Twas the Night Before School

and all through the apartment, the teacher was wondering where summer went.

Although it feels much much to early to be back at school, I've actually been moving into my new school for the past week and a half. My new school may be only 3 miles from my old one, but so far it's been a world of difference. We came back early for Professional Development sessions and have had hours in the afternoon available to work with the team and set up the classroom. I'm so excited to be in a professional environment that is supportive and encouraging of the teaching style I want to develop.

Take a peek in my room!

Welcome to Room 113!

This is probably the cleanest this will ever be...

Books! Look at all those books! My team has been so wonderful in passing along great texts for Read Alouds and for  independent reading. We still need books -- check out my donors choose project here http://www.donorschoose.org/ms.astrue

After 3 years of teaching, I'm able to repurpose materials from my old classroom setup. This will be my first time with tables instead of desks -- the cubbies used to be my shelves for Guided Reading. Yeah Target Itso brand for having interchangeable parts

I'm pretty nervous but excited. I've already met 3 of my students at Meet the Teacher night. My roster now currently has 17. 17! That's six fewer than last year. Trust me, that's a significant change. I'm going out of town this weekend to see 2 of my most favorite people in the world get married so I'm trying to get ready for the first day AND next week (tomorrow is like a soft opening -- half day and then return again on the 5th).

And now for the shameless plug. I currently have a project on Donors Choose and time is running out of time for funding! Check it out http://www.donorschoose.org/ms.astrue


Here's to hoping that the number 13 is lucky this year!

Keeping up with the Joneses

And we're officially back in business! Metro Nashville schools welcomed back almost 80,000 students on Thursday for the first day of school (albeit a half one at that). The week leading up to it was a blur of faculty meetings and room preparation, so much so that on Wednesday night I felt that familar "uh oh, what's tomorrow going to be like feeling?" that had disappeared over the summer.

Even as a second year teacher, there's a lot to keep track of. We have grown in size yet again! In the 2009-2010 school year, my school had about 260 kids enrolled. Last year, we hovered +/- about 10 from 500 for most of the year. On the first day of school this year, we had 650 students in the building with another 50 or so on the roll but who were not present (many people don't seem to understand that that first half day is so critical). The building itself looks the same, but the people within it look a bit different.

Changes thus far...

• A new principal. I cannot begin to describe how excited I am to be working under her. I think every conversation we had as a staff managed to find its way back to "How can we best help the students? What do we as teachers need to accomplish this?"
• An assistant principal! Numbers, not need, determine whether or not a school has an AP. Not only am I glad that responsibilities can be shared, I also have really enjoyed all my interactions with my AP
• Coaches--Last year, we had a Reading Coach. This year, we have a (new) Reading Coach, a Numeracy Coach, AND three additional Coaches on leave from their schools to come and provide support to the 46 untenured teachers.
• Inclusion -- this year, I will be co-teaching for 2 hours a day with our ELL teacher. I will also have another hour of the day where an Exceptional Ed teacher will be in the room. For someone who felt really alone in my room last year, the door this year is going to be pretty open with inclusion and 6 official observations.
• New staff! - We've grown in student enrollment to the point where we have 6 teachers on each grade level. It's been a challenge to try and remember names, faces, and assigned positions as we've welcomed people into the building over the course of the summer. It will be confusing -- we now have several Smiths and confusing number of Joneses working in the building (at least 4...)

I'm a bit nervous about this upcoming year because I know I will be challenged to push myself to make my kids more successful. Adding several experienced teachers to my team has made me really see how much work I have to do to become a better teacher.  However, this year I feel prepped with the tools at my school to make those changes. After a shoddy relationship with my PD this past year, I look forward to a much more effective and supportive relationship with my new MTLD (Talk about overwhelming changes. My school had a ton, and then TFA went and changed things on me!)

I'll save my thoughts on my new kids until I meet all of them on Monday, but here's a preview.

I have a feeling I will very quickly be obsessed with them :)

Ignore the mess behind the curtain

It's the day before school starts. As a kid, I was always super excited for the first day of school. Now that I'm a teacher, the feeling is a bit different. Perhaps, to be fair, it won't always feel like an all-encompassing fear and panic. It may just be that being a brand new teacher who's teaching in a building that still has construction workers in it isn't conducive to relaxation and eager anticipation. My room is set up, but a whole bunch of things have been shoved in drawers and cabinets until I can figure out what the heck they are and where things should actually go. (Pictures to come this weekend when I have a spare second to upload them)

The whole situation began to feel more real once I got my class list -- 14 boys, 11 girls. I felt my heart drop to my stomach when I looked at all those names. 25 sounds like a lot because it is, even by district standards. I've been issued most things in groups of 20 because that's the ideal size and up to 24 for some other things because that's supposed to be the max. I won't know how many kids will stick with me for a while, and last year the school had a 60 percent in/out rate. If you don't know what that means, don't worry -- I'm not entirely clear I get it when I stop to think about it. Basically, last year had lots of turnover.

I inherited some papers with background on (some of )the kids. I have at least 3 kids with special needs and 2 students who are ELL. Several students are medicated, and it looks like some others should be. I also got to see the kids reading scores. I got excited when I saw one of the first ones in the pile -- at a 44, the student was scored at a mid 4th grade level. Huzzah! Then I turned a few more sheets into the pile.

I have Sweet Pete in my class.

I had learned about Sweet Pete awhile ago when I first met with some of the teachers who knew the incoming 4th graders. I asked a teacher what the range looked like in the grade. As I can tell from my own scores, a majority of the kids are not on reading level. My own class average based on what info I have from their previous teachers puts them at late 2nd grade (24)

Sweet Pete has a 2. A generous 2. By the scale Nashville uses and after the summer away from books, I wouldn't be surprised if he tested back at a 0 which is where he was for most of last year. To be a 0-4 is to essentially be a non-reader. Which means if I am lucky, Sweet Pete will know his letters and what sound they make. Maybe.

I want to make my own conclusions about him, but I have a feeling he's going to be one of my biggest challenges. He is getting special resources, so I won't be the only one working with him, but I think I'm going to push myself emotionally to unrealistic places trying to get him to succeed and will be very invested. Not that it's a bad thing to do, but I realize that people more skilled than I have already been working with him for years.

And that is the achievement gap. I saw it this summer in Atlanta and now I'm getting glimpses of it here in Nashville. It's an intimidating to take it head on, but I feel like I have the confidence of so many people. My family. My friends. My TFA coworkers. Even my school coworkers who know I've never had my own class before have confidence in me.

My dad likes to wear casual clothes, so when he has to dress up for work, he says he's wearing his positions "costume". I have my teacher costume ready to go. We'll see how long it takes for the costume to feel like the real thing.

First Day of School: Failure?

Today was the first day that I got the chance to teach. I had my teacher voice, my teacher outfit, my lesson plan, and an activity to make math concepts more visual to students. My objective? Students will be able to do subtraction with regrouping (not across a zero). On the diagnostic, only one child mastered this objective out of 12. The one ELL kid who reads at a preschool level.

The start of the class was fine. The kids were tired after 100 minutes of reading, so we took a "brain break" (For those that will understand -- tomorrow, we will bacon sizzle) to get ready to switch to math. I started off with an example that I walked through, checking at each step for volunteers. I had several of the same volunteers over and over. Several people were NOT in a good mood after reading. I knew one student had been taken out of the classroom and brought back in time for math with me.

My class time was split oddly so that I had 20 minutes before lunch and 20 minutes after, which included the transition time in the hallway. While I initially though this would be a huge problem, it ended up being a bit of a god-send.

The Block Debacle

Since my lesson plan involved teaching with base-10 blocks, I thought I would introduce them before lunch and continue afterward. My class had been pretty good with directions (aside from some shouting out) until we got to the blocks. Each table had a set in their table bucket and while some kids had noticed them earlier, most of them did not until I said the disastrous phrase.

"Ok class. Today, we're going to use blocks to --"

I barely got past that line before kids had opened up the neat ziploc packages and dumped them all over the table. I tried to stop them, to get out my directions, but the fact that these were blocks AND they stacked together was like giving kids Legos. One table managed to somewhat follow directions, but you'd have thought that the other kids were at home in their rooms with the blocks making big castles and fortresses. Unfortunately, this meant that the kids who were trying to listen at those tables couldn't pay attention. This went on for longer than I care to admit to in a quantitative assessment.

And here's where the teacher voice came in. In summary, I said --

"Class, it is clear that we are not ready to work with blocks today. When we get back from lunch, there will be no blocks on the table for anyone."

I went on to include stuff about taking other peoples learning time, but I think they just shut off after I said no more blocks. A few people were rowdy on the way to lunch, and on the way back was worse. I soon discovered that one student had not been given her meds that morning for what I'm guessing is ADHD. We'd gotten a new student that morning that no one had seen before and sat him in what has to be the worst spot for him in the entire room.

For the second half of the class, I had the one good table try to model what we were doing. That worked somewhat better, but from now on I think I'm going to pass at the blocks.

The most frustrating part was that my assessment was too long and complicated for most of these kids. The ELL student got it all right, but then again she was the only one in the class who had gotten it on the diagnostic. I did notice some patterns in they're work, and it's such basic subtraction things that it almost made me cry. How on Earth was I supposed to teach regrouping if you can't even subtract 5-3?

But I keep telling myself that tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow's topic is similar, so we can do some review.

But NO BLOCKS.