Summer School rumination

It's funny. I think "rumination" comes from the same root as "ruminant" which is a cud-chewing mammal, like a cow or sheep. I've been chewing over a few ideas regarding my work right now, and you, dear reader, are the Oh So Lucky Recipient of my conclusions.

I started this blog as a class assignment in grad school and continued it, thinking it would be about lesson plans and great readings and cute things kids said at school. In reality, it's been more about my career in general, recession, the resulting lack of jobs, and the weirdness of working lots and lots of extremely part time jobs right after getting a *&%&*#@$% master's degree... but I digress. It's pretty much been about my own navel.

So, as I examine the aforementioned navel, I find that I tend to freak out a little sometimes. I was grading papers last night, after a lovely summer weekend spent largely not grading papers, and when I sat down to get to work I pretty much dissolved in tears over the ridiculousness of the scene. I felt a bit like a fraud; I don't know how I'm going to teach these kids what they need in four short weeks and I'm not being told I have to do any particular thing, so all I'm left is "professional judgement". I'm thoroughly enjoying every minute with my class, but I worry that they're not going to show improvement on the post tests. Not that I have serious reason to worry based on their performance thus far, I just worry in general. Just ask my dear husband.

This summer session is like a regular school year in microcosm. Assess. Instruct. Allow some free exploration. Instruct again. Assess (and hope like heck they've improved so a good statistic can be reported on a spreadsheet somewhere). I just hope it's being done well, and above all else that the kids are getting what they need. I do have an awfully good class, so I have reason for optimism.

Summer School!

Well, I spent the first month or so of summer break doing a combination of relaxing and stressing about my job prospects. It has been nice to stay up at night with my husband and the other grownups around here (we've had some house guests), sleep late, and of course to have more relaxed time with my daughters. Fortunately, though my work situation for the fall is still in limbo, I did have summer school to look forward to.

Said summer school started this week. I'm teaching the fourth grade, and I love it! I already knew many of the students, or at least recognized them. Most are from Favorite Elementary School, which is where classes are being held. Students from the whole district can attend, though, so there are some new faces. This summer session is targeting Title I, Migrant, and Title VII students; this means basically no change in demographics from the regular school year, so it feels just like home!

This is the first time I've taught summer school, and for starters I'm so grateful for the opportunity! I was lucky to be hired: the administrator running the show approached me about it during the spring and I immediately told her I'd been hoping to teach in the summer and would be thrilled to do it. As it turns out, those jobs were never even posted on the district's personnel site, so I doubt I would have had a chance if I hadn't already known and worked with Ms. Administrator.

From a professional standpoint, though, summer school is an interesting  opportunity. We have only 16 half days: four, four-day weeks. I have to do superquick assessments and dive in to targeted reading and math lessons as fast as possible. There's not a lot of time in which to make a difference for the kids, but on the other hand there's not the rigid, punitive air of the regular school year either. I want to show growth between pre- and post-tests, but what I choose to do and how I do it are largely left up to my professional judgement.

This is an interesting point. As a recap for readers who may not care to re-read my posts of the past two years, I got my master's degree and teaching license in the summer of 2009. I then entered the worst job market in memory (the Great Depression being outside most people's memories by now). I was fortunate to be hired as a long term substitute teacher, a gig that ended up lasting fully half of the school year (pretty great for subbing!) in one of my own daughters' former kindergarten classrooms. It was great. The second half of the year was spent rushing about between four part time jobs: Occasional Substitute, Title I Academic Interventionist for Rural Charter School (K-7), Math Interventionist for Favorite Elementary School (prepping students for their state assessments), and Tutor. Whew. All these jobs and still not more than 25 or 30 hours a week! But they were all in my field and what with the way the schedules and the travel time lined up there wasn't room for any other gigs.

So with my interventionist work, I was quite beholden to state and federal guidelines, and found myself administering a number of assessments and generally fitting students of all shapes into neat square boxes in order to satisfy said state and federal requirements (such as compliance with Title I or getting enough of them to pass their state assessment that the school would get out of AYP jail). While I have absolutely no complaints about the administrators with whom I worked last spring, and while I do feel they treated me respectfully and as a professional, the way I had to run my classes was entirely different than summer school. Did you wonder if I was going to bring it back around to my main topic? But yes, I did have a point!

Summer school is up to me. If the kids attend to my lessons, some improvement can be recorded, and we all have fun, then it is counted as successful. So week 1 for my 4th graders consisted of some pretests, a number of cursive and grammar exercises, math facts memorization, and some arts and crafts. And a lax attitude about how long recess should be. I'm used to developing plans more slowly, but now that we're 25% through, I feel that I know where we're going. I'm going to throw the decoding lessons out the window; it's all about comprehension. I'm going to back off on the worksheets on equivalent fractions or ratios and probability; we'll focus on the multiplication table and then probably drill on all basic facts, along with some online math games. The kids will do some silent reading, but most of that time will be used  by my read-aloud: The Lightning Thief. I hope to also share a whole bunch of books and graphic novels I picked up at the library on Greek Mythology as an extension of the read-aloud. And at the end of each week we'll do some art projects. Last week it was pop-up cards; I'd found a reading comprehension exercise where they read a page of instructions and then answer questions. Naturally I felt they should be able to actually make the cards. I think next week it'll be origami. This will require a lot of preparation, and the parapro and I will have to know what we're doing ahead of time. Maybe I can find animated how-to's on the internet. If I can incorporate some reading and written responses in the activity like with the pop-ups, that would be great.

I think I'm off to google origami now. And then a late afternoon iced coffee. Ahhh.

A little bitty good start

Next week I'll be teaching a fabulous science summer camp for elementary kids (and one of my own very favorite daughters will be attending). Today I got to go in and set up "my" classroom. This was no big deal, but the feeling of Control was sweet. I'll be one of four or so teachers, with three classes of kids rotating through our rooms each day. The camp has a full curriculum with pretty much all the supplies provided, so it's a great opportunity for running the show without having to invent the show. In my room the kids will be working in teams to construct "land sleds", along with other activities, leading up to a grand prix on Friday involving an obstacle course outside and water balloons. In fact, water balloons figure prominently throughout the week. Games involving throwing them and getting points for being driest will allow kids to buy gear for their sleds with the points. Note to self: don't wear white blouses next week. I'm sure to get hit at least once.

Meanwhile, Operation Move the Family of Five continues unabated. Right now I'm looking at my living room overflowing with those 5 gallon plastic storage tubs. There are around twenty of them filled with books, kids' stuff, and baking dishes. Oh, and my "office". I managed to go through an entire graduate degree program using the dining room table as my work space next to a weird bookshelf I built full full full of textbooks and binders. The dining room is smack in the traffic pattern for the house. It was not ideal. Literally the day after my last class, we started moving. Once the dust settles and we're all moved in I'll have my very own office and art studio suite. With doors. And no homework to do. Let's hope I get work and need to do lesson plans in there!

On a side note, I figured out how to review comments. Wow am I a modern gal. This had never come up before, but now I see that someone actually reads this and I'm not completely talking to myself. Which I've been fine with. I must say, it does add a little something to the blogging experience, knowing someone's reading. Thanks!

In keeping with the ongoing spirit of forced optimism I've been enforcing around here (here being my own head, of course) I'm proud to say that I did not shy away from finding out what the bleep was up with my recent student loan statement. A got this little paper in the mail, and though I've largely ignored them all year because nothing comes due until 6 months after graduation, I figured what with the graduating and all I should open this one. And it says I owe about $28,000 more than I was expecting. Oh, the emotional roller coaster. Oh, the wtf, the lost sleep, the "how do I break this to husband?". I added up the tuition estimates on my school's website, verified that my math wasn't crazy, and working against type I actually called the Direct Loan folks (that's federal student aid, for those lucky enough to not have incurred such debt). Turns out this was the one statement I should have ignored: sort of a typo-snafu resulted in bad info. It's all cool. And I love this administration. Thanks to the brand spankin new Income Contingent Repayment plan, I could be enjoying low low monthly payments of like $15 or $20 for ten years. Then, I believe, the remainder is likely to be wiped clean. Anyone out there, especially K-12 teachers, with federal Direct Loans: look into this. It made me go from freaking out to cool as a cucumber. OK, I'm a kind of hot, tired, and unemployed cucumber, but still. Finally some good news. I'll take what I can get from the stingy Good News Department.

summer at last

Classes ended on Thursday. I stayed up late and got up early so I could be done for real when the final class came; some papers could be turned in over the weekend, but I walked out of there for the last time and went to a family celebration with nothing left on my plate. My mom cooked some of my favorite comfort foods, my girls were ecstatic, and I ended up sleeping for twelve hours! It was heavenly. The next day, we started our move. We're moving about eight blocks down the street, into an amazing commercial building we just finally bought a week ago and are semi-renovating into a loft for the family upstairs and art studios, office, and workshop space on the main level. The thing's huge, I tell you. The girls were roller skating around the embarrassingly big living space while Dave and I cleaned up lots of dust and debris to get ready to move in. Until the county planning department signs off on it, we won't be officially living there, but we're getting ready as much as possible, and we took as much as we could down there today. So so so tired, but in a good way. Now I'm preparing to teach a week of science camp for elementary kids, back at the same school where I did my student teaching. And there was a promising interview earlier in the week for a teaching position at a really exciting school, so I'm hoping and waiting. So far so good for July!

This school year is coming to a close. Next week we're only in session three days, the following week four days, and that's all she wrote. Though I have a few weeks of course work to follow that before I get my pretty letters to stick after my name, it's safe to say the end is in sight. So, in the interest of adhering to the central theme of this Master of Arts in Teaching program (reflection, reflection, reflection), I thought I'd ponder the enduring understandings about the profession of teaching that I've gleaned this year.

Inside the classroom, my biggest focus is on classroom management, with general organization being a close second. I've found that when I'm on a roll with the kids and they're responding well to my instructions, amazingly we get a lot more learning in! When I came to the first grade right after spring break, on the heels of almost six months with sixth graders, it took me a while to get into the rhythm. Obviously, with such a large age gap, a lot of management techniques have to be different. Some things are the same, whether the students are first graders (or, I'm sure, preschoolers) or graduate students. We like to chat with our friends. What we're talking about and how we carry ourselves while doing it may look different at different ages, but a good teacher/ professor/ workshop leader acknowledges this and works with it instead of against it, using age- and setting-appropriate ways to pull every one's attention back to the task at hand.

In the beginning of the term I spent a lot of time (which felt like wasted time, though it had its educational merit for me and for the kids) just getting it quiet enough that I could move on to the next part of the lesson. Some days it was excruciating. Even while teaching my work sample, which overlapped with my full time takeover of the classroom for the student teaching requirements, I never had a whole day of attentiveness. I'm not expecting perfect silence, or everyone sitting in rows with hands folded and backs straight. It would be weird if six year olds never squirmed or giggled or picked their noses when the teacher's talking. Of course they will get off task. But I know that when I have developed enough gravitas and authority it will go more smoothly.

After a week of ups and downs, Friday was an especially up day. Previous days had included some especially squirelly behavior. This included a lot of running and sliding in the classroom, nasty words exchanged, tattling, and general jokey noisiness during instruction. There were some moments of successful first grade work, but I was so tired after each day.

Then we got to Friday. Sullen Malevolent Boy and Hyper Hateful boy were both absent. That left only Manic Rude Girl to stir the pot. The day was like a dream. They were still wiggly and excited because it was the Friday before a four day weekend, followed by only a few days remaining in the school year. We had practice for the class play. We made costumes. We watched the movie Babe to wrap up our big unit (actually from the amazing math curriculum!) on farms. We had a bike parade to wrap up our school's two-week Bike to School extravaganza. We even got to have our long awaited cups of ice cream to celebrate some good behavior points earned long long ago (which I noticed even the Jehovah's Witnesses accepted!). My mentor had to do one more formal observation of my teaching, so I led the math lesson of the day, and it went beautifully. Every last one of them was engaged, they were excited about finding as many different methods as possible to solve the "how many legs on three cows" story problems. A few of them spontaneously worked in pairs (actually worked, not just got together to avoid) and came up with creative and accurate answers. Then they all finished up more than we'd expected in the time allowed and sat on the rug reading. It was awesome. It was only later that I connected the aforementioned absences with the awesomeness that was my lesson, but I'll take what I can get. It was so nice to leave school for the long weekend with a sense of a job well done instead of wearily feeling like I need this break just to survive the rest of the year! Despite the providence of those absent fellows, I am feeling significantly more able and skilled when it comes to directing the kids and maintaining (or quickly regaining) appropriate order. I was thoroughly charmed all day long by the sweetness and enthusiasm and just general cuteness of these children. I felt like I'd finally gotten to the level of proficiency I'd reached around February with the sixth graders. Thank goodness!

Now, on to my four day weekend. Lots of sleeping in and hanging out with my own kids!

Feeling the love...

Yesterday was an absolute high point in the term. Most of my course work is done now for winter quarter, with only a couple of finishing touches left, so I'm completely focused on this great group of kids I've been working with, and who I'll be with only another week.

These sixth graders will spend a week in May at an outdoor school on the coast, which is of course a very big deal to them! No one with disciplinary problems or any Fs on their report cards can go, though, so a lot of attention has been paid to grades lately. I've been fielding hourly questions about their grades, working through lunches with our "math club" to get those kids boosted to a passing level, and generally been completely consumed with this room full of personalities.

My cooperating teacher, who's been out for a number of weeks recovering from a car accident, had arranged to swing by yesterday so we could sign a few papers and so she could see the kids for a bit. So I wasn't surprised when she showed up, but when she began instructing the class to stand and read clearly as they took turns sharing the cards they'd made, I was confused. What was she talking about? I'm with the class for about two thirds of every day, and I knew nothing. They sent me to sit on a desk at the front of the room, and one by one all twenty six students and my teacher read thank-you cards they'd made for me! The kids shared their favorite projects that we'd done together and said kids would really want to be in my class and that I'll make a good teacher! One sweetie sitting up front passed me a box of tissues, which was a good thing because I was a teary mess from the get go. I don't know how to describe how touching it was. A mother who volunteers with us every week gave me a quilted flag she'd sewn, with each student's name stitched onto the stripes, and the substitute teacher we've had for the past six weeks gave me a book on developing reading programs. Then my teacher gave me a beautiful big basket with instructions to put any especially great work from students, or letters from parents, or nice cards from kids into the basket over the years. This will be more than a memento stash: it will be a source of inspiration and comfort I can draw upon whenever the going gets tough. It now has a beautiful pile of colorful, handmade cards to remind me of the powerful experience this year has been.

I really love this class, and though I'm looking forward to working with the first graders when we get back from spring break, I'm going to miss these guys! They've taught me far more than I ever expected.