Back to the Grind

Well, this is it.  Tomorrow is the first day of school, and I'm running towards it full tilt boogie.

The last week and a half has been a whirlwind  of classroom prep.  I found out at the end of last term that I was going to be moving classrooms again and that I would be moving into the music teacher's room, as it has a sink.  Okay.  Student Minions, move my stuff!

The only problem?  The music teacher was out for knee surgery and had no idea.  Fast forward to now.

No Contest

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday (we all really needed the break, I'm sure)!

Other Art Teacher and I got the art show hung just before school let out for Thanksgiving and just in time for literacy night, so we had a lot of traffic through that hallway.  It was wonderful!  We were hearing a lot of feed back about how good our 1st and 2nd graders did and how great the hall looks with all that art up.  Our superintendent even got to see the kids efforts, which is pretty great I think.

Attitude!

Just recently I have decided that I need only 3 rules for my classroom:

#1 - Have a good attitude.

#2 - TRY.

#3 - Have fun!  (Okay so this last one is silly, but I like it and think it's still important.)

No. 2 has been an unofficial rule for most of the year, something that I have continuously pounded into my students' heads.  But the first really only occurred to me after today.  Attitude is important!  Of course I knew this; so do most people, if only in an abstract, back of the mind sort of way.  It may go by a different name or phrase -- we routinely admonish the kids to "make good choices".

This week my kids have had a free-draw day, earned each 9 weeks through good behavior.  But today's 1st graders have had somewhat appalling behavior since Christmas, and as a consequence, they lost their free day.  Now, as it so happens, I had nothing planned for this eventuality.  So I got out a quote on attitude, one that my college mentor teacher gave to recalcitrant students to copy.  I had the children sit quietly with their heads down while I explained to them exactly why they didn't get free day.  Then I read the quote:

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes. -- Charles R. Swindoll

 I feel that this quote is something of a truism, and I was really getting into it.  After reading it aloud, I further expounded upon how important having a good attitude was.  I'll admit I was on a bit of a tear (they've been incredibly frustrating for months now--talking, sniping, arguing, tattling, the list goes on).  I wasn't shouting, but I was loud and rather vehement, gesturing and pacing through the room.  And I'm not sure why (or even if I wasn't imagining things), but it seemed to me that for once the kids were actually taking in what I was saying instead of letting it go in one ear and out the other.  Time will tell, I guess.

And then they spent the rest of the class copying that quote.

Now, having thought back about today and how thoroughly I lectured my students, I've thought about how this all applies to me, not just in my teaching but in my life.  Attitude really is one of the most important things in life, and I think it's something that one should always try to keep in mind.

As an instructor of small children, I know that how I feel has immediate effect on my students.  If I am unenthusiastic, so will they be.  I've noticed that my students are always more difficult to keep on task if I'm feeling low energy or low on excitement.  And it makes it hard.  But I also know that if I just take a few minutes before class to breathe, and to do whatever I need to do to change my attitude, the whole day just brightens.  Both my students and I will have much more fun.  Sometimes, I just need to do something utterly silly like wave my hands wildly in the air and jump up and down or have a quick stretch.  It wakes me up!  (Sorry, theater person here; we do crazy warm ups like that.)  Or maybe I'll read a bit of an interesting article or funny anecdote.  Sometimes I start the class speaking with a silly accent; giggling kindergartners can really lift my mood.  But if I ignore my less than wonderful attitude, I end the day feeling disillusioned, exhausted and put out.

It's something to think about.  If I police my current attitude and try to keep to a positive outlook, will things go more smoothly, even when they don't?  I'm not sure, but I think that it will at least make me feel better, more productive, and more fulfilled.

I have been incredibly remiss in regularly updating my reflections these last couple of months!  Shame on me.

It always seems that when I feel like there's something to reflect on and blog about, I never have immediate access to my blog.  I suppose it shouldn't matter; for example, at the moment of writing this entry, I am using Notepad, to be copy-pasted at a later time.  Doesn't seem all that difficult, I know.  But somewhere in the grand scope of things, it just didn't occur to me to do it, or it became an excuse not to write.  In short, I've been lazy.

But my New Year's resolution is to STOP--being lazy, that is.

The week following the holidays was quite slow and easy; the kids (all but one class) had earned free days for the 9 week period, so every class got to have free time while I kicked back and putzed around at my desk.  Not exactly the most stellar method of getting back into the swing of things.  It is now our second week back, and I have managed to kick some of the laziness in the butt.  I have some great lessons with my kids--unfortunately, I still end up dragging because I'm just not getting enough sleep.  Going to bed in a timely manner is perhaps my most difficult challenge!  But I've got to do it.

This week, my kids are doing the following:

K - Non-objective dot pictures.  They have a lot of fun with it, and it kind of builds on the book we read before the holidays (the Dot).  Today I even had a couple kinders who used the term as an answer to a question (correctly, if you don't count actually saying the word right), and I was thrilled to death!  I have no idea what I'm going to do with my 2-day a week kindergartners, but I have until Friday to figure it out.

1 - These guys are making ROBOTS.  They love robots, so dropping names like R2D2 and Optimus Prime or Bumblebee gets them all sorts of excited.  What this lesson involves is looking at a print of a robot sculpture I have (it is made from things like retro TVs--very cool) and identifying basic shapes therein.  Then we talk about how robots can look any way they want, not just humanoid, or rather "people-shaped", and how shapes could be put together in fun ways to make a robot.  Yesterday was the guinea pig class, and they got it, but there was a distinct lack of imagination and a lot more "copy completely or partially the teacher's example and the picture on the board and the stuff in Transformers".  I was a little disappointed, but it went okay.  Today though?  They blew my mind.  I did a demo on the board (and erased afterwords) and we talked about thinking.  In otherwords, think about what your robot looks like.  Can it fly?  Does it have arms?  A head or face?  Wheels?  Absolutely NO copying something they've seen before.  They had some incredibly detailed and imaginative robots at the end of class, and I can't wait to take these pre-sketches and make some awesome robots next week.

2 - Now, the second graders are probably completly exhasperated with me as we still have to finish the snowflake mobiles we started before the break.  Right now they are more snowflake and less mobile.  But we'll be finishing them up this week, and I will hang them from the ceiling (where they will likely remain right up until Spring Break, lol).k

3 - Third grade is currently in the midst of my "baby", that is, the unit I created as an assignment during my student teaching.  They are into the third and final project of the unit, the Laurel Burch project.  This week, we looked at and discussed some of the artist's work and discussed how she used color, line and pattern to convey emotion to the viewer.  We talked about themes, in this case friendship, and did a brainstorming worksheet.  On this worksheet, we all brainstormed 8 friendship action words like play and hug.  Then the kids had to assign each word an emotion and each emotion a corresponding color, line, and pattern.  Not everyone finished, but that will be for next week.  The backside of the worksheet contains two areas for pre-sketches, which they will be required to complete before they can start the drawing on their 12x18 paper.

In other news, the Challengers are once again challenging me--go figure.

My classes with them have not been as incredibly frustrating as they were before (this may be due to a return to a more, shall we say, hard-nosed approach wherein I give out sad faces and sad notes at the drop of a hat), but nonetheless, they frustrate me.  I don't know what it is about my kids, this class in particular, that makes me lose it and be all raised voice grrr.  But I do.  Today I had to kick out a child in my class--twice, no less--and it was the same one who got removed to the office for dumping 2/3 of my table supplies on the floor and throwing markers.  I started the class by dropping him outside the office as we passed because he was doing his usual messing with the other kids acting up thing and told him to come to class when he felt ready.  He came back about halfway through and got to work.  Had one marker thrown, but otherwise okay. 

Then he started acting up more, so he along with some others ended up with a sad face.  then he got a sad note and began to throw a small fit that included the shoving of my marker bin across the table.  Where it not for the presence of other kids around the table, it probably would have ended up on the floor.  this was about five minutes to the end of class, but I sent him to the office anyway to sit outside. he dragged feet all the way to the end of the cafeteria (so of course now I'm having to shout across the caf at him) and basically doing everything he can to not actually leave.  An aid happened to be going that way, and she had to walk him out.

Okay, so now I've got to settle the rest of the class (who always take any opportunity to chatter that they can) and get them lined up and back to their home room.  Goes just fine.  After this, I sat and talked with my little trouble-maker.  It didn't do much good, as he really couldn't get past the stage of crying and protesting that he didn't "want a sad note!"  I explained why he was getting one, but I'm not sure he actually payed any attention.  He really just didn't want one, and I don't think this particular kiddo really got why what he did was against the rules.

He is honestly my most challenging student as far as behavior goes.  And I know that I'm not handling it correctly.  Problem is, it's proving to be incredibly difficult to change how I behave when confronted with his misbehaviors.  Part of the problem is that the whole class is kind of wild, so taking the time to deal with one student seems to give them cart blanche to go wild.  But really, I just need to stop and breathe.  I need to THINK before I react. Gah.  Back to the drawing board.

An Introduction, of Sorts

For anyone who may stop by, let me first welcome you to my blog.  It's purpose is this:  to allow myself an easy method for reflection and to perhaps give others ideas and help in their own classrooms.

When I was interning this past Spring, one of my standing assignments was the completion of several journal entries throughout the semester detailing my experiences during the course of the internship.  I was to examine the good, the bad and the ugly, as it were, and if so desired, my thoughts and feelings as well.  I discovered it to be a highly useful tool for improving my performance as a teacher and a wonderful way to organize my thoughts.  Having been long accustomed to blogging about my life in general, I felt that blogging about my classroom experiences would be no hardship, allowing me to continue the "journaling" experience more easily.

In addition to reflecting upon my teaching, I want to use this journal as a place to put lesson plans that I create and, hopefully, find successful.  For any future visitors to my blog, I hope these things are both enjoyable and helpful.

Moving on...

Somehow, it seems that I would have done better to start this blog before or during the first week of school, so as to better record the events therein.  But as most ought to know, the classroom can be pretty crazy at the start!  Well it's now heading into the third week of school; I finally feel able to start this thing up.

So maybe a bit of a recap is in order?

As a new teacher, there were several things to take up my time at the beginning of the school year, not the least of which was packing and moving six hours away to my new home.  I have found myself rooming with the other art teacher at my school, which has been fortuitous.  From inservices to paperwork to lesson planning for that first week of school, life was a chaotic mess.  Much of it is a blur now as I focus on other things.

Perhaps one of the most daunting tasks I faced was, believe it or not, setting up my classroom.  Now, coming into this position in place of a previous teacher, there are certain things that are different from how I would have imagined.  First, my current room was, at the time of my interview earlier in the year, a music room.  So some things had yet to be moved to the NEW music room.  Easily taken care of.  Secondly, I had to utilize my new teacher budget and buy office supplies.  As many know, braving Wal-Mart at the height of the Back-to-School sales pitch is a long journey, fraught with peril.  I had to learn all about requisition forms (and word to the wise, the office secretaries are smart ladies--they know the answer to a great many things), bringing me to my third task:  inventory.

I currently teach at two schools: the elementary (grades 1-4) and the learning center (Pre-K and Kindergarten).  I had to visit both places and make a list of what supplies I did and did not have (or perhaps that should be DO not have, as I am still waiting for my final supplies to arrive).  When you come into a teaching job, at my district at least, you rely on the person(s) who preceded you to handle things like ordering supplies for the new school year.  So while I had a great many supplies, there were still things missing which I felt I needed in order facilitate a more productive and meaningful art experience.

This is where, while waiting for my supplies, I have to think outside the box.  I have hardly any white drawing paper right now, but there is more pink paper than I can shake a stick at.  So that can be used for pre-sketching and free-draw with no problem, saving the better quality white paper for the "actual" projects.

There is also the decision to make on what needs to go with me in the afternoons when I leave to go teach Kindergarten.  For one thing, at the learning center, my classroom is on a stage in the cafeteria.  So, no, not technically a classroom as most people know them.  I have no sink readily at hand and no drying racks or counters.  This is another area where I must think creatively.  And at the moment, I'm still trying to get it all figured out!

As I go, I feel like things are getting easier to manage (though maybe a little more slowly with Kindergarten).  I think that so far, I've found that feedback is worth more than gold.  Being able to bounce ideas off of and relate experiences to other teachers has been a wonderful help.  But that is a post for another time.