Friday, April 20, 2012

Spring has sprung

>> Spring has sprung in my classroom. I know I haven't posted anything of substance lately, but quotes will have to do. THe boys in my classroom are in full crude middle school humor. Enjoy. Carl: It feels like techno music when my heart is beating. -- Nick: I heard all the girls in high school are stuck up... so there goes my chance. -- (while using magnetic poetry) Carl: Pull up.. I need pants! -- Seth: I have an innie outtie! (pulls up shirt and shows bellybutton) -- Seth: DId you know that some elephants get indigestion when they eat peanuts? -- Carl: Yes. This is your penis.. I mean pencil! -- (Bell rings to go home) Jamie: HAPPY DILDO DAY!

Friday, April 13, 2012

almost a month

>>Yes, almost a month since I last posted. A lot but almost nothing has happened during that time. My home hospital student came out of the hospital but then just went back in today. (I think she will be okay this time). Today we found out that Sam had a sinus infection that his doctor did not take care of so it extended to his brain. Yes. Bad. He had surgery today and we are all very scared.

Here are some quotes that have been saved over the past few weeks.

Me: just because they have braces doesnt mean they are ugly (referring to girls)
Carl: But they can bite your tongue off.

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Phillip: Life plan.. 15 years old new laptop. 16 years old new cell phone. 17 years old new car. 18 years old new job.

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Carl: I gotcha bro. Yes, I call her bro. She's my bro.

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Carl: Could you translate "once you go black you never go back" for me?

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Jamie: I need to get some knee pads
Carl: your girlfriend needs to get knee pads.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Quote

I am totally proud that I taught my class all day today with only 1 part time aide. I am awesome.

Student: you look tired today
Me: you know, that's not nice to say to someone.
Student: why? What's wrong with that? You do look tired.
Me: well I'm not tired so that's not a nice thing to say.
Student: I didn't say you were tired I just said you looked it.
Me: okay. Drop it.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Goals

>> Another blogger I know over at Scooping it up wrote a post about goals. It got me thinking. I have many goals for myself as a teacher. Why not share?

First of all I want to plan more lessons.
My class is based on schedules, and doing the same things weekly. Wednesdays are writing day. Thursday and friday are fluency reading. Monday and Tuesdays are phonics/workbooks. (These schedule needs to be extended into math too, but L.A. is pretty steady now.) I have to clear my credential, so I am required to write up lesson plans, create goals and this year I have focused on writing because it is not my strong area. In fact in the beginning of the year we NEVER did it. Anyways, this past few months I have been focusing A LOT on writing rubrics and my students initiating their own learning through using rubrics. Wednesday I did a lesson where students had to create their own rubrics using past writing examples of their own as well as ones i made. my students LOVED IT. They requested we leave the examples up all year so they could look at them and use them while they are writing. They were excited. They explained their reasoning and why they graded certain things certain ways. I LOVED IT. It did not take me long to plan. But, if I could try and do something exciting like this once a week. A fantastic different kind of learning experience. I would be proud of myself.

2: develop a good way to track students goals.
Currently I have a huge binder in which each student has a divider. Their goals are divided in, and usually a week before goal checks are due, I go through and find work that meets each goal and I check their progress. (we work on goals all the time, but i dont specifically test) I would like to develop a way to test monthly, if not every other week. I would love to be able to send home nicely corrected evidence with every goal, or at least have less estimations, and more analyzing of data.

3. Do not be late on any IEPS.
I will say it is usually not my fault that I am late on IEPs. usually it's scheduling, parents, and my waiting until the last minute. I would like to be EARLY more often then right on time.

4. Have more fun.
A lot of time in my classroom we spend on academics because my students are so far behind academically. I would like to incorporate some more fun learning activities. Art projects. Fun history lessons. Fun science lessons. This goes into my first goal. but I think if I take time to research and work on new exciting lessons, we could have a lot of fun.

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>>I took my students on a reward field trip to a local fast food restaurant today. We had to walk there in the rain. Which wasnt awful. My students did VERY well. I was actually impressed. The worst part was coming back to school and trying to get them back on track for the rest of the day. We survived but, I was also checked out ,and that is never good for anyone. I was being silly and immature, and it is not always the best when I get like that.


>>Next week is the ski trip. Do we remember that from last year? I hope it goes okay.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Quotes

Phillip :
I want to shoot calves in the desert.

Aide: what do you want to learn the most about?
Phillip: soil
Aide: you want to learn about soil?
Phillip: I hate soil
Me: then why do you want to learn about it?
Phillip: because soil is cute.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Phone app

>>I decided to start using a phone app for blogger mostly so I can post quotes during my prep and breaks because I always forget them. These week was one of those hellish weeks. There were schedule changes which royally messed up everyone. A half day in the middle of the week. Observations. Assemblies for one grade only. Field trip permission slips. Ahh. We survived. It's done.

>>A student from the other special Ed class came up to me and poked me in the face on Thursday. Who knows why. But I poked him back.

Friday, March 2, 2012

so many things

>>There are so many things as a young teacher I feel ill-prepared or incapable of dealing with. Being a mother figure and the only stable adult in a 13 year olds life is one, dealing with neglected students another, but this one takes the cake. My home hospital student (the girl with CP, who has non-stop seizures) is very very very sick. She's been in the hospital for 2 weeks. The first two she was on a bipap machine to help her breath, and now she is on a ventilator. We went to see her today, and wow. I do not know if I am prepared to deal with this. There is a very large chance she will not make it. Please keep her in your thoughts. She needs all the good ones she can get.