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. 

New year, New school, New Goals!

I will admit that I started this blog post about a month ago.  Thank goodness that I outlined my goals so when I revisited it, I could just write.   Past me was looking out for future me!  Thanks!

Here are my goals and their current status.   I know that there are currently 7 goals but I am feeling good about this year.

1. Remind - I previously have used Class Dojo to track not academic behaviors, communicate with parents and have students reflect on their behavior.  Since I made the move to high school this year, I didn't know where it was going to fit in but I know I needed something to communicate with parents in addition to phone calls and e-mails.  Remind has rocked my world already.  Once a parent or student signs up for your class (using a code that they text to a 6-digit number) they instantly have access to 'reminds' that you send out.  Also, there is a chat feature.  This all occurs through a text message on their phone!  It is so easy it almost too good to be true.  I want to get ALL students signed up.  This week we have open house and I am going to be hounding my freshman parents like crazy!  Not only do I want ALL to sign up, I want to challenge myself to use Remind on a daily bases. 
2. Visible Learning-  This will be my biggest challenge for the year.  I learned about this during new teacher week and I have a lot more to learn!  Here is the gist of it.  There are different instructional techniques that have an effect size.  The idea is that the larger the effect size, the greater the learning is.  Also with VL, it is about communicating Learning Targets, Success Criteria and Why we learning something to all students.  This is a lot harder than one thinks!  More to come on this topic soon... I hope. 

   

   50 Effect Sizes of Visible Learning

3. Twitter/Google-Coming from a district that was ALL tech to a district that is just starting I find myself wanting to help streamline things!  First, the district has a twister but the high school does not!  I want to tweet at my high school!  I am still getting my feet wet and don't want to disrupt things much right off the bat.  This also goes for google.  Google docs... as much as I hate the phrase, 'create a google doc for that' it is actually pretty functional.  This past Friday, I witnessed the same birthday list be sent out 4 times through email.  That was because on the 1st draft, people were left off.  The 2nd, corrections were made.  The 3rd, mistakes were found and the 4th was the FINAL I guess.   I so wanted to create the google doc and share it but I know that people aren't ready for that yet.  So my goal for Google is to educate my department on how to use google docs to streamline things.  I have started a little bit but once again, don't want to rock the boat as they say.  
   
4. Co-teaching- Work towards sharing the classroom, letting go, letting someone else in, finding a balance, working together.  Lots of work to do but hopefully some district provided PD will help me with this. It's for the better of the students.  
   
5. Workload-  I don't want to be in the 'new teacher' funk again.  This means, I have a life and I need to find a balance between my work and my home life.  I need to set time aside to work and have fun the other times.  I have found myself saying, "I am going to have to do work on that Sunday so I can't _______"   That's not fun.  
   
6. Blogging-  I want to blog at least once a week.  Ideally I want to do it every other day but I know that will never happen so I will write at least once a week.  Once I get in that habit, I will up my goal.  

What are your goals for the year?   Do you have something that you have started and will do whatever it takes to follow through with it?  I would love to hear from you.

Have a great day!

Never Forget

On this day, 14 years ago that I was at home with my Mom.  It was on a Tuesday and for some reason, I was still at home when the 1st plane hit.  I can vividly remember sitting with my mom in the TV room staring at the TV.  I was only 17 at this time but I knew that this was big.  This was bad.  This was a disaster.  I did not know at the time that these buildings were to NY like the Sears Tower or the Hancock Building were to Chicago.

In disbelief of what was happening, I went to school.  I can remember walking down the hallway and thinking to myself, what is happening.  It was sometime later that we got word in the school that a 2nd plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.  All I wanted to do was to get to Ms. Kris' classroom.  She was our aviation teacher, she would know what happened.  By the time I got there 7th period, she was not allowed to talk about it.  Being glued to the news for days, I still did not understand the impact that this act of terrorism had on the US and the people involved.

Over the past few years, I have watched documentaries and movies about 9/11.  I have cried as people involved told stories about their involvement.  I have sobbed at the idea that people woke up that morning and then they were just gone.

Today I watched 'Boatlift' and it is the story of boaters who flocked to NYC to rescue ordinary people from the unknown.

As I am sitting on the back porch watching this, I am crying like a baby.  The thing that got me was that nobody should ever have to go through this, EVER.  This was a horrible event and the good in people came out.  Strangers helped strangers in any and every way they could.  They rose above those awful people and did the right thing.

Another documentary I watched was 'Out of the Clear Blue Sky'.  They lost everything AND everyone.  They lost their friends, their family and themselves.  This is a news story about Cantor Fitzgerald.  This shows that emotions are real, these are real people that have had to overcome the worst.

Sitting in school this morning I was a mixed bags of emotions.  The kids that I am teaching were 4 years old when this happened.  I feel bad that this tragedy follows them and will forever follow them. Then I felt sad because of all the kids 14 years ago that lost their parents while they were sitting in a classroom.  They started their morning saying the pledge and on with their day they went.

Here, 14 years later, during a moment of silence, I wiped tears away.  How could anybody ever recover from this.  Then I think, people are good and good will prevail.

I realize this post is out of my usual but I couldn't not write about it.  I want good people to win.  I want the future(the kids) to learn that although there are nasty people out there, they have the choice to be good and to make this world a different place. What do you want to teach your kids that has nothing to do with your subject?

Never Forget

I'm really doing this huh?

There I am!  Smack dab in the middle of the crew.  I am part of the 'We are BHS' crowd!

Reflections of a REAL high school math teaching coming soon.  I am so much to do and not enough time.

How you do manage your time at the beginning of a new school year?  Any and all help would be appreciated!