I think I’m starting to hit my stride as a teacher, or at least I don’t feel so seat-of-my pants each day. From the time I was hired until Spring Break, I made a (mostly) systematic improvement in each subject starting with English, then Social Studies, Math then Science. Each day we also did some intensive work on comportment. They now behave reasonably well when I’m physically present, but they made a substitute cry and go home (before 10 am!) last week when I was absent for a day. Spring Break arrived just in time- I was becoming aware that though I start each day as a model of civility, I often lose my temper and bark. Since this crowd of kids is completely inured to yelling, it’s not a great strategy. Two indications that I need to have better control over my temper:
1. Reading through one of my kid’s writing journals today, I came across the following entry (paraphrased from Spanish):
“….then we got a new teacher, Ms. C. She is good. She is very strict and yells alot…”
2. In the days leading up to Spring Break, one of my kids had started saying “Count to ten Ms. Checka” every time I started to get That Look on my face.
Today I came in happy and relaxed, and my kids seemed equally rested after their week off. They behaved so well this morning that another teacher complimented us! Not coincidentally, we got an unusually high amount of work accomplished.
Here’s a breakdown of how it’s going, and what I hope to accomplish by the end of the school year:
English- I’ve been devoting an unofficial hour of the day to straight up English language instruction, like a mini Rassias class (complete with a few minutes of daily drill). Even my newest newcomers now have enough “emergency English” to be able to string together painstaking sentences and ask simple questions, and my more advanced English learners are moving ahead at a fast clip. Despite my initial prejudice against worksheets and packets as “busy work”, I am now a true believer in them. They allow the kids to practice, practice, practice the parts of speech I’ve painstakingly taught so far (nouns, verbs, adjectives) and learn vocabulary much faster. Ironically, now my bilingual ed group knows more English grammar than the rest of the class.
2. Social Studies- the textbook was boring me (and the kids) to tears. It’s heavy on facts and has almost no history. After slogging through an entire section on corporate farms in the Midwest, I ditched the status quo altogether. Now we start each class by either writing postcards to people who have written us, or reading newly arrived postcards. It’s great fun to pull down the map and find the city or country. I also let them vote on which continent we would study next in the book. They chose Asia, so we spent a full class just passing around and talking about the objects Lucy sent us from India to get us in the right frame of mind. Our classroom is currently Asia-themed everything, and even though the textbook is still slow-going, it doesn’t feel tedious.
3. Science just needed more preparation, which I’m better able to do now. After the mixed (but mostly positive) results from our first lab (diffusion), the kids are paying better attention and looking forward to the next lab. Comprehension is still not where’d I’d like it to be. I may let them pick the next topic the way we did in Social Studies, since that seemed to work. Another idea that I tossed out that they are really excited about is the prospect of Emailing Real Live Actual Scientists with some of the excellent questions they pepper me with.
4. Math! Math keeps me awake at night. It’s their favorite subject, and I should capitalize on that more. For a while now we’ve been doing almost nothing but fundamentals, since I realized they didn’t know how to handle fractions (or decimals, or find common factors, or reduce fractions). Each time I came across a knowledge gap, I stepped backwards until finally we just started drilling multiplication tables. Since they don’t seem to much of a problem conceptually, I suspect that now we’ve closed some knowledge gaps we’ll be able to move ahead at a pretty fast clip.
A short note on standardized testing:
Tomorrow is the first test that I feel genuine annoyance at. I’m supposed to test just my bilingual kids for two days on a test that will yield no results - it’s just a field test for new questions. Two days of instruction! We don’t have that kind of time to be messing around.
Also: I’m waiting on tenterhooks for the result of the last standardized test benchmark they took (right before spring break). I found the results of the one they took before I started there eminently helpful in identifying problem areas (that’s how I first realized they didn’t get fractions).
Most excellent. You rock, and they are lucky to have you… Did I ever tell you about the time I got so angry with my class that I hit my desk with a rule with enough force to broke the (thick plastic) ruler? Good times. Shortly after that I went off some medication I was on…. I don’t know if it helped, but it made me FEEL better.
I’d love to get questions on astronomy, stars, planets, space exploration, international space station. And I think I’m both real and live. Sorta. We’ll be traveling for the next 5 weeks (Leominster, Scotland, Paris) but I’ll look at email every couple of days. Maybe L can give me your postcard address….
And I’m still in training, obvs, but I’d be happy to either (a) answer questions, or (b) pass them along to real scientists who could answer them.
Have you gotten our postcard yet?
Also, tattoolady wanted me to tell you, in response to this post, that she once flipped her wig while teaching and threw a book at a student’s head. The force of impact shocked him dumb. There were no repercussions because she was teaching at a military school.
Of course, she did things like this to her children too. The repercussions are that we all tell stories about her to everyone we know. No child-rearing foible goes unremarked.
I’m delighted horbrastar, sun2, and son1 are willing to take questions. I’ll be contacting you soon with our first round.
Emily and Tattoolady- I’m strangely relieved to hear that someone else has had trouble keeping their temper reigned in. I’m happy to report that I only raised my voice once all day, it was a tiny miracle.