Today was a good day...

Yea, I know it's still the honeymoon period when kids pretend to like you and try, but it was still a good day. The first week or so where I teach is kind of a loss because kids are moving in and out of your room so frequently that long term projects/homework is pretty much out. So today I was planning on doing some writing assessment. One of my fellow teachers had found this one online from New York State.

Prompt: Youʼve been in school for most of your life, so you know different teachers decorate their classrooms in different manners. Think of your ideal of the perfect classroom. Is it colorful? Does it have desks or tables? What does it look like? How does it smell? Are there any sounds in it? Write an essay describing your idea of the perfect classroom. Your teacher may even incorporate some of your ideas into the room!

Now if you fell asleep in your Fruit Loops I don't blame you. So after first period, I started to interject a bit of commentary into the prompt to get them to look at it in a different light.

Prompt: Youʼve been in school for most of your life (well duh!), so you know different teachers decorate their classrooms in different manners (gee, ya think?). Think of your ideal of the perfect classroom (who the heck wrote this sentence anyway?). Is it colorful? Does it have desks or tables? What does it look like? How does it smell?(please don't tell me how it smells!) Are there any sounds in it? Write an essay describing your idea of the perfect classroom. Your teacher may even incorporate some of your ideas into the room!

In addition to my commentary (yes I aced my sarcasm classes!), we talked about things that kids liked to see in the classroom and then expanded it to different classes such as auto shop, art, music and PE. I loved watching them write down ideas and then start their drafts. When asked how long to make it I told them to completely cover the material. What I hope is that when they write about what is interesting to them, the length will come naturally and so far, so good. Tomorrow we finish the drafts, do some peer reviews and then start the final draft.

Now it's your turn... What do you like to see in a classroom?

Update #1: Looks like I need to get me some bean bag chairs! And more lava lamps too! Amazing what happens when you give students options...

Taking part in the process

I'm sure that all of you have heard the mantra of "Contact your Senator etc." when you have issues with what they are doing. Today I did just that. While surfing on the web (and watching my son play Mater-National on the Wii, I found an easy way to contact our representatives and senators. So I decided to let my rep, Shelly Berkley, know how I felt about the health care plan currently in the house.

"I am writing to express my opposition to the health care plan currently put forth in the House of Representatives. I believe that it is nothing more than a government take over of the health care industry and will make things worse and not better. I am going to get to the point, if you vote for this bill not only will I not vote for you again, I will actively campaign to defeat you in every election until you leave office. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like to discuss this further. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

Sincerely,

Desert Art Guy"

Now I don't know if she is going to respond, since she supports is and I oppose it, but at least she knows that if she supports it, she loses my vote.

PS Here is the link in case you need it. http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

1 Week

Yep, one week until school starts and I am totally overwhelmed. Now I do have my classroom 90% set up and I've met many of the other English teachers at my new school. But I have no unit plans, no teacher edition of the writing book for my room and the novels we use to teach may or may not actually exist on campus. Add in the fact that I don't yet have the template for the lesson plans, roster sheets and only a vague idea of what stories I can teach (so I don't mess up the other English classes) and you can see why sleep has been fleeting.

It's not like I don't have lesson plans either, but they are not in the right format and not in anything that resembles units yet. I'm not sure if 1 week is going to be enough time to really get everything together for the first day of school.

One of those days

I had this great plan for the day and well, it didn't quite go as planned. My plan was to sleep in, work on my room and then go to McDonald's before heading home to relax with the kids. Yea, that was the plan anyway! My son woke up at 6:30 because he had a bad dream, they were waxing the floor at the school so I could not get anything done and so in reality we went to McDonald's and then went home where I entertained my son while my daughter played Wizard 101. So much for my plans. I also heard that CCSD has banned refrigerators in the classroom so I don't know if I'll be able to bring up my mini fridge after all. I may just bring it anyway and put it in an out of the way area. I see so many fridges in classrooms that it may be one of the things that is 'illegal' but ignored.

I did take the literature book and writing book home with me to look through yesterday. It looks like I may actually get some use out of it. It had some stories that I knew and liked such as "The Most Dangerous Game" and "Two Kinds". It's a good thing I have a short story elements worksheet that I took with me from my old school last year. All I have to do is change the name of the story and print it out. I won't do it every time but it's a good way to teach things like conflict, plot elements, and the like. I just hope that I will be able to teach some of my favorite stories like "A Jury of Her Peers" and "The Yellow Wallpaper". It depends on the rest of the 9th Grade English teachers though.

It will be kind of strange coordinating everything with other teachers when I was at the charter school I had total freedom, and when I was just a student teacher, coordination was something that I didn't have to worry about. I was just there to observe and learn.