Looking back

Looking back on my second year teaching I can truly say I've grown a great deal on a professional and on a personal level. How?

1. I had a positive and productive relationship with my administrator
2. I was able to collaborate with colleagues
3. Colleagues were emotionally supportive
4. I loved most of my students
5. I focused on the things I could change
6. I focused on student growth in relation to our big goals
7. I earned a masters degree!
8. I was able to attend workshops for professional development
9. I've learned how to keep students engaged
10. My interactions with students are much more productive

Fun with conjugation

To lighten the mood during state testing, I am combining card games + mental math + conjugating verbs in Spanish. How? Our first game is 21 Blackjack. 

Students play the game in groups of 3's or 4's. After each round the winner doesn't have to conjugate any verbs, but the losers have to conjugate verbs based on the cards they have in their hand at the end of the round. Each suit (spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds) corresponds to a given verb, and each card value has an assigned subject pronoun. 

This is how it works

Global perspectives

How do I connect topics I am teaching to the real world?

One of our recent units was "la comida" - food. Food can either be very mundane and basic, or it can be unique and exciting. In order to make learning about food unique and exciting, one of the activities involved looking at an ordinary activity like grocery shopping from a local and global perspective. 

We compared grocery shopping the USA to grocery shopping in Venezuela.

Why did I choose Venezuela? Aside from it being a Spanish speaking country, Venezuela has a government and an economy that is very different from our own. On paper Venezuela has a republican form of government, but in reality the government has socialist tendencies and an economy that increasingly socialist with pockets of capitalist industries. What does grocery shopping have to do with socialism? In order to make necessities like toilet paper, flour, sugar, meat, and cornmeal affordable, the government subsidizes local farmers and manufacturers who supply government run supermarkets. This means that privately owned supermarkets do not have sufficient food or basic necessities. As a result, people are forced to shop at government run supermarkets. This sounds great except the government supermarkets are also low on supplies like beef, chicken, toilet paper, sugar, and flour. Why? The government subsidized farmers and manufacturers are not making a substantial profit by exclusively supplying government shops, so they only supply select items. 

Food shortages in Venezuela

What does this look like for the average consumer? People stand in line for up to 5 hours to get into the grocery store. Once they are in the grocery store there is no guarantee that they will find what they need. Some people wait weeks to get basics like toilet paper. My students' minds were blown at the thought of cueing up just to go grocery shopping. 

Toilet paper crisis

What was our classroom discussion like? We asked and answered some revealing questions. 

1. What is socialism and how is it different from our government?
2. What is supply and demand? How is this an issue in Venezuela's supermarkets?
3. How do we feel about necessities being available at a reduced price that everyone can afford regardless of occupation? 
4. What would happen to the EBT program if the USA adopted socialist policies?
5. What are some extremes we saw in the Venezuela supermarket crisis? How is this similar to and different from a trip to the supermarket in the United States?

The teaching and learning format for this lesson featured several video segments followed by open forum discussion on the issues presented in each video. At the end of class students answered reflection questions. 

My students will never look at grocery shopping the same way. 

Bread from heaven...

School has been canceled for 3 days. Why? Manna is falling...

Así es la vida

Talented students revisited

I'm always amazed at my students' creativity even if its completely misguided. 

Will this one get an office referral? Most likely. We don't condone violence.

Así es la vida...

When the teacher is away...

When the teacher is away, the students will play. A few weeks ago when I was absent from school one of my classes took this opportunity to wreak havoc. Things escalated from verbal threats to flipping desks.

The end result...a broken desk (that still hasn't been replaced) and in school suspension for one of the students involved.

Así es la vida...

Talented students

Students are such talented individuals. It's amazing how they will always find an outlet for their creativity.

 

Should I have written this kid up for drawing on his desk? Probably.

Así es la vida...

What's conjugation?

We learned how to modify verbs in Spanish depending on who we are talking about. 

If you still don't know how to conjugate present tense verbs that end in -ar after multiple modes of presentation, you are beyond the teacher's reach. 

1st try: visual + auditory

Check out the awesome video

2nd try: traditional (some people like the no frills approach)

3rd try: kinesthetic (you made a foldable on neon green paper and stapled it into your interactive notebook)

OUTSIDE

INSIDE

I don't remember Spanish being this exciting when I was in high school.

Kool-aid pickles?

Kool-Aid pickles (kool-aid +sugar + pickles) are quite the thing in the county as well as in many other places.

Kool-Aid pickle

During break time (snack time) the school sells things like sports drinks, chips, nachos, fruit snacks, and of course Kool-aid pickles. 

On one fine afternoon several young female scholars proceeded to do "unspeakable things" with said Kool-aid pickles in the bathroom, so the school no longer sells this southern delicacy during break time.

Our fearless leader was deeply moved by these events, so she decided to make a public service announcement at the start of classes the following day. She kindly informed the student body that "we are aspiring to acquire greatness, not sucking to acquire greatness." 

The struggle is real.

 

No sub, no problem

Here in the county many certified staff use all of their sick time and then some. The problem is that nobody likes calling out sick ahead of time, so the school is always scrambling to find a substitute at the last minute.

If we are especially fortunate, one of the bus drivers will stay on as a sub, but when lady luck is not on our side we push for more innovative methods.

Option 1: send the students to the gym so that 20+ kids can disrupt the gym class that already has 40ish students.

Option 2: send the students to the library so that the librarian can babysit 20+ kids with nothing to do.

On one such occasion when we resorted to option 1 (sending the kids to the gym), students used this opportunity to engage in "inappropriate activities" in the bathroom.

Such innovation, such preparation, such flexibility.

The struggle is real.

Enrichment?

The department chair decided that enrichment would be more effective if we allowed a few select students to run each classroom. These chosen elite would be the teachers delivering instruction and clearing up confusion in each classroom. Sounds awesome, but that's not how it worked out.

The students didn't respect their "peer teachers", so no "enrichment" took place. But no worries, we have a flawless plan in place. We will continue to run enrichment the same way for the rest of the year.

Here in the county we believe in continuing to beat the dead horse even when there are several signs telling us that there is no life remaining in the poor beast.

Well, I guess its easier to leave something broken instead of using precious resources to fix it.

The struggle is real.

CPR training...can someone help the nurse?

Sounds crazy, but this really happened. Our wonderful principal thought it would be in everyone's best interest to learn CPR and get certified. I also agree that learning CPR is pretty important especially when you work with children. So, we plunged into fall break with professional development ie. CPR training.

To speed up the process we broke off into groups of 4-5 people. My group finished demonstrating our mastery of CPR pretty early, so we sat back and watched the other groups in action. I noticed a middle aged woman seriously struggling to deliver the chest compressions and rescue breaths. I'm not the only one who noticed this because I saw other heads turn in see what was going on. Naturally, I was curious to find out who the poor woman was, so I asked my colleague sitting next to me. She leaned in close to my ear and whispered, "that's the nurse!"

I stared back at her with wide eyes. I couldn't believe it. My colleague noted my surprise and said, "girl, I'm dead serious, that's the nurse."I proceeded to shake my head in disbelief as my colleague then whispered, "if somebody passes out, you better say a prayer because the nurse can't help."

Apparently the CPR instructor noticed the struggle taking place, so she said, "can someone give this woman some assistance?" The look on her face was priceless when someone informed her that "this woman" was the school nurse for the school district.

Here in "the county" we have a long standing practice of hiring people who are under qualified and holding on to them even when there is evidence that the person is incapable of doing what the position requires.

The struggle is real.

....and I'm my own grandpa

Not really, but I am my own TST (teacher support team). Awesome students, not so awesome students, average students, failing students, students who have failed this class one or two times before, and students who just don't care; I deal with them all, I plan lessons to accommodate all of them, and I plan interventions to reach all of  my "diverse learners".

In the great state of <insert name here>, much like other states, we classify students based on tiers.

Tier 1 = typical students
Tier 2 = students at risk of failing
Tier 3 = students who have failed 2 or more classes in the past

Once a student gets to Tier 3, the TST, comprised of much smarter people than myself, is supposed to step in and plan awesome interventions that the teachers can implement in the classroom. In "The County" I am officially my own TST. Even though I document interventions and students' responses to intervention, nothing ever comes of it. It is amazing how progressive the education system is in the nether regions of our beloved country.

At the end of the day, If you are failing a class where there are 3 tests, 5 in class art projects, and 20 daily grades/classwork assignments, then you deserve to fail. Aside from the sheer quantity of assignments given in the first 9 weeks, I have used collaborative learning groups, learning through song, educational videos, and tons of graphics.

There comes a time when the blame slides off the teachers back and creeps up on the student. The blame then leaps onto the student and grabs him or her around the neck and clings tightly. That time is now. If Billy and Suzie choose not to complete assignments, it is not Ms. Smith's job to convince them that it would be in their best interest to make an effort to complete their work. If Billy and Suzie are absent more times than they are present, it is not Ms. Smith's job to hunt them down to give them 3-4 weeks worth of make-up work. Even when Ms. Smith goes above and beyond the call of duty to put together missing work for Billy and Suzie and she then tells them that they need to complete this extra work by <insert date here> to pass the class, it is not Ms. Smith's job to force Billy and Suzie to complete said make-up work and turn it in before grades are due.

The struggle is real