Assessment time: round two

Most of my time is being spent on test preparation for kids who didn't pass the state assessment the first time around. As is the case all over the country, these tests are high stakes; in some cases it seems the stakes are higher for the schools than for the students themselves. Because these are mainly the kids who struggle at least a little more than others, it's sometimes dispiriting work. A lot of walls get put up so these kids can reject the whole process, the whole idea of school, before it can reject them by informing them that they don't meet benchmarks. I wonder what the future holds for some of these kids; most will eventually master these skills but a few will end up dropping out or barely making it through school. And then what? Young people have few enough options these days; kids who self-limit by blowing off scool end up with even fewer. If only their frontal lobes were developed enough for them to comprehend the impact today's actions and decisions will make.

I have to both coach kids who need more work on test taking skills and convince the reluctant participants that it really is a good idea to take these assessments seriously and actually do their best. I go home tired at the end of the day.

Lots of number crunching.... is this teaching?

As a part of my job as Title 1 interventionist, I am also serving as the Title 1 coordinator for the school. This is by no means an official job title. It's just that now I am assembling/writing the school's Targeted Assistance School Plan. Seems that the person who resigned and who I replaced had not really assembled this year's binder of plans, schedules, data, etc that make up this Plan. So now I'm working on it in addition to helping students. Overall I have to admit that I kind of enjoy the work. Not that I'd like to do just this all the time, but it's informative and a good counterpoint to the hands-on work with kids. I think it's good for educators to have some insight into the needs and responsibilities of administrators, kind of like I think everyone should hold at least one service job. Gives you perspective. I'm not an administrator, but working with some of this federal government paperwork does give me a broader perspective on the work I do in the classroom. I just wish more pencil pushers had a chance to see how their work impacts children. It's a good experience overall.

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?

One must steel oneself to work in at Title I school

I was just reading this post from Elementary, My Dear...

She mentions hurting for her students who are so impoverished that a foam snowflake is enough to make their day, seeing as how they'd otherwise have no gift at all. I can relate. My students (and my daughters' classmates, as they attend the same school) are a struggling lot. Homes filled with extended families or multiple families. Parents without jobs. Parents in jail. Older siblings and cousins in gangs. Parents who've lost these kids to foster care. (Some parents who perhaps should lose the kids as they're not doing a heck of a lot of active or healthy parenting, but I digress). Homes without heat, where the baby's formula freezes solid when you set it down for a half hour. Immigrant families who don't speak much English and are hoping for something to improve for their children. Hard working, underpaid families surviving through the food bank and thrift stores and pawn shops and food stamps and unemployment (for as long as it lasts) and the free clothes closet at the school and Operation School Bell. Dustboard furniture and chipped plates and dollar store barbies and no time or energy for checking the kids' homework folders or reading a bedtime story.

And local legislators are planning to vote against tax adjustments on the wealthiest that would not improve the schools' budgets but would just maintain them at their current too-low levels. Disgusting.

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.

Assessment time ... and holiday art?

Ten days to go, starting in about an hour, before winter break. Four days to administer assessments for progress reports. I sure hope a) I didn't forget anything critical from the 2nd quarter report card when I was writing up the assessment forms yesterday at my dining room table, and b) the little monkeys scholars can demonstrate more knowledge than last time they were formally assessed. I have a hunch they will; a bunch that started the year off in the "intensive" category from our DIBELS testing have shot right up to benchmark status in emergent reader skills, which is Very Promising. And of course there was Friday's awesomeness. General good learnin' all around. If only my little Bound to Repeat Kindergarten girl could wake up enough to understand that "cat" does not, in fact begin with /m/, nor do most of the other words I throw at her in our practice sessions. M was the very first letter of the week way back when, and it seems that it's never clicked for her that other sounds exist out there too. Breaking apart words into phonemic segments is weirdly challenging for kids this age, but Everyone Else in the Class has grasped it to some degree or another. Sigh. Upping her interventions so we can document all this in EBIS.

And if I can squeeze in two handprint calendar pages a day for the holiday craft/gift we're making, we will have it done in time to be all put together and sent home with the kids before the end of next week.  And we have the annual winter concert this week, with much disruption in the schedule. Oh, and I need to put up some sort of holiday crafty art thing in the hallway display area before Thursday. I'm thinking poinsettias made from red paper and maybe some glitter. Seasonal yet secular.

Woo Hoo! Monday here I come.