The Perfect Class Period

I officially had the perfect class period. It was brief but it was glorious.

Here's the set-up: I am in a group from my school that is doing blended learning. Blended learning means that some of the learning is in a traditional classroom and some of it has online aspects. Specifically, I am trying what is called the in-flip model. That means that my students watch a video of the lecture in class and then start the practice. (What they don't finish of the practice becomes homework) The reason I like this so much is that students who are absent aren't really missing the lecture and students who want to review a topic can easily hear the entire lecture again or even pause it and re-watch certain parts of it.

Our technology department asked those of us in this blended group to give them a time they could come by to see our blended classroom. (Side note: the two people who lead our technology department are awesome and I feel 100% comfortable around them so this was a really easy request for me) I told them that 2nd period on Thursday would be ideal. I have a really great Algebra I class at that time. So Thursday rolls around and between first and second period I see our tech people . . . along with our assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction! One of the tech people pulls me aside and tells me that he dropped by and she said that she hoped it was ok that he was going to observe my classroom. Well, it made me a little nervous but, eh, what's one more person? Second period has about 25 students in there so I had room for a few more people.

So class starts and my observers were kind enough to give me a few minutes to start class before they came in. My class were superstars! They were focused and on-task. When asked questions, they answered honestly and their answers were great! The three observers got to see how a student who was absent the previous day was able to easily catch up on his work. Another student said that he really liked the video lessons because he could go at his own pace. So this was all happening while I was walking around helping with technical problems, answering questions, etc. Then I noticed someone who was not doing the notes. I walked over and realized that it was the assistant principal of curriculum and instruction! I said hello to her and thought, "Oh goodness, that another person watching me. Ok, uh, at least it's an administrator with whom I have a very good relationship." Not ten minutes later I noticed that I had another visitor! It was the executive director of secondary education. So at this point I had five adults (other than myself) in my classroom ranging from my co-workers all the way to one-step from the superintendent. I was sweating bullets.

Then I had a moment where I really shone: I saw on my computer (via an awesome website called EdPuzzle) that a majority of my students were getting a comprehension question wrong from the video. I thought "Oh no. This is a major concept. I need to clarify this before we have a whole class of confused students" So I got all of my students' attention and pointed out what the correct answer was and why. Then the students went back to their individual work. One of the tech people asked me if I knew that I needed to address that topic because of the previous night's homework. I pointed out that it was actually from real-time data and I think she really liked that. :)

All of this is to say that thanks to my awesome students and the support of my wonderful family (especially my husband) and the admin team at my school, I feel like I am really stepping-up my game as a teacher. I also have classes (and let's be honest, whole school days) where I feel that I'm totally lost but I think those days are growing fewer. Here's to always moving forward!

-Clare G. S.

Bonus for reading this whole thing: a video of me from just before the school year started:

So many students!

That's my blog slung over the shoulder. 

A new school year has started. I'm teaching two classes of Algebra 1 and four classes of Pre-Calculus. The problem that has arisen is that I have 173 students. For those of you who are not teachers, let me put it this way: in my past five years teaching I have never had more than 140 students. I usually have 115 to 130 students. This is like teaching another class period. Also, I am used to having my conference period in the middle of the day but now it's the last period of the day.

These two big changes mean that my systems of organization don't work anymore. I can't pile things on my desk and then sort them during my conference & again at the end of the day. I can't do lunch tutorials because this introvert very much needs those 30 minutes of quiet time. Trying to keep track of 173 tests is more complicated. I'm revamping everything.

In a moment I'm going to go to the school to set up my new system for passing back papers, to sort my copies from the first unit of Algebra and Pre-Calculus, and to generally unclutter things. Hopefully this will give me time tomorrow to grade and input grades. I am avoiding doing hand grading so I am taking a page from my husband's book and having students submit their work via a Google Form. Then I have an add-on called Flubaroo that automatically grades it for me. This is saving me literally hours on the weekend. This won't work for tests and quizzes but those are rare enough that it shouldn't be a problem to grade those by hand.

I hope that all of you out there are doing well!

-Clare G. S.

Mixed Signals

Life keeps trucking along. We have one more week until Spring Break and we are not sure what we will be doing. My husband and I both would like to take a small trip to the Texas coast or something. However, we also greatly dislike crowds and everyone wants to go to the coast over Spring Break. I suggested a trip to Houston since we haven't spent much time there and we have plenty of friends in the area whom I would love to visit. We'll see what happens. In all likelihood we will relax by spending a couple of days just reading. I would not be opposed to that at all. :)

The real purpose of this post is to vent a bit. I keep getting mixed signals at work. We had a meeting a few weeks ago about discipline. I think the meeting went pretty well and it helped me understand why we have so much paperwork. It's really so that we have proof that we tried talking to the student, we moved the student's seat, we spoke with the parent, and the behavior continued. In the meeting they emphasized that we really should take care of behavior issues "in house" when possible and to only write referrals when absolutely necessary. So I leave thinking to myself, "Ok, I need to make sure I have all my ducks in a row before I write a referral. If the student is not working and is only distracting one other student then I need to call home before any referrals."

Fast forward to yesterday. One of our instructional coaches observed two of my classes. I first should say that this IC is awesome. She is very good at giving constructive criticism. I feel like she really balances compliments and suggestions for improvement. After I talk with her I have a clear idea of the next steps to improve my classroom. So as I said, she observed two of my classes on Friday. I had a group of about 4 students who were not working and just chatting most of the class. I spoke with them multiple times, I offered to help them, I pointed out that they were already behind and now were going to have more work to do at home. I even moved their seats. Nothing convinced them to start their work. After the class the IC pointed out to me that if she had been the teacher she would have given them referrals because they were at the point that they were being insubordinate.

Now I am confused. At what point do I write a referral and kick out the student? I think that I'm waiting too long because I have made literally hundreds of phone calls/e-mails to students' parents this school year. I have done my best to keep up with the paperwork on the behavior issues. The IC offered to make a poster that outlines the consequences of the students not following instructions/not behaving. I told her I really wanted the poster because it would remind me that if I've given the student a warning, moved the student, and spoke with the student about their behavior and it persists then it's time for a referral. I am spending too much time trying to get students to comply and it's taking away time that I could be using to help the students who are willing to attempt the work I assign.

This was probably a really boring read if you are not in education. Hopefully you understand that this is my job; it's what I spend most of my day doing. I'm almost at the point where I am no longer considered a new teacher. I think most people agree that after five years you are an experienced teacher and this will be my fifth year. At the same time I'm in my first year teaching math. Oftentimes it makes me feel like I'm in my first year again. What really counts is that I truly believe I am continuously becoming better at my profession. I can't ask for more than that.

-Clare G. S.

Substitutes

This was a long week. There are a few things you will need to know about my life as a teacher for this post to make sense. 1) During my conference my room is used by another teacher, Ms. Cowell. She teaches English 4. 2) My last class of the day includes modified Algebra 1. That means that there are students in the room who take a modified version of the state test and it means that I have a wonderful co-teacher, Ms. Adams. 3) We had to collect two writing samples from our students this week. It is a bit complicated why we had to do this and all the rules involved but trust me that it was a high priority that it be done on time and correctly. We had a strict one-week window in which to do this.

Ms. Adams told me in advance that she would be out Wednesday and Thursday this week. I was not looking forward to those days because I really need the help in that class. The good news is that she would have a sub. Ms. Cowell let me know that she would be out Thursday and Friday. She asked me to help out a bit by collecting the papers for her class which is no problem at all. However, none of us counted on a stomach bug going around the school and thus the school being short many subs.

On Wednesday I was notified that Ms. Adams' sub had canceled and I would be by myself. I was worried but in the end the students were angels! I have no idea why they were so well behaved but I am very thankful. I was hopeful that Thursday would go smoothly since there would be a sub that day.

Thursday rolls around and no, there was no sub for Ms. Adams because we were so short staffed. The students were ok in that class. In Ms. Cowell's class I stuck around the entire class period because they were taking a test and there was a typo in it. I had to explain the typo and then I helped monitor because this test was being used for district data. There is a lot of pressure to make sure students do their best and that there is no cheating.

Friday took the cake for most exhausting day. I was told that during my conference I would need to cover a class. I was glad to hear that it was a class of Juniors. Just before school started I suddenly realized that Ms. Cowell would not have the same sub she had yesterday and her subs for Friday probably had no clue what the students were supposed to do. I printed off her lesson plan and ran to the different rooms she teaches in to leave the lesson plan and the copies of the work for the sub. After first and second period I went by her classes and picked up the work. Luckily she has third period off because I had to go cover a class. It took me a while to find a teacher with a key to open the room I was in. The great news is that the class went smoothly. Then I had to rush back downstairs to my fifth period class. During team time I tidied up the papers for Ms. Cowell and tried to breathe for a moment. My last class of the day was about what I expected: a little loud, a little crazy, and some students did not get any work done. Once again Ms. Adams was not present because she was covering another teacher's class. After school I had students in tutorials making up work because it was the last day of the grading period. Then my co-worker came in and asked if I wanted her to take my writing samples to our lead teacher. I completely forgot about them! They were due Friday! The students had written them but I had not yet put the papers in the correct order, labeled them, etc. I asked my co-worker to tell our lead teacher that I had the papers and just needed to organize them.

I ended Friday in tears simply because I was so tired. After dinner I took a nap and it helped my mood greatly. I'm hopeful that next week will be a little more calm because Monday is a work day (no students!) and my classes have a test on Wednesday which means less prep time for me.

I hope that your week was calmer than mine. As a bonus, below is a video of the coolest pillow ever. It's like a mermaid! At only $10, I just could not resist.

-Clare G. S.

It's Been Too Long

Am I awful at keeping up with a blog? Obviously that is a big hell yes! Whoops! Teaching a new subject and especially teaching Freshman has made my life much busier than I expected. Something had to give and it ended up being this blog. I'm hoping to get back to it! At least once a month would be nice but I think writing once a week would help me decompress. So, let's get updated on my life.

TP'ing and egging of the house
The guilty parties were found and punished. Those people personally came to my husband and myself and expressed their remorse. It sounds like it started as a little prank and one person in the group thought repeating the prank over and over would be funny. The other people involved only participated once from what I understand. Matthew and I forgave all of them and we are really happy to know that it has stopped permanently.

The House
The person we contracted to fix the wall and left it in a worse state has disappeared. We lost a fair chunk of money since we paid for work that he never did. The wall is still standing but we will need to find someone to fix it. We are taking the whole situation as a lesson learned and are moving forward. We are very thankful that we are so careful with our finances that this didn't affect our ability to pay other bills and whatnot. Projects we want to complete next: finishing the former HVAC closet that we are converting into a storage closet, adding some "flooring" (nothing fancy) in our attic so we have more storage room, fixing our fence so that we are more comfortable with the dogs being in the yard unsupervised.

Flipped Classroom
Having a flipped classroom has been an adventure. I really love using EdPuzzle so that I can ask students comprehension questions during the video. My biggest problem is that the students will watch the video and write the notes but they will listen to music instead of the video. I have tried to explain that it's like listening to music while I lecture; you just aren't getting all of the information. They are getting frustrated that they don't understand the material but are still unwilling to listen while they watch the video. They expect me to reteach the lesson completely. I am more than happy to do that for the students who have given the videos a try but it's still not clicking. It's frustrating for me to re-teach those students who I can see (thanks to EdPuzzle) that they never even finished the video or I have had to ask in class to turn off their music. I'm hoping that more parent contact will help. My husband showed me how I can e-mail a progress report to all of the parents. I'm going to try to do that each week and ask the parents to remind their students to listen to the video notes and watch them all the way through. Looking at data my students are still below the school average on tests but it's by less than 10 points. I know part of it is that I am new to this subject and I think part of it is trying to transition to this new way of teaching. I am not going to give up!

Health
My anxiety has been really odd. Every now and then I suddenly feel like I'm not breathing properly; like I'm not inhaling deeply. I have to pause and focus on my breathing and it usually passes quickly. It's tough to do that in the middle of class but I muddle through. I am a bit concerned because I had an anxiety attack and I have no idea what triggered it. All of my attacks in the past I can pinpoint what started it. This time I have no idea. I was walking around the school running some errands and I felt my breathing was off. I walked slower and tried to take some deep breaths. Then I got that awful feeling that something bad was going to happen and my fight-or-flight started to kick in. I immediately went back to my classroom to get my emergency medicine and then went to my husband's classroom. I am so incredibly thankful that he has the same conference as I do. Between the medicine and my husband I was able to make it through the anxiety attack and calm down before my next class. Ugh, just writing this is difficult. Anyway, I am seeing my psychiatrist later this month and I'll make sure to mention what happened to him.

My resolution to be healthier has hit the 6 month mark! I would like to mention that although I use my weight and measurements of my body as a way to track progress, it's not my end goal. My real goal is to have healthier habits: drink more water, walk more, and eat less. When I say "eat less" I mean that I need to eat until I am no longer hungry. I have a bad habit of eating until I physically cannot eat anymore. That was wasteful of food and made me feel sick. I think I'm doing much better with my eating habits but it can be really hard! I love food! I just need to remember that almost all of the food I eat can be re-heated later and taste almost just as good. No need to eat it all in one sitting. Here is where I am now compared to August 1, 2016:

• Weight: -26.4 lbs
• Bust: -4"
• Band: -3"
• Natural waist: -5.5"
• Hips: -3.5"

Here's a photo of the difference in my face. I'm not comfortable yet showing the world the photos of my whole body in workout clothes. I hope you can see the difference that I see!

-Clare G. S.