A semester passed

I complete my first semester as a teacher tomorrow!!! WOW! I was looking around at some other first year TFAs yesterday afternoon and I realized how much OLDER we seem now than we did 5 months ago. We don't look so shiny and obviously new. We are a small bit wiser, but mostly more tired and worn out. Though we live in the valley of the sun, we are all very pale from all the hours we spend under fluorescent lights.

Somehow, I am starting to feel more comfortable as my teacher self. I am starting to realize that I can handle difficult situations when they come my way. This morning, as my students were coming in, somehow one of my students ended up being knocked to the floor and for a minute couldn't seem to get up. He even started crying. All the while I am trying to get my other students to settle in and get their work out. I found myself standing over Bryan on the floor while looking up and counting down for my other students to be at their desks in between asking Bryan if he is ok. Luckily, Bryan is my tiniest little student, so i could just pick him up to get him on his feet once i realized he wasn't seriously injured. Never a dull moment.

Yesterday afternoon I decided, based on a recommendation from a Program Director, that I needed more face time with my Spanish speaking parents. So, I decided to go to the houses of a couple of my...i guess you could say...challenging students. I called ahead and was able, with 2 hours notice, to be able to sit down with both parents and the student at each house. It was great. I think we made some progress. The students, I think, were shocked that I actually came to their house. I made it very clear to them that I was there because I know how smart they are and I want to help them do better because they are fully capable of more. I also made it clear that I was tired of them disrupting my class. We made some plans...rewards and consequences. They both did much better today. We will see how long it lasts...but i think they know that i will have their moms sitting in class with them if they don't shape up...and i will be back at their houses if i have to. Today one of them earned being able to stay after school. Isn't that funny? FOr him, detention is a reward rather than a punishment. I should do this home visit thing more often...

I have to get out of here! SO much grading to do, but it is all at my house.

hasta luego

ups and downs

My students wrote very formulaic 5 paragraph essays this week about their place in the family. I am going to write a blog post in the format that my students used:

Mrs. Nehs showed up at my door and asked "there are 4 students out here in the hall who claim they are with you," I look out in to the hall to see that, yes indeed, 4 of the students I was helping during my lunch hour, were standing sheepishly in the hallway. It was clear that they knew they had done something wrong. I teach Reading and writing to 130 11 and 12 year olds. Each day brings many new challenges and rewards.
Classroom/student management is one of my greatest challenges. I am constantly trying to figure out the best way to get my students to stay on task, finish their work, not throw things, not call out, not shoot each other with rubber bands, take care of the classroom, be respectful towards each other, walk in a straight line without talking. The list could go on forever. Each day I figure out new things that work and encounter new classroom management challenges.
Teaching effective lessons, aside from the classroom management side, is another one of my challenges. Some days, I feel like my students really understand what I am trying to teach them. Other days, I see blank stares and I wonder if I will ever learn to communicate in 6th grade language. I am also challenged to write engaging lessons that wont bore my students to tears. Facilitating student learning is one of my greatest challenges.
With so many challenges, one might ask, "why do you come back each day?" There are moments. There are days. THere are times when I believe that my students are really learning. That they feel respected by me. That they grasp hold of their writing goals for the year and really want to achieve them. They know that I care about them and their learning. This is true for many of my students. Knowing that I am reaching students keeps me coming back each day.
Classroom management can be very tough. Presenting material in an engaging and understandable fashion is also challenging. Changing the lives of children, no matter how clique that sounds, makes all the challenges worthwhile. Being a 6th grade teacher is the hardest thing I have ever done, but I cannot imagine myself doing anything else right now.


There it is...perhaps my sentence fluency and word choice is a little higher level than my students, but that is the format that I am teaching them to use. They are a little overwhelmed, but they are getting it.

I want to jump off a cliff all day and then there is a moment ...

that makes me realize why I come back to school every day.

back to school, back to school

After a week off, I feel recharged. I feel like I can tackle what's in front of me. At the same time, I wonder what this next quarter will hold for me. I wonder what challenges will come up. I wonder how much work I will have to do to retrain my students after a week off. As one experienced teacher at my school said "teaching is a lot like being a firefighter. You never know what you are going to end up doing in a day." Having done both of these jobs, I certainly agree with the analogy.

one reason to teach in Arizona

FALL BREAK!

My mom came and visited. We took some time to play, but mostly got stuff done...the stuff that normal people do on a regular basis but you neglect when you are completely consumed by your work. Now I am taking time to plan for the next quarter, trying to set my students up to learn a LOT more than they did 1st quarter. I am also reflecting on how I can better involve parents, and also how I can keep my classroom culture positive. I can feel that things could explode...the students like me and trust me, but issues between students are brewing. These conflicts could spell disaster for my goal of a "positive, productive learning space." Hmmm. Right now I am focusing on having my quarter planned out very well--my learning objectives calendared, and some idea of how I am going to teach those objectives. I need to have a more coherent idea of what I am doing this quarter so I can communicate that to the students. This is much easier said than done...but it HAS to get done. Teaching is such an interesting profession...so many things to think about!

OK that's all I got for now.

I have to admit it's getting better

I have to take the moments to embrace the things that are getting better. I am FAR from an excellent instructor, but I am making lots of progress. My classroom is running much more smoothly...at least most of the time. There are still moments of chaos at the very end of the day.

A couple funny stories:

I had the kids correct a messed up sentence. In it was supposed to be "piece" but instead it was spelled "peace." I asked the kids what "peace" meant and one kid says "you know, like peace out, when you are leaving."

Monday my class got video taped by my program director. I had to step out of the room to round up some loose kids. While I was out a student went to the sink to wash his hands. While he was up there he broke the faucet. It came clear off. A couple kids joined him at the sink to watch as he put it back on. The funny part was that I had no idea this had even happened until I watched the tape this afternoon. I almost fell out of my chair laughing. I can't wait to bring it up to the student tomorrow.

SO MUCH ASU HOMEWORK. OK, if i was a good student and did it throughout the week it wouldn't be bad, but it makes for a rough Wednesday night when you put it all off. but TOMORROW is the last day of this darn technology course that eats up so much of my time. Next 9 weeks is ESL which will be much more useful, I hope.

I am enjoying myself in my classroom more often lately...getting overwhelmed with frustration a bit less often, and looking forward to next week off. I hope to get my next unit planned well during my time off. It'll be exciting to have more effective instruction :)

ohhhh i'm a nerd, but i love it.

Possible Good News

Friday my principal told us that he is going to hire a new 6th grade teacher. This would mean 2 absolutely fabulous things: my class sizes would be normal, around 26 AND my students would have 1 hour for writing and 1 hour for reading. The only issue here is that these two subjects cannot be taught in isolation. I have to decide by tomorrow what I am going to teach. I am tempted to choose writing and have the kids read novels and use those novels as models for writing and to give us things to write about. Then the reading skills/basel reader would be taken care of during reading and we could focus on reading as authors. I don't really know. Teaching both reading and writing is really tricky! There is one part of me (a very silly part) that doesn't want to give up teaching reading after I just spent so much time writing a summative assessment for reading. I think I need to sit down with my PD and my vice principal to talk about what my course will actually look like. hmmmm.

This coming week, I have decided, is going to be better than the week that just passed. I have rearranged to desks in my classroom and soon will make a seating chart. I hope that this seating chart will alleviate a lot of the management problems I've been having in my classroom. Classroom jobs will also begin on Tuesday. The kids are writing letters this weekend to apply for them. I hope that investment in our classroom--if not the course itself--will increase with having students with jobs.

There are so many things to fix...so many things that are NOT working in my classroom, I just have to fix them a couple at a time. This is hard because I want everything to be perfect NOW. Well, not even perfect, but functional.

I am going to attempt to not think about teaching for about 30 minutes now before I get going on a long sunday of planning and preparation for the week.

Post me a comment so I know someone is reading :)

Mama said there'd be weeks like this....

This past week was so filled with highs and lows I can't even believe it. I started off the week with a bang, spent all day Sunday planning and was inspired to be more consistent with my students. Monday went great! Tuesday was fine. Wednesday was a disaster. I woke up (late) sick. I was frazzled, I didn't feel well and as a result I was not patient or consistent with my students. Therefore, lessons did not go as they should have. I felt awful physically and emotionally. I started crying in the faculty restroom and when I returned to my staff meeting my vice-principal insisted I go home and get a sub for thursday. I did not argue with her. I went to bed early on Wednesday and slept for 12 hours. Friday I was feeling better and had it much more together...which was a good thing because we had a LOCK DOWN. 35 6th graders in my classroom for 3 hours straight. AWESOME. Actually, it went fine, I figured out an activity for them to do and then made them read silently, but it certainly mixed things up.

I realized again that I still don't really know how to do effective literacy instruction. I have been looking at some sample long term plans and have decided that I need to follow a pre-made one instead of trying to make my own. I will have to adapt it because the ones that I am provided with are designed for 2 hours of literacy instruction each day and I only get one. I am not sure exactly how I will teach them everything. I am going to have to prioritize and be creative. I know I can do this, but I also know that it is URGENT that I get my long term plan in place because right now my instruction has OK but doesn't really have direction. These are all things that I know and have known it is just a matter of finding the time to do it.

In other news, I am losing a roommate. This is rough. She has been having a really hard time and has decided that it is best that she not continue teaching. It is strange to think of Phoenix and this apartment without Julie. She is leaving on a trip on Monday and I'm not sure when she will be back and how the whole moving process will work. Hopefully we'll get to talk about that before she leaves. I still can't believe it.

I continue...I woke up at 7:30 this morning and my alarm was not set til 9:30. Those of you who know me well will understand how strange this is. I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep...so I ate some fruit and got to work. It is time for my break to be over. I need to clean my room, something I haven't done since I started teaching 6 weeks ago. Oops.

A few quotations from my students...

"Can I eat cheetos during healthy snack time?" -Na Quay
"No. You already asked me that question and I said no." -me
"No, before I asked if I could eat spicy cheetos. They are different. Spicy cheetos are spicy. (sticks out tongue and squirms it around to illustrate spicy)" -Na Quay
"No. You cannot eat cheetos of any kind during healthy snack time." -me


"Ms. Burns, is that your husband?" a student, about the picture of me with my dad from graduation.

"Ms. Burns, is that your boyfriend?" a student, about a picture of me and steve from graduation.

"Ms. Burns do I have a beautiful smile (GIANT toothy grin to illustrate)?" Na Quay
"Yes, you have a very nice smile. Now sit down and get to work." me

student raises hand in the middle of my lecture "That's a really pretty shirt"
"Thank you, Na Quay. Let's keep it on topic." me


"Ms. Burns gots skillz!" --several 6th grade boys when I played basketball with them at lunch

we hope

that at some point this year we will feel confident that we are providing the education that our kids deserve. we do this work because we believe that our students deserve an education as good as the kids in scottsdale and paradise valley, but we wonder....how the heck are we supposed to provide that? our jobs are made all the more challenging by the fact that in order to do what we want to, we actually have to be MORE effective than the teachers in those districts, because we have to move our students more than one grade level in one year. oomf. this is big. baby steps. i have to keep my head up. do my homework. etc. etc. etc.

one day.....

3 weeks in...

overwhelmed. overjoyed. pissed off. lost.

OK these are a few of the things that I have been feeling lately. I love my students, they crack me up. I don't really know what I am doing. I know I need to figure out it...quickly. I feel so limited in my abilities. I see good teachers doing things that I am attempting and failing at. I know I will be a good teacher eventually...or at least I usually believe that.

It is crazy to see yourself through the eyes of a 12 year old who is looking to you to be consistent and to teach them what they need to learn.

It is also just funny to hear the things that come out of their mouths sometimes. They look like little kids and often act like them, but they have moments of trying to act like teenagers.

Today was beautiful, around 100 degrees most of the day, so a break from the intense heat. It'll be real hot again later in the week, but I took advantage of the nice weather today and went down to the pool for awhile to soak up some vitamin D.

I really like my roomies and I am adjusting to phoenix pretty well. Julie (one of my roommates) and I went to Pizzeria Bianco on Friday, it is supposed to be one of the best pizza places in the country. It was certainly delicious.

OK I need to grade diagnostics and get my week planned out so Julie and I can go for a night hike tonight. It is the best time to go so it isn't quite so hot.