school and school

School:

So I stayed up last night until one in the morning to finish my paper and submit it. Note to self: YOU ARE NO LONGER 18 YEARS OLD!!!!!! When you are my age, you have no business thinking you can get up in the morning and function! I did function, but you know I fell asleep practically the second I got home. It’s all a part of the “just one more thing” mentality. I needed to finish the writing part while I still knew what I was talking about. Then I decided I might as well put the citations in the paper while I still had everything open and fresh in my mind. And what the heck, at this point I might as well put in the references at the end because I still have all my references open. And hey, I might as well submit the paper to the Center For Writing Excellence, a thing the school has that will look at your paper and make suggestions for corrections and improvements. Oh, gee, that was done quickly! I might as well look at what they said. Yeah, I can fix these few things and ignore the suggestions that are stupid. Oh, look! The paper’s done! I’ll just submit it now! And yeah, by then it was 1:00.

In the meantime, I did get my other paper back, with a score of 14.8 out of 15. At the top was a VERY nice note from the teacher!

School:

Today was day three of SFA, the reading program. Day one: J. and E. spent the two hours off-task and no amount of redirection or support helped. So notes were written to give to their parents. Day two: E. was much better, and no problem today either. Then there’s J. Moved him to another group. Moved him away from all groups, so he decided to GET UP and walk over to another group to take a member’s paper! It just got worse from there, and his time ended with a form filled out and sent with him to the office. Day three: It only took about fifteen minutes for me to have this other form filled out and send him to the toughest 4th grade teacher. I should have done that yesterday, because technically that comes before being sent to the office. Gee, I can hardly wait until tomorrow! In the meantime, I’m documenting everything. This is a fifth grader who’s reading at a beginning third grade level. If he doesn’t actually read during reading class, he’ll be a ninth grader someday reading at a third grade level.

In the meantime, I have A. in my regular class who I also began documenting. He was tested last year but didn’t qualify for services because he’s a part-time student, just like my buddy K. from last year. If you’re a teacher, you’ve seen those timed addition tests (100 one-digit problems). He got 43%, not on the timed test but doing one for homework. It’s not just that he couldn’t get them right — some of his answers weren’t even numbers! He already missed two days of school — the two days before the math test (on which he got zero out of 15 right, which was an open note test). But we’re going to try to reopen his case again.

Swimming

Can I multitask? Well, I guess we’ll find out! I’m watching the Closing Ceremonies of the Olymmpics and grading papers off and on, and doing research for a U of Px paper off and on.

So yesterday Dad and I decide to go swimming. It’s what we do on Saturday afternoons. Sometimes there are a few families on Saturdays at his pool, but most of the time it’s fairly quiet. So we get there and see …

a photo shoot. Girls in bikinis and really odd bathing suits in all sorts of places at the pool, and photographers, and a director woman. There were also a very small number of regulars.

Of course, my experience of the event wasn’t the same as my fathers; he found it quite entertaining. I kept thinking it must be weird to think that your contribution to the world is being pretty and skinny. One of the models said that they (as in Someone) had gotten together twelve models and twelve photographers for the shoot. They were hoping that it would end up being a calendar, but it seemed like a freelance sort of arrangement. But you’ve seen pictures of the pool and its big rock in this blog, so if you see a swimsuit calendar with a huge rock, a woman with a blue inner tube (she borrowed my father’s), or hanging upside down on the rock with weird sheer fabric flowing behind her — well, we saw it being photographed.

I am nearly finished with the third week of the U of Phoenix. For this week’s group assignment, we needed to make an outline for our upcoming paper. Charlie made the outline itself, but didn’t add his part. Sharina added her part. Walter is a no-show. So I did the rest (put in my part and filled in the rest as well). Sharina and I agreed that the men will simply be assigned what to write, since they didn’t participate in the outline. Earlier in the week, the teacher declared that she didn’t get our last assignment. Well, after I sent her a screen shot she found it. So today she declared in the forums that she gave everyone back their personal papers from last week so we can use the feedback to do better on the paper due Tuesday (moved from Monday). So guess who didn’t get her paper back??????? Then again, every time she responds to a post of mine in the forum, she calls me Carolina. I haven’t figured that one out yet.

Catching up

Let’s see, where to start? My digital camera isn’t working; it thinks it’s still hooked up to the computer. I may have to use my cell phone for a photo, so you can see my back fence. The fence is wooden like the gate here:

But it doesn’t have the metal stays. It had a piece of wood toward the top and toward the bottom. But there were chunks missing. So I get home yesterday to find a note on my door saying that when they were pulling the neighbor’s fence down to fix it, mine came down too. They’d put it back up today. In the meantime, everything I have in the yard is vulnerable. But hey, they’ll fix the fence, right?

I REALLY have to get a photo. They put up three metal poles. Great start. I get home and there are two wooden sideways beams. Cool. AND THEN THEY ATTACHED THE CRAPPY OLD FENCE TO THIS!!!!!!!!!!!! What the heck?? Now it just looks stupid!

In other news, Monday and Wednesday were both dentist days. Monday began my root canal. “Began” because part of the root tried to close itself, so the dentist could only get so far. He put meds in it to open them back up. Did I care? Not so much. I was busy inhaling nitrous oxide. Great stuff! My last two dentists didn’t use it. So when they offered on Monday, my answer was “of course!”

Today was a cleaning. My dental hygienist reminded me of my sister-in-law Lisa! She was really nice and a lot of fun. I’m not fond of actually going to the dentist’s office, but that place is really awesome! And today they gave me headphones and tuned a radio to the station of my choice. That helped offset the fact that my mouth was being poked and scraped.

Wednesday I went to the folks’ for Jaeden’s birthday party. He’s three now! Time sure flies! He’s into trucks, especially from the movie Cars. He loves blowing out birthday candles and got to do that a few times! But my camera doesn’t work, so we’ll have to wait until Dottie gets her pictures developed.

Apparently I’m keeping all 27 students. There was talk of moving some to some of the teachers who have only 20, but apparently the office has been getting a lot of requests to move students, so the principal decided no one moves, period. On the plus side, Monday starts SFA (the reading program where the students go to the class that matches their reading level). This means we will get a break from each other, because only one of my students is in my class. My reading group will be 4th and 5th graders who are in level 3.1 (first half of third grade).

In my group for my university class, it’s my job to submit group assignments. We had one due Sunday, but I submitted it Saturday. So on Tuesday we get a note saying that since it hasn’t been turned in yet it’ll be a 20% penalty! WHAT???? So I write back that I submitted it on Saturday, and also put a note in the group forum since they all got the same message. Then I took a screen shot of my personal forum that shows it was submitted on time, and sent that to both the group and the teacher. But I still haven’t heard back yet. I was not happy to get that message yesterday, though, as you can imagine!

I have not been able to swim in my pool since I got back from Wisconsin. It’s been closed because of some nastiness in the water. They tried to clean it a couple of times, but mostly by dumping chemicals in, not by anything else like scrubbing. So this week they simply emptied the pool. It looks like they did clean it before they started refilling it this time.

Oh — today when they said that the temp was currently 100 degrees, it was just like “oh, that’s nice.” No big deal. Summer number two back in the Old Pueblo — and 100 is just a number!

Dark!

Last night I was on the phone with Donna and the lights started to flicker. Then they went out. This was around 8:30. The lights didn’t come back on until 1:30 in the morning! We had quite a series of thunderstorms last night. I managed to get to sleep, but twice they woke me back up! So this morning I looked at the on-line newspaper and it said that 14 power poles were knocked down in the storm! But I learned how to set the alarm on my cell phone and I found a battery-powered travel alarm clock so that I’d be able to get up this morning. I personally don’t think the weather should be exciting!

I did learn something from the infamous Labor Day Storm in Syracuse, though! I have a water jug turned to ice that I keep in the freezer and one in the fridge as well, so I didn’t have to worry about how long the power would be out.

In my on-line class, you have to post the answer to the questions on Wednesday and Friday, as well as two substantial posts a day for four days. I’m going to have to start doing them earlier! If I had waited, I wouldn’t have been able to do them yesterday! Luckily I did get them done and in fact had just finished when I called Donna.

Well, I’d better go do my lesson plans. I didn’t get them done last night because I didn’t have enough light to read my notes by and I didn’t really want to suck down my computer’s battery for lesson plans!

MY FEET HURT!!!!

Well, yeah, that’s the main thing I can say about being back to school! On Friday I had 24 students on my list. One of those hasn’t shown up yet, but I have four new ones (two yesterday and two today) so I have 27 bodies in my classroom aside from mine. When they brought me the latest new child this morning, I pointed out that he was taking my last desk. Other 4th grade teachers have 20 – 23. Lucky me. The third and fifth grades, though, have over 30 each!

My kids are generally nice, but chatty of course — especially since we have to seat them in groups. Of course they’re going to talk! But some of them are pretty sharp and none of them seem actually mean or anything. Yes, the year is new, but I remember a student last year who gave my extra grey hair by the end of his first day! That was the lad who seemed to be trying to break every school rule in the short amount of time remaining in the school year. I don’t have one like him yet!

I’m carpooling with another teacher. My wonderful brother who knows me (and my dislike of driving — especially driving a car that seems to insist on having each component replaced) made a suggestion that is working! The teacher will do all the driving and I’ll pay the gas. A plus side (and minus) is that he wants to leave early for work. We have to be there by 7:30. He wants to leave at 6:30, but he did want to leave by 6 A.M. so 6:30 is an improvement! The plus side is that I don’t have to worry about being late for work this year!

Did I mention my feet hurt?

Olympics, Groups

I love the Olympics! I hate group work!

I thought the opening ceremony was fabulous! There were some years that the opening didn’t do it for me. The French ceremony wasn’t very appealing (OK, I thought it was weird) and sumo wrestlers aren’t exactly my thing either. But this year’s was incredible!

I’m finally getting to see things I want: gymnastics and diving. I’ve seen swimming as well, including a number of broken records. Beach volleyball got more interesting once it started pouring rain.

Every time I see the girls on the uneven parallel bars, I remember taking gymnastics in high school in gym. It wasn’t pretty. I almost fell over the horse a couple of times as the spotters backed up rather than be spotters. I know we had to write our own routines for the balance beam, floor, and unevens, each having certain elements. I don’t remember if I ever fell off of anything, but I know the floor routine was the only one that wasn’t scary! It’s hard to fall off the floor!

My on-line program is sort of going OK. One thing we have to do is form learning teams. Well, we’re assigned the people, but we have to accomplish certain tasks. This week’s tasks were simple — fill out this document and choose a coordinator. The coordinator’s job is to turn things in, basically. So, my three team-mates: C posts his share of the form’s information on Friday and says he won’t be on-line over the weekend so whatever we do is fine with him. The form is due today, so in effect he has just refused to be the learning team coordinator and has refused to vote on any version of the document or even vote for anyone else being coordinator. S adds her information Saturday morning and hasn’t been back since. W adds his Saturday night but has ignored my other posts about the revised version as well as coordinator. All threads in the team forum are started by me, trying to accomplish what we’re supposed to do. I send e-mails in addition to the forum posts. Nothing. No one says boo. I post reminders.

Finally, I submit the final version — which I’ve created based on the information provided to me, and I submit myself as the coordinator because otherwise we’ll be late and get marked off. As it is, we’re likely to get marked down because the final version wasn’t voted on at all. In the meantime, you can see what’s happening in the other team forums as well, and I look longingly at the groups that are actually working together and communicating with each other. I hate group work, especially when the two words become mutually exclusive!!

Saturday

On Friday, some of us at school took a van tour of the neighborhood to see where our students come from. It is amazing how beautiful one housing development is and its contrast to the trailer court next to it! But it was a lot of fun and great to see. Our turf is huge! No wonder we have nearly a thousand students!

Thursday after the meetings we had a grade level meeting and talked about what sorts of things we’re going to do the first day (Monday). So I spent a few hours Thursday night coming up with a schedule and lesson plans. I posted these on Friday and three of the other teachers liked it so well they copied it!

Blog of the Week: http://tinyurl.com/65d59w I know, I haven’t done this in a long time! The blog entry in that link isn’t the most recent (the ones above it on the right sidebar are) but it’s the one that drew me in. The author is a Fullbright Scholar who moved to Bulgaria this week. Talk about Adventures in Moving and Living! Makes moving to Arizona look so tame!

One of the things I wore to school this week was the necklace Lisa bought me at the art show in Mt. Horeb while I was there. Many people commented on how they loved it! My camera is being wonky at the moment, so I haven’t taken a picture of the necklace yet, but I will when I can.

Cool Beans!

Today we had our PBIS meeting. These two women came and did a workshop with our school, primarily asking what we thought was needed in our behavior code, what we thought the different components meant, etc. It’s hard to describe now. But the thing is, much of what they came up with was the things I already put in the Character Education component I made (which they hadn’t seen yet). That was nice, that what they were thinking matched what I created!

After the women were done, the PBIS team presented what we did. I presented my grid with the whole year of Character Education spelled out, read them the first week’s announcements and showed them the folder with the whole year of announcements done and explained to them how it worked, showed them the monthly chart that goes on their wall and is going home with the students, etc. I just walked them through the whole thing, pointing out how much easier this will make things for them especially when it’s time for the students each month to select their student of the month for that class. One of the other team members pointed out the importance of the students doing the selecting.

A few people came up to me afterwards to say they liked what we did and to thank me for my hard work (there was a lot, so it was sort of obvious that I did a lot this summer). Well — I just got off the phone with the principal. She called me at home to thank me, and tell me that people had gone up to her to praise me! She also said that I showed good leadership skills and that I should do more of that! OK, I’m not sure that last part is good.

Special

Yes, indeedee — here I am, about to begin my tenth year of teaching. Ten. It is my second year of teaching in this district, in this school. With me so far? So today my principal tells me: The district, in their infinite wisdom, has decided that I’m a brand new teacher and has assigned me a mentor! Isn’t that special???? I couldn’t believe it! The principal pointed out that I can probably teach the mentor a few things! Anyway, I’ll meet her on Friday. The principal is thinking we’ll only have to meet like once a month. Oh joy.

My very first year of teaching, I allegedly had a mentor. Peg was another of the sixth grade teachers. It’s remarkable how unhelpful she was. She didn’t just not help; she badmouthed me to other teachers. She came in my class and yelled at my students and at the time I had no idea why. It was a nightmare! So the thought of having a mentor just generally runs chills down my spine. But really, in my tenth year? We’ll see. I’m not even really sure what a mentor’s supposed to do at this level.

My U of Phoenix class started today. The syllabus is … scary. But I filled it all in on my calendar, so I can stay on top of things! They work hard to help you be successful, which I like.

I survived day two of the reading workshop. I know a whole lot more about what I’m supposed to be doing in this program, and now understand the things I couldn’t do last year because they made no sense. A whole ton of stuff is squeezed into that 90-minute reading period!

The AC wasn’t working in the building very much yesterday, or at least not in the room we were in, so today we were in one of the portables. This teacher’s room certainly didn’t look like a summer room! His students could walk in this afternoon and he’d be all set! But that’s one nice thing about the portables — we (of course) have our own heat and AC. Mine are these dippy units that stick out (I have two), but I do get to control them. And because of the way they are, it doesn’t matter if you need heat one day and cooling the next (or as happens during part of the year, heat in the AM and cooling in the PM).

Day One

Well, only sort of. It was my first day back at work, but that’s for a 2-day workshop on the right way to do the reading program we do. When I arrived at school, the first thing I noticed was the graffiti on the portables that apparently was supposed to welcome us back. Mine had a star with something inside. My neighbor had 666 but also 999. Is that 150% evil or something? He seems like such a nice guy, too!

I dropped some stuff off in my classroom and headed toward the building, where the principal and one of the assistant principals were greeting people. That was nice! Then onto the looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong workshop.

At lunch time I checked my phone for messages. I’d called Human Resources again on Friday about my contract. So the lady was returning my call. She thought she had already done my contract but she checked to make sure … and there was no record of it!!! So she was doing it this afternoon. I left a message that at this point the best way to get it to me would be through school mail. So if I hadn’t called her????

Then tonight at six I got my expected phone call from my admissions person at the U of Phoenix, and she walked me through everything for tomorrow’s start. It had to wait until today because the classroom itself wasn’t opened until today. I’m excited, even though there’s a ton of work ahead of me! And I like this a whole lot better than when I was trying to do LeMoyne grad classes one class at a time after working all day, on the lifetime plan.

I found my hard-cover book 2 of Harry Potter (note to Donna: You’ll never guess where it was!). I had started it (again) before I left for Wisconsin, but put it away and couldn’t find it, so I was reading the paperback copy. So I went out back and sat on the patio reading, when something moving caught my eye. Somehow I don’t think I saw one at all last summer, but here it was today, up close and personal: One of those huge bugs we get here. Huge. Spread your thumb and pinky. That’s how long it is. Big fat black body and not counting things like antenna the body itself is like two inches high (partially due to the length of the legs). You’d be impressed how quickly I managed to get back into the house!