Current Struggles

There are a few things that I am struggling with this new school year and I am hoping someone, anyone can help!

• Freshman attitudes
• After dealing with middle school students, I thought that high school attitudes would be nothing.  Well, the mix of high schoolers I have seem to all play off the worst of each other.  In one of my classes, I have the following
• highly distracted x2
• clueless x 2
• joksters x 3
• the 'all I want is teacher attention' x 1
• middle of the ground but not a leader x6
• too cool for school x 2
• and of course the blenders (the rest)
• So what do I do? This is their current seating arrangement: 
• They are in pods of 3
• Each pod has a leader, a student who has strong math skills
• Each pod has an outgoing student who isn't afraid to ask questions
• There is mixed ability at each pod
• The distractors are all seated so they are facing 'out' and not towards the general group.
• I have incorporated movement, humor, engaging problems but they seem to still be pushing back. 
• I hold high expectations and I am not about to give in on things this early.  I have a group of girls that continue to fight on 'rules' such as being in your seat when the bell rings, being ready for class when the bell rings.  Out of the 28 students in the class, it is these 3 that just ruin it!  What can I do? They ruin my day. 
• Working checkpoints into a demanding curriculum/pacing guide
• We have a pacing guide that is pretty set in stone.  We have a curriculum map that should be followed.  I want to work in check points but I feel there is NO time!  I was thinking about using exit slips and entrance slips.  I want to but the hesitation I have is the time.  Since there is such a wide array in the classroom, what take one student 10 minutes may only take another 1 minute.  How I do balance this?  How do I work around this?  I have done it in the past but for some reason, I am running on empty and have nothing. 
• Co-teaching
• This has been a frequent topic of my blog lately.  Things just aren't working.  
• From my end, I feel my co-teacher wants to be involved but doesn't give the effort, dedicate the time and knows that I will take care of it.  
• I am struggling being a good teacher in these classes because I am not comfortable

So I have just aired my flaws and problems.  Please help!!!!!

Do you have suggestions for classroom management techniques that work amazingly? 

What about managing the demands of a pacing guide and the need for ongoing assessment? 

Co-teaching relationship building?

I feel that I am a 1st year teacher out of college again that has absolutely NO tricks up their sleeve anymore.  I am deflated and need some inspiration. 

Moving Day into My New Classroom!

So it finally had to happen.  I had to take ALL of my things from FMS and move them to my new classroom.  I have been dreading this day since, well forever.

Caitlyn (my former neighbor at school) always said that whenever she needed anything, she would come to me because I had EVERYTHING!  I like to be prepared, what can I say. The packing process was miserable.  I did it over 3 days.

Day 1
It was more of a 'search and rescue.'  I went to school to survey what I needed.  I had some boxes and I found out the cold heart truth was that those boxes just weren't enough.  In addition, I ran out of packing tape.  So I packed what I could and walked away.

Day 2
This was a serious packing day.  I needed to get my butt in gear and make some progress.  The hurdle I found on this day was that I wanted to keep everything.  It was so hard to let go of things.  For example, I had 4 brand new fly swatters in my cabinet.  I should really get rid of them, I haven't used them so naturally, they should go.  But, what if I create a great SMARTboard game and I NEED them?  In the box they go!  After my internal fights subsided, I did pretty good.  I was able to give things away to co-workers, separate the things that I was going to leave for the new teacher that would be in my room and pack the things I was taking.  At the end of the day, I had 2 table tops loosely filled with 'stuff'' i didn't know what i was going to do with.  In my book, it was a success!

Day 3
This was the day I was going to move out.  I was on a mission and I had to finish it that day.  It was not so bad.  I worked on tying up to loose ends.  I gave away MORE things to another math teacher.  This lightened up my load by a bit (and filled up her stroller!)  I had everything packed and started to bring things down to the truck.  On the second trip down, I realized that I had not packed the truck properly and needed to re-organize.  It was hot, the boxes were heavy and I was quickly becoming crabby!  In the end, I called the hubs and asked him to come by with my car for the last load.  I took the easy way out.  When everything was packed and loaded, I bid farewell to my home for the past 3 years :(

I may have added this picture before BUT it is still sad....

So now what?  I had boxes in my car and in my hubs truck.  Should I just let them sit there till I can't handle it anymore?  I was fully planning on it but I also was feeling a bit like a hoarder still.  So the next night, we pulled the cars to the alley and it was my time to go through and purge some more.

Yesterday, it was time to bring my boxes to my new HIGH SCHOOL room!  Here are some pics of my room after 1.5 hours of unpacking.  Nothing on the walls yet but soon!

Looking in from my door.  I have a classroom that is attached to another room through a wall.  I have only ever seen these walls with cork board but as you can see, I have a WHOLE wall of dry erase board!!!!!!!  Also, it is magnetized as well, SCORE!

 This is a view looking in from the door.  A mess, I know but totally workable.  You can barely see them but on the window sill, I have unpacked my gnome collection.  It is official, I work here now!

Last picture that has the most work to be done.  On the far side of the classroom, there is 1 tall cabinet, 1 short cabinet (under the counter), a very long counter and an equally as long shelf.  Above is a giant brown bulletin board.  It is 30" x 20'.  That's a lot of dip!  This is my biggest challenge and something that I may be most proud of when finished!

So I am very excited to move on to this new adventure.  I can't wait to share pictures when I am 'finished' with my classroom.  Reflecting on this process, I think every teacher should 'move' every 3 years to reduce the amount of clutter.  What do you think? 

Thanks for reading!

Day 1: When Things Start to Change

It is the first student attendance day after winter break and I am tired!  Yesterday we had institute day which was nice but I still went to bed at 8pm!  HOLY COW!

As I start to reflect the first 4 months of school and look to the next 4 months there are somethings that I am going to do differently.

1. Incorporate more MARS tasks into the routine.  If you are not familiar with MARS tasks, they are wonderful activities that access student's thinking and push them to the next step.  A lot like what PARCC is about to do to all these kids.
2. Go back to backwards design.  My school adopted CMP3 this year and it has been a rough transition for others and myself. I need to take back the feeling that I am accomplishing things in the classroom and really push these kids to be their best.
3.  Start taking advantage of the information that entrance and exit slips give.  My curriculum partner and I were talking at institute yesterday and decided to cut the number of problems on the weekly quiz and gain this information other ways.

Do you have anything that you decided needed to change when you stepped away for 2 weeks?  I would love to hear about it.

Color Cycle Year TWO!

So it finally happened today, Color Cycle is back!  Once again, Color Cycle is a volunteer organization for students.  I don't get paid to do it,  I do it because I believe in it!  If you remember, last year we collected 44 pounds of markers that we sent off to Crayola to be recycled.  That doesn't seem like a lot but it is 44 pounds that didn't end up in a landfill.

Today after school, 7 dedicated students (6 really and the other had to be there) helped out.  I had some students walking around the school recording room numbers/teachers names where bins would go, the boys chose to clean the bins and the rest were assembling the signs that go on the bin.  After the bins were clean and their signs was affixed, we went off and put bins in 20 classrooms with 6 more that still need them.

I am excited to get this off the ground and start doing a small part to help the environment.  My goal this year is to incorporate some of the SBL into math/homeroom classroom and expand the program!

Sharing the Love, My Newest Goal!

So as I am still awake (way past my bedtime) I decided that I need to put more of the things I create out there for others.  Here are a few reasons why:

• I know that it will make someones day a whole lot easier
• I spend a lot of time on things and it should be shared, not hidden
• I think it would be really cool to have my things in other peoples classrooms
• How cool would it be to be TpT famous? 
• What teacher can't use the extra money...

With that being said, visit my store!  I will be posting more (I have SO many things I have created the past two years)

Here is a preview of the activity I made tonight...for tomorrow!  It is a constructing triangle stations set that has students draw conclusion and write about what they see.  

As you can see at the very bottom of the preview, I am still working on those mathematical practices.  It was one of my goals and truthfully, it really isn't that hard!

Hope to see you at my store soon!  If you have any requests for anything related to 7th or 8th grade math, feel free to post a comment here, I am CONFIDENT I have made it!

Is this the End or just the Beginning?

 My 8th graders graduated on Tuesday night and I miss them greatly already.  I have spent the past 2 days scheduling the current 6th graders and can't help but think ahead to next year.  I have found my mind wandering, focused on how can I make my lessons better!

I have to remind myself that it is still 3 months away and that I need to take time some for myself but then I think, HOLY COW 3 months to prepare!  Never the less, to settle my battle, I have started to come up with goals.

Goal 1:  Incorporate STEM.  I know it seems like a buzzy term right now but what I want to incorporate are the ideas and the exposure to my students.  The idea that math is related to other subjects often times stumps my students.  How could it be?  Well dudes and dudettes, it is related to other things!  The other part of STEM that I like is that my students would be exposed to math in real life.  I know that math is everywhere and slowly everyday I have attempted to share this with kids but if I can make the solid connections with engaging and high interest activities that focus on the process standards for science, align with the CCSS for math and the SAMR model, it's a win win for all!

Goal 2:  Tweak my SBG practices.   As this was the first year I followed the SBG model changes need to be made.  There are some things that I really liked such as students could show progression and I knew exactly where every student's strengthens and weaknesses were at a glance but there were things I didn't like either.  I need to figure out a better way to show that I care about homework but to emphasis that it is practice and get the kids to be intrinsically motivated to do it as opposed to extrinsically motivated by rewards.  This is a big one!

Goal 3: Let students help in the classroom.   I can admit that I have a hard time letting kids to things in the classroom because I may be slightly a perfectionist.  Slowly over the past two years, I had a group of students that knew this about me that helped me out and did a fantastic job.  Now that those beloved 8th graders will be replaced by unsuspecting 7th graders, this makes me panic! So, I promise to myself to create 'Classroom Jobs' so that students can take ownership of the classroom.  I also promise to not redo a job at the end of the day because students won't benefit from that!

Goal 4: Learn to really do the Rubik's cube.  I can do it about halfway but I would really like to dazzle the new kids by completing it without aides.  In addition to the 'cool' factor associated with this(yep, kids still think it's cool!), it sparks interest in transformations which relates back to incorporating real like mathematics into the classroom!  Double Bonus.

I will update my goals as I continue on into the summer.  Do you have any goals for next year?  I would love to hear about them.  Thanks for reading!