Nerves, Nerves, Nerves: The day before the first day of school

Well, what a day.  Last day preparations and another schedule change (3rd one) and open house for students and parents.  Whew!  


There was so much to do, and really not enough time, definitely not enough energy, to do it all.  So, the first day will happen, and it won't be chaos, but it will be different than the schedule we made up.  


There are so many details that teachers have to think about--organizational details.  You don't even think much about the curriculum and lesson plans for the first few days, because your primary goal is to get the routines in place.  Plus, my team has a couple start of year activities that they do every year, so they don't have to think about things as much.  The activities are valuable, they are just very similar every year and all my team needs to know what the lesson is is a two or three-sentence description and poof, it's there, they know the materials they need, and done.  


I met some parents and students tonight.  It was kind of weird, because I didn't really know if I should go up and introduce myself to the parents or not, I kinda just hung out and observed, I clarified some things that people seemed confused on, but I didn't go up to parents actively.  Is that my role?  My master teacher stressed this word for my activities during September experience: observe, observe, observe.  I was not sure if that applied tonight or not, probably, but not too sure.  

I did get assigned by the principal and a Title I teacher to direct students to their teachers' classrooms, though.  During the BBQ part of the Open House BBQ, I was stationed at a table with school maps and class lists for all the grades, and parents and students came up to me to find out who their child's teacher was and where their classroom was.  Which is fine, but I don't know the geography of the school yet, so I had to just search for the teacher names and use the map to direct parents and kids.  Also, I don't know how to pronounce everyone's name and I don't know who is a Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. yet, either.  Good thing there was a staff member posted nearby to help me with that part.  It was fine.  

One challenge was that many of the students are ELL or their parents' native language is not English, so I didn't always know who to address my questions and explanations to: the parents or the kids.  Because you don't want to disrespect the parents, but you want the message to get communicated, so sometimes it's better to address the kid who does speak English pretty well rather than the parent.  Oh, one more difficulty with being stationed at a help table is that if you're there, parents ask you questions, questions I don't know the answer to, like these three:

1.  Can I get a class list of my kid's classmates?  I want to know who else is in his/her class.  (I said no, I cannot give you one, I am not authorized to do so.  Talk to the classroom teacher, maybe you can get it there.  I later found out that there is no handing out of class lists to parents because it just causes huffs and puffs that really don't need to happen)

2.  How/where do we sign up for school lunches?  (I answered talk to the people in the office.  The right answer, I later found out)

3.  Is there any way we can switch classes around, because these two boys are really good friends and might raise cain in the classroom if they are in the same class? (No idea how to answer that one.  I said you can discuss it with your children's teacher.)


4.  If my kid is walking for the first two weeks because he is doing crossing guard duty, what do I need to do? (No idea about the whole transportation management system.  I referred to my master teacher.)


Anyways, it was a busy busy day with lots of panic and nervous energy starting at about 2:30 since the BBQ started at 4:45.  Time for day 1 with kids.  We shall see how it goes. 

First day of school Tips

1. Just keep breathing
2. Be flexible
3. Drink water, lots of it
4. Plan more than you need but know and accept that you won't get to all of it
5. Go with the flow
6. Be ready to nip kid misbehavior in the bud because they are testing your boundaries from the very beginning
7. Be organized and ready to go with materials that you need laid out and easy to grab
8. Have your first few days schedule written out to nearly the exact minute with time spent on each activity clearly designated
9. Plan activities that keep kids busy and out of trouble while you take care of first day paperwork like really long attendance sheets and the lists of who is walking, who is bussing, and a myriad of other forms you have to deal with at the beginning.
10. Plan less-threatening activities, like don't require kids to do a lot of sharing, because they are nervous about their first day
11. Any materials you are not going to use, put them away out of sight so you don't feel overwhelmed
12. Even if you don't know how or what or why of things, act like you do
13. Give the kids a fresh start every year. It is helpful to know the red flag behavior problems and what other teachers have done to manage them, but that is it. And tell the kids it is a fresh start for them. Don't ask them about last year, ask them to think about what kind of student they want to be this year and start there, with what they want to achieve themselves in the 5th grade.

Teacher Interview, Part 2: Classroom arrangement

Throughout the school year, students are in cooperative groups with assigned jobs to group members and groups change periodically over the year, as does the exact table arrangement of the groups. There are a couple main reasons for this: one, all the learning in my team is inquiry-based, and true inquiry requires teams of students; two, arranging tables in groups allows for more floor space that the teacher, even in 5th grade, uses all the time. My master teacher likes to move her kids a lot in her class, just get them moving, because it is more fun for her and for them and it is a more effective way to learn for some of them and it is a GLAD strategy. GLAD strategies are a collection of strategies used to reach all learners, regardless of ability level or language proficiency or learning style.


Despite the nearly year-round groups, the teacher starts the school year with students in rows. Students remain in rows for the first week and half or two weeks of school, then the desks are put in groups. The reasons she starts out with rows include the following: one, it helps her to get to know the kids and who works well with whom; two, the teacher really needs all of her students' attention at the beginning of the year so she can get the routines and expectations clearly understood and established; three, being in rows is a safety zone for the new kids, the kids who just moved to this school from somewhere else--they are less likely to be singled out when students are in rows; four, having rows that all face the teacher sets the tone that the teacher is the boss of the class; five, students get to know the teacher first--they don't have to make efforts to get to know many others in the beginning, they just have to get to know the teacher--she thinks this makes it less overwhelming for the kids.


Pictures will be added later. Classroom is still a mess of planning.

Teacher Interview, Part 1: Classroom management

The classroom management plan at my 5th-grade placement is somewhat school-wide with some grade-specific adaptations. School-wide, behavior and academic management is based on a book called Inch and Miles: The Journey to Success by John Wooden. The Journey's ultimate goal is to achieve competitive greatness. The foundations of this pyramid are: industriousness, friendship, loyalty, cooperation, and integrity. Up the pyramid you have the attributes of self-control, alertness, initiative, and intentness; then you move up to achieving condition, skill, and team spirit, followed by poise and confidence, and then ultimately competitive greatness. Inch and Miles are a schoolwide program, and throughout the first part of the year, teachers are to focus on teaching two or three attributes or skills in the pyramid.

Also schoolwide is the code of conduct, and this code of conduct is maintained by daily monitoring of progress that students reflect on each day and parents are informed about. Different grades have different things that constitute warnings and how many warnings kids get before they have to do a refocus sheet in a refocus room (a buddy room--another teacher's room) and what behaviors constitute an immediate refocus or visit to the principal's office. In 5th grade, one missed homework assignment equals a warning, and once a kid has three warnings they have to do a refocus sheet. Each day at the end of the day, the 5th-graders reflect on what kind of day they had and they give themselves a color rating (green, yellow, or red) in their agenda/planner. Teachers walk around and discuss the rating, checking the management binder that travels with students to every class they go to, including specialists, and have a conversation with the student about what they did well or poorly that day. This planner goes home every night to be signed by parents, and if parents do not sign the planner, I think that constitutes a warning as well. Once a kid gets 2 or 3 warnings, they automatically have a yellow day, I think. I am still trying to figure out the subtleties, but that is kind of the essence of it.

Anyways, within the classroom(s) of 5th grade, all 5th grade teachers participate in Star Team, which is an extra motivator to the kids. If you are on Star Team, that means you are doing really well. You have to have a whole week of green days before you can be on Star Team, and if you have a single non-green day, you are off Star Team and start over. Star Team members also have the more powerful/cooler class jobs (class president, bell ringer, etc) and if you are not on Star Team, you won't have the "good" jobs. Also, after a kid has been on Star Team for 4 consecutive weeks, then they have the option of being the Star Student that week, meaning they get their pictures on a poster and get to bring in stuff to share about themselves. The teacher chooses the Star Student by drawing names from a hat of kids that have been on Star Team long enough to qualify.

The four core rules of the school and the classroom are: Be responsible, be respectful, be safe, and do your best (do your best is only the rule in 5th grade, it's an add-on to the three core schoolwide rules).

The rationale behind this complex management plan is that it works. It works because it requires student accountability, and many articles we have read in classes at UWB have shown that when students have greater ownership of their learning and behavior, they excel more. The plan also works because it builds confidence, it lets the kids that really deserve it shine, it does not single kids out because it is all done semi-privately, it makes them more aware and self-reflective about their own learning, and there is a positive twist to everything, and humans respond to positive better than negative, according to research.

Phew, this is hard!

I am having a very hard time keeping up with everything. There are so many different systems and routines built into the 5th-grade day and they are all managed, maybe micro-managed. How will I ever get them all down? Or is the best answer to just say, OK, well, I'll explicitly teach them these things, but if it does not work, I will not freak, because you know what, no matter how they get from Jane's class to Jean's class, they will most likely all get there in one piece with little sidetracking (hopefully). These are not kindergarteners, the classrooms are not that far apart, and they are very unlikely to get lost. The intentional sidetracking probably won't happen till later, and hopefully by then, I will have the system figured out so I can call the kids on it.

They will figure it out eventually. The hard thing is that you have to teach it to them, and in order to teach it to them, you have to understand all the complexities and nuances that are part of the classroom management plan for 5th grade. It is intensely organized. But legitimately so.

Another thing, how is it right for an administrator to be up talking about 10 and 2 strategy (you talk for 10, they talk independently for 2, then you bring them back), keeping exercise involved in the day because it is one of the Brain Rules, (from the book, Brain Rules) as is a stimulating environment with lots going on, and then proceed to talk at you for an hour or so with no exercise breaks or anything that follows the Brain Rules. Most teachers that I know are not used to sitting down listening for the whole day. They stand, they roam the classroom, they interact with students and teachers, and it is hard for them to focus for that long; they are not used to it.

Maybe that's just environmental educators who can't sit and listen for long, but I tell you, I never thought I was one of those kids who always needed to move until I went back to school after teaching students in informal education settings for 5 years or so. I am fidgety, I need to move, or talk a lot, one of the two. Is that OK for me as a teacher to be that way? Am I setting a bad model because I cannot sit and listen for longer than 20 minutes without massive bouts of fidgeting or raising my hand to share?

Questions, anxiety, and excitement

Questions I still have and what I still want to know:
I want to know if our education system is so focused on deficits in children (as a result of high-stakes testing and federal legislation that had to choose some definition for things) that it is unable to recognize multiple intelligences.  I also want to know what I as a teacher can do to look like I am cooperatively working within the deficit model system and at the same time ignore the deficits and seek multiple intelligences instead.  

Anxiety: How will I ever figure out the complex systems my team has in place for behavior management and academic success, and how will I go about recreating those in my classroom if my school culture is different or focuses on different basic rules.  I hope I am in a team situation, a collaborative school, because I honestly don't know if I can set up all that from scratch on my own without any support, guidance, or references.  

Excitement: I am excited to meet the kids and start seeing actual instruction, not just planning, because it is really hard to keep up with planning on my team, cause they have been working together for 3 or 4 years as a team and a teacher says one word and the other teachers know exactly what they are talking about.  They are amazing and laugh a lot and try hard to help me understand everything, but man do they go through it fast.  I am hoping it will all become clear once I see it in action with kids.  

Accepting imperfect or not my best

Something I learned:

I already knew this in a roundabout kind of way, but obvious statements by someone with authority and expertise inform me that I really don't know these things deep inside.  

Today, the obvious statement that came as a bit of a revelation was this: You cannot be the perfect wife, the perfect teacher, the perfect Mom, the perfect student, the perfect anything.  You have to be able to let things go.  When the laundry is piled up and your kids are demanding your attention and your husband needs your help fixing the sink in the kitchen, you have to be able to say "I can't handle this right now.  I'm going to go take some time for myself and then I'll come back and deal with it."  

I have not really practiced this faithfully, and I am a new wife (one year in 10 days) and still trying to be what I see as the perfect wife.  I have to let this go, because it is not going to happen this year.  I think I will have an even harder time letting go and abandoning chaos that is life to gain some space for me when I have kids.  I am mostly concerned about at home, though, not as much at work, but the whole work thing affects home life.  This next year may prove to be the hardest at that because I have been practicing as an overachieving student my whole life.  It is harder for me to tell myself, "OK, I don't have time to do my best, I just have to fill the square," (which you have to do in school sometimes, just fill the square) about school assignments than it is for me to try my best.  But I will not have the luxury of enough time to always do my best work at schoolwork.  Sorry profs, but that is the way it is.

But the obvious statement, "You just have to let the idea of perfect go.  Let things go," is somewhat of a new idea, though I have heard about letting things go to move on from emotional distress, being the sensitive person I am.  Somehow, I have to figure out how to let go of loading the dishwasher a certain way and planning our weekly menu perfectly and sticking to it and not turning in my best work so that I can get the sleep I need to be healthy and the most productive person I can be, or I will not make it over the 5-year teaching career hump, much less through the whole kid-raising thing when that comes around.  I will try.