argh.

My students are coloring and doing activity pages. They are quiet, cooperative, and on task (for the most part). Why is it that they seem to only be capable of this when no actual LEARNING is taking place? Why is it that when they're doing things that mean they have to stretch their brains, they get in fights and throw things instead?
(Why do I think I just answered my own question?)
Sigh.

You Know #2

You know* you are a primary teacher when you find yourself picking up pencils out of the dust swept up by the custodian.
...and they're not even very good pencils.

*Yes, I know this is still not a blog post. Grades are in; however, now my CSAP** paperwork is late. One day I will be done with all this stupid paperwork... however, this will probably be the day I retire.

**CSAP=Comprehensive Student Assistance Process. Essentially, the process by which the school district avoids giving students the extra assistance they need, by attempting to prove that it's all their teachers' fault.

You Know

(I realize this is not an actual blog post, and that I haven't really made a blog post for over a month. Hopefully I'll have time shortly, now that my grades are in.)

You know you are a primary teacher when you find yourself thinking, on a more-than-weekly basis, "What is this in my pocket, and how the *&@#^$A* did it get there?"

Yesterday's catch: 3 bits of crayon, 1/3 of an eraser, a late slip, someone's broken cell phone, and two pens.

Proof that I might be getting through

...albeit slowly. XD

Ms. K (teasing): S, I'm gonna pop you in the nose if you keep that up.

S(grinning): You can't do that, Ms. K! That's thinking with your fists!

Utterly Depressing Afternoon

As usual, I'd like to go into more detail here than is probably advisable in such a public forum. Suffice to say that one of my kids got taken by DHS today.

Given the way the system works, he has a middling, ranging down to slim, chance of returning to my class. He was (as might be expected, given the DHS involvement) one of my major behavior problems, but I can't bring myself to even be relieved that he might be gone. I was getting through to him. It was an uphill battle, but I could tell he cared what I thought, no matter how hard he tried not to. I can't bear the idea that just as we were beginning to develop a relationship, he might have to go off to a new school and a new teacher and new classmates, none of whom might be at ALL understanding of how he works, and without even the dubious stability of going home to his parents. It's utterly depressing.

The worst part is how he is when there's no audience. He's a sweetheart. Adorable, quirky, funny, intelligent... He could have been the sweetest little boy in the whole world, if only no one had ever beaten the shit out of him.

Argh.

Stupid Tuesdays.

I hate lesson plans.
That is all.

Disconnected things

• The downside to a half-decent school administration is that they actually read the lesson plans I turn in, which means I actually have to write them. Sigh. They're due Wednesday by noon, so of course I'm about 1/4 done with them at 9pm on Tuesday night. bleah.
  
• The obnoxious child about whose leaving I gloated is finally ACTUALLY gone. I'm thinking of framing the drop slip. This is horrible and mean-spirited on my part, but OMG she was making me crazy.
  
  • unfortunately, the inflationary addition I mentioned previously does not seem to apply equally to subtraction. 26 is not that much less than 27. Alas.
  
  
• We finally have the social studies curriculum. Yes, this is 2/3 of the way through October. No, we do not yet have the science curriculum. Argh.
  
• Doing my photocopying ahead of time makes my life easier in myriad ways. Not least of which being that when one of the two copiers breaks down at 7:45am, I do not flip the fuck out, because my morning copying is already done. Muahaha.
  
• I have mentioned this before. But eating breakfast has more of an effect on my outlook on life than I'd like. Hooray for cream of wheat, and the extra 10 minutes in the morning in which to eat it.
  
• OK, literacy and math plans written. Time to go to bed before 11pm for the first time in weeks and weeks.

Perspective

Considering the stuff some other teachers complain about as "toxic" and "horrible" and that make them want to leave their schools, I really should be dead by now. Apparently I have a higher hassle-tolerance than I thought I had... the posts are starting to make me think "seriously? that's all you have to complain about?" And I'm still alive, relatively healthy, and less stressed than I was this time last year. I don't know whether to be proud of myself or amused at all of them.

(In other news, I've discovered the way to have a really good school day: five kids absent. Heh heh.)

On Quitting

(Necessarily vague, because this is an at-least-mostly-anonymous blog.)
Lots of discussion in various forums lately about new teachers quitting, mid- or beginning-of-year. I'm not going to say I never thought about it, because urban teaching is really hard, and sucks in a lot of ways. Yes, the kids can be tough. Yes, the support can be lacking. Yes, the funds are often not there, and the expectations can be unreasonable. Trust me, I know.

But what I always come back to is the message quitting sends to the kids, who are young and impressionable and in a lot of cases already deeply hurt by the world. How can you essentially say to children, "You are hopeless of improvement, so I am abandoning the cause"? They might not be able to articulate to you that this is what they hear, but how else could they interpret it? Especially when they are young, and already prone to the "magical thinking" that they are somehow the cause of everything that happens in their lives. They don't understand things like faculty politics and funding and mentor teachers, but they do understand that they don't always behave themselves, and now their teacher is gone.

Children need to know that they can grow and improve, and that adults believe in their abilities and potential. They learn this when the adults stay and teach them, even when they are challenging.

Not everyone can be happy at every school. But unless there's actual imminent danger, I can't really understand a decision to leave before the end of the school year. This isn't a job you take just for your own happiness.

mini curriculum rant (or, I thought the section heading "Naming Parts of Sentences" meant that we were going to learn to name the parts of sentences.)

OK, look. The words are subject, predicate, and punctuation. NOT naming part, telling part, and end marks. Stop dumbing down the fucking language.

Do you suppose I'll get in trouble if I use the correct words? X_X

excerpt from an IM with my mother

:i would REALLY like a standard 5 day week, please
:i understand that this is kind of a weird thing to want
:but OH MY GOD if we don't have a day with a standard routine in it soon my kids may actually kill each other.

That pretty much says it, really. There are only so many interruptions of routine 7- and 8-year-olds can handle before they just totally fucking lose it. If we haven't gotten there already, we will be there soon.

Busy busy busy.

Once again, haven't forgotten yall. But I'm either too busy writing lesson plans, or dealing with home stuff, or having my birthday a week and a half ago (hee) or I'm just too tired. Several times in the past couple days I've thought to myself "I should really update the teaching blog," and then I think "Bleah, don't want to. Much too tired to write."

Still the case at the moment, plus my classroom is a horrific mess (and the vice principal came in today and saw, argh), so you'll have to content yourself with a couple additions to the list of Posts I Will Write At Some Point.

Man, teaching is exhausting.

(PS. The most obnoxious child in my class just transferred to a different school. Off my roll sheet and everything. *does a dance*)

Argh.

Classroom management is getting more and more difficult. The afternoons are just crazy. I've gotten some good advice from O, though (give them things to do IMMEDIATELY, minimize the written words) so we'll see if that helps.

had a fistfight after school today. as we were trying to get down the stairs. I turned around to get the girls in line and two of my boys were just ON each other. Punching, yelling, wrestling... it was all I could do to separate them. So now two of my seven-year-old children have a 90-minute detention tomorrow. Sigh.

I wish my aide were full-time. She leaves at noon every day to face the math block alone. It's just no fun. I'd love to do math groups, if only I had enough supervision... Blah. I'll see if I can work it out anyway.

I think I must be too tired to write -- I don't feel like I'm saying anything. (the reading teacher just yelled my name in the PD and scared me to death, but she was just using me as an example. Heh.) Hopefully I'll write something material soon.

Was any decent music written after 1985?

Haven't forgotten about yall. Busy organizing (never my strong suit) and writing lesson plans and attempting to prevent my kids from killing each other. Will write a post with content later; for now, I just wanted to record the amazing ability of classic rock to improve my mood. 3 cheers for 80s hair bands.

Kendall's Fifth Law1

In the context of class size, addition is inflationary by a factor of 2-2.5.
(Example: 20+6 is not 26. It's more like 32-35.)

We leveled today. I'm about ready to die.


¹Kendall's Laws 1-4:
1. Nothing's ever simple.
2. Never trust nobody with nothing.
3. Geometry does not apply to wood.
4. No matter how much you sweep, there is always more dust.<sup>2

2</sup>"Men come and go, but dust accumulates."
 -Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

PS. Professional development makes me want to stab out my eyes.

Leveling

L was out on Friday, so we couldn't finish preparations for leveling*... so much for starting the new classroom with the new week. Ah well. It'll probably happen by Tuesday... and it'll give me that last day to finish my DRAs. I forgot when I was doing them that the "high" kids are just as important as the "low" kids... I may have to trade one boy back from L and give her a girl, because she's probably too high to be in my class. He's borderline (I/J reading level) but given the involvement of her mother and her mother's insistence that her daughter loves to read and went to the library frequently, I'm betting she's at least a K by now.

This is all massively frustrating. There are lots of things (introducing the job chart, organizing guided reading groups, putting name tags on the desks) that I don't want to really get into until I have a moderately stabilized classroom... and as I said last time or so, I'm sort of feeling like I wasted the first week of getting routines underway and getting the kids settled since we're going right back into upheaval. I guess I could think of it as an opportunity to try it again and see if I can do it better... but the problem is that the core curriculum goes into full force this week, and I don't have the extra time in the mornings anymore.

I was about right about numbers, though. I'm losing two Cs and two Ds off the bottom, and two Js off the top, and gaining six Is and six E-Fs. This will give me, according to my current plan, four teams of five and one team of six (this makes more sense than four teams of four and two teams of five for space reasons, much as I like smaller groups) with two desks left over. I will have to give up on my plan to have morning circle until I can get more rug pieces, because currently my rug is just too small. (What I will probably have to do is move the rug out from the wall a bit, and have them sitting on carpet squares all around its perimeter. They'll actually sit on the rug when they're in rows for lesson introduction or read aloud.)

We'll have to see how it goes... providing it ever actually fstarking happens. Bureaucracy can bite me.


*I never fully explained what this was, did I... It's got a couple of meanings. On the one hand, they're trying to keep the kids organized by reading level, so that no one has to cope with TOO much differentiation in the classroom. O will have the lowest kids (B-D, K-early 1 level), I'll have the mid-range kids (E-I/J, mid-to-late 1) and L will have the highs (J-P, 2nd-early 4th grade level). To answer Naomi, who asked me this a week ago by now, this differs from tracking in that the kids are re-evaluated and placed every year, so if they improve they'll be in a different class for third grade).

It also just means leveling the numbers. I have yet to have more than 20 kids in my classroom, despite the fact that my roll sheet says 25. L has had 28, with a roll sheet of 30, and O has actually had 30. So by the time we're done, L and I will have 26, and O will have 25. (some kids on the roll sheet don't actually go here anymore.)

So that's that.

My perspectives on grade-level work are somewhat skewed

...as anyone who went to school with me would know. I came up gifted and talented, 3rd through 12th grade. This can make it difficult for me to relate to learning differences, or even average learning curves.
All of which makes the current situation even more frustrating for me. I supposedly have the "middle" class, while O and L have the "low" and "high" classes respectively. These classes were arranged according to reading level. SDP measures reading level according to the Guided Reading scale, which uses the letters of the alphabet, A being an emergent Kindergarten reader and Z being somewhere in the vicinity of eighth grade.
The "appropriate" level range for second grade is J through M. Now, I was under no misapprehensions that all, or even most of my class would be starting the year at a level J. I was also prepared to deal with the fact that few or none of my students would have made any advances in reading since June,.
What I was not expecting was for them to have slipped two to three levels over the summer. One student who was apparently reading at an F last year is now reading at a C. Another supposedly F-level student is at a D. One of my new admits is reading at a C.
These are kindergarten levels, people. I haven't finished doing my DRAs yet, and honestly I'm a little afraid to. It's not like it matters for leveling purposes anyway (gotta keep those homogeneous groupings, don'cha know) since unless they've dropped more than three levels they're staying in my class... but I do need to know what I'm dealing with. If nothing else, I need to go back and redo my 100 book challenge book selections, since 1 blue and 2 blue are obviously beyond us at this point.
I do not know how to cope with this. Activities I plan as independent work are way beyond them. They can't write complete sentences. They can't spell. They don't all use vowels consistently (as in, at least one per word). I'm going to have to drastically scale back my ideas, and it's difficult and frustrating and not what I was hoping to be in for. I always have a tendency to aim high... which I suppose is laudable, but there's a difference between "aiming high" and "going totally over their heads." Argh.

There's also the question of the core curriculum. We have topics we are required to cover... but if they can't do the work, what good does it do us to give it to them? It's setting them up to fail and it's gonna make me crazy. The middle years learning support teacher has this problem a lot worse than I do... at least there's not THAT much they're already supposed to know by the second grade. She's dealing with eighth graders who can't add 3-digit numbers, and she's supposed to be teaching them geometry -- is required to, in fact, lest she be written up. It's not even the second full week of school and she's already got a look of resignation on her face that's heartbreaking.

The other fun part, of course, is that whole "leveling" thing I so cavalierly mentioned a few paragraphs ago... along with the new admits who keep appearing every day. We've lost a few kids too, to transfers and interstate relocation, but not nearly enough to give us a reasonable class size... Or to allow us to feel like we've got any kind of stability. And my class is going to change by at least a third once we finish DRAs, regardless of new admits, because of the whole homogeneous-grouping trends. Gotta keep the percentile ranges together, apparently... so I'll probably trade three to L, and four to O, and get back probably twelve kids in return. Kind of makes one wonder why they bother having the kids in class for the first few days. Can't we just have them come in, do a day of diagnostics (DRAs, basic math skills, writing sample) and THEN put them in a classroom? It makes me feel like I just wasted the two full days I spent on routines and classroom procedures, since half of them won't need it anymore and half my new class won't have any fstarking idea what's going on.

In other news, I got a warning about not being outside by 8:30 this morning. If I was late (of which I am not certain) it was by like a minute... but at the same time it's nice to know that there are administrative types actually doing their jobs. Just like they tell us about the kids: consistency in consequences makes for a safe learning environment. Funny how it works for grownups too.

How did it get to be 10:18? Jesus. No wonder I never get anything done. This has been quite a rambling journal entry... maybe one of these days I'll actually have time to sit down and organize my thoughts into headings, and write a separate journal entry for each one. For now, though, I need to write my emergency sub plans, so rambling is what you get.

Right.

Got my school laptop today, which is in itself a big step up from last year (when they could supposedly have given me one, except they never got any power cords, or if they did no one remembered to check and see if I actually wanted a laptop, or to check and see if I wanted or needed anything *cough* I mean hi). Since I'm just now starting the insurance claim on my stolen laptop, this is not only an advantage but almost literally lifesaving, since I can now do things like level books and find PDF worksheets and look up information in the core curriculum documents without having to lug the books home.

Second grade this year. This is exciting on all kinds of levels, not least because one of my all-time favorite teachers was my second grade teacher. I spent a lot of time in his classroom in college and after, both volunteering and subbing, so I find myself drawing a lot from him when I organize my classroom and plan my day.

The kids are interesting.. very active, very chatty. I'm supposed to have 25, but the most I've ever seen so far is 17. This, of course, will not last, since the other two second grade teachers have closer to 30. I have the mid-range kids, too, so as we get an idea of their levels, they'll be offloading onto me anyway. All I can do at this point is cross my fingers and pray that the eight that haven't shown up yet have moved away and that I won't suddenly have a class of 33. Because, ew.

I spent some time this summer rereading my classroom management books, which has done me some good, although in some respects the assumptions they make are just frustrating. The idea of a flexible curriculum, for example... or a 30 minute recess, or enough classroom space (or few enough students, take your pick) for a morning circle (as opposed to a morning set of rows on the rug). However, I am learning to adapt.

Starting the year from day one has really made a difference too -- even if I only had one and a half days' lead time (my bulletin boards are STILL not finished, argh). We're setting up routines, we're practicing signals, I'm getting to actually implement things like time out... things are not going perfectly, of course, but they're going. I don't feel as completely overwhelmed and apathetic as I did last year. Just as exhausted, but not having to force myself out of bed in the morning. This is a promising sign, I feel.

With that, it's 10:35, and I haven't finished sorting through the three massive boxes of Stuff that my father brought ume over the weekend. (hanging folders, craft supplies, pencils, pens, paper, notebooks... a veritable treasure trove of Teacher Things (tm). God, I feel so old.) Further bulletins... well, hopefully more regularly than last year.

I was going to restart this blog for the new school year

...but this morning I left the door unlocked in my new classroom (at my new school) and my laptop got stolen.
So, not for a little while yet.

the problem with analogies

This is something I've been mulling over for a while, but just now found the words for.

Back in October, when I was hired, the representatives from my school said that the teachers were "like family."
I didn't realize at the time that rather than speaking of "family" in a Platonic sense, they were actually talking about my family. Specifically my second and fifth aunts.

Little details...

Look out for number one

This is not something I ever thought I would hear myself complaining about. I have heard enough other women complain about it for several lifetimes, and wasn't exactly hoping to join them. But here it is:
My pants don't fit anymore.
This is not because I've gained weight. That was what happened this time last year, when I fell off my bike and sprained my ankle and was basically totally sedentary for four months. (Please note that, at the time, I did not complain about the state of my pants, other than to bemoan the loss of my favorite cords in the accident.) This is because I have lost weight.
I discovered this yesterday, when I put on my pants without the flannel pajamas I've been wearing underneath them for the past several weeks. (The building isn't always warm, and I walk several blocks to the bus stop each way.) I can't wear these pants -- pants which I bought back in October, wearing nothing but standard underwear, and which fit me fine at the time -- without them falling straight off me. This is the literal truth -- I take four steps and have to grab them. Wearing a belt they bunch up so much as to be uncomfortable.
At least I can go back to my typically nonconformist outlook in the fact that I am not exactly happy about this. Sure, I could have stood to lose that extra 15 pounds I gained a year ago (and I think I had lost some of it). But I would have preferred to do it by maintaining a healthy diet and taking a few dance classes, and not, as I seem to have done, by sleeping through dinner so frequently.
(For the edification of my father, I would like to point out that as I write this I have just finished a bowl of granola and yogurt, and that I had a well-balanced, healthy dinner last night and breakfast this morning.)
I need to find some out-of-school energy somewhere. I come home and the last thing I want to do is cook dinner. Or make lunches for that matter, which explains my execrably high grocery bills the last few months (I've been grabbing premade sandwiches from the co-op, at ~$3.50 each, plus the occasional energy bar for breakfast, more than twice a week since mid-November). Other than all the wandering around at school during the day (and the miles and MILES of stairs in that damned three-story-with-a-basement building), I'm not really exercising. I'm just teaching and sleeping, and occasionally eating a sandwich.

Clearly, this has to change. I need to find some good, simple recipes that I can cook -- preferably over the weekend -- and eat all week. I need to start keeping a container of yogurt in the staff room, so that I at least have a backup plan. Because this is ridiculous.

I am also -- big surprise -- writing this to avoid doing this week's lesson plans. Argh. The next round of benchmarks are coming up Friday after next, and we've barely done any science in the meantime. Got to get back into that, at least to the extent of reading the textbook a little bit now and then. We did on Friday, which was nice.

Classroom management post later, I think. Same problems with same kids, but I'm getting a bit more advice. I just wish it didn't all conflict. >_< Sigh.