A Little Bit of My Life as a Teacher

Since a major portion of my life revolves around school, I decided to stop only focusing on Sawyer and our adventures, but to also include posts about school. After two years in a facebook-themed classroom, I decided to overhaul my classroom. You can only spend so much time in the same room, and since facebook changes monthly daily, I couldn't keep up. This year, my room is a mix of bright colors and pinterest ideas. Here's what it looks like: 

This is right next to the door- the squares on the yellow poster are the perfect size for sticky-notes, and the blank space is so that I can ask exit questions, and they can respond on sticky-notes as they leave the room.

Bathroom passes for my less-than-hygienic students

I get tired of students interrupting class to ask to leave. They're old enough to know when they need to leave, and responsible enough to leave and come back without my holding their hand. They can sign in and out of my classroom by writing their names on the board and erasing it as they return. Obviously only one can leave at a time. :)

Comments and suggestions? Leave them in the comment box!

Spare pens/pencils

My kids struggle with intelligently discussing their thoughts and opinions. These are some sentence-starters to help them get their words out.

These are remnants of our float-building (TWO winning years in a row!) and pictures of my family- this is the BEST spot in the room :)

Copies of Nineteen Minutes and Romeo and Juliet. <3 literature!

This has a literary timeline as well as a modern school-year timeline. :)

View of the curtains/ceiling

Their thoughts+my thoughts

Absent assignment calendar + assignment bins + Sir Gawain

Pictures of all my classes, dances, and clubs so far :)

Since high schoolers watch the clock the ENTIRE class period, just a friendly little reminder...

 So what do I do all day? My classes are as follows: 1st: Senior Literature (elective- 14 students), 2nd: English 9 (15 students), 3rd: English 10 (12 students), 4th: Prep Period, 5th: English 9 (26 students), Lunch, 6th: English 9 (11 students), 7th: English 10 (25 students), Homeroom, and Study Hall. That's 103 students a day, plus my study hall, which is another 10ish students. And they are AWESOME! 

My first week of school was pretty good. My English 9 curriculum centers around types of literature and types of writing. I started with non-fiction, because that is my least favorite to teach reading, and my most-favorite to teach writing. The best assignment we did was to create these: 

 I actually fingerprinted students, then I used the copier to blow up their fingerprints, and they created an auto-biography written on the lines and swirls of their fingerprints. It was a fun way to get to know them better! 

My English 10 curriculum focuses first on an intense study of grammar. And when I say intense, I mean intense. I actually use notes and exercises from my Advanced Grammar class in college. In one semester, we examine *almost* every bit of the English language. I expect a lot of them. Because I've had them for two years now (I have all 9th and 10th graders), I know them pretty well. That helps in my endeavors, because I know a lot of what they're capable of, and how to make it relate to them as best I can. I did give them 2 days of "fun" activities the first week of school before we started hard-core. My favorite was this: 

Excuse the nasty picture- This was after 6 hours of a 95 degree classroom :)

 Because they've all been together since kindergarten, and I've known them for two years, we all took turns taking "Positive Identity" pictures. Each person got up in front of the whiteboard, and the others wrote positive things about them. It was a fun activity. You could tell some of the less popular kids were hesitant to go up there, and scared of that awkward silence they thought was coming when no one could think of anything, but I am really proud of how the classes handled it. Everyone was quick to compliment all of the students, and I think it provided a good starting atmosphere for our year. 

Grammar is one of my FAVORITE things to teach; perhaps the most favorite! We start from scratch, learning the parts of speech. A lot is expected of them: daily homework, daily quizzes, etc. It's hard to go from a class that is usually very abstract and opinion-based (Literature) to focusing on something that is very concrete and formulaic. Some of my math-lovers do much better on this portion of the curriculum because everything is so black and white. However, some of my more creative kids feel stifled and overwhelmed. I try to make it the least miserable I can, though, because I LOVE it! For nouns and adjectives, we play a game where kids take turns describing nouns in a paper bag (highlighter, quarter, clothespin, etc.) by using one-word adjectives until their class can guess it. We play charades using verbs and adverbs, and we do some visual learning for prepositions. I'll probably blog about my more entertaining lesson plans in the future. :) 

For now, while I am in this world, Sawyer is LOVING being at Debbie's three days a week. He's very entertained by other kids, and he thinks he's one of the big kids. He cries when we leave, so I'm feeling less and less guilty about leaving him. Instead of being deprived of something by my working, he is getting loved by even more friends. It's a good life!