Winter Benchmark Screening Time

Back to school this January has meant mid-year benchmark screening for the entire student body at Rural Charter School. While I don't exactly relish the role that tests play in our school year, I do appreciate the access to data that these assessments give us. I've gotten pretty used to administering the tests now and can see the overall structure of our school's RTI pyramid. Though there are always a few kids to worry over, the student body in general looks pretty good so far. The majority are at or above their grade level benchmarks and only a few in each class are in Tier 3. I'll spend the remainder of this week and all of next (which is only three days) wrapping up all the tests. I can't wait to get back into lessons with my students. Doing this sort of work is informative, is a crucial element to public schools in the NCLB era, and is great experience for me. I'd still rather be helping kids learn to read and spending time encouraging them to work hard.

Meanwhile, back in town at Favorite Elementary, I'm moving forward with the after school math classes. The principal there asked me to go to last night's school board meeting and share some of the work I and the other after school  teachers are doing. It's developing into a great program. Favorite Elementary is a Title 1 school with a large population of English Language Learners and a history of a shaky relationship with AYP. Thanks in part to an intervention program we did last year (which I was part of) we met AYP, but are still in the danger zone for a couple of small demographics. So this year the interventions are after school, and I like what I'm seeing. I'm able to spend 45 minutes to an hour with my students, and we have great conversations about strategies and skills that should help them in math in general and on their state assessments in particular. I'm glad my kids go to Favorite Elementary. I guess if we lived further out, I'd opt for Rural Charter though. That place is growing on me! In a nutshell, I really love my work. I'm grateful to be working, even if it's still not quite full time, and I just love the jobs. I feel so fortunate!

How I Spent My Winter Vacation

Well, I'm still not a full time employee of any one school (though I do manage to work approximately forty hour weeks between my three or so different gigs); this means I'm paid hourly and therefore am coming up $hort this month, what with that whole Christmas/oops: separation of church and state Winter Vacation thing. Not that I'm not loving it. In between the hacking cough, runny nose, achy head, and sore throat, I've managed to squeeze in some nicely spiked egg nog, some gift wrap tearing extravaganzas, and some mighty late mornings.

Of perhaps more interest (to myself, obviously, as no one reads this blog as far as I can tell) is the lesson planning I've been working on for math. I teach math interventions for first through eighth graders at Rural Charter School and in an after school program for third and fourth graders at Favorite Elementary. I've had my students take the easyCBM progress monitoring tests to get a handle on where the holes are. These came out this year from the University of Oregon and are aligned to the new Oregon math standards, which are in turn aligned to the NCTM common core standards. Bureaucratically this is tricky this year, but it's essentially a good idea to move to the common core. The tests the kids took can be pulled up in a usable report with details of what skills are lacking. I've been going through the reports for all my students at both schools and generating documents with areas of concern listed out. Then I can target their weaknesses with select activities and worksheets (yay!! worksheets! who doesn't love 'em? but it's what I do). My biggest complaints with this approach are that it's tedious to pull all the data for the twenty five or thirty kids I teach and that the management is a bit tricky when I've  got a group of students all doing different pages and all honestly needing my attention in order to pull it off. And by attention, I really mean that often that's the primary thing they need. When not given the option of spacing out, passing notes, or  otherwise picking answers willy nilly in order to just be done with it, my students tend to do well and to show improvement.

So I'm getting prepared both for Monday back at school and for this Friday evening, when we host our New Year's Eve party. We've done it enough times now to call it our Annual New Year;s Party. Better go get rested up for it while I can. In the meanwhile, I think I'll feast my eyes on my lovely 1965 retro My Favorite Careers Barbie (aka The Teacher with the "PhD in Fashion"). Check her out at the top of the post. Other than the horribly Not Sensible Shoes, she's pretty rad. Thanks Dave! Made my xmas cheerier!

Off to school I go

Getting really into the new year (and kids haven't even started yet). I even had another job interview yesterday and was offered the position, but I'm going to turn it down and stay with Rural Charter. (It was a preschool teacher job, with future expansion into kindergarten and, probably, other elementary grades as this new school grows into a full private elementary school. Not for me though- I'm a bit too immersed in my mission as a Title 1 teacher- and the pay is half what I make now, so it's not an option anyway. Great to get the offer though.)

So it looks like I'll be the intervention specialist and an instructional coach at Rural Charter. Not sure what exactly this will entail, but it looks like it will be things I've already been doing, like getting the new math standards out to all the teachers, and so on. Very interesting work, and hey- I'm up to 27+ hours a week, which unfortunately still looms large as a worry. I need about 50 hours, but whatever. With some tutoring and possibly an after school intervention deal at Favorite Urban Elementary, I'll be significantly closer to full time this year than last.

Got to get ready for work now. Today is the first meeting for the Title 1 transition team: we're going from Targeted Assistance to Schoolwide this year (as in, 2011-12 will be schoolwide) and have to jump through a ton of hoops along the way. This morning, hoop #1. Bring it on.

Summer's wrapping up. Time to look forward to September.

I've agreed to return to Rural Charter School and continue my Title 1 interventions. This year the job will be about 20 hours per week (last year it was 14) and the board was going to buy a reading curriculum, so lots of improvements. Frankly, I was looking for full time work, but those positions are few and far between around here.
One of my main hopes is that I can establish myself with a set classroom. This would improve the flow of students through the day's schedule immensely. Last year I sort of camped out in the director's office and then moved around the school, pulling kids out of their classes at the appointed times. This wasted a lot of time and the older ones (7th grade) often put on a big show of resisting coming with me. This is sort of understandable; if you don't feel great about being pulled out for extra help you're likely to try to resist. If you're 12 years old anyway. This year the school is adding 8th grade (so it's  now complete as a preK-8 school). I see even more of this silliness unless I change my methods. The school is housed in two converted houses, and space is at a premium. They're working on grants to convert and take possession of a third house on the property, but I don't expect it to be ready by September, or maybe not even this year. However, if I could stake a claim on even a small room, probably in the primary grades building, I could pretty much have the older students show up for our sessions on their own and I could get the younger ones from their classrooms across the hall or whatever without wasting any time. Then my transition time between sessions could be spent on work instead of on walking back and forth across the property.

I'm also hoping my 20 hours a week at the charter school can be condensed into three days, so that I can have two days for other work. This could bring my weekly schedule much closer to 40 hours. I may have an intervention gig at my own kids' Urban Public School, prepping students for their state assessments. If that's two full days a week, I'm in great shape. This scenario is basically how last spring semester went, only with more hours per day. I did about 5 hours at Rural, three days a week, and about 3 hours at Urban, twice a week. That added up to around half time, but spread out in such a way that it was pretty tricky to do any other work. If I do my 20 hours at Rural over 3 days and get two other 8 hour days at Urban, voila! I'm working full time! Still no benefits, but whatever. I'm going to push for this schedule. The Urban job likely won't start in September, but could be lined up to start in October. I think I'll contact the principal at Urban and propose this. It's based on an idea he presented to me back in May or June, and this would be a great solution both to my own income and career needs and, I think, to both schools' intervention needs.

The recession has thrown everything into a tizzy. I started grad school thinking that if I just applied myself and presented myself well to the powers that be, I'd be given at least a couple of job offers and my biggest dilemma would be choosing which grade level I wanted to teach. Then, while I was in school on my way toward my degree and  teaching license, everything went south and no one's retiring and the few teachers who do leave aren't being replaced and some are even getting RIF'ed and someone like me who's just entering her second year is pretty low on the totem pole. As a result, this blog has become much more about the job hunt and the economy and ohmygod how am I going to pay the bills than about education. Now that I'm somewhat at peace with the direction I'm headed for 2010-11, I will allow myself the luxury of talking for a minute about Actual Teaching. How novel!

I spent the month of July teaching summer school at Urban Public School. A caveat: I use the word urban rather loosely. I do not live in a big city. I live in a rural county; I'm in the downtown area (really downtown in a loft in a converted commercial building) of the town that is the county seat, and my kids' school (which I'm calling Urban Public School) is a few blocks away in the 'hood of our community. I like this and wouldn't have it any other way, but truly my town has a population of about 40,000 and is not contiguous with any other towns. It's the smallest place I've lived for more than about three months. It's not a big city. But within that context this is the most urban area of the whole county and we have a proportionate amount of the ills of most cities. Heck, I live directly next door to the local Gospel Rescue Mission- basically a soup kitchen and homeless shelter. I hear a lot of sirens. My daughters are familiar with gang graffiti. It's by no means a bad place, and I'm not going to make it out to be truly Inner City or anything.



The rest of the language arts block was spent reading The Lightning Thief to the class, with required brief written responses each day. Then during the second half of the month I brought in a dozen books from the public library on Greek mythology, and the students did a small written description and a portrait in markers and construction paper collage of their favorite character or  type of creature from the myths. We had quite a few Medusas. The draw of decapitation was too much to resist. Poseidon also loomed large. It was sort of an abbreviated version of Project Based Learning. We read some literature, did some research on pretty freely chosen subjects (any character they wanted was fine) and created a final presentation that was then put on public display at the district office. If I ever find myself with my own classroom of kids around this age I think I'll do a more in-depth version of this project. It was tons of fun, but the subject is so huge it would be better with more than a few hours worth of time.

All in all I was pleased with how the summer session went and how the kids responded to my lessons. It was really valuable.

Last week of state assessments. Finally.

I honestly came really close to falling asleep while proctoring a fifth grade reading test today. My job was to listen as the student read the selections aloud and occasionally tell her to "do her best" because I "know she can do it". ZZZZZ. At least when we proctor the math tests we do something, even if it is just to read the questions and the multiple choice answers to the kids.

Did I mention I'm looking forward to having my very own classroom and not having such a focus on tests?

The good news is that a lot of the kids I've sat with for their tests have passed! Most, in fact. And this is the last week for testing, so for good or for ill it'll be over soon. Sigh.

Yes, the middle school job looks very appealing. Actually it's not technically middle school, since it's multiple subjects in a self contained classroom. Regardless, the students and the curriculum are really appealing. I've started stocking up on Nancie Atwell and thinking about standards and units and all the writing we'll have to do. I'm hoping it does in fact pan out- the school has a board of directors (charter school) who asked me if I'd take the position but who also haven't officially signed off on anyone's jobs for next year or the budget. That's probably happening next month. All the teachers (all 4 of them, 5 including me) are crossing their fingers while waiting for the Official Word. But I'd be surprised if staffing changed at all other than, of course, me moving into a classroom and someone new filling the Title 1 interventions position. I'm wrapping up the school year by assembling reading intervention program samples that the board could consider adopting for next year. I like Reading Success from SRA. It meets the federal guidelines of being a research based program, it's fairly inexpensive (I think it can be bought with this little school's little Title 1 fund), and it's designed for 3- 30  minute sessions per week which is in keeping with the most likely schedule of the interventionist. At least it's what my schedule has been this year. And it includes levels for older kids (grades 4-8) who are struggling with comprehension and a little bit with decoding. Anyone have any thoughts on this program? It might not be fabulously satisfying work, as it's strictly direct instruction (as far as I can tell), but it's probably user friendly and will probably work well for RtI. The school really needs to adopt materials for next year!

Working on reading and math interventions

Things have gotten underway in my new job. I'm doing small group interventions for reading and math at a rural charter school. The whole school is only about 55 or 60 kids, and my groups are all four or fewer students at a time. The challenge (for now) is streamlining my curriculum. I'm working with five different levels for reading, and using as many different programs! There's a fair amount of prep involved on the front end to get this all figured out, but I feel like I have something coherent and relevant for each group now. The littlest ones are using Touch Phonics to review and incorporate some remedial phonics skills. The next level is using a Sight Words and Syllabication system. The next two levels of intermediate students are reading short high interest nonfiction passages and being tested for comprehension. I think I'll soon be adding Dolch word drills to their work as well. And with the oldest students we're timing their reading speed on short passages, repeating three times per passage, and charting the results on nice little graphs. They seem pleased in spite of themselves to see the improvements they make each time.

This is all a great learning experience for me. I have to deal with such a huge age range (7 to 13) that my classroom management skills are tested daily. But I'm loving the challenge and as I get to know the kids I think I'm doing a better and better job. Tomorrow is an inservice day and they're sending me to a training for Renaissance Learning. I'm looking forward to it because their systems are widely used in our local districts and it will be good to know better how to use them, and because I think the Accelerated Math component could be useful for interventions. Plus it will be nice to sit and learn in that format for a day.

All in all it's going well.

2 jobs = more than twice as busy!

I've worked a week now with the (for now) real schedule. Three days a week I do academic intervention at the rural charter school about a half hour from home and the other two days I'm in my beloved kindergarten class. The new job is solely under Title 1 and has been mostly paperwork and assessments so far. The routine hasn't been quite set yet, so it's still a little hectic. I do feel like I'm learning good things through all the reading tests I've been administering! Each is a one-on-one session with a student and it's giving me a chance to get to know the kids a little and start crafting my strategies for the actual interventions once that really gets started. For example, I'm identifying who needs remedial phonics lessons (mainly 2nd graders) and who needs a fluency oriented curriculum (everyone else). The next challenge is going to be applying pre-approved, research based programs in an engaging way. I like the 1:1 ratio, but it won't stay that way. I'm most concerned about a very reluctant seventh grader who doesn't want to participate in anything. He's a challenge, but most of the other kids are pretty happy to be learning. My kindergarteners are great as always. It feels like coming home to go back in there on my Tuesdays and Thursdays. I really loved being there full time. I'm still adjusting to this new routine! Now I've got to go make up a homework packet for the week. This week we're learning the letter K!

OK. I'm back!

Curses. It's been nigh unto a month since I posted here. What have I done since the  middle of Winter Vacation? Well, we had a nice little New Year's Eve party that pretty much consumed my life for a number of days. You wouldn't probably guess it to look at me/my home/ my wardrobe, etc., but I am, according to a new self-help book from the library, a perfectionist. This doesn't mean I do things perfectly. It just means I expect myself to and get all bunched up if (OK, when) things don't go that way. But New Year's was fun; a couple dozen friends came, there was a LOT of food, kids watched Up and lit fireworks at midnight out in the snow. The weird building that's become our sort of loft apartment cleaned up pretty good, and I drank champagne.

School started back up with me working mornings and Official Teacher coming in from lunch on. There were some minor annoyances (homework folders neglected, books rearranged, a new penchant for boy lines and girl lines instead of one we're-all-one-class line) but the big stuff has been going OK. One poor little soul has been freaking out and "rearranging" the furniture (read: knocking over bookcases, throwing around little chalkboards, and generally resorting to the Civil Disobedience 101 method of physical noncompliance). He hates Official Teacher, hates her new rules, hates her as-yet undifferentiated methods. He's the brightest and academically most advanced kid in the class, but he's a total pill. He gets bored to the point of anger with tracing letters with a marker when he can already read. I've been pulling him out of groups the moment I see that little scowl forming around the eyes and giving him stacks of books and writing paper to use instead of the worksheets or magnetic letters the other kids are using. In addition to preventing meltdowns/ overturned crayon cases/ shredded papers, it gives him the challenge he needs.

 And I don't insist he hang up his jacket on a hanger. He can just wear it. He really doesn't seem to bathe often and he's pretty guarded, so just keep the jacket on and read about the New Dog or whatever, I say. But Official Teacher has these opinions about life skills that sound pretty, well, sound. The kids have regular plastic hangers and must hang up their jackets every time they come inside. Between having the manual dexterity of 5 year olds and the broken zippers and the crowd of bodies all trying to get to the jacket area at the same time, this little detail uses up a good 7 minutes every time we come inside. It drives me bonkers. I yearn for little hooks where hoods can just be shoved so the jacket's owner can high-tail it over to the story rug. Seriously, 7 minutes. By the time we're back to work, we've lost a ton of time. We come in from the outside at least 3 times every day. This is a ton of lost minutes, and I'm not convinced that this is a skill they really need. No other classroom uses hangers, for example. I just hate it. But hey, I'm not there to hate!

Report cards are coming up next week, so we've been working on our assessments. During the first week back from vacation, Official Teacher and I decided that I'd do the math portion and she'd do the language arts. I got started by the end of that week, and am now about 95% done with it. I'll finish on Monday, I expect. She didn't start until about a week later for some reason, so I'm concerned that we won't have data on Grade Prep day (this Friday). Ugh. I am getting paid to do a full day on prep day, so I can get all the report cards done and then maybe work on more prep.

Official Teacher has been talking a lot lately about wanting to work Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and have me come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If this is what ends up happening, we'll have a lot more planning to do because we'll need the week to flow consistently. Doing mornings and afternoons like we have been has meant that I do certain subjects and she does others, and if our own lesson plans are altered or extend to another day or whatever, it's fine. With someone else teaching the next day that will become problematic. And frustrating. So we'll have to plan together and stick to the plans so that it all makes sense from day to day. If this grade prep day goes like the last one, I'll be done with report cards early (maybe 10am) and we can focus on planning.

The other good thing about this possible schedule is that it fits perfectly with my new schedule for academic interventions at Little Charter School. I'll be there Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This would be extremely good. Actual work five days a week!

I met with the director of Little Charter School last Thursday and we discussed the schedule and the general program I'll need to do. I'm going to be paid out of Title I money, and it turns out they had enough of that to give me more hours than they originally expected. The pay is low by professional standards, but seriously. $20 per hour is not bad pay, even if it is only part time. I mean, one day of work a month and my phone bill is paid. One day and my electric bill is paid. This is certainly not bad pay. If I combine it with Tuesdays and Thursdays with my kindergarteners, I'll be very close to Making Enough. Wow.

Anyway, the interventions work will be challenging and very interesting. They have no curriculum or specific program in place due to some sort of personnel hullabaloo during the fall, so I get to establish a system from scratch. They prefer that I use a standardized program, something research based and established. They have a few different programs on hand, and next month they're sending me to a training on Renaissance Learning so I can institute Accelerated Reading and Math. This is exciting because I will be the house expert on these programs and will be able to use them as much as they are appropriate for my students. I think this will be helpful, especially for the math for which there is little in the way of materials so far at the school. Let's just hope that's not on a Tuesday or Thursday!

Well. I've been busy. In addition to all of this, I had two out of three daughters home sick this week with the pukeys. My husband and I are hatching plans for insulating our walls through an incentive from our natural gas company, and I've been working valiantly to Get Caught Up on laundry.  I go to bed Tired at night. But it's way better than being unemployed. Way better. I love this work. I just hope to continue to get enough of it that I can focus on pedagogy and stop fixating on money. So far the new year's shaping up pretty decent in that way. Who knows- at this rate I could be on contract by September!!!

job job job

I officially accepted the interventionist position. The only real drawback I can predict about it is that it's a bit of a drive from here, in the snow, uphill both ways. It's about 30 miles from my home, and I need to allow for at least 45 minutes to get there, especially in the snow and ice. And I have to call my husband each time I arrive at the school to let him know I got there OK (there are some notorious stretches of road along the way) and again when I'm on my way home. And I'll be doing it in the 20-something years old pickup truck with No Radio because he needs the Regular Car for in-town work and child chauffeuring. This will be difficult. I will have to Be Alone With My Thoughts for like two hours each day I go up there. Alone with my thoughts but unable to write down lists. Gonna have to fix the radio situation.

Anyway, I think it's going to be a good thing. If I thought teaching kindergarten on short notice was a challenge, how's intervention support for grades K-7 going to feel? I think it will be exciting. Reading is the main focus, but because of bureaucratic stuff it will be kept to less than half of my time there (probably hovering around 45%). For kids with tons of need in reading, I may be able to incorporate reading skills into some math work, as that will be around 45% of my time. Writing will likely round out the remaining 10%, and of course that's got some overlap with reading so it should be a system that can meet the kids' needs.

I want to start researching and preparing for this, but I'm not sure where to start. I don't know who the kids are, what they need, or what kind of work load I'm really looking at. I hope I can accomplish a  good deal of it within the alloted hours, as it doesn't appear I'll be paid for prep time. I'm already used to a lot of unpaid overtime, but when it's one's own (even temporary) classroom it's a little different. Then again, the director says I'll be free to craft my own program, and I'm sure I'll have a designated work area if not classroom, so I'll come up with a workable system. If I can just capture that commute time for productive lesson planning somehow, it could be great. I can't see myself talking into a little recorder, and obviously writing in a lesson plan book is out. Any ideas on how to work while driving and not end up in a ditch?

OK, not exactly the end, but changey-changey

Today was the first day of our winter vacation. I about got "Merry Christmas"ed out by the end of Friday, but when in Rome...
     Anyway, I'm hoping to do very little work in the classroom over the break. I'll have two weeks worth of lesson plans to write (from home) for reading and writing. And number corner (for the Bridges Math calendar and numeracy work that happens in "my" part of the schedule). After the break I'll be doing mornings for the first 2 weeks, and Official Teacher will probably take over full time after that. I know I'm repeating myself, but I'm sorting this all out and hoping it will come out looking like gainful employment soon!
     So today I got a call from the charter school I interviewed with back in the summer. (shameless self promotion: I heard from an acquaintance that they'd had around 200 applicants for the two positions. Making it to the Final Four is pretty awesome. If 200 is accurate. But still.) So the director of the school called me to offer me a part time position with them as an academic interventionist. This is sort of a reading and math specialist, but slightly altered because I don't have a reading certification. And no one with the certification is likely to want to work 10 hours a week. At a little little town half an hour from my already fairly small town. So anyway, they found a way to revise the job description so it's kosher to have any licensed teacher doing it, and then they called me. Cool, as far as I can tell.
     My husband and I are discussing this and sleeping on it before I respond to the offer. Though some guaranteed hours each week would be good, and the work itself would be great, we're hoping it wouldn't get in the way of my ability to accept subbing jobs, since I'd absolutely need them to survive! I'm kind of thinking that it would be a doable scenario, though, because the director said they could adjust my schedule as needed so that I could take sub jobs, provided I had enough notice.
     The job does sound interesting. It would involve working with small groups,  no more than four kids at a time, and focusing on reading and math. There would likely be a bit of writing in there too. The school is K-7 (probably adding 8 next year or the year after), so I'd work with a wide age range. I think it sounds really challenging and interesting, and I would pretty much get to design the curriculum. I kind of think I'd like it as long as I can cobble together enough other gigs to keep the bills paid. I'm off to google response to intervention. Crossing Fingers!

The end is near

Well, the day I knew all along would come, has come. It looks like I get one more week with my little kindergarteners, then winter vacation, then two weeks of half days while we "transition" Official Teacher back into the classroom, and then I sub. I substitute my ass off. I substitute like it's my calling, like it's the greatest way to spend the second semester. I sub like I'm so grateful for the wide ranging learning opportunity that is not knowing when you'll work a day and when you'll stay home trying to not fight with your spouse because you're both really worried about money and why did this whole go into debt to get the degree so you can NOT get a job thing sound like a good idea anyway? I'll sub. OK. I'll sub like I don't miss the class. My class. Like I don't miss making lesson plans and going to staff meetings and hanging up the poster for the Letter of the Week. I'll sub like there's no tomorrow.

Or maybe I'll teach preschool. Head Start (a wonderful and valuable program if ever there was one) is hiring. If the pay is approaching OK, maybe I'll do that instead of sub. Which of course would mean stepping out of the school district a little and maybe not being quite as well set up for getting a contract if anything does open up. ARGH!

At least everyone was nice to me. A few teachers and paraprofessionals privately told me they thought I was doing well and should be there for the whole year. The principal was nice; he said I'd be #1 on the sub list, and so would be called first any time one is needed. That could pan out well, but there are no guarantees. We don't know when someone will be out. I can't figure out what to do. One more week of being their teacher. Better make it a good one, even if I seem to want to cry about four or five times a day.

We are a Well Oiled Kindergarten Machine

So we start every morning in my kindergarten class with a routine of letter and number practice (with the kids all sitting on the rug, of course).

Disclaimer: Actually, we really begin the day by taking a trip through the cafeteria, grabbing take-out "food", trouping back to the extreme opposite side of the school (including climbing a staircase with food in hands-- no way to use handrails there!), setting down food, unpacking backpacks, stowing backpacks on backs of chairs, hanging up jackets (on hangers...ugh. Takes forever.), eating breakfast, wiping up spilled milk, opening those maddening little foil topped juice containers, pouring out unfinished drinks in the sink, stacking the paper "boats" all this glory came in, putting wrappers and unfinished food in the alotted trash bucket, setting the bucket in the hallway for easy pickup, and finally settling down on the rug for some learnin'. And I take attendance and occasionally wolf down a granola bar during this period.

Then the day begins for real. We have a calendar routine which is part of our math curriculum and which is pretty comprehensive. It includes, in addition to the expected purely calendar aspects, pattern recognition, counting and numeral recognition, some science, some art, and so on. Quite cool actually. Then we go into a fairly rote but useful alphabet and phonemic awareness routine. We focus on a different letter each week and review it and the rest of the letters, along with our growing word wall of high frequency words. After this we take a bathroom break and get ready for an hour of literacy center rotations.

Most of these exercises are designed for whole-group choral response. We've been doing this since the first week of school, with its current, revised and improved format since about a month in to the school year. Of course, I haven't always had full participation, or heard everyone in unison. But yesterday, the Kindergarten Goddes was smiling upon us. Everyone assembled at the appointed time, enthusiastically offered answers and predictions at the calendar, moved around the area (mostly) smoothly, and recited the admittedly rote material Perfectly and In Unison. Without me reciting along with them! I was so proud of the little monkeys scholars! And best of all, one of our building specialists (the speech & language pathologist) was there to observe it! I think we're getting somewhere with all this learnin' business.

Next up: progress reports. Then, start using the new digital projector. Which of course doesn't have its outlet wired yet, meaning I'll have to rig up an extension cord. But if I can get 28 kids to perform that well on their ABCs and so on, I can string a cord across the ceiling and down a wall of windows to get it plugged in. (We're back to 28. 3 days after Poor Little Ward of the State moved away, a new student arrived. He brings with him what appear to be good foundational skills, especially considering he doesn't speak English!)

Shiny new things for the classroom!

The good news: I'm getting a digital projector installed in my classroom tomorrow! (a Smart Board is "soon" to follow. read: sometime this school year).

The not as great (but ultimately insignificant news: we have to relocate to the computer lab for the day! I have to take a bunch of portable activities and squirmy kindergarteners out of our fortress of solitude and somehow teach them something in the process! 

I think we'll be taking periodic walks outside to burn off energy that can't be sustained around that expensive equipment.

Maybe with enough crayons (and the aforementioned exercise breaks) we'll have a good day. Hope so! 

Now I'm starting to think about things I can do with the new gear. Air PBS (or similar) video clips of phonics-related material? Make a class video (something with counting maybe?) My husband suggests collaborating with older classes to have them make Power Point presentations about the alphabet, or other appropriate stuff, for my class. It could then be easily shared with other classes, and the tech-centric teachers in the upper elementary grades could have good assignments for their kids in the process. So cool!

Losing Sleep

My little guy who's been moved around with one of his siblings was moved again yesterday. They called the classroom from the office telling me to send him down there after school. Later I found out that he and a sister were picked up there by DHS workers and taken to a new foster home outside of town. This time he won't stay at our school. I kept waking up last night thinking about him and his siblings; two of them are still with foster parent #1, while he and the one other sister have moved to #s 2 and now #3 just since the school year started. I don't know why they couldn't stay at #2, or why the siblings have been separated. We were holding steady for a while there, since they still all attended our school and could see each other a bit. I had all his sisters dropping into my classroom during the day, when their classes were at recess or just when their teachers OK'ed it. They'd sit with my little guy and work on his projects with him. He just glowed whenever they got together. Now I don't know what will happen to these kids. If I'd known they were sending him away, I'd have at least given him a hug on the way out. They must be so scared, and angry and lonely. It just makes me want to cry. In my delerium at 3 am I pondered the possibility of becoming a foster parent so I could just magically step in and make everything better for these kids. But now's not the time for that, and of course I  couldn't be his teacher and mom. I guess what it boils down to is that all I can do at this point is care, and that does very little.

Job security stress

I'm having such mixed emotions. I met with the principal and the teacher I'm subbing for Friday afternoon to talk about her coming in as a volunteer a few (as in, 4!) days a week so she can start flexing her muscles a bit in preparation for returning to the classroom. The accident left her with brain damage that is mainly showing itself as memory problems. Lots of them.

The negative feelings: I feel threatened. My space and my authority with the students will be undermined or even usurped. She might get all the way better and I may then lose the job altogether. I'll have someone looking over my shoulder, which doesn't always lend itself to my best performances. It'll be like being a student teacher again.

On the other hand, she'd a great woman with tons of experience She taught one of my daughters a few years ago. She wrote my letter of reference when I was applying to graduate school. It's so weird and not right to see her as an adversary. We will probably work well together and the kids will probably benefit. She's got a nice sounding Thanksgiving project in mind, which I'm more than happy to let her lead since, as I've mentioned here, I have no interest in diving into what I see as a can of worms in teaching that particular history. The curriculum for kindergarten is so simplified, though, that it ultimately doesn't much matter. She tends to have a generally multicultural approach to most everything in the classroom, so it'll be fine. I'd still like to do the gratitude tree though.

I suppose this volunteer thing will go one of two ways. Either she'll prove to be significantly on the mend and ready to return soon or it'll show her what is still too difficult. We briefly discussed the idea of a job share down the line if she is ready to return during this year, since the kids of course see me as their teacher and the work load might be manageable for her if it were shared. My bottom line would likely be affected by that, but it would sure be better than unemployment, or than regular subbing with the constant question of "will I get called?", not to mention the chaos of subbing all over all the time, with little consistency. God I want a contract! I can't help but think that the uncertainty of this situation will serve me well in the long run. Someone's got to retire eventually, and I should be able to step in when that happens. It's just so hard to stay upbeat some days, feeling like it could end anytime, and then what? I've got some serious bills to pay!

This is not a typical first year teaching experience. But it's not a typical economy either.

Sometimes hugs aren't enough

A few days ago I was monkeying around with this blog and I added the phrase "Phonics, counting, singing, and hugs in a Title I school" to the sidebar. I had hugs on the list because little people are all the time running up with waist-height hugs. It's sweet, and it's a perk of teaching primary grades. Yesterday I really had to put my hugging skills to the test, though. My little guy who was just moved to a second foster home broke down at the end of the day. It's been a couple of weeks since the move, and he's mostly been just a slightly bouncier version of his normal 5 year old self, but as we were preparing to leave school for the day I noticed him sitting with his chin on his desk, all red in the face. I sort of told the class to talk amongst themselves (they're quite good at that) and called him over. Before I knew it, he was curled up in my lap, sobbing that he missed his sisters (one was moved with him, two stayed behind). All I could do was hold him and whisper to him that it will be OK, that lots of people are on his side and making sure he's taken good care of, and so on. I hugged him like I hug my own daughters when they're sad: a real, solid, I'm not letting go kind of hug. Granted, my kids get upset about things like a skinned knee or a squabble over a toy or frustration over learning subtraction. This little guy has the world on his itty bitty shoulders. The irony is, all his sisters are in our school. It's just hard to pull them out of class to get them together. I'll track down their teachers today and see if we can do something. In the meantime, I'm a good hugger. And I've gotten good (thanks in large part to my husband's influence) at being consistent and reasonably strict with rules. I hope that can help the little guy, as well as the many many others in my class who are in stressful situations. We're a Title I school, and with high poverty tends to come a high level of stress for a lot of people. Sometimes it's heartbreaking, but I'm grateful for the chance to be a spark of positivity (and source of necessary skills and knowledge!) for so many kids.

In other news, I think for Thanksgiving I'll just do a kindergarten version of a Gratitude Tree that my mentor teacher did last year with 6th graders. I'll make some sort of tree image to go on the wall and the kids will give me quotes about things they're grateful for that I'll put on leaves. There. That's done!

What to do about Thanksgiving?

On the one hand, the holiday generally delights me. It's secular. It's focused on those most important 3 F's: family, friends, and food (my three favorite things, really). We're supposed to be with our loved ones and think about gratitude. Nothing wrong so far. Oh, and we get a little time off. Always nice.

On the other hand, the prospect of teaching about Thanksgiving and its history worries me. I'm not one to buy into the whole Earnest Pilgrims and Helpful Indians thing. Not without mentioning the smallpox or the complex and pervasive societies that predated said pilgrims. Not without mentioning Europeans' treachery and general ignorance. Not without some sort of caveats.

And these are kindergarten students, so most of that would be frankly inappropriate and difficult to understand.

And the district apparently has an official Teach Thanksgiving policy, though how specific this policy may be I don't yet know.

And a significant portion of my students are Native Americans. And I'm not. And this is a politically conservative community. And I'm not. AAAAArrrrggh.

We made hand print turkeys, though. Can we call it good?

In which a first-year teacher survives her first Parent Teacher Conferences!

Well, we did it. After two 12 to 13 hour days, parent-teacher conferences are done. OK, technically I had a few no-shows, so I should be wrapping it up after school next week, but still, Whew! I learned a few things. Don't forget to let the office know when your own daughters' conferences are, so rescheduled appointments don't get piled up at all the wrong times. Block out a dinner break. And just plain go more quickly. I went a long way past the allotted times, partly due to folks arriving late in the middle of the day, which snowballed into everything running late after that, and partly due to me wanting to explain every last item on the report cards to the parents. Granted, my speech got quicker and more precise as I went along, and I got good at writing key benchmark goals upside down as we sat across the table from each other, but still... shorter and sweeter would have been good.
More pertinent to the children's actual education: in an effort to include positive feedback for every child I may have ended up sugar coating the news in some cases. I had our building's instructional coach sitting in with me for a couple of conferences, and when the parents left she seemed amazed at how they didn't register that so many "needs improvement" marks really means their child isn't up to par.
Good news: after going through each report card in detail (after, of course, having created each one less than a week ago) I have a good idea of where the class stands, what skills are commonly lacking, and what I need to emphasize. In addition to the daily routines that are already in place for phonemic awareness and letter recognition, I'm going to have to set up small groups to work with a paraprofessional regularly to drill on letters and numbers. And colors and shapes in some cases. Sheesh. If the kids with the lowest skills would just participate, I think we'd see some growth.
More brainstorming will ensue. In the meantime, I have a three day weekend and I intend to only spend it with my family! There's storytime at the library to take the three year old to, some area rugs to haul upstairs in the interest of warming up the cold cold loft, maybe some real cooking to do... Sounds pretty good!

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Kindergarten

Starting a new school year with about two working days' advance notice and another two or three days of prep time is A Challenge. Doing it in kindergarten, where the clientele is squirmier, wigglier, and generally needier than is typical in other grades is a Super Learning Experience! Doing all this while still unpacking and living out of boxes from the Big Move is a bit much, but I digress.

Now, however, I've begun to hit my stride. I don't exactly have a year's worth (or even a semester) of lesson plans or anything, but I know my students, I can remember the daily routine, and we're getting familiar with the great mystery that is How School Works. We line up. We sit on the rug. We raise our hands, occasionally, when we have something to say. We even give passing recognition to Directions. Not bad for ten days of experience under our little belts. I've begun elaborating on the basic Reading and Math curricula and can start introducing some science and art. We did little handprint paintings that became a flower garden. I remembered to sing with them, and they liked it. I'm going to do a seed unit soon (something I spotted in a recent NSTA article). We're getting it!

Friday was so sweet (especially as it came on the heels of a decidedly sour Thursday). I was introducing the class to the idea of writing stories. They would be given a paper with space for a picture on top and three or so lines for their literary masterpieces below. I started with the overhead projector and modeled thinking through ideas, writing them down, and making a picture. Turns out probably none of the kids had seen an overhead projector before, and they were so blown away by watching me draw in one place and having it projected on the screen that they not only stopped goofing around, they actually burst into applause. I kid you not. They clapped for me. Granted, my picture of a princess and her new friend the monster was pretty awesome, but still... That plus the one little guy telling me my hair looked "cute" totally made up for Thursday. Which was draining and worrisome.

Long story short, I think I like kindergarten!

no news is good news

...and by that I don't mean that there's no good news! Just that the lack of posts here is because I've been working. A lot, actually. I just finished week two of a long term substitute job which is likely to last through the fall and could go longer than that. I'm starting the year for a kindergarten teacher who dropped her motorcycle in July and can't work yet. Though of course this is bad news for her, it's great for me. I'm learning a lot, working in an almost-mine classroom, and not stressing about the paycheck for now! Plus, it's at my kids' school, so I get to walk to work with the girls in the morning and see them a lot more during the day than I would otherwise.

Kindergarten is a wild experience. The kids came in in groups of six or so Monday through Thursday last week, and Friday was the first For Real day of school for them. It's amazing: I'm already able to assess a lot of their abilities and even personalities. Some are shy and just haven't warmed up yet, but others are already wild and crazy. Quite a few can't write a single letter, or write completely backwards. One obviously bright girl has serious stamina and perseverance issues. As in, she has none. Her inability to stay interested and on-task longer than it takes to write her Aa once or twice screams "TV watcher". Then there's the over-sharing, both from kids and parents. I've already heard all about a mother who was in jail, a father who's never around, a pit bull, unexpected pregnancy (that mom is 23 and already has four kids, with #5 on the way). The non-English speakers, the criers, the mommy-missers, the hypoglycemics and breakfast-skippers. I came home tired on Friday. Next week we're focusing on writing our names and identifying colors in English and espanol. Fortunately, the classroom came equipped with a number of books in Spanish, so I've been able to read a few to certain kids. This helps them feel more comfortable.

All in all, I'm loving the job. Since actual open teaching positions were few and far between this year, subbing is great and this gig is great great great. I love the school and I feel like I'm actually contributing to my community by being there.