ice skating

so i am currently waiting for my choc chip cookies to cool, so here is the (highly anticipated i know) story of taking one of my students ice skating.

so tfa put on this event where teachers could take up to four of their students ice skating at no charge. the ice skating rink (to my surprise) was ACTUALLY OUTSIDE!!!! so both me and my student were a TAD underdressed.

so, like i said, i was allowed to bring up to four students, but most of my kids were busy that saturday and, frankly, not all of my students had behaved well enough to be able to go, so i just took one student, one of my girls.

when i picked her up, i asked her if she had ever gone ice skating, she said no. to myself i thought "oh boy, this is gonna be interesting"

when we got there, we got our skates, laced up (i had to help her, she wasn't sure what to do at first), and i gave her my hand we got on the ice.....where she DID NOT FALL! we were pro. we were there for about an hour and half and she didn't fall ONCE! i was pretty impressed! especially when compared to the other students falling all over the ice haha.

it was a fun morning because i got to be in a different setting with one of my students, i also got to hear a bunch of the gossip going on in my classroom! (i'm happy to say i knew most of the boy-girl stuff going on! i'm perceptive! lol)

anyways

cookies are done baking (omg, cookie overload)

i need to go do something productive!

a poem

this was written by one of my students for their poetry anthologies (due today). they had to create eight original poems about themselves. this poem was written in response to my confiscation of every rubberband in the classroom throughout two days because the boys were shooting paper across the classroom (typical) and snapping each other with them (typical).

GONE RUBBER BAND

On Tuesday Ms.Brodhead took my rubber band,

she said she was going to give it back on

Wednesday but, she lied and today is Friday and

she said she was going to give it back at the end

of the day but I can’t wait that long I need it now.

thanksgiving party

so i'm not sure how many of you heard about the thanksgiving party debacle over thanksgiving break.

but here it is.

(i might be setting it up a little bit calling it a debacle, but whatever).

so i want you to keep in mind that i teach at a school that is 7-12. i teach the YOUNGEST kids. i missed the memo at halloween that there should be a halloween party, so for thanksgiving i knew i needed to do something because my kids were very vocal in their disappointment at halloween (silly me).

so i decided that the last period on tuesday would be our party time and i would bring some cookies and chips or something and we could just sort of hang out/play games whatever. WELL.

my plan of cookies and chips and juice (the full spread was cookies, teddy grahams, popcorn, apple juice) was put SADLY to shame BY EVERYONE ELSE IN THE SCHOOL. the 8th grade teacher literally cooked a whole bunch of stuff for her class (think lasagna, etc), got chicken wings, lots of pies, i mean A FEAST. (the 10th graders joined in to have this party with the 8th graders)

this feast next door made some of my kids whine to go next door and made me realize that my christmas party needs to be epic. bah. i'll have to do a sign up sheet cause i won't be able to afford it otherwise!!!

i'll keep you posted on the christmas party.

oops.

sorry yall for the lack of updates. i don't like updating when i've been having bad days/weeks/months (haha) i'm worried i'll say something i'll regret!

overall, i'm pretty ready for break. i think my kids are too. it's the last slog through till the holidays and there is still a TON of stuff to cram in. my kids poetry anthologies (basically personal narratives in the form of 8 original poems) are due monday, and of course, even though i have given my kids a month to work on these (anticipating them getting one and half done each week, plus homework), most of my kids have less than FOUR. WTF? and of course, my kids are resisitent to doing the work. we'll see what these turn out like.....

we are also drawing our unit to a close and will be taking our test next week, having our poetry slam, our christmas party (which, i will tell you about how high my bar needs to be in another post..THIS IS A BIG DEAL!!!!) and half of my kids failing math and science (not to mention my class!!!) life is CRAZY!!!

i also took one of my students ice skating this past weekend, i'll tell you about it another time too.

things to keep you hooked ya know! lol

on the upside, the tfa holiday christmas party is this weekend. i've heard its lots of fun (it is also open bar = automatic win).

try to get these posts out more often:)

exchange of the day

Student: "Ms B, I woke up a Christian today! I can't do work!"

Me: "Um... why?"

Student: "Christians don't curse!"

student responses

i would like to share this response with my readers (little though they may be, i hope itmakes you laugh, like it made me laugh when i read it)

we had been going over our rules in order to reinforce them, because a lot of the kids had forgotten about them (or choosing to ignore them, either way they were crazy). in response to this question:

"do you think these rules and expectations are fair?"

one of my students writes this:

"yes but no because everything is not fair but somethings are"

onomotopaiea.... or something like that

i'm currently doing a poetry unit with my kids and we're looking at figurative language right now. today, among others, we were talking about onomotopaiea (spelling?).

for those of you who do not remember (it's ok, these things happen) it is when the word sounds like the noise it describes. an example: boom. crack. zip. etc.

so we were going over it and i was having my kids come up with their own examples, which i could tell they didn't fully get (some examples of words put down: fireworks, gun shot, etc) so i stop and i ask the class, what noise does a bee make??

and the entire class goes "bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

and then i go, how would you spell that? and the kids kinda look at me, and i supply, "how about b-u-z-z" now say the word that we just spelt and the kids all go "bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

we then repeat with dogs (we had roof, arff, and woof going on, so it took us awhile)

by the end of the period my class sounded like quite a zoo.

however, my kids got it!

i'm thinking about having my do now (the first five minutes of class time) be a sound do now, we could continue the zoo! chickens, cats, etc. we'll see.

two things

ok, the first thing did NOT happen in my class, but it's too funny/crazy to not tell.

first period (right after breakfast), the 9th graders are in science. a baby mouse is seen. every student is up on the tables, screaming ( i could hear this down the hall haha). then one student decides he's going to throw a book at the mouse. he literally hits it dead on, and mouse guts splatter out. that is too much for two students in the class, one of whom vomits on the floor, the other one makes it to the trashcan. the custodian had to come in and clean it up and disenfect it and the science book that did the damage was thrown away.

you know, a normal day.

the other thing:

i just got back from a boxing class. OMG. OMG. OMG. i can barely move.

my love life

my girls were talking about it yesterday.... not just one period, more than one period yesterday.

one of my students "ms b needs a nice mexican"

then later on "a mexican with nice wavy, long hair and blue eyes"

there was an argument over the blue eyes though...some of my girls said blue eyes were ugly. (hope they don't look at my eyes too closely!)

then it was discussed if i would ever date more than one person at once (the consensus was no),

and if i would want to date one of my students (many) brothers. She ultimately informed the class via blackboard that i was actually dating one of her brothers, at which point the entire class started railing on the one student that i couldn't do that because i would be showing favoritism and she finally said, "Ok she's not dating him, i just said that"

so an interesting friday over all.

first day back

so today was good and bad.

it was my first day back after my long weekend. i came back to find out that my students accomplished next to nothing yesterday and my best student was thrown out of the classroom by the sub. so.

my kids were all sorts of off today.

3rd period was good today, 7th period was not.

i ended up getting locked out of my classroom by one of my oh so lovely students.

they knew they had gone too far though when i got back in (it was literally about ten seconds when i had to tell students to let me in) because they were silent. completely silent.

i felt like i was breathing fire i was so angry.

but my kids said they were happy to see me this morning and 3rd period was good. a topsy turvey day overall.

not related to teaching, but....

I HATE MISSOURI DRIVERS!

literally every morning and every afternoon i say this (or possibly yell) in my car. i've gotten cut off more times on the highway, had to swerve because someone was drifting in my lane, gotten behind people going 55 in the fast line (OK, OK, it's the speed limit, but everyone knows that the left-most lane is for people who are going faster, i'll admit, i shouldn't speed, but if you guys want to criticize me there talk to my father..or laura. haha).

LITERALLY EVERYDAY.

everyday i also think about how the road i take to and from school, I-70, will take me all the way to DC (well, frederick, but same difference really). i promise. i've driven it!

i miss DC, so far STL is not my favorite city, i'm not gonna lie. i think part of it is cause all i ever do is work (or do classes as is the case currently) and it is such a HUGE change from college. waking up at 6 am everyday sucks. going to bed every night at 9pm is depressing. being too tired to do anything on weekends is boring.

i think that i would have these same issues if i was in DC, the adjustment from college to working life is going to be hard for anybody. i guess my biggest thing is that when i do things in DC i know what to expect, i'm still discovering STL, which seems like more work than i'm willing to do right now.

anyways, sorry for the slightly pessimistic blog post.... TFA has warned us that october is called "black october" because basically now is the time when all new teachers are starting to see that

1. they haven't accomplished very much (which is understandable, but unacceptable, which is hard to deal with)

2. the "honeymoon period" is over and the kids, while they may like you (as is the case with me) still will be crazy

3. all of the above kicks in, before it was kind of exciting, now you're just tired

4. it's getting darker.

ok

i promise, i will work on the pessimism, but i really do hate missouri drivers!!!

quote of the day

"ms b, were you fat and have acne when you were little? cause white people are all fat and have acne when they were little"

the most exhausting day of teaching thus far

hey guys!

so last friday had to be the most exhausting day of teaching i've had yet. i think part of this may be due to the fact that i managed to get a cold and so was not on top form anyways, but, it was a TIRING DAY.

first hour we finished up our testing (finally). Third hour we had our publishing party. I had all of the kids title their stories, and then i had about 6 of them share what their narratives were about. in hindsight i think that i should have structured what they said about their narratives better--maybe had them read straight from their narratives, because some of the kids got a little off-topic. oh well. to make sure they were listening i made them write a letter to one of their classmates who shared (the letter was not actually going to be seen by the student, just me) and thanking them. i made them put specifics in their letters. i also had to threaten them with bookwork if they couldn't pay attention to their classmates.

fourth hour (directly AFTER the publishing party) we held our talent show. my kids are quite talented!! we had poetry reading, rapping (original!), singing, dancing... the principal came in and watched and asked the kids to sing out our assembly on monday!!

it was exhausting though, keeping all my kids on-task, well behaved, and respectful to their other classmates. i came home immediately after school and passed out until about 5ish. for those of you who don't know, my school day is over at 2:07 and i can leave at 2:17. anyways.

that's it for now. i have to grade narratives.

testing

so this week is going to be a rough week for the kids..... it's terra nova testing... and it's the "complete battery." it is actually as scary as it sounds. my kids have to take an hour long reading test, a 35 min long grammar test, a 70 min math test, and 40 min science test, 40 min social studies test.....

THEY ARE DOING THIS ALL IN MY CLASS.

i've had to bribe them beyond belief to get them to be quiet and work haha

it's made me realize that we really test our kids too much.... i mean who really wants to sit and take standardized tests all the time!??? i always hated them.

i guess i need to figure out a better way to invest my students in them.

on a different note:

today was an interesting day for another reason besides testing.

one of my students ran into my classroom after lunch today, started dancing and actin a fool, and then slipped on some paper that was on the floor. it was like amovie, his feet came out from under him, and he fell, i think his head might have hit the table, but i don't really remember, but his head def hit the floor--HARD. he continued to act a fool on the ground, and my worry went out the window, until he came up to me about 15 min later saying "ms b, i think i'm sick" and he was tipping his head back cause he had vom in his mouth.

not good.

some craziness happened ( i had to watch a class for a hot sec and my student as still in the bathroom.....)

and then we went to the nurse. ... in the end mys tudent came back to my class and the end of the day he seemed normal....

an incident report was written and a call home was made, tomorrow iwll be interesting to see how he feels.

all in all a stressful day, on top of which i sat at the tfa offices for 3 hours.. BOO.

pictures!

hey guys, here are some pictures of my classroom. pictures of the kids to come soon.

this is the front of the classroom--up above the chalk board are my kids goals and visions above their hand prints, which is them reaching for their goals. haha. my big classwide vision and big goal is to the left of the kids on poster board.

see the hands and "we are always reaching for our goals"

the back of the classroom with our class library and my desk in the left hand corner.

this is one of the sides of my class, with the stellar student wall (for student work that made mastery--80% or better) and my words and terms wall

stellar student work!!!

the "this is why i'm hot wall" is my student shout out wall. i'm going to start taking the kids photos and putting them on the wall.

class rules, rewards, and negative consequences. below the chart paper that says "what does respect mean to you" all my kids have signed a poster board saying that they agree to the rules 100% of the time. we did that on the very FIRST day of school!

the respect thing was part of what we did yesterday to talk about the crazy ish that has been going on.

anyways. that's all for now

also, i know everyone is just falling over with disbelief that i've updated so much.

a blog update twice in one week!???

lord.

today was ROUGH DAY.

i generally start of monday, wednesday, and friday with a temperature check. that means i have the kids circle up and tell the class 1-5 how they are feeling. five they could do cartwheels across the room and 1 they want to curl up in a ball and hide. they know, and i continue to tell them, that they need to be RESPECTFUL and listen to their classmates, which means NO TALKING. however, they lost the privilege of temp checks for the forseeable future because no one would be quiet. i think we got through about 3 students today. it was a bad start.

then, to make my already frustrated self a little more flustered, the PE teacher was out, so i lost my planning period (where i had a bunch of stuff i was planning on doing) as i needed to watch the kids in the gym.

then, when we get back into my class (15 min late, cause neither me nor the other teacher had a watch), one of my girls had to leave my class because she was shaking she was so mad at another one of the students. i believe she probably would have hit him if she had stayed in the classroom (she went to the 8th grade classroom, this is one of the reasons i like the school i teach at, because this can be an option)

then of course, we have a fire drill. that is chaotic in itself.

when the one girl came back in my classroom after the fire drill she sits with her back to me (one of many drawbacks of round tables) and ignores me for the rest of the period we have together (which doesn't sound like we have a lot of time together, but on mondays i actually have my kids for one hour in the morning, planning period, and then two hours before lunch, so we did still have about 45ish min left at this point).

my literature lesson starts off with kids again talking and talking and talking and i couldn't get their attention. i am sad to say i lost my temper a little bit and yelled quite a bit. it did however get them on track to do their work and most of the class turned in their work.

i have to say, one thing i don't understand--why would you NOT turn in work? especially when the work is groupwork? i have a student who will consistently sit there and talk to his table mates (another drawback of round tables) and not actually write down any of the work i ask. he understands it, because he tends to get some of the higher grades on his assignments, but he has a bad grade in my class cause he has so many zeros for his classwork. he really frustrates me, i think because i really do see his potential and i think he's probably one of the nicest kids in my class.

anyways. at lunch i generally have some girls who come to my room at eat lunch (actually a lot of my class has started to want to come into my room at lunch at eat). they don't always talk to me, but a lot of times they do--even after we have had a bad morning they like to come. they came for lunch today, but i said "girls, ms b needs a break today. you need to go back to the cafeteria"

then i had to sub for the ss class in the afternoon, right after lunch. the teacher had left them work to do which was good, and i wrote it on the board, there were twelve questions. most of the class go through 3. THREE QUESTIONS IN ONE HOUR. that is how much they were talking. it was hard because i wasn't super familiar with the topic so it took me awhile to be able to answer the questions. ugh. all in all, rough day.

because of this constant stream of talking--not whispering, not side conversations, literally not paying attention AT ALL--we are going to take tomorrow's lit class and talk about what's been happening. another reason i like my school--i can actually do this without worrying too much about falling behind because i always see my kids at least twice during the day.

anyways, long update. i guess i'm just venting here!

yikes.

oooh, graded the test.

not good.

life goes on..

sorry guys, forgot my camera on friday. i will bring it on monday though!!!

i will also try to post pictures of the 7th grade talent show my kids are putting on on thursday. lots of dancing, maybe some stepping, some singing/rapping, and who knows what else my kids will decide they want to do.

i also told them that if they worked hard on their narratives this week and finished them by monday we would have a publishing party a week from monday (the 27th). I said the publishing party would be like a coffee house and i would bring them juice and hot chocolate and some sort of something that isn't too sugar-filled. i think that was some good motivation.

i'm currently planning for my upcoming week on my NEW unit--short stories. our first story is by walter dean myers called "the treasure of lemon brown."

last week was a mixed week of good and bad classes. they finally understood what "text-to-self connections" were (it's a reading strategy where you can relate to something that happened int he sotry to help you understand it better) because i had them do skits about times when they were bullied, they bullied someone, or someone snitched on them. there were some pretty funny skits, one kid pretended he was like urkel with his pants up under his armpits, some glasses on, and walked all hunched over. he is also one of the smallest kids in my class--the kids LOVED it. i also had them write things that they thought they could teach and a couple of the kids wrote "i wasn't so sure about text-to-self until we started doing the skits and artwork, now i really get it!" that was a highpoint.

a low point was on friday after they took their test and i was going to have them do an activity about manners, and irony of all irony they couldn't be quiet AT ALL. i gave out written warnings all sorts of things, and we didn't get anythign done for 30 min. i finally said "if you guys can't sit here quietly for the next 5 min you will be eating lunch in my room completely silent"--that sure made everyone get quiet real fast.

anyways, i should get back to work, i promise pictures soon!!!

my kids first test is tomorrow....

wish them luck!!!

i know they know everything, but i'm nervous for them!!!

i'll keep you updated.

tracking

hey guys

i am currently grading and trying to put together my tracker. it's not going well. the upside about grading is that i can watch tv while i grade....but the downside is setting up the tracker. i have no idea what i'm doing.

on a better note, i gave my kids a quiz on friday and about half of them did a really great job! i showed some of them their grades and it made them smile really big too:)

this upcoming week is going to be pretty crazy i think. we (as in the teachers at my school) are volunteering at a place called Kidsmart on tuesday for 3 hours. this means we get to shop once a month for free--literally fill up a cart with a whole bunch of stuff for free. you can get notebooks, pencils, sometimes they have overheads, all sorts of things apparently. so that will be good.

then on wednesday its meet the family night. we'll see how many parents show up. saturday is a whole-day tfa thing. boo. my life is basically always full.

this upcoming weekend is also the balloon festival, so i really want to see them blowing them up on friday night!

anyways, i should get back to grading/setting up a tracker/watching tv

i will work on pictures for my next post!

i'm sure you're all wondering

I'm sure everyone is dying with questions about how last week went with little lesson planning---it went fine! except for at the end of the week when i had to come home and lesson plan and prep instead of just prepping. the last thing i wanted to do when i got home was lesson plan!
so because of that i will be working my darndest today to make sure i get all this weeks lesson planning done!

i'm still teaching personal narratives, i'm also having the kids write their own personal narratives. i'm excited to see what the kids are going to write about! i've made them think and pre-write for three different ideas, and i'm going to have them choose one this week to actually write the whole deal.

i'm currently planning for my next unit, which will be short stories. deciding what stories we will be reading and deciding if i like the ones in the textbook (i'm leaning towards no). teaching is a lot of prep work... no jokes.

this weekend was another not-so-teacher filled weekend. mom drove up from tejas with some furniture and now our apartment actually looks like people live here full time, instead of just some beds and a couch. haha. it has also been really nice here this weekend... gorgeous weather! too bad i am now stuck inside lesson planning! (and blogging, obvi).

anyways, that's all for now!

non-teacher

this weekend i had my first non-teacher weekend.
i did very little for my job. we'll see how i feel during the week.
however, it was glorious.
it was the festival of nations this weekend in tower grove park, which is just down the road from my house. so i went with one of my roommates to check it out.
it was a really nice day and we saw some dancing, shopped, and ate!
then that night i hung out with non-teachers... ariel and some of her friends.
i need to make it a priority to not have teaching become my entire life.
today i read and watched some tv while i graded. i also did two days lesson plans, the end. all in all... good weekend.

i JUST finished the girl who played with fire... and last week i read the girl with the dragon tatoo: i recommend them both!
anyways, i'll let you know how my week goes after not doing as much planning as i have been:)

differences

currently teaching: personal narratives
currently reading: the watsons go to birmingham--1963

so you know what the differences are between me and my kids?
1. on mondays i don't come back to school bouncing off the walls.
2. after lunch i want to nap, not run a mile. even in high school i remember just wanting to sleeeeeeeeeeeeep all afternoon. thank goodness there are only 2 periods after lunch!

that's all for now.

Blog title

hey guys,
figured this would be easier to keep everyone updated on whats goin onnnnnnnn in my life here, instead of telling tons of people the same thing over and over again.
i'm sure you are wondering about the title. look it up on youtube. my students said they're going to teach me. i also promised them i'd show them my moves (haha) at the end of the semester. they promised not to laugh too hard.
in other news, for those of you who don't know, i'm teaching 7th graders and i'm teaching Communication Arts (aka english). there is actually kinda a lotta pressure cause it's a tested area for NCLB. it is also a change from what i thought i would be teaching (social studies).
however my kids (so far) are cute. the boys are all SMALL! but i think they are going to grow A LOT by the end of the year.
so. this is the setting. i teach at a school that is 7-12. i teach 7th graders comm arts and i am their advisor (which means that i also see them 1-3 other times during the day and teach them random things).
so that's that.
first week almost over.
i'll try to update this as much as i can!