IT'S A THREE DAY WEEKEND! From getting used to my new students and adjusting to this whole "7th-hour plan" schedule, I am exhausted! So exhausted that I have abandoned my blog for these two weeks. I needed that time with my students and starting the year strong! Unfortunately, starting the year off that strong made me so very tired. All my energy I put into my classroom and creating an environment where we write, share, and just have some fun! I will have more updates on my 6th-grade students in another post, but I mostly wanted to brag, celebrate, and share some exciting news! But before I do. . . I need to give y'all some context. If there is one thing I have learned from teaching and being a student myself, I LOVE context. I want to know the entire situation and circumstance before moving forward. So c'mon. Join me in my contextual rant. It'll be fun, I promise! Barry School is an awesome place to work. It's a pleasure and a blessing to have been hired here for my first job. When I visit other schools or talk to other teachers, I realize how blessed I truly am. Barry allows teachers to have the freedom and control over our classroom. Yes, we have a curriculum (even that is fairly new!) but we still have freedom over how and when we cover standards for our grade level. We have our hiccups, don't get me wrong, but this school allows teachers to voice their opinion to solve problems. In this specific case, they gave teachers complete control to solve it. It is called Flex. It's hard to define. Why? It has no definition. Last year, it didn't even have a clear purpose other than it gave students who had no elective to be placed in an ELA or Math classroom to receive help . . . or have extra practice. I still have a hard time explaining it. Again, I was hired mid-year and a lot of stuff was confusing and Flex was one of them. I had two classes of Flex, and it was the poorly planned class that I had no idea how/what to do in those 43 minutes. It wasn't just me though struggling with this concept. Other ELA and Math teachers in the building were frustrated. We all spent valuable time planning for these classes that didn't even have a grade. It wasn't even Pass/Fail. Why were we planning and working so hard for a class that students nor we truly knew what to do with? Us, teachers, we rioted. Not in the literal sense, but we were fed up. Over the summer, the 8th grade ELA and Math teachers redefined it. They are amazing and, again, I'm so blessed these are my co-workers! Holy Moly! They inspire me so much! Every ELA and Math teacher will create an elective that they are passionate about centered around their subject. With one core teacher being the lab person. In the end, us Flex teachers came up with these Flexible Personalized Classrooms:
I was shocked at my result. A total of 35 kids wanted to join my Barry Newspaper! THIRTY-FIVE! THIRTY-FIVE! I met some of them yesterday, but next week will be the first whole week of this new pilot program. Since it will be a student newspaper, I am handing over the responsibilities and design to the students. They will be taking the photos, writing the articles, interviewing people, creating/designing the website, advertising and marketing our website, etc. I will be sure to share that website with you all, but oh my goodness! Have I mentioned how blessed I am?
Also, does anyone have any ideas on how to start up a student newspaper? Just. . . asking for a friend.
0 Comments
So begins the first week in August. For teachers, this is quite an emotional time full of excitement, anxiety, nervousness, and just plain stubbornness. I had a mental tantrum just thinking of going back, but at the same time I was eager to get back. Yes. It all makes perfect sense. We want a fresh start but we don't want to start. It is a tug and pull kind of situation. . . at least for me. I am sitting in my newly decorated classroom feeling completely put together yet frazzled. My lesson plans aren't even plans. They are rough sketches of many possibilities; some are outlines and others are documents piled on top of copies. I know my units AND the order in which I am going to teach them. . . but it's the details that I'm missing: all of the details. However, my classroom looks exactly how I want it! It is the complete definition of an Instagram post: perfected and filtered just enough to hide the chaos of reality. You may be thinking, "But you had plans! You had BIG GOALS!" Yes, I did. . . I DO! Except I never planned out my goals. When I did my Inquiry Project for PLWP, it was all hypothetical. Now, it's real. Creating a Community of Writers is quite intimidating. However, I know what I want to do the first day! However, it's the rest of the days I am having trouble with. Having this community takes a lot of upkeep and I'm worried that I'm not planning or tweaking out the details enough to keep the momentum I want going throughout the whole year. Will everything fit into place? Will I have time to complete everything I want to do? Better yet, will students enjoy or gain anything? I want them to enjoy my class so much that I'm afraid they will hate it. On top of preparing for Writer's Workshop, I have the nitty gritty stuff to prepare. Not only do students hate sitting through a lecture on expectations and the syllabus, but I hate doing it AND making them. I have spent so much time making the document fun and it was still a bore. There were things I had to think about that I just wasn't ready for: what are the consequences for not having materials, being tardy, being disrespectful. . . good question TpT syllabus template. I have no idea. This is the first time I have been given the time to think about these things. When I hired in January, those consequences were fairly already in place. There was already a rhythm and even though I came swinging in off-beat, the classroom was a song being played for quite a long time. Now, I'm expected to compose the song. Ha. Add this to the questions to ask myself at midnight laying in bed contemplating various scenarios. I'm sure one of my scenarios will give me the answer. I hope. I still have 10 days. As I send you all off probably worrying for me and my last 10 days (I do have A LOT to do in a short amount of time), I will be manically planning, attending New Teacher Orientation, attending back-to-school meetings, doing Active Shooter Training, and just really trying to keep hold of the little summer I have left.
This isn't my first time blogging. I might be a rookie teacher, but I'm not rookie blogger. I was assigned to create many blogs in my high school career. I know! I'm a pro! However, I eventually deleted them on the last day of class. Blogging, to me, had always been temporary: something I had to do to get a good grade. It never had a greater purpose for me. Now that I'm on the other side of education, I now want my students to blog or at least get their writing out there somewhere. Whoa. . . whoa. . . whoa. Hold up. You just said, you as a student didn't see the purpose of it. Yes. Yes I did. Not because there WASN'T a purpose in it, but because it was never given to me. I had great teachers, but blogging was new territory 10 years ago. Teachers knew it was going to be something big, they just didn't necessarily have the tools to teach it just yet. I respect their boldness. I will be different. This is different. This is to set the groundwork for my classroom for this upcoming school year. I'm a new teacher, and I have many ambitions. I am bold. Well, a bold planner at least. I like to be prepared. If I want my students to share their work with people all over the great, wide web, then I should be doing it too. This is the trial. The guinea pig stage. The first pancake. Thankfully, this summer I participated in the Prairie Lands Writing Project (PLWP). Through this structured writing institute of teachers, I had the time to write, prepare, plan, and research ways to handle the issues I experienced before. I settled on one many goal. I focused my whole project on it. Curious? Download the link below to see my plan for next year.
My mission is to create a community of writers in the classroom. Bold, right? For the half-year I was teaching, I found myself and the students not writing enough. It was English class and we weren't writing. They didn't know the process, and I was running out of time to teach it. I have lots of regrets about that half-year. I know I learned a lot from that experience, but I have regret. I'm not sure that any of those students gained anything from my brief time with them. Now that I am starting fresh rather than being plopped in a classroom in January, I get to set those routines, expectations, and rules with my kiddos. I am so excited. It is technically going to be my first day of school as a teacher. I have a plan of attack on how to establish and build this community of writers. I know what things I want to do for the first 10 days. I know how I want to continue that mindset of being a "writer" throughout the whole year with writing assignments that match our curriculum. I have it all mapped out. I'm ready! Except, I'm missing one component. Publishing. How are students going to see the value in their writing if no one is going to read it? This question has been nagging at me since I started this project over the summer. My students have the means to create their own blogs. We are a 1-1 school with Chromebooks. Students like playing with technology. Why not just have them blog? You do remember my experience, right? How can I teach something that I haven't gotten the chance to enjoy? So I'm experimenting. I am doing this with a purpose. I am going to enjoy this. . . hopefully. I'm going to build my community of writers. Nothing is going to stop me. I'm determinedly excited. However, the niche of publishing is now solved through this website and blog. I am going to try out blogging for this school year. A whole year of dedication. Taking you through my struggles building this community and the benefits. When the times are really good, you'll have the chance to read my student's work. I will publish them MYSELF. I hope to gain the confidence with blogging so that for the NEXT year, I'll be ready to implement a blogging classroom. Again, I'm bold. Just boldly nervous. I have to know what it's all about. So. . . Welcome! This will be a treat to witness, I'm sure.
I'm skeptical. I'm a Non-Blogger just hoping to create a meaningful blog. For myself, for my students, and hopefully for my readers (if there is any). |
Erica CookRookie, Newbie, New Teacher. Archives
September 2018
Categories |