Adventures of a Teacher in Transition

I’m not even done with it and it’s already 50 slides long. 

Granted, there isn’t a TON of information on each slide and a lot of slides are examples dissected step by step. But still. This is intense.

But I’m enjoying it so far and I’m super proud of it already.

PLUS THERE’S AWESOME HUNGER GAMES PICTURES AND EXAMPLES!!!!

Also, why did no one think to tell me that I can download free PowerPoint templates online? Seriously, ridiculous.

world-shaker:

watchallisonteach:

Sometimes I really love being an English teacher.

You should share with the class :o)

I am more than happy to share it with the rest of the #education community once I finish it. It’s still got some work to go. Plus, it would be great if the lovely teachers here caught any mistakes I might make, rather than me teaching my students the wrong information. :)

Sometimes I really love being an English teacher.

Student teaching fail or win?

I’ve been looking forward to this week for the last month. I said that if I could make it to spring break, then I could definitely get through the last four weeks of student teaching.

I can do this. I still don’t feel 110% on teaching, but I think that’s normal when you’re struggling to get used to something. Now I’m much more in the grooves of things. This past week was awesome. I saw some amazing speeches that I could tell my students worked their butt off on and I’m so proud of them for it. I also noticed what was lacking in a lot of speeches, which reflects on what I need to improve on when I teach speeches again. 

But it’s kind of amazing sitting in the back of a classroom, watching kids give their speeches and know that you had a hand in their success. Absolutely amazing.

He started the speech by knocking over the podium, which is big and metal. I was still finishing writing a few comments on the rubric from the last speaker and I swear I nearly had a heart attack. He used the bang from pushing it over as his “attention getter” and then proceeded to pull up a classmate for a question and answer session that I still can’t figure out the connection between it and his speech.

He rambled on for a while with this person (who, when asked how he was feeling at that moment, replied “Pissed because Ms. H gave me a D- on my speech” which caused the rest of the class to do the “ooooooooooh” that they all do. [aside: he deserved the D-]). Then he talked about Freud, the Id, Superego, and sexual objects. Somewhere in there was something about unconscious reasoning for doing things. He was walking around the classroom during his speech and using strange arm gestures. He also kept making random comments in the middle of his speech to random class members asking things like “how are you” in the middle of descriptive sentences. 

He argued briefly with the girl keeping the time when she showed him the 6 minute card (speeches are supposed to be 4-6 minutes) and said he wasn’t going to stop. 

I still don’t know what this speech was about. The speeches are supposed to be persuasive and I never even heard a problem. It was literally the strangest and most awkward thing I’ve sat through as a teacher or a student. Scott and I kept looking at each other with an “I have no idea what’s going on” expression on our faces. It was so strange.

And it’s amazing how much more work I can get done. I can actually enter grades in AT SCHOOL and don’t have to lug home a huge stack of papers to enter.

This whole not having internet on my laptop while at school thing is super annoying. But hooray for super amazing awesome English teachers who let me use their laptops. My CT said I can probably use this for the rest of student teaching, so long as the teacher doesn’t need it.

Only downside was that I couldn’t figure out how to connect it to the projector and so the visual aids during speeches weren’t as good as they could have been, but it wasn’t the students’ faults.

1. About 15 people asked me if I had cut my hair. I didn’t - I just straightened it. My bangs cooperated so I didn’t pin them back, so apparently that makes a big difference. So my day started off amazing.

2. I was super wide awake this morning, so I was probably way too bouncy for my sophomores - especially considering they were freaking out about giving their speeches - but a little extra energy was probably definitely needed today.

3. After a few speeches, I got in the hang of grading on the fly. WOOO.

4. I helped two kids with their outlines today and seemed like I made a difference!

5.  The weather is gorgeous!!!

6. 4 DAYS UNTIL SPRING BREAK AND THE HUNGER GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was trying to figure out what to do when there is time left over from their speeches (I’m thinking most will be under the required time, not over) and I didn’t want them to just have “free time” so let’s do something fun and possibly educational.

Plus, I adore trivia, so let’s hope they will too.

Maybe if LiveText would underline the words I spell wrong like every other internet program, it wouldn’t be so annoying.

Of course, LiveText doesn’t know how to not be annoying.

I can do this.

This is an easy week.

In 2 of my three preps, my students are giving their persuasive speeches. So really, all I have to actually “teach” is Romeo and Juliet for my freshmen. So it’ll be nice.

I’m nervous about grading the speeches, but I’ll survive; I know I will. :)

Order your cap and gown for graduation!!

Something my CTs said to me today when we were conferencing about my midterm evaluation.

But it’s gotten me thinking that I’m not sure how much I do enjoy it. I know I like the content. And I like the actual teaching portion. But I don’t know if it’s just everything related to student teaching that’s getting me down or what.

*sigh* I don’t know. Maybe I’ll feel more into it after spring break. Because right now I’m just surviving day to day and trying to get to spring break.

There were some great comments, and also some not surprising critiques. But still, it’s super hard for me to hear critiques, even though I know that I need to hear things that I have to improve upon. Most awkward conversation evah. And I was so nervous all day that I could barely eat my lunch. As soon as I left school, I was STARVING. It was awful.

Non-Midterm Eval:

• I think I felt worse than my students did when I had to talk to them about plagiarizing. I’m calling their parents tomorrow and I’m TERRIFIED. No joke. Terrified.
• I gave my first detentions today. They were for tardies, but still. I wrote them and handed them out and dealt with the complaints about it. I even did it in front of my supervisor because they were in the class he observed and he said that I did a good job of dealing with the complaints. The kids were trying to get me to back down and take away the detentions and I was having none of that.

Just went through two poetry anthologies I had put off to the side to be checked for plagiarism. And every single poem in their anthologies were plagiarized.

Every. Single. Poem.

I wish I were joking. 

This isn’t just some little assignment - this is 150 points, the culminating assignment for the poetry unit. This is huge. I’m imagining there will need to be some disciplinary action - detentions at the very least. I’ll be talking to Scott tomorrow about what he would do when someone plagiarizes their entire assignment for something this large. 

Also, I feel like I’m making a difference with these two girls who came into get help about their speeches. What we talked about seemed to sink in and little baby light bulbs came on in their eyes.

:)

I’m choosing to ignore the bad that happened today, especially since there’s nothing I can do about it. Let’s focus on the good!

I’ve never seen it until now.

I opened a word document so I could take notes… and I’ve been too enthralled watching the movie to take any notes. 

I’m actually quite excited to see the same movie twice in a row all week. This is fabulous.

Monday is a new day. That’s how I’m looking at it.

At least one thing went right this week.

I just feel like nothing I do is ever right. I’m constantly told how I can do things better. I just feel so dumb, all the time.

Related: I was talking to my CT yesterday and I mentioned how I’m worried about if my students trust me and feel like they trust that I know what I’m talking about and he just simply told me “Allison, you’re not dumb. You’re not. Stop it.” and I swear to god, I almost started bawling right there. 

I’m just such a wreck right now. 

And I feel like I’m the only student teacher feeling this way because everyone else is posting about how much they love their placements and how their supervisors say they have the best lessons they’ve ever seen and how everything is amazing.

And I feel like I’m drowning.

I’m also sick of coughing myself awake at night. I can’t even tell you how many times I did that last night. Which led to me not sleeping well. Which led to me being super tired today.

Which led to me being kind of a bitch today, so much that I pretty much snapped at my fourth hour class.

We were going through I.i of Romeo and Juliet and they were confused so I was trying to clarify and students kept interrupting and making stupid comments and just overall being obnoxious so I basically told them that I don’t want to hear their voices for the rest of the period unless their hands were raised and it was a legitimate question or comment. Which worked for about 5 minutes while all the kids mouthed “oh shit” about me getting angry.

I’m just so sick of not being respected in there. Because they’re decent when my CT or supervisor is there; not perfect, but there were issues when my CT was in charge. No matter where I move these few kids, they just have to be annoying. I want an environment where we can have discussions and we can have some fun. I don’t mind a little joking around, but I can’t get stuff accomplished if I’m stopping every twenty seconds to reprimand. 

5th hour, in contrast, had 10 minutes left at the end of the period to work on their study guides. In 4th hour, I finished about 5 seconds before the bell rang. I feel like I should sit down with fourth hour and ask WHY they’re behaving the way they are. And it’s not the whole class - just certain students. So I don’t want to put the students on the spot. But I need to figure out a way to have a positive learning environment AND be able to control the stupid shit that the kids do on a daily basis  because they’re getting worse instead of better.

Today I found out two pieces of information about my fourth hour class.

1. A kid’s mom was apparently in the guidance office recently complaining loudly about how much work I apparently give her child. Her reasoning was that two weekends ago, her son was apparently working day and night Saturday and Sunday trying to get the poetry anthology done.  What her son apparently neglected to mention was that: 1) I assigned it two weeks prior to the day it was due; 2) about half of it should have already been done if students were keeping up with daily work and; 3) I gave them ample class time to work. 

Luckily, my CT stood up for me and backed me up on this because I had even gone over the rubric and the assignment with him before I had even assigned it. So nothing is going to happen. I just think it’s kind of ridiculous.

2. Today, I apparently sent a girl to the social worker in tears because of an article I had the class reading. We’re starting up Romeo and Juliet and I had the students reading a news article about a couple of teenagers who committed suicide because their parents didn’t approve a la R&J. Now I already had one student come up to me when I handed out the article telling me he wasn’t going to read it because his brother had just attempted suicide. I understood, and the next day had a different article to read.

This girl didn’t talk to me at all and since I know her a bit (she’s very quiet, shy, withdrawn, etc) I don’t really expect her to share super personal details. According to my CT who talked to the social worker, reading this article not only brought some dark thoughts to the forefront of her mind, but made the thoughts and feelings even worse.

So basically, since suicide is a huge issue in Romeo and Juliet, I might have to come up with a brand new novel unit for her (and possibly the other boy). I just feel awful that this happened. I had no idea that she was dealing with any of these issues — not that I should have, I suppose.

And luckily, my CT completely backed me up and supported me on this with the social worker and he’s going to help me out a lot if I end up making a different novel unit for her. Oh man. Differentiating instruction at it’s finest.

On the plus side… My kids really seemed to enjoy my puns activity using Laffy Taffy.

I didn’t lose my voice.

I’ve been battling a horrendous cold all weekend - it popped up literally as soon as my supervisor left on Friday and has only gotten worse over the weekend. I’m hacking up a lung over here and can’t really raise my voice right now, which is annoying because I have to raise my voice during most of fourth hour to get any sort of instructions out (although my supervisor did praise me on my strong “teacher” voice)

Fourth hour was a little better today because since I physically couldn’t raise my voice, they actually had to listen to be heard. Plus, a good bunch of the kids are getting sick and tired of having to deal with all the other chatter, so they’re doing a good job of shutting all the other talkers up. Which is super awesome.

I feel awful though because I wanted to get a lot more grading done over the weekend, but barely got any of my huge stack accomplished. How do teachers do all this, all the time, and deal with all these germs? 

Making NyQuil my friend tonight and hoping I don’t cough myself awake at 2 in the morning again.

Would anyone like to grade for me?

I can’t think of a time I have been more proud. Honestly.

They were incredible.

Tonight is closing night of The Drowsy Chaperone. Quite a few of my students have big roles (which is huge since I teach freshmen and sophomores).

Plus, my CT is the director.

Lots of support!

The first thing he said to me after I had taught both class periods was “you certainly seem to enjoy what you’re doing; that’s obvious and the kids can tell.”

Let me say that I enjoy the actual teaching portion of being a teacher. It’s all this other stuff I’m not a huge fan of.

I did my best to pretend that my supervisor wasn’t there, which once I started actually teaching the lesson and was focusing on what my kids were saying, was much easier than I thought it would be. There were a few times I actually forgot he was in the room, but then one of my kids would say “crap” and I would freak out a bit because I still don’t know what “swears” I should reprimand them for. But anyway.

I think it’s interesting that the fact that I seem to enjoy what I’m doing was the first thing my US said to me. I just had this conversation with my friend while I was at the job fair that I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to be a teacher forever.

Actually, I know I don’t want to teach high school forever. I actually want to end up teaching college and be a professor one day. But I feel like I should be enjoying myself more than I actually am right now. Maybe it’s all the stress and the constant worrying that I’m screwing up constantly. People keep telling me I’ll enjoy it more when I have my own classroom, which I’m sure is true.  But I feel like I should be enjoying myself more or know absolutely that this is what I was meant to do. But I don’t…