Not half bad...

The secret to Mondays -- it's all about how you start your day.

This was the start of my Monday: I spoke up in our staff meeting today (Yikes! Hardly ever happens, which is a big deal for anyone who knows me because I'm a fearless talker, hardly ever intimidated by the crowd of listeners...). We were talking about some teacher frustration with iTime and students' failure to show up for intervention even when their planners are stamped. I raised my hand and volunteered a procedure that I had invented because I, too, had been frustrated that students weren't showing up after I took the time to stamp their planners.

"Well," I began, "in my PAWS class I actually don't hand out student grade slips unless their planner is out on their desk and I can see they have no stamp. If I do see a stamp, I still give them their grade slip, but I make sure to stress with them that they have to go to that teacher. Then, if I'm suspicious of the student, I'll follow-up with the teacher to see if they made it to intervention."

What happened? The principal turned to the rest of the staff and said, "That's a great procedure."

Another teacher spoke up saying, "Can we just make that a school-wide procedure now?"

The principal replied, "Yes. Let's do that."

I, the lowly intern, triggered a school wide procedural change.

I feel powerful.

For the rest of the day, even when things got stressful, I felt frustration roll off of my shoulders. Were 7 students from my 4th period still unprepared for Reader's Response? Even after my all-too-moving lecture about what they want out of life the week before? Yes.

But today, I didn't let it get to me. I let the room get eerily quiet. I went to my desk, and stated simply that those students had zeros and would need to take care of it during iTime on Tuesdays. Then I called three more students. Two of them were unprepared and I did the same thing. The one got up and I rewarded that student with 10 points extra credit for being prepared. No lecture. No red-faced Mrs. Brown. I let it roll and moved forward.

Will this change things? I don't know if students will be any more motivated to come ready, but now I'm not pulling my hair out and walking out of the school on Monday feeling like a failure. It just rolls off of me.

And I'm telling you - humor is so important. With my seventh graders, as we were reviewing complete and incomplete sentences again (I wouldn't review it if it wasn't a problem with every assignment!), I wiped away fake tears and included some dramatically fake sobs when students couldn't remember that a complete sentences needs a subject and a predicate or when they still didn't understand what a subject was. They laughed, but also knew that I expected more of them.

All in all - a wonderful day.

Tomorrow is the first day they get to take their iPads to each of their classes (which probably means that I won't get a lunch break, but what they hey! We all got iPads, so I might as well roll with it!). I'm crossing fingers that things will actually work... A girl can dream, right?