So, I went in to work yesterday. Got there around 7:30 – about an hour before school starts and a full 30 minutes before tutoring begins. I had a test to finish grading because I wanted to be able to go over it with the kids. No such luck. If an interruption could have happened yesterday, it did. We have progress reports going out Tuesday morning, and I have to have my grades and conduct uploaded by Monday morning. So, to keep from bringing home nearly three days worth of grading, I stayed late and got it all done. I left the building around 9pm.
Count closely. That’s nearly 14 hours in my classroom yesterday.
From now on, I’m bringing some of that stuff home to grade at night. I’d rather keep up with it during the week than have a shit-ton to bring home on Friday, thereby killing any hope of a weekend I might have had. I’ve ended up bringing it all home on Friday so far (except for yesterday), and I’ll grade papers all day on Saturday, and barely get a start on lesson plans. Then, on Sunday, I have to finish lesson plans and daily warm-ups and I have no down time. I do believe that’s a quick way to burn yourself out.
Today, since I had no papers to grade and no grades to upload, I was able to spend 4-5 hours this afternoon lesson planning and making a list of things I need to either copy or make overhead transparencies out of. I also re-did my seating charts to separate kids that are giving me headaches and perhaps create a better balance between partner work. I still have to go through the worksheets we’re doing this week and make answer keys, but I’ll do that tomorrow. I have all my originals made and have copies of them ready to work on, so I’m set and just need to go.
I’m really hoping to have a good couple of hours to veg on The Sims 3.
My first week of teaching…whew! I was totally overwhelmed with everything. I had too much information on what I needed to include in my lessons, but not enough information about how to handle the administrative side of the whole First Day Paperwork. And then we had the whole immunization issue to deal with. Of course, I would be teaching a grade level that was affected by the new requirements. Of course – because I’m just that fortunate! I hadn’t had time to create any real lesson plans, other than some outlines of what I needed to cover on which days. The first two days were supposed to be dedicated to rules and routines. After that, I had no plan. For the second week, I spent considerable time creating detailed lesson plans the way I was taught in college. I quickly realized that those lesson plans are WAY too rigid and allow no flexibility for tasks that take longer than expected. But I got through it. I felt like I was running behind all the time, and I was, but I pushed through and made it. At the end of the second week, I realized that all I was doing was getting kids to do worksheets – and not very successfully in some cases – but I started to doubt whether I was really teaching. The test I gave that Friday proved I WAS teaching because most of my students passed with an A or a B. Sure, a few of them failed, but considering the types of inclusion cases I have, that’s to be expected.
To create a lesson plan for last week, I chose a much looser, more flexible format: an outline. Nothing was written in stone. I simply listed the warm ups I wanted done each day and listed the worksheets we would be doing for the week. There was another test on Thursday, followed by a game day on Friday, so it was a relaxed week overall. The outline worked so much better than the “Five E” lesson plan format I was using, but for record-keeping purposes, I think I need something that lies between the two. Especially since this coming week will begin to cover material that should be new for all the kids. So, today I worked on my plans, going through the C-Scope, the teacher’s edition, and the worksheets given to my by a fellow math teacher (I pace my lessons on his, so following his handouts is a wise thing to do). My mentors keep telling me that the district provides far more material to put into a given lesson than a single teacher will ever use. They do that so that we can maintain some sort of flexibility and autonomy in our classrooms. We don’t even have to use the district materials, so long as we’re sticking to the scope & sequence. After all, we are the only ones responsible for our kids’ test scores.
Next week begins the usage of the overhead projector in my room. I’m hoping that I can cut down on the time certain activities take by using transparencies. For instance, the time it takes to have the students check each others work. Right now, I have my key and I call the answers out one by one. With an answer key on a transparency, I can have the kids trade papers, slap the transparency key down, and give them five or so minutes to grade. I’ve just cut a 20 minute process down to five or ten. That’s a win in my book! I also have certain worksheets we’ll be doing together scheduled to be made into transparencies. Right now, I have to write everything down on the board. Then, at the end of class, it gets erased and I have to re-write everything for the new class. (There’s not enough board in the room to leave it all up!) With transparencies, I can write it once and display it for each class. There’s still things I’ll be doing on the board, but not like what I’ve been doing. Again, it should help me speed things up and cut down on the amount of time my students have to start chatting.
I’m starting to see the start of routines in my classroom, as well. That’s good and it means that I’ve been consistent in enforcing them. I always have the day’s warm-up sitting on the corner of a table that is located close to the door. I don’t even have to remind my kids anymore to pick one up on the way in. Some of them are also getting into the habit of checking their “returned papers” folders, as well. And, when I make a mistake on a routine, I get reminded of how we’re supposed to do things! It’s really awesome.
I’ve also started seeing some routine-following for myself, as well. Sometimes, I have to do a task several times before I figure out the most economical way for me to accomplish it. Taking attendance and keeping up with who was absent on which days has been a hassle. But this past week, I started doing something that became automatic by the end of the first day. I have my students in assigned seats, and the desks are numbered. To take attendance, all I have to do is check for empty desks. Then, I take a sticky note and write down the names of the kids who are absent, along with the class period. I do this at my podium. I then take the sticky note to my desk where I enter attendance on the computer. When I’m done, I stick the note to the bottom of my computer screen. Then, at the end of the period, I gather up all the papers I’ve collected that day (we put them all in the same place everytime something is turned in), put a binder clip on them, and stick the attendance sticky note to the top. Then, when I finally get around to grading, I can hold onto the note and quickly see who I should excuse from turning in the assignment because they were absent, and who should get a zero for being present but not turning their work in. Such a simple routine, but it took me nearly three weeks to “discover” it.
Really, since this is my first year teaching, I just don’t know how I’m going to utilize my room all the time. I have my ideas about how I’m going to do things, but reality is often quite different. I have to adjust how I do things according to how I actually end up moving around the room. I’ve realized that I need to have a cup of pens and a bottle of water at my podium, for example. Oh, and sticky notes to take attendance. :)
In this same vein, I’m also developing filing systems for the various pieces of paper I have to deal with. I have a file drawer established for worksheets, their key and the original, and another drawer for student records. I also had to get something set up to deal with all the various forms I need. I go through file folders like crazy these days! I also have certain paperwork that I have to have ready access to, so I had to set up a few binders with divider organizers in them. I am slowly getting myself organized! And it’s so strange to feel myself doing so. If you go to work in an office, everything is already there and established for you. You just have to figure out how to use what’s already there. For me, there was NOTHING already established in this room because no one had ever used it before. I started with empty desks, empty file cabinets, empty shelves. But they are filling. And quickly!
