A little time off

Well. I have my low group back. At the last minute I was given the green light to work with my low performing kids everyday. I am so thankful for this opportunity. Some pretty cool things happened when we switched classes. A few kids got wind that something was changing. So they switched themselves without asking. A few kids stayed in my class because they wanted to. Then some stuck themselves with the other teacher because they wanted to. It was priceless. We gave a few students a choice. Who will teach you better? Some students need rigid structure. That is not my style. Some students need a flexible environment to work at their own pace. That is my style. I have gifted kids as well as low performing kids. Although I only had them two days this week (due to the flooding) I have already had a glimpse of this working. Having the same group of kids everyday for 110 minutes. Teaching them both History and ELA. I have come to realize that there are two things that are important for these kids to perform well on these stupid state tests: vocabulary and reading comprehension. I am going to focus 80% of my lessons on those two things. Let me give you an example of how I used the IPADS to make this work. We have a website that we work on called "Edmodo". It is like a Facebook for school. I put all sorts of things on there including PDF files so kids can download whatever it is that we are working on. We are reading "The Ransom of Red Chief" by O.Henry. As I was reading the story out loud I realized that they have no idea what O.Henry is referring to in the story. (These are 5th-7th graders) How can they comprehend a story and have no picture in their head. The story is just a jumble of words. Things such as; maypole, buggy, bloodhound, and red haired freckle face boy, and a summit. This is all in the first page. Not to mention they probably cannot even picture the time period. So, as I read the story I told them to find pictures online of these things and post them on our Edmodo page. It helps them to see what the story is saying by use of visual images. These kids were brought up on visual stimulation. I think this will be very helpful. I also think that articles from Readers Digest will be helpful. They are short, clean, and easy reads. Yet, they have ideas that can be allowed for further discussion and keep kids relevant on current issues. I then created a dice game on Social Studies vocabulary and made it a competition. This went over real well. These kids LOVE dice. I bought a few inflatable globes and threw these around the class while they were playing the dice game. They all have short attention spans. I am giving in to those attention spans and working with them rather than fighting them. If I can help them use that natural ability to do 5 things at once, maybe that will help them in the long run. Teaching them to sit still and be quiet all the time is fighting their nature. How miserable. I have found a website called teacherspayteachers.com. I bought a few downloadable lessons and a set of 5 reading discussion cue cards. It is so cool. A teacher in Kansas made discussion cue cards for me laminated them and sent them in the mail. I paid her 35 bucks with shipping. What an awesome idea. Instead of paying companies, I pay people like me. One day I can do the same. I also ordered a book called "Teaching Outside of the Box" by LouAnne Johnson. I have not read very far into it, but it is inspiring me already. She wrote the book that inspired the movie Dangerous Minds. Her teaching philosophy is a lot like mine. Helps me to not feel so insecure about the amount of flexibility I give my children.

2 days till lift off!!!!!

Monday I am back at it. Flexibility already tested. I am not getting my low level kids everyday. The powers that be suggested that this would not be a good idea. I will probably never the know the reason why. So. I will have my low level kid for only Social Studies. I will have my middle of the road kids for English. We follow an A/B schedule. Meaning one day I see my English kids and the next day I see my Social Studies kids. Rotating schedule. I also heard a rumor we may not get our IPADs. I have been working on lesson plans everyday for about 3 hours. I communicate with another teacher via phone, text, email. We are meeting at the school tomorrow to make copies and support each other. I ordered 5 plastic inflatable globes from Amazon. My students really don't know where the continents are and my 3 year old nephew does (why is that?). I have been typing up plans and ideas. I send them to my principal and fellow teachers. Checking and rechecking. This is the OCD part. I can't stop thinking about school. Relaxation is not an option. If I am not working right now I feel like I am wasting precious time. I am branching out for ideas. I posted my GLE's on Facebook. GLE's are Grade Level Expectations. What I am focusing on with my kids. I have been getting feedback and support from Facebook. I have to research the topics I am teaching and think: How am I gonna get this in their brain? How is it gonna stay there? Will it be fun? Can they apply it and show me they really know it? The nerdy part of me loves to research all the topics. I am so nervous. I am wanting this semester to be easier than last semester.

Teacher Supplies

Be creative. I cannot tell you how many times this school year I have been told to be creative when the internet was down. I am super creative. So creative sometimes that it hurts to cram all that creativity in one brain. I have to write things down constantly. Ideas come into my head at the most inconvenient times, too. As I am falling asleep or driving on the interstate. I am a pack rat. I see an empty box of granola bars and I try to think of what I can use the box for. I collect jars, old keys, pizza boxes,loose fabric scraps, broken plates,old newspapers, magazines, etc. There can be an opportunity to use anything. Most recently, I bought new sheets and kept the plastic bags they come in. They are square and have a zipper! Perfect for holding group craft supplies. I would like to emphasize this next sentence. TEACHERS SPEND THEIR OWN MONEY ON THEIR CLASSROOMS. I try to inform everyone about this. We can only claim 250 bucks on our taxes. I am going to try to itemize my expenses this year. I am well over the 1,000 dollar mark. On December 31st I spent some money on my classroom. Mainly organizing materials and games for early finishers. Here is that list for inquiring minds: A few books from Amazon, lesson plans from teacherspayteachers.com, 2 big buckets, 2 medium size baskets, 2 tupperware organizing containers, 6 small covered containers, 1 game of checkers, 1 pack of sharpies, 5 sticky tack packs, 2 100 piece puzzles, 1 box of markers, 1 ruler, 1 pack of division flashcards, 1 pack of multiplication flashcards,1 pack of memory flashcards, UNO game, Dominoes, 50 beverage stirrers, 1 pack of construction paper, 10 huge poster boards, and 18 small poster boards. All of these things will be destroyed in the next couple on months. These things are torn apart by kids very fast. Without them, those 18,000 minutes would go less smooth.

Why having a smidge of OCD is helpful as a teacher

I have spent at least three hours on research or brainstorming. What is my attack plan? How will I teach my students for at least the first six weeks. If I make a game plan for 6 weeks by the end of my vacation I will be happy. Let me break this down for you. That is 30 days of planning, respectively. That is 550 minutes per week for every grade level. 550 for 5th. 550 for 6th. 550 for 7th. My experience is that the average child behind grade level has about a 20 minute attention span. Sometimes less. So mathematically I must divide those 550 minutes in 27.5 blocks of time to be effective. That is 27.5 activities, lessons, or chunks of information for each grade level in both ELA and History every week. I first and foremost must take into consideration that I have a plethora of different disabilities and multiple intelligences in my classes. I have autism, ADHD (of course I do and I will rant later about where I think ADHD comes from), learning disabilities of all kinds, and behavior problems. I have no idea what kind of day these kids have had when they get to me. The crazy thing is that I can plan. But, it is only a plan. I can be mildly OCD when making these plans. I can have my whole 330 minutes of instruction for the day completely planned out. And it could fall apart. There could be a fight, a plumbing problem and the whole school smells like poop, my instructional time interrupted by an administrator that has other plans that supersedes mine. Or worse, the kids don't get what I am trying to teach. There is a communication breakdown. This happens more than I would like it to. Sometimes there is a lack of background knowledge. I think they know all of there continents and then I find out they think Texas is a country. I think they know what a particular vocabulary word means and they have no clue what the definition in the dictionary means to describe the word. Sometimes my educational background is too high for them and they look at me like an alien. Sometimes I spend a week teaching something. Losing sleep because my OCD self is putting all the cutesy things into my lesson and they all fail the test. So after I spend all the OCD time planning. I must then become a flexible person that goes with the flow. I must learn to breathe and be ok with making planning mistakes. I must show the students that I take responsibility for not attacking the lesson plan in a way that helps them to understand what I am teaching. This can be all very taxing on the soul. But, I have finally learned after 8 years that planning is everything. It is 90 percent of my job and it doesn't happen at work, usually. It happens today. I have spent a few hours looking at websites getting ideas. I have spent money ordering books. I have yet to make a journey to the dollar store to pick up supplies. I have yet to create nifty ways of keeping my classroom in perfect order for those 1,650 minutes a week I must entertain middle school students. It is entertainment. I am the actress in the classroom. I am the ringleader. I am the motivator. The counselor. My shirt is perpetually covered in boogers from the middle school catastrophe that causes a cascade of tears and hugs from me. I am the enforcer. " No, you may not make fun of someone because they stink of body odor". And then I must inform the smelly student that wearing deodorant would prevent this situation all together. Then I tell all the students as I lift up my arm and smell my armpit that "Ew. Ms. Cormier stinks today. I even forgot to put my deodorant on". Everybody laughs and the smelly kid is off the hook. Planning. All week for the next 6 weeks. 18,900 minutes of educational perfection.

New Year's Resolution

I have a task at hand. I have a group of students I asked for. I asked for the "low-performing" kids. I asked for the behavior problems. I asked for the special needs. I asked for the kids not on grade level. I did it to push myself. I am going to make a story out of this. This will be my first real attempt at setting a goal as a teacher and making it there. I have been teaching 8 years and I think this now is the time to share the struggles and joys of teaching with my friends. How cliche does that sound? Here is the situation. I am a teacher at a first year charter school in a rural area in South Louisiana. It is not a normal middle school. We are open from 7:15 till 5:00 daily. We use block scheduling. The kids are super precious in their uniforms. It is a predominantly "black" school. I am the only "white" teacher. I feel I have had a course in multi-cultural relations since I started this job. Because it is the first year of this charter school there have been many hurdles to jump. First off, I have no textbooks. This has been the hardest thing to wrap my brain around. Text books have been a part of my life since 1985. We use IPAD's. Try teaching a class of 5th, 6th,and 7th graders with IPAD's. It completely blows any idea of classroom management out of the water. So I have to use IPAD's to teach middle school students for 110 minute block periods. I teach history and ELA. This task is very difficult. I have cried. I have come close to mental breakdown. I have thought about quitting. I have thought about becoming a secretary. I have been depressed over the lack of money I make for such an important job. But, something clicked recently. I will do this. I will succeed. My students will succeed. My resolution for the new year has always been "to write a great American novel". Not this year. This year I am dedicating my first 6 months to a group of students. A group of 5th graders. A group of 6th graders, and a group of 7th graders. They are going to have the best teacher on the face of the planet. I want you all to journey with me. Ask questions. Give feedback. Keep me honest. Make me write. .