At my school, there are typically 4 men working at one time.  Sometimes there are 3 or 2, but on average there are 4 men there.  There are at any given time, 10-12 women at my school working.  Thus, one would assume that as we have only one staff bathroom, the toliet seat would ALWAYS be down.  Nope, not the case.  And the sad part is that I know which man leaves the seat up because as I was walking towards the bathroom, he was walking out of it.  What is the protocal for this?  How do I say, ummmm thats gross, leave the seat down?

Other things that bug me:

1.  Wasted time during prof. development days

2.  How my principal at times does not make a solid decision, but just says “Oh, we’re working on that”.

3.  My school has toner, but no paper

4.  We have parent teacher conferences… TWO DAYS IN A ROW… from 4-8.  UGHHHHHHHH

 

At least next week is Thanksgiving break.  AND NEW MOON COMES OUT ON THURSDAY NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:o)

I realized that I haven’t updated my blog in about two weeks and figured I should probably you know I am alive and well.  I honestly can not believe that it is November, that I have been teaching for three months, have not been home for the past three weekends, and that I need to start making a Christmas list for my family already!  I love November, especially because of the upcoming holidays and the nice cool weather, but I still am in shock how fast the months are going by.  Before I know it, it will be January, then suddenly June!!!

Teaching is going well, although I’m shocked by how different I am approaching teaching then when I did when I was student teaching.  When I was student teaching, I was constantly being told what to do and constantly beating myself up when I didn’t meet to expectations of my cooperating teacher, who was a pretty demanding and at times annoying with her comments that I wasn’t doing it the same as her.  I am thriving with the freedom to create my lessons the way I want to, changing lessons in a flash without crying that they went wrong because someone isn’t telling me that I messed up.  It’s very liberating.  Not that I don’t appreciate what my cooperating teacher did, because I did learn a lot from her in regards to teaching and communicating with students and parents, but I love having this type of freedom in the classroom because its MY classroom.

This week I have really been able to demonstrate my creativity because of our lack of toner and paper at our school.  Funding for charter schools, especially in Ohio, has become somewhat of a struggle as our governor doesn’t really want to fund charter schools as much as Ohio does (charter schools receive so much funding from the state and fed. government per student and receive the rest of the funding from private investors).  So as our school struggles with budgets, we as teachers were forced to become inventive.  With my classes it is especially hard because we only have 15 social study text books for my two 7th grades classes and two 6th grade classes.  Thus, creating handouts are really the only solution for teaching and without a printer, that becomes quite a problem.  It’s during times like this that I think hey, it would be great to work at a public school where there isn’t any question of whether or not you will have toner and paper the next day, but then I think of my students.  My students who parents have taken the time and effort to remove them from a failing public school, parents that take enough time to think about their child’s education- even though they don’t put too much effort into coming to school and meeting with teachers.  And as much as having a public school teaching experience would be nice, I wouldn’t trade my students for anything.  Because as annoying they can be on a daily basis, it is an incredible joy when you see a student who has been struggling get one of the highest scores on a simple vocabulary quiz.  Thats the joy of teaching right there.

On other reasons why I am a teacher, I’ll repost this link I posted earlier.  Because I can make a B+ feel like a slap in the face and make a C- feel like a gold medal, because I have done it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU

This week has been an interesting adventure.  On Tuesday we started the school week with two classes on lockdown for their behavior- they are not allowed to leave their homeroom all day, rather the teachers come and teach them.  Downside of this- one of the classes is in my homeroom and I don’t have them during the day, only for the first 30 minutes of the day.  So yesterday and today I have been lugging around my papers, books for reading classes, and handouts for class from class to class while trying to find an open classroom for the students I am suppose to be teaching that period.  Regardless, its a very annoying situation to be in and hopefully tomorrow or Friday I will finally have my classroom back.  I feel awkward being in another teacher’s classroom, sitting at their desk or using their markers for the board.  I also feel weird because three of the classrooms I am now going to have higher walls and my voice echos.  Its quite annoying and loud.

On the plus side, 50 of my students had a social studies test on Ancient Egypt today and unlike my last exam I don’t want to scream at them “WHY DIDN’T YOU STUDY?!?!?!?!?”.  My last test at least 20 students received a D or an F (which lead to me making them make up tests to earn back points), where this test I only have 8 as of now.  Thats a HUGE improvement, especially for my lower class.  In other exciting news, I have one student who has several disabilities and a long IEP that I have to follow.  On his test today they had to complete map skills and after his aid read him the directions and problems for the first 4 map skill questions, he completed the next 4 by himself- CORRECTLY!  He didn’t have her read the questions, he didn’t ask for help, he just read the questions and answered correctly!  This makes my day.  He is improving and hey, maybe I’m starting to finally figure out this whole teaching world after all.

But, its almost Friday.  Which means I get to see my sister, her hubby, and my adorable nieces and nephews.  Let the weekend begin now please:o)

Nothing makes a stressful week and a day that included 5 fights better then coming home, seeing my grandparents, and eating some home cooking:o)  Yum.  Happy Friday Everyone.

I still find it extremly hard to believe that it is October 16th.  As in halfway through October.  Which means that it is almost November and then it will be Christmas.  And it means that in two weeks my first quarter at my school will be done.  I find it hard to believe that I am in this spot- that I am teaching my kids, going crazy over my kids, and am now an adult with a big girl job.  Last night I was able to take a break from grading and school and spend some quality time with one of my girlfriends at a hockey game (yes, an OSU hockey game).  It was so nice to just sit down, relax, and not think about what papers I need to grade or lessons I need to plan.  Sometimes doing something as simple as watching boys beat eachother up in hockey can be the best night of the week.

In other news, I am starting a war against my former employer (the daycare I worked at for one week).  During the past week I have attempted to deposite my paycheck 4 times, but each time the bank tells me there is no money in their account.  So, after talking to someone today AGAIN for the 3rd time, I decided that if I don’t hear anything by Monday, I’m going to call the department of labor.  It isn’t something I really want to do as I hate confrontations beyond belief… but, my teacher clothing fund is low and needs to be replaced:o)

5 things that happened this week that made my day:

1.  Hockey games and catching up with a good friend

2.  No kids at school today:o)

3.  I had a student say thank you this week

4.  My assistant-superintendent and I had a life chat for 30 minutes.  He then said I was doing a great job at school.

And #5, which is the best thing that happened this week:

I was able to talk to a girl who struggles (emotionally, mentally, has been abused, etc) for 15 minutes yesterday before school.  This is a girl who has repeatedly acted out in my class and as I was walking towards my room and she was going to ISS (in school suspension), she told me to have a nice day.  This is huge- the fact that she talked to me about her life shows that she is growing and that hey, maybe I’m not that scary of a teacher and some of my students may actually like me as well as respect me.

This week I’ve been trying to change my attitude at school, or well, change my yelling.  I yell too much, too often, and I hate the way my students complain “you always yell at us”.  I’m struggling because still my students don’t always take me seriously and their behavioral problems are quite serious.  In the past 3 days alone, 10 kids have been suspended.  Today was our first time having an in-school suspension system (thank goodness) and 15 kids were in it due to their poor behavior yesterday.  I keep trying, but I just feel sometimes that I am failing.

On the plus side, I ate lunch with some of my 6th grade students.  They are one of my stronger classes, both academically and behaviorally and just overall great kids.  So, instead of sitting in my room grading papers, I got to talk about their families, likes, and many other things.  It was a good day:o)

…how to break up a fight between two girls on the playground (which is really dirt and cement), while pulling/ripping eachother’s hair out.

And that was the second fight of the day.

I just got my first big girl paycheck.  Hello weekend:o)

I swear I really don’t have anything to wear to school today.  Especially since I am washing three possible shirts at 6:30 am.

I promise I will be doing actual laundry tonight.

This was the first full week of teaching (5  days, 6 periods a day), and although I survived it was quite an interesting adventure.  I survived open house, where I met many parents who demonstrated their concern for their child’s grade.  I survived interims, where I have in every class more then 1 kid failing, and most of those kids not caring that they fail.  And in one day, I survived 3 fights and 1 “mosh pit” after a student decided to turn off the hallway lights. One of these fights occurred because a girl put her book on another girl’s desk, another occurred in the boys’ bathroom, probably over something trivial like toilet paper or washing their hands in a certain sink.  But I did survive and now I’m planning for another week.

This week will be interesting as I am going to be observed by a guy who works for our schools to see how my discipline in the classroom is going.  Which, it is going pretty bad- my kids don’t take me seriously, they really act like I’m basically a joke because they do not respect me.  I’m trying to change that, but no matter what, they are constantly disrespectful.  Hopefully this will work and they will start to respect me because honestly, yelling at my students to be quite and spending most of my time discipling the students as oppose to teaching the students is going to make for a long, long year. So fingers crossed that I will also survive this week.