What's this about a teacher's short day?

There seems to be a misconception that a teacher has a short day because an official school day is usually 7 hours long.  Well, those 7 hours make up the students' day, but not the faculty's day.  I start my day at least 1/2 hour prior to the "official" start of school.  Actually, I have already checked my school email from home and dealt with some of the issues in them prior to leaving home.  I do not leave the school until about 45 minutes after the last bell.  I see students before school and after school to help them and to let them make up their tests and quizzes. 

Then, there is the grading.  Wednesday night was the open house for parents of current students to meet their children's teachers, so I really had no time to grade the homework I took up that day.  Hence, on Thursday night I stayed up an extra hour just to grade the waiting homework plus the quizzes I gave that day.  I plan for when I will grade work, so make up work is pushed to the end of my to-do list and may take some time for me to grade.  I usually do make up work on the weekends.

With the grading comes the responsibility of keeping an eye on which students need more than most.  I discovered in grading the quizzes that I have a student who will need extra effort on my part to help the student demonstrate the math skills he/she has learned.  That means more meetings with parents, the student, administration, etc. outside of the official school day.  Plus I need to make sure that that student's tests and quizzes allow the student to legitimately succeed.  I do not believe in false grades, but I do know that not everyone has good math logic abilities.  I'm so glad my art teachers didn't grade just on my ability to shade properly -- because I didn't shade at all usually -- but also included my best art skills, i.e. structure and form.  I try to remember that gift when teaching students who care and work hard to succeed.  They need to know that they have math skills, just not necessarily in the same way as their classmates.  St. Paul was right: we are all parts of the same body, but we each have different gifts to share in that common body. (My interpretation.)  Besides, nothing succeeds like personally-achieved success.  I have faith that this student will strive to achieve as much as possible in math when he/she knows what is possible.  I've seen it happen before.

After saying all that, I guess I lost track of my original subject, but I regained my incentive to be the best teacher I can be.

Snow Day!

I always liked snow days when I was a student. In my last year of college the governor even closed my school for a blizzard; that was the only time during my first degree stint in which I had a snow day. I guess it was fair since there were no snow days when I was a high school senior, the only year of my 1-12 schooling that I had no snow days to be off. Anyhow, today is an official snow day at my school, and that is the theme of today's blog.

Tom Batiuk put it right in his comic strip "Funky Winkerbean" when he had the teachers more enthused about a snow day than the students. Most teachers at my school really enjoy the occasional snow day -- the operant word being "occasional". Too many snow days makes education a difficult task because the students lose their focus. Back to the topic.

When I taught in the public schools, only teachers who had enough years in the public schools to have more "vacation" days than the school year allotted could stay home on snow days. Since I did not have those extra days, I had to risk my neck getting to the school at the normal start time. For those of you in private industry, like I was for 14 years, schools are unforgiving. If you're in private industry and know that you may have trouble getting to work, you call in and make adjustments. In the public school system, you basically cannot do that; you must be at the school at the usual start time -- when I was teaching in the public schools, my high schools started between 7:15 and 7:45 a.m. depending upon the system. It's a bit perilous driving into school when: (1) you are ahead of a lot of the snow plows in your area; and (2) there may not be anyone to open up the school for you (Yes, Virginia, most teachers do not have keys to their own places of work.). Thank God, that in my non-public school the faculty do not have to come to the school on snow days. The principal believes that we are professional enough to do our work at home. Considering how much of our work is on the internet, it's much easier to do schoolwork at home. (In fact, I have suggested that we have school on the internet on snow days when there are a lot of them. My suggestion has not been taken up as of yet.)

When I moved from the Pittsburgh area to the Southeast, I thought that people holed up when it snowed because they simply did not have enough experience driving in the snow. That's a little true (I had never lived in an area before where people did not know what studded tires were.). What's really true, though, is the fact that most snow down here is wet. Cars slide on the wet snow because it gives no traction. Then, it gets really cold, and that wet snow becomes ice with no cold, dry snow in between. Ice storms are an occasional problem here, too, with the loss of electricity. Of course, we do get the cold, dry snow also, but that is the exception, not the rule.

Hence, on our presidential inauguration day, I will be sitting at home watching the inauguration while grading papers. I hope that my students will be watching the inauguration, also, but that's an iffy hope. We had the okay from the principal to have our classroom monitors tuned to the inauguration prior to this week, but I would have missed much of it because the monitor faces the students and not the teacher. My suggestion for the future: either make every presidential inauguration Tuesday a school "holiday" or have a special school function to take it in by all students and staff. Just an idea.

Breaktime chores

I am about to write 2 recommendations for students that must be postmarked before January 1, 2009. I would say that I'm procrastinating, but recommendations require some serious thinking, at least for me, since I want to be honest and positive at the same time. In these 2 students' cases it's not a problem because they are good students who do well in their work. One I've had for 2 years, the other I've only had for this year. The latter asked me for a recommendation mainly because he is applying to my alma mater, and he thought it wouldn't hurt to get one from an alumna. I agree, especially since I've worked to get any student to look at my alma mater over my years of teaching, and he's the first one I hooked. It helps that about half of his family also went to the same university, but I like to think that I am such a good influence that he was drawn to that school. Now, if I can only convince the admissions people that he's a keeper.

After that I get to start grading projects that were due on the last day before Christmas break. I'm glad that I have such specific rubrics since they keep me honest and actually make it easy for me to grade them. I figure that will keep me busy for the remainder of this morning.

Homework Confessions

I am just sitting at my computer procrastinating as usual. It's usual in that I have a stack of homework, tests, and make up work to grade. I absolutely hate to grade homework! So I procrastinate since it is the homework that I need to grade the most.

I am trying some self-psychology at this point. I am reminding myself of how much better I feel whenever I am caught up in my grading. It is true that I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of me whenever I have all the grading done, but I still hate to do the grading. Hence, I procrastinate. Even writing this confession is a form of procrastination. Yet, I want my students to do everything in a timely fashion. I am such a hypocrite!

There is a reason why I hate to grade homework and classwork. In order to save the school money and myself time plus make the expense of buying the textbooks worth their while for the parents my homework assignments are usually out of the textbooks. This means that the students will put their work in various sheets of paper requiring some effort on my part to figure out what is what. I do require that all problems be numbered even if they were done out of order; I am not going to spend my time trying to figure out which answer goes to which problem. I also require that the student's name be on the first page of the homework, I allow my students to use my stapler in order to keep homework with more than 1 page together, and I take the "teacher's prerogative" of determining what different characters and words are if they are difficult to read -- I refuse to argue on those points because it is the student's responsibility to insure that his/her work is legible. Frankly, saving the school money by not making and copying worksheets is messy for me. I have fellow math teachers who are absolute fiends about copying worksheets partially to make the grading easier. With the economy the way that it is, I wonder how long they will be allowed to continue that.

Now, there is another way to deal with the said homework grading, and I have used it. It is to put the answers on the board and go around checking that the students did their work while they check their answers. It is faster, but the students learn to make marks that look like work when skimmed by the passing teacher when, in fact, they had done no work at all. I found that this method did not do much in the way of helping my students learn the subject. So I collect their homework and grade page by page .... and I procrastinate when it piles because I have not had time for it.

There is another way to deal with homework that is accumulating. That is to just chuck it in the trash without looking at it. I knew a principal who said that he gave daily quizzes when he taught and he would throw away occasionally ungraded quizzes when time was short. I do not give daily quizzes, so those I do grade, but I do trash some homework and classwork at times. The caveat for me is to check every piece of paper so that make up work does not get trashed also.

I do not have the same distaste for grading tests and quizzes that I do for homework, and there is a reason for that. My tests and quizzes are all done on photocopied sheets so they are not messy in form. It is much easier to go through them, so I usually do them rather quickly.

There is one other thing regarding how I grade both homework, tests, and quizzes. I mark every answer whether correct or incorrect. Correct gets a check mark, and incorrect gets circled. I also write notes and examples on their work so that I can do a little one-on-one in their work that gets returned to them. My intent is for them to learn no matter what; it is not just to "give" them a grade for their effort. (I have noticed that students "earn" an A, but they are "given" a D or worse. It is amazing how their viewpoints change about their work based upon their grade. I guess they do not realize yet that they are fooling no one, especially their teachers and parents, with their words.)

New teaching tip from old exceptional children's teachers

In the South, just about any amount of snow or ice on the road means either a snow day or a one-to-two hour delay or a one-to-two hour early dismissal. Well, for the first time in the 24 years that I have lived here, we had snow before Thanksgiving. Hence, on Friday we had a two hour delay to the start of school. Normally, that would not be a problem for me, but the math department was assigned Fridays for tests and major projects, and I had planned to give tests all day. I had already printed the tests for my first 3 math classes with the intent that they would take the better part of our usual 47 minute periods. What to do?

I did not want to completely reprint the tests since that would be a waste of paper, so I went through them and crossed off 4 problems, leaving 37 to do. In the first class, there were a lot of complaints about the lack of time and the students' desires to move the test to Monday. Knowing the principal's opinion of such an action, I said no to their request and had them start. At the end of class I had agreed to the following: those who wanted to finish their tests later in the day could, and the others' tests would be graded on what they already did with the caveat that each problem would be worth more. The students were satisfied, but I was not. I had 2 more classes taking the same test, so I needed to think quickly.

When the next class started, I told them that I decided to give them their tests one page at a time. They would do one page, hand it in, and receive the next page. That way if they did not finish within the shorter class, they could finish on Monday (As another math teacher pointed out early on Friday: we cannot give tests on Monday, but we can complete them then.). All but one student finished the entire test within the time allotted. That one student was upset because she had to do one page at a time, so she only worked on the first page. I assume that she had talked with students from the first class and believed that her class would get the same deal from me. I will not go back on my word for any particular class, but that does not mean that I have to offer the same to the remaining classes. Every teacher knows that one makes the most mistakes on the first class in the day of a particular subject, and I did that in this case. By the third class, everything was running smoothly for this test.

I learned this technique from our learning support/exceptional children/special education teachers. We have students with diagnosed requirements of extra time to take tests, so what our LS teachers do in those cases is give the tests one page at a time. That way the students do not know what's on the next page if they have to finish their tests later in the day. I offer this tip to all teachers who, like me, find themselves having to give an already printed test in a shorter time frame than originally planned. It works. Now, if I could only go back on my word to my first class ... ;-)

Of parents and teachers in high school

There is a major difference between the parents of students in "poor" public high schools and the parents of students in "well-to-do" public high schools and non-public schools. The difference is the accessibility of the parents to the teachers and the willingness on the part of the parents to show up at school functions in order to talk with their children's teachers.

When I taught in public high schools, I always seemed to be teaching in poor schools, the type considered to be schools of failure -- and with 4th year freshmen, i.e. 18-year-olds, some of them had really earned that title. I learned early on that the students who believed that their parents would never hear of their misbehaviors were the worst behaved in classes. We would have open houses for the parents, and I would be lucky to see one parent even though I taught mostly freshmen and sophomores. I did learn to call parents between 10 a.m. and noon on Saturdays because that was when parents were more likely to answer their phones rather than letting their children do so. I did have a few interesting situations because of this. The first one was when the mother said to me, "Well, what do you expect me to do about it? She treats me the same way!" At least, I tried in that case and had documentation of it. Another time I heard the mother turn around to her daughter and use the worst language in screaming at her daughter for making her receive a phone call from a teacher on a Saturday morning. In that case, I spoke to the girl privately later when we met between classes. I try to make it a rule never to say that what a parent does is wrong, but I kind of broke that rule then. I told the girl that most parents don't use profanity when talking with their children. The girl and I agreed from then on to work things out between us because I was never going to call that mother again.

Where I teach now, the parents are an integral and important part of the school community. Many of them volunteer to work in the office and other places. They seek out their children's teachers in order to speak with them. There are, of course, some "missing" parents, but they are the very small exception to the rule. Usually when I try to contact my students' parents, I have very little trouble finding them. Our open houses are full, both the ones for parents of current students and the ones for parents of potential students. I would say that the cost of a non-public education is the main reason for this, but my acquaintances who teach in well-to-do public schools see the same types of relationships, so out-of-pocket cost is not the only reason. There are parents who are vested in their children's education and those who are not. Now, if we could only get the unvested ones to be vested. Hmmm.

I close with a story told me by another teacher. The way that legislators look at public education and teachers is much like the idea of making dentists responsible for the state of their patients' teeth without taking into account how the different patients take care of their own teeth when not in the dentists' offices. Educating young people takes responsibility of all people involved in their lives, all the way from birth until high school graduation. In our society, that's very hard to do sometimes.

Of Group Work and Projects

Over the years I've learned not to pay too much attention to students complaining about the work they have to do when it comes to group work and projects. All I usually hear is the complaining until the end of the year when they may actually say that they really liked the group work and/or the projects. Sometimes I hear from their parents about how they came home all excited and talked about something they had done as part of a group or how proud they were of their projects. As I said, all I hear at the time is the whining and complaining because I make them continue on their merry way to an education.

The seniors returned from a week of internships on Monday -- one day of class followed by no school on Veterans Day. How to set the tone for getting back to work? I looked at my lesson plans from prior years for my functions and modeling classes and discovered that I had written 2 ways to teach an introductory lesson to power functions, i.e. functions of x^n . One way was lecture and demonstration on the overhead calculator. The other way was to have the students in groups take an exponent, create a table of values for x to the said exponent, plot the points, sketch the curve between the points, and answer some questions about what their final graph shows them. Each group would then present their graph and their findings to the class. All of this within a 47 minute class. I decided to go with the group work format because they would probably be more engaged with it than with the lecture. It was successful as far as that went, but I did spend much of each class walking among the groups to keep them on task while answering questions. The presentations were good considering the lack of planning time for the groups. Wrong answers were corrected with no embarrassment. They learned more than I could have taught them in a straight lecture even with the overhead calculator. Of course, it actually was more work for me in that classroom management is far easier with students sitting in straight rows being quiet, but I am teaching for their learning. If I wanted a quiet career just for the money, I would still be in private industry.

Simple ideas

I have been thinking about the drive to technology use in the schools, and whether it shortchanges the students' experiences in their learning. I give you a case in point. When I was first teaching, I took the opportunity of having a principal-trainee help me in designing more interesting lessons. I taught the lesson I designed to my third-period class, and he taught the lesson which he designed based upon my original lesson plan to my fourth-period class. What really impressed me about his version of my lesson was the use of construction paper learning materials. He had been an elementary-school teacher originally, but these were high school students. I had been warned in my education classes not to use things like construction paper, candy, stickers, or stamps with high school students because those things were too closely associated with elementary school children. The view was that high school students wanted to be treated more like adults and less like small children. I definitely threw that warning out of my teaching bag of tricks after my experience with the principal-trainee's lesson plan. Since then, I always have stickers, stamps, construction paper, art supplies, and occasionally candy in my classroom. Teenagers love them!

This all came to the forefront when I discovered from my lesson on Monday that my students could not seem to understand a basic algebraic concept from their prior algebra classes. After serious musing on how to reteach the lesson, I pulled out my bag of tricks. I created a PowerPoint slide show with animation and sound to demonstrate the concept in a different way. Then, I took out of my desk a set of envelopes with construction paper letters glued on them. I created these over 10 years ago, and they still work well. The letters on the outside represent variables (x, y, a, and b). They all have magnetic tape on the back so I can hang them on my metal white board. I put inside each of them an index card with a number or an algebraic expression written on it. In Tuesday's reteach, I started with the slide show which got my students looking at the concept in a different way, but it was when I had individual students come up and use my "variable envelopes" in equations that they really understood the concept. Hmm. Slide show was fun and funny, but it didn't quite make the connection for the students. Old construction paper variable envelopes were cheap and fun to use, and they did make the connection. By the way, the concept stuck with most of the students after that lesson.

This does not mean that I am against using technology in the schools. I use it every day. I was the one who got our school to have homework websites for every faculty member. It saves time for the faculty and allows students to keep up with their assignments and upcoming projects even when they are out sick. Our grading system is on the internet and keeps parents and students up-to-date with the students' progress. The English, history, and other departments in which students write papers and reports use an online service to check for plagarism and cheating . These are all very useful examples of school technology at its best. I just don't believe that technology should be one's first choice when writing lesson plans. Sometimes simple ideas work best.

Homecoming Week

Being that I teach in a non-public school, we have extra rules regarding dress and decorum ... and not just for the faculty and staff! Well, homecoming week knocks that down for a bit. Monday was pajama day with dire threats for students wearing negligees, babydolls, too short shorts, boxers, etc. Tuesday was celebrity day. I saw 2 John McCains, 1 Barak Obama, 3 Audrey Hepburns, and a bunch of characters and actors from shows I've never watched. I heard rumors of 1 Sara Palin but I missed her. Those political masks are very disturbing in their own way. Wednesday was tacky day. That's enough of a description for anyone. Thursday was decades day with each class having a decade assigned to it. Being the junior class moderator, I seriously considered wearing an old fringed leather vest from the 70's which was the juniors decade, but I realized that someone had to be the adult in the class. Friday was spirit day when students wore the school colors.

It was enjoyable except when the students would try to play around because they were out of standard dress code. For that reason, and my years of experience, I opted to dress very severely every day. At least I was taken seriously by my students in all my classes. My choices came in handy on Wednesday when I went down to the cafeteria to monitor the silent study hall during activity period with the students who chose not to join a club. I was not in the best of moods at that time because all faculty who had no clubs meeting were to be there helping with the study hall, but I was the only one there. I ended up talking with the principal about my need to have at least one other teacher due to the number of students. When the principal showed up with another teacher, I got kudos for my student management of getting them all facing the same way so they could not talk across the tables and having them silently working already. Severe looks can really help sometimes.

Friday we had too assemblies and I gave 4 tests in shortened periods. Plus I took someone's first period study hall. The class that followed the first assembly was so short that my students did not finish their tests. They will finish them on Monday since it was not their fault. Meanness and lack of fairness are not my forte in teaching. I had really wanted to go to the football that evening, but I was so tired from grading notebooks on the fly, grading computer science programs on the fly, administering and proctoring tests, running around like a chicken with my head cut off, and helping students and faculty, that when my son finished his work for the day, we headed home where I promptly fell asleep for about 2 hours. I'm still somewhat tired, but I plan on spending my afternoon in the arms of Morpheus. If I'm smart, I'll go to the late afternoon mass at one of the local Catholic churches so that I can rest up tomorrow morning, too.

I do love homecoming week, but this year it was purely exhausting. Next on the list is Backwards Homecoming during basketball season. At least I have a few months between then and now to catch up on my rest. ;-)

That One class

Every teacher knows that every class has its own personality, some ones have a lot more personality than others. This year due to my new slogan of "always use good manners in this classroom" and my personal mantra of "solemn and sober" I have my classes working well on most days. There is this one class, however ... the One class. It has 12 students, 8 of which I've had before when I was having problems with settling my classroom management all through the year. I have problems with that class even though I've used all of my bag of tricks. I think I know the students too well, or maybe I just like a lot of excitement in my life. On to this week's story.

I asked the dean of students Monday morning if we could meet and discuss my problems and possible solutions regarding this class after school. She agreed. During that class that day we had 2 fire drills in a row. In our school the students are to leave the classroom silently for any drill and remain silent until the all clear signal is given. The first time in the hall I was called out by the principal because my students were being noisy. 12 students? In a hall of several hundred? Very weird. Actually, I was very troubled by his admonition, so troubled that I could not bring myself to mention it to my family that night. I did try to see him later in the day, but he was too busy with the office staff out for training to see anyone for a non-crisis conversation. I did meet with the dean after school, and she said that she was coming to my classroom the next day to speak with my students. This was something unusual for me since I am still having trouble going from public to non-public school mode.

The next day I had already decided to change their assigned seating (a very quick way to achieve a few days of respite) and to continue working on making the lesson plans solid for the entire period. I asked the principal about his calling me out, and he told me that when he asked the noisiest students from where they were coming, they told him they were coming from my room. Ouch! I did note to him that I had already spoken to the dean prior to the fire drills about helping me with that very class, and he seemed pleased that I had started putting things right early in the year. The dean came to my classroom between class change. I had the new seating plan up for the students to see when they came. The dean raised cain with the class and told them that anytime I wrote them up for speaking out or acting up, she was going to give them Saturday detention for that week. They took her seriously, but we shall see. We shall see.

Short class week

One advantage of teaching is that the schools do create those in-service days so that we can earn our license renewal credits while the schools do not have to pay for substitutes. Hence, I taught for 3 days only this week. The students loved the idea of having a 4-day weekend, but I gave my Advanced Functions and Modeling students an assignment that will take longer than the usual half-hour assignment I give for school nights.



Why only a half hour? We do not use a block schedule (Thank God!), but our students have 7 classes a day -- some juniors and seniors give up their lunch to have 8 classes a day, so I do not give more than half an hour's worth of homework for one night on Monday through Thursday. Studies have shown that high school students tend to retain best when they have 2 hours total of homework (that's all subjects combined). Less than that, they retain less. More than that, they do not retain nor learn more. I do tell my students that if they are working on my homework Monday through Thursday nights and they hit 45 minutes, to stop right there and tell me about it the next day. Since my math classes are filled with students who have learning disabilities, I know that some of them will pay dearly for taking longer to do their work if I don't give them an out. I remember when one of my daughter's middle school teachers assigned 2 hours of work every night for each of the 2 subjects she taught my daughter, and I never want that to happen with my students. Weekends, however, are fair game for longer assignments.



I received an email on Thursday afternoon from a former AP Computer Science student who graduated last year and is in his freshman year of engineering. I have changed and italicized words and names to protect his privacy.

Hey Ms. D.,

I'm here at college and had some free time so I thought I'd see how things were with you at the high school.

I just wanted to also let you know how a few things in your class are coming back in classes I have now. I thought I'd tell you so when students ask when they'll use it, tell them I'm using it already, less than a month into college.

In my Engineering Exploration course (required of all freshman engineering students) we're doing flowcharting. Our third quiz will be almost solely on flowcharting and our first test will deal with it some. My next homework assignment is to create a flowchart to find the volume of a frustrum cone and return only certain values. I never did any flowcharting because I did independent Honors CS, but I know you teach it in the regular class. I haven't had to use any Java yet, but my professors have said that just a basic knowledge of Java will help when we touch on some other programming languages used more by engineers.

So, thanks for everything over the years.

Take care,

Your former student

Oops!

One thing that I learned in education classes was not to start on one track and then suddenly go to something else that I just remembered. I did that yesterday on this blog. I named it "Haunted School" because I was going to tell about some spooky stuff going on in my classroom, but I got sidetracked into talking about my normal school day. Oops! On to the original story.

In my morning classes over Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, my students and I heard thumping in the front outer wall corner. I originally said that it was the teacher next door because he was known for having his students do some rather noisy activities; that was Wednesday. When it started up again Thursday, I just walked over to his classroom and asked him about it, but he and his students had not done anything noisy. I knew that my classroom was over part of the library storage areas, so I spoke with the librarian during lunch. She said that there had been some students in the one area watching a DVD. "Ha!" I thought. That was Thursday. Come Friday, the same knocking started up again. I immediately called the library to see if there were students in that area again, but there were none. The librarian asked the technology coordinator and the maintenance supervisor. She discovered that the H/AC system was being worked on and that the pipes/vents in the walls above the storage areas were being affected. Hence, the knocking we heard (by this time she heard it too when she was in those areas).

Drat! I really was hoping for a ghost even though the school building is only 8 years old. It would have been fun, so to speak. Maybe we can have someone bang the pipes on the week before Halloween!

Haunted School

Due to the extremes of teaching, I have had no time yet to catch up on what's going on. We had the annual "back to school" night for parents of current students to follow their children's schedules and meet the teachers on Wednesday. I did not get home until 10 p.m. which may not sound bad until you know that I always get up between 5 and 6 a.m. on school days. So Thursday I was dragging all day like all the other teachers. The fact that I am an introvert and need a lot of alone time to energize myself does not help on days like that.

When I was in private industry, I could never understand why teachers complained about not having enough time. I was working 50-60 hours weeks a lot of the time, and I did not need more than 2 weeks vacation and a few holidays for any given year. Not really, but I believed that teachers had altogether too much time on their hands. I was so wrong. I get to the school as early as I can to get my day set up. This includes just mentally remembering which day it is and what each subject requires (yes, I use a planning book, but teaching to teenagers is not something most people do well on the fly -- organization is extremely important because in this day and time, one cannot leave one's students to take a quick trip to the restroom or copy a paper or just about anything). I need to take care of all personal needs, do any copying necessary for the day, set my room up for my first class, respond to parent calls and emails, help any students who come by, and go over my in-depth lesson plans for the day. That's just the regular before-school duties. When I was in a public school, the duties were worse.

Then the school day begins. Teaching and enforcing school policies are the 2 main duties of that time period. Teaching takes so much out of me that I make sure that I keep exercising in the evenings so that my energy level stays up with me. Another teacher swims every morning at 5:30 a.m. for her health and energy. We all have our ways to keep going amongst very energetic and enthusiastic young people. About once a month I have some type of lunch duty. This past week was lunch duty in the dining hall. It's not bad actually. I just have to help the administrator make sure that the students clean the tables before leaving lunch. In other schools I had to make sure that no one cut into lines (cause of many fights) or that no one tried to get into the rest of the school buildings. The one year that I taught at a middle school, I had lunch with my students every single day. I bow to all teachers who have that situation. They are saints in my mind. Next month I get lunch duty in the library for a week, mainly due to our current librarian's discomfort with trying to get parents to help her watch students during lunch. At least there I have a computer with which to work.

After school, there are meetings, helping students, answering calls and emails, copying more papers, doing anything else necessary for the next morning. If I remember, I make doctor, dental, whatever appointments before their offices close at 5. Last year, I chaperoned the senior class after school coffee shop twice a week. I also try to do some walking around the track with another teacher when we can get together; it gives us some exercise, time to talk with each other, and time to talk with students at practices. I strongly recommend walking around the school track after school for all those reasons. We leave the track refreshed and energized for the evening.

At home, I nap, then supper, followed by grading papers, lesson planning, exercising if time allows. After all that, blessed sleep.

I was so arrogant about the teaching profession when I was in private industry, and now I'm paying for it.

Week 2 Over

I finished the second week of teaching yesterday. It was my department's test day (Friday), so I gave 2 computer science tests. I do not recall having special departmental test days when I was a student, but this is the second school where I've taught that assigns specific weekly test days. The problem with math is the fact that it makes lesson planning awkward because I cannot test when I finish a section or chapter. I find myself making extra lessons to use so that the students do not forget what they've learned on their way to the test. I feel like I'm juggling oranges and have just added the spinning plates to my show. At least with Friday test days, I can grade the tests over the weekend and hand them back on Monday. I'm not always capable of grading tests overnight when the math test day comes earlier in the week.

The dress code for girls was drastically changed this year because they abused it so much last year. Only dress pants of tan or black non-denim, non-stretch, woven cloth with a collared and sleeved shirt tucked in. No camisoles showing, no layering of clothes, no open-toed footwear. On assembly dress days (i.e. church service days) only modest-length dresses or skirts with sleeved blouses plus nylons and dress shoes. Well, the clothing fight is on, so to speak. I talked with the dean of students regarding the slow movement off the code, and we agreed that I would warn the girls this week and write them up next week. Phil Gramm may have spoken about people complaining about the economy as "whiners", but these girls give whining a really bad name. Anyway, they've been warned .... as have the boys regarding their facial hair.

My "always use good manners" campaign in my classroom is working, so I currently have not started having problems with student behaviors except in my one class of 7 former students plus 4 new ones. My AP students, of whom I have had all before, are no problem because they are serious about their subject (serious geeks, you might say). One of my problem students had a note from his mother yesterday regarding her signing a required form for him. I do not doubt that she signed it, but where is it now. The student tells me that she gave it with his emergency forms to the front office. Since I had this student the prior 2 years in two other math subjects and since I still have my grade books from the same years, I think I'll look up whether he handed them in before or not. With 2 years experience of my expectations under his belt, he should have known to bring that form directly to me instead of having his mother hold it. Hmm. I'll add that to my to-do list for Monday.

The weekend is here, and it's time to relax.

What a difference 2 days can make!

We finally had rain ... severe thunderstorms ... wind ... rain ... lightening strikes ... rain ... and so on ... We are now on the other side of the isobar, and it is much, much cooler. There goes my sewing days for a while, but I did finish repairing our favorite comforter last night. (Our cat just came in, damp from outside. I wonder under what did she walk to get her fur so damp?)

I went to the school yesterday and discovered that my AP computer science students from last year did not pass the AP exam. Ouch! Teaching coding and concepts is the easy part. I've had trouble teaching the logic of certain structures that I find easy to understand myself; hence, the trip to the computer science workshop early this month. I needed someone else's eye to help me see what I could not. I have some great activities to center my students on the logic and structures. Also, they will be required to spend at least 3 extra hours a week in the computer lab outside of class. Plus they will be taking progressively harder practice exams every Friday. I intend to ram the learning down their throats, even if they really don't want it. After all, they chose to take the AP class, and they cannot drop it after the first week due to school policy.

This morning before and after my daily walk I will be working on something new to me: Alice programming language/system/?. I think I can use it to get the idea of object-oriented coding more entrenched into my AP students, plus I have an idea of how I can use it to create an animation to use in my math classes to entice more students into computer science for the following year. I just need to learn how to use it better. Of course, I still have the shirt waiting to be pinned and cut out, but that can hold off until later today.

Teacher Time Saved

On Friday I had my annual physical. I make sure that I get physicals, medical tests, etc. taken care of in the summer because it is such a hassle taking time off school as far as using a substitute goes. Since I teach math, there are very few substitutes I can get who can actually teach a lesson, so I have to create generic lesson plans that usually involve a lot of worksheets. I find that to be such a waste of teachable time. So much for the idea of teachers being out whenever they feel like it. Maybe I should have taken on history or some such subject. ;-)

I've been catching up on newspapers; I'm currently in the middle of March. I find it so amusing that politicians and others put the onus of students' learning on the teachers exclusively. It's like putting the dental health of patients entirely on the dentists' shoulders and ditto for doctors. As long as we have a cultural view that it is okay for students to do badly in science and math, we will never have major success in those areas across the board. Of course, we do have a president who takes pride in being a "C" student. That man shows me just what value a Harvard MBA does not have. End of sermon. I have some sewing to do.

3 Day Workshop

I came back Thursday evening from a 3-day workshop. Here are my notes that I kept whilst at the said workshop.

July 8, 2008

Here I sit in a college dorm in the Old South, taking part in an honored teacher summer tradition: the educational workshop/conference. This one has to do with teaching computer science, but, frankly, they all have a certain sameness to them. They take place in a college or university, the food is college institutional fare, each participant has his/her own dorm room with a shared bathroom, the dorm furniture looks like it comes from the same catalog. The main differences are in the subjects and the qualities of the workshops/conferences. The strange thing to me is the fact that I did not live in a dorm when I was in college, but now I seem to spend part of most summers living in one.

I write this on the laptop I borrowed from my high school for this workshop. I feel I should use it since I lugged it around all afternoon with me. (That’s the last time I’ll borrow a laptop without a shoulder strap!) I had asked prior to this workshop if I needed to bring a laptop, and the workshop contact said it was a good idea. Good idea, my foot! Since I have no wi-fi card on this machine, I cannot use it to connect to the internet. Next time, I will be leery of computer science workshops where the college is not supplying access in a lab. Other than that glitch, I am really enjoying this workshop which means that I am actually learning some new stuff that I can use in my teaching.

I spoke to my husband on our cell phone. We bought a “no-name” cell phone when we visited my mother during Easter break this spring because the hotel was having trouble with their new phone system. I do like the fact that I could tell him that I arrived safely when I got here today. That has always been a problem for me, even when I worked in private industry before the days of cell phones. My computer science students have always found it amazing that their CS teacher would not own a cell phone. I guess we finally made it to the 21st century now. Off to a shower and then a book. One nice trait about said cell phone: I programmed it to be my alarm clock for the night. Now, that is very useful add-on.

July 9, 2008

There is a major plus for me at this workshop: I am actually spending time outside of the workshop with others in the same workshop. I’ve usually ended up sharing a dorm apartment with others in different workshops – not a good thing for a world-class introvert like me. This eating, sleeping, etc. with people I see all day does help me keep from feeling isolated in the evenings. I have to remember that when I fill out my evaluation tomorrow.I got a lot more useful ideas today. My only fear is the fact that I tend to be very enthused when I leave these workshops and overplan what I can do during the school year. Now, planning too much on its own is not a bad thing, but in my zeal I do not do any of those new things well. I hope that I will remember to choose just a few new things for this year and plan them very well so that I have good successes instead of mediocre successes due to little planning.

Cheap Traveling

I have been out for about 2 weeks because my husband and I were camping up north while visiting my mother, other relatives, and some friends. We camp because we like it, but it doesn't hurt that it is cheap, especially since my husband gets the senior citizen discount of 10% off the cost. Actually, the hard work of camping is setting up and taking down our campsite. The rest of the time is pretty easy, and we can slow down so quickly.

No television? No problem. I read Truth plus jokes by Al Franken, 2006, and Rome Wasn't Burnt in One Day by Joe Scarborough, 2004. I find it interesting to see what others say about our political history when it is still rather recent. Aside: Franken's book was not as good as his book Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. I also read a few of Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer mysteries. In the way of e-books, since we have a tent ... on the ground ... with air mattresses and sleeping bags, I read Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Boroughs, Othello by William Shakespeare, and I started The Republic by Plato. It's much easier to read an e-book in a tent than reading a bound book by flashlight. I did not take any school stuff with me because I know that I will never touch it and that it will wear on my brain.

While we were visiting my mother, I worked on the tablecloth that I am embroidering for my daughter and son-in-law. Note to self: never again agree to embroider anything with so many satin stitches in it. It looks more beautiful as I finish each section, but it takes hours to do! Being a person who needs to move while talking, etc., I find knitting, stitching, working crosswords, etc. helps me center on the conversation. Okay. I do not listen so well when I work crosswords, but the rest is true. I wonder if I would have been labelled ADD when I was a student if I were in school now.

Sometimes a not-so-great notion ...

Let this serve as a warning to all student teachers, new teachers, and teachers-to-be. I am paying today with a check ($142.53) to cover my error in judgement when I decided to bring myself down to the level of my students.

I was walking to the computer lab when I stopped at the ministry office's student hangout to pick up some of my computer science students. One tried to hide behind the door, so I decided to play a prank on him. I enlisted the assistance of some of the other students, and we all pushed against the door. I thought that he would eventually give up and cry "uncle" after which we would all go on to the lab in a good mood. Instead, he pushed back by putting his elbows on the bottom frame of the window in the door, thereby breaking the window. Since I was the adult in charge, let alone the instigator of the situation, I offered to pay for the window. That's one prank that I will never repeat.

As an aside, I was amused by the response of my computer science students to my owning up to what I had done and to my freely offering to pay for the damage. In a public school I could understand their response of "why would you go out of your way to admit and make reparations when there were no other adults to witness your actions?" My school is a religious-backed school, though, so the students' view was surprising to me. The financial cost of my error is well worth it if I have been a good role model in the art of responsibility.

Faculty Freestore

Today is "Awards Day", the last day in which I give out underclassmen awards because I am resigning the math department chairmanship this year. It is also my last chance to add to my version of a "faculty freestore" for this year. Every year when the students clean out their lockers, they trash a lot of good 3-ring binders, unused looseleaf notebook paper, almost unused spiral notebooks, and other useful stuff. So I do some serious rag-and-boning -- dumpster diving is what my students call it -- to offer freebies to the faculty before they leave for the summer. I started this when I taught in the public schools but only for my own use. When I started at this private school I found that I ended up with far more than I could ever use in a year, so I began my annual faculty freestore event.

The English, religion, and history departments get most of the looseleaf paper because so many times students "forgot" to bring extra paper to class. The math department scarfs up most of the graph paper; I give the remaining graph paper to the science department. Textbooks in good shape go first to students in need, then to the departments. Same for reading books. Of course, there are the extras: pencils, pens, locker shelves, assorted other locker storage items, and the various plastic folders, etc. Every time we have a teacher new to the school, he/she is amazed at what is offered at the end of the school year. If all goes well, my students in their 24 minute classes today will help me set up the store so that I can have teachers pick up their supplies before leaving school today. Talk about practical recycling!