled it out.

He returned with only his name filled in and the time. Still annoyed, I responded, "Please fill it all in next time, (student name)."

When he walked away, a piece of paper fell out of his planner. Wrinkled and ripped, the scrap paper turned out to be his parent permission slip that I have been trying to get him to turn in for the past week. When I pointed it out, he grabbed it from me, wadded it into a ball and shoved it in his pocket. Of course all of the students in my class are now fully focused on him and not the test, so he grins at them and laughs as he shoves the paper in his pocket. My frustration is obvious to the class and they laugh again.

GAAAAAAHHHH.

So, I waited by the door for him to return from the bathroom. When he opened the door, I gestured for him to remain in the hallway for me to speak to him.

Raised eyebrows again.

"What's going on, (student name)?"

"Uh. Nothin."

"I don't appreciate your behavior in class today. What is going on?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't do anything."

"I will not stand for you disrespecting me in the way you did - you don't throw you're planner at me. You know better and I expect more from you."

"But I didn't know."

Thought occurs to me - he's an eighth grader but might not have gone to Dixon last year. 

"How long have you been here, (student name)?"

"Uh. Two weeks."

"I know that you know about the planner, we talked about it in class."

"Well, I was asleep."

"Okay, well whose fault was that?"

"Uh. Mine."

"(Student name), if you didn't know how to use the planner as a hall pass, why didn't you just ask me?"

"I dunno." He hunches his shoulders and puts his hands in his pockets like Is this gonna take much longer?

"I'm sorry, that's not acceptable. Your attitude in my class and your attitude right now is not going to fly this year."

"What attitude? I'm not doing anything."

"Don't argue with me right now - I'm not your mother, I'm your teacher, and I deserve your respect. You still have work to do in my class. Please get started."

I open the door to let him into class, he enters and slumps in his chair refusing to even pick up his pencil to continue. He stares straight ahead uncompromisingly. 

Instantly feeling bad for our conversation, I reflected on the moment. I'm struggling to somehow prove myself and my validity as a teacher particularly to this class. I saw the moment as an opportunity to show this student and the class that I wasn't going to stand for nonsense.

But this student got the brunt of it, and though his conduct was not ideal, he didn't deserve it.

I watched him for the rest of class. Dejected. Angry. Flippant.

Then this scripture broke through my frustration like sun rays through a cloud: "Reprove betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy."

So as the bell tolled, I asked this student to come to my desk.

"I'm sorry, (student name). I should have been more understanding of the fact that you didn't know the hall pass procedures, but I have high expectations for you. You're a smart student --"

"Uh. No I'm not."

Pause. Epiphany.

"Well maybe that's what I was picking up on. I've only known you for a few weeks and already believe in you more than you believe in yourself. I have high hopes for you, (student name), and I simply want you to raise your own expectations for yourself, okay?"

"K."

"I know you can. Bring me that parent signature sheet tomorrow, okay?"

Raised eyebrows. "Fine."

I don't know if that achieved the "increase of love" I was shooting for, but it hurt to see someone so willing to admit he has no hopes for himself. 

And it hurt to know that I failed him in my assessment as a teacher - I saw a flippant young man who wanted attention. Then I met a lost young man who needed validation, compassion, and understanding. 

There is no other word.

GAH.

Here's to trying again tomorrow. :D

Doing it by hand...

I'm a technology snob.

Inadvertently, of course.

I still get surprised when I learn that someone doesn't own a cell phone, doesn't have an email address or doesn't have a computer at home.

But more than that...

I have a hard time believing that people survived without technology, especially as a teacher.

A few days ago, the internet server at our school went down.

No internet. No gradebook. No nada.

I panicked. How am I supposed to take roll?

I poked into a neighboring teacher's room and asked her what she was doing to take roll. She said, "I'm just marking who's not here on my seating chart. Don't you have a seating chart?"

Well, yes. But it's saved in Powerschool which I can't access because the internet is down.

Needless to say, after that day, I made hard copies of my seating chart.

So today, as I sat ready to tackle that to-do list on our second day of testing, my Microsoft Word program decided to play tricks on me and only open my documents in an itty-bitty window no bigger than my thumb on the screen.

Hmmm....

How am I supposed to write my unit plan and finalize my curriculum map when I can't see more than 2-3 words at a time?

Then it came to me....

I could do it by hand (at least until our Technology Assistant gets a few minutes to save this damsel in distress).

I realize it was not a novel idea, but it was definitely an eye opener for me.

Here's to doing it by hand (and hopefully not dying of carpal tunnel by the end of the day) - a whole new adventure.

Testing...

It's all quiet on the Dixon front today thanks to our DRP testing.

3 days set aside for students to answer 70 questions and fill in 70 different bubbles with freshly sharpened #2 pencils.

Most of them were at least halfway finished by the end of class today.

Hmm....

Yay for silent reading time, right?

So, I'm checking those little items off of my eternally long to-do list one by one.

Created emergency sub plans - check.

Wrote emails to the principal and department with new updates - check.

Listened to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong during my prep and dreamed of the 1940s - check.

Started a check-out system for my classroom library - check.

Submitted ideas for accommodations for specific students with 504s - check.

Tried to solidify my curriculum map and didn't get frustrated when no one knew what class sets of texts the school has - check.

Fell in love with my job all over again when a sweet unknown student popped into my class and told me that she wished I had been here last year so that she could have had me for 7th grade - check.

Looking forward to finishing more to-dos tomorrow.

:D

Monday, Monday, Monday...

Well, it's official. I survived the first week. And you know what the best part was?

I wanted to get up this morning.

How many people can actually say that on a Monday morning?

(Don't get me wrong, I would have loved an hour more of sleep, but after working a summer at daycare  - where my morning mantra was "Please don't make me go to work! I'll do anything!" - it was a welcome change to greet Monday with excitement.)

But Monday comes with lessons . . . lessons like a 30-minute class period goes faster than my mom's peanut clusters at Easter (which is really, really fast).

I already knew that I needed to work on not planning as much in a single lesson (we're talking I finished 1/16 of what I had originally planned during one of my lessons last week), but these Late-Start Mondays really threw me for a loop.

For today, I had planned on introducing our "Reading at Home" program and taking my classes to the library to check out books. Well, when you introduce procedures, you should really plan on fielding questions for the rest of the class period. Seriously. Even if you give them a tangible list of guidelines that answer ALL of them - they're still going to ask. I've got to give it to these kids - they are the most inquisitive people I've ever met.

I felt so bad for the librarian at our school. I was leaving like 10 minutes each period for her to give her presentation on proper book care and the library. I'm just downright mean. Note to self - make treats and thank you's for her.

Well, that was fun.

And guess what? This week is supposed to be our DRP testing. I haven't been told a thing other than the printer at the district office is broken and we might not actually start the tests tomorrow. Mmm... Okay?

My mentor teacher just shrugged his shoulders with a half-grin on his face and advised me to have a back-up lesson plan.

I'm telling you - good teachers are some of the most flexible people in the world.

So I'm going home to do some stretching. We'll see what actually happens tomorrow. :D

Common Sense and Sticking to It...

I don't think my face could have been redder this morning. Literally, my stomach resided right in my throat for most of the day.

Today was our lockdown drill during homeroom period.

You have to understand - I'm a new teacher. I don't know how to do these things. I was literally clinging to the binder I was given that walked me through the responsibilities of a teacher during emergency drills.

Nowhere on that list of responsibilities did it say, "Make sure your class stays silent." I promise. I checked.

So I locked my door, turned off the lights, had my students get down on the floor, and told them they could talk quietly if they wanted to.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Somedays I wonder how I ever got through college.

Hindsight really is 20/20.

To make matters worse, the students were playing a game of hangman on the board (don't judge - it's homeroom and I'm still figuring out what I'm really supposed to be doing in that class) before the lockdown drill.

So what were they saying when our school police officer was walking by to check our door?

"You're so dead!" (not in reference to the lockdown but to the hangman game they were playing)

I cannot begin to tell you the heaviness and panic I felt when, after the drill, the principal got on the intercom and chastised the students overall for not taking the drill seriously, for not being quiet, and for making inappropriate comments like, "You're so dead."

And my homeroom students knew - they looked at me and started the "Ooooo! You told us we could talk!" kind of teasing that every teacher dreads.

What could I do? I admitted to my students that I was wrong and apologized. I told them I took full blame and I talked to them about why it was so important that we stay silent during a lockdown.

Wow. I really need to get some common sense.

(But after talking with one of the other teachers in our department, I felt better knowing that everyone makes mistakes. She told me that - on her first lockdown drill as a teacher - she opened the door when the assistant principal came around and jiggled the door handle to see if it was locked. In a lockdown. She opened the door.  :D Why is the knowledge that everyone is human so innately comforting?) 

And as I look to weekend, I would just like to add my testimony to this:

The funny thing about lesson plans is that they are planned. What happens when the unplanned happens? As much as I would like to be that teacher who plans for everything that is unplanned, the truth is I don't have enough experience to be able to predict and plan for what the unplanned could be.

So when I go through my lesson and start talking about synthesis and say some pretty embarrassing things, I just went with it. Like it was totally planned.

Picture this:

Discussion about synthesis.

We've been taught to provide lots of different synonymous phrases when we're teaching new content - students need more contextualization and more repetition of ideas.

So when we talked about synthesis, I used synonymous phrases like "create new things," "coming to new conclusions," "proposing a new insight," and I decided to provide some context to illustrate my point. Please don't think less of me after this story!

The incident happened like this: "Synthesis can be like proposing a new insight. Propose . . . like when a guy gets on his knee to propose! He's really offering a new insight. He's not just saying, 'Will you marry me?" he's saying, 'You. Me. I think this could really work, the whole happily ever after thing. What do you think? Let's do it.'"

Those last 3 words nearly killed my entire lesson with my eighth graders.

I SO did not mean it the way they obviously took it.

What do you do in those moments???? Where is that part of the lesson plan where I accidentally say something super inappropriate and somehow save myself without losing all credibility? It's not there! Ahh!

So I moved on like I didn't even notice that what I said could be erroneously taken as an incredibly inappropriate comment.

I moved on.

They laughed.

I stopped, waited for them to calm down, and wrote "-10" on the board to let them know they just gave me 10 more seconds of class.

They stopped laughing.

I moved on.

I'm telling you. Stomach in throat all day today.

I dread the comments I will hear in staff meeting on Monday about our lockdown. I dread the emails/calls I might receive from the parents of those students who reported that I talked about  --- shhh ----  "s-e-x" ----- in class today.

Gah.

Oh well. I probably need to be more explicit in my lesson plans so I don't ever say the words "Let's do it" ever again.

Every day = a new adventure.

Things to do over the weekend: get some common sense.

Inquisitive

A student approached me tepidly the other day with a question that I found quite ironic: "What is this word?" he inquired.

The word was inquisitive.

While I reflected that I may need to edit my disclosure document to reflect more fitting middle school vocabulary, I had to keep myself from laughing at his question. Why? Because these students are some of the most inquisitive people I have ever met in my life. They have questions (and stories) to go along with everything I say.

It makes getting through an entire lesson quite challenging, but always entertaining.

And I'm getting better at deflecting the questions that have no place in the classroom - sometimes you just have to say to all the hands raised in the air, "How about you wait for me to explain the rest of the directions and then you can let me know if you still have questions? Mkay."

And I'm starting to learn who those students are who ask questions like, "When are we going to dissect a frog?" when you use the word dissect to expound the term analysis. The connections these kids make are absolutely incredible.

I couldn't believe how insightful our discussion of analysis was today. I showed this picture in class and challenged the students to "analyze" or break down the photo into small pieces and put the pieces back together in a meaningful way to create a new idea (synthesis).

Two of my seventh grade periods both came to the conclusion or synthesized that this girl was from a foreign land and had endured a lot of suffering. 7th graders. Came up with that.

My eighth graders - heaven, bless them - decided that this girl was a depiction of Little Red Riding Hood. Which isn't wrong at all, but it made me even more aware of the differences between 7th and 8th grade. 

I was just floored. 

Teaching these students invigorates me. I walked away from each class exhausted but elated today - even with my eighth graders.

Tomorrow we get to continue our lessons on analysis and synthesis - I can't begin to express how excited I am. Granted it's Friday, and that will be an adventure, but my management procedures (so far) have been pretty powerful. It is really great to see the positive peer pressure that erupts when I start to keep track of the seconds they'll have to stay after class for "stealing" my time. 

I wouldn't be happy doing anything but teaching. 

"The period from hell..."

Is it bad that I was relieved when one of the other English teachers came into my classroom after the last period of the day and said "Whoa - that was the period from hell."

Why was this comment comforting? Because she teaches all 8th graders, and I felt some similar sentiments from my first two eighth grade periods as well. Though my description would probably be less fiery and hostile, it was definitely unexpected. Who knew that 7th and 8th graders could be so dynamically different?

During my 2nd period of 8th graders, I had one student swagger in almost 10 minutes late while I was taking roll and learning names (since it was the 8th graders' first day of school). Instead of walking in politely or quietly, the boy bounced, opened his arms up to the classroom, and announced his presence with a very distinguished, "Whazzup my peeps?"

Though at the time, I thought my reaction may have been harsh, I feel much better about it now. I looked at him square in the face and said, "Excuse me. That is unacceptable. Go back to the hallway and try again." I'm sure he rolled his eyes along the way and made some gestures in the doorway (where I couldn't see) that sparked some laughter from his friends, but he walked in again, his swagger a bit wounded.

I guess I never expected to be the "mean" teacher. I'm not that person. I hate that moment when students give you the eye like, "Whoa, woman. Chill out," but I learned that sometimes it's necessary. A teacher pulled me aside after today and I shared my 8th grader impressions with her. When I told her how much I hated to be the mean teacher, she corrected me saying, "You're not the mean teacher. You're the no-nonsense teacher and they need to know that."

But on the bright side, I got some real practice with classroom management! That "You steal my time - I'll steal yours" procedure really works with them. They do NOT want to be in an English classroom for any longer than they have to, that's for sure.

It was a whole different kind of an adventure, but an adventure nonetheless.

Day One: Lessons Learned

Lesson #1: If you jokingly tell students not to panic when you turn off the lights for a video clip, they will panic jokingly.

Lesson #2: If you share stories about your friends and family, you will be met with sweet 7th grader stories of their friends and family.

Lesson #3: If you move a student on the first day of school because he was constantly chatting with his neighbor despite your warnings, he will hate you and fall asleep on his desk to spite you.

Lesson #4: You can't play stupid with 7th graders. If you bring in a bag of goodies to introduce yourself and pretend like you found it in the hallway and need help finding the owner, they'll pick up on the obvious: the bag is yours.

Lesson #5: Some students just aren't going to be excited about school no matter how energetic and animated you are. It's like pulling teeth to get them to introduce themselves or tell you what they like to do. But even they will admit that they just don't know you, so you have to be patient.

Lesson #6: 7th graders just sponge up everything you have to say. And they have incredibly smart and intuitive things to say, too.

Lesson #7 (relearned): I was born to be a teacher. I wouldn't be happy anywhere else.

And it begins...

Back to School Night. Nervous seventh graders and not-so-anxious-to-return-to-middle-school eighth graders approach my classroom door with trepidation and reluctance.

My drenched armpits are about to give me away when I ask for a name. And all of a sudden, this thing - this internship - didn't seem so daunting. With a funny comment and a handshake, I caught most of them trying to hide their smiles and their excitement.

And what did parents want to know?

What school supplies to buy.

How to contact me.

What time their student has lunch.

I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am. I know that they are going to be quiet and shy and nervous tomorrow, but I already love them and am so excited for this new adventure.

And - my mentor teacher wants to steal MY idea for introducing himself tomorrow. That's right. I'm not the only thief at the school, and I am so excited to be educationally robbed. :D

Here's to 7th grade day tomorrow!

"Adventure is out there!"