Uniform
Month: August 2018
Meetings and Homework
As a teacher, I've been in a number of meetings. I'm fortunate to say that I can't make a claim like, "Not a day goes by that I'm not in some meeting or another," but I suppose that's possible.
We have grade-level meetings every Friday. We sit around and talk about what's going well with the logistics of our grade -- moving from class to class, getting materials out of lockers, going to the bathroom, going to lunch, heading back from lunch, getting to related arts classes. All these things and a million more. We talk about students who are showing bad behavior in multiple classes and make a plan for dealing with the kid, hopefully with more positive outcomes for the kid than he is currently experiencing.
Every Tuesday we have professional development. We learn about new websites, new methodologies, new laws, new tools, new books, new paradigms. We go over how to accommodate children with mental and behavioral challenges in ways that are productive and in accordance with the documentation (IEPs/504s) in place for them.
Lately, we've been learning about the new way the district requires us to write our lesson plans. It's tempting to think that since the lesson plan is a tool primarily for the teacher that the district would allow a great deal of flexibility in this endeavor, but that would be a faulty assumption. Verbiage, formatting, pacing, sequencing -- all of this is decided for us. And when the district decides that it wants to make a change to this or that element of our lesson plans, we, as far as I know, have little to no input into the changes and are simply told, "This is how you do it now." Perhaps some select few teachers get to attend those meetings where such matters are decided, but I've never met anyone who's had a sense of having any input into these issues.
On altering Wednesdays after school, we have faculty and department meetings. These usually just turn into information-dissemination sessions, and I'm sure many participants find themselves thinking, "If you could just give me this in writing, I can read it on my own time." Sometimes department meetings provide professional development as well.
While sometimes there's a distinct feeling in the room that everyone would like to be doing something else (planning lessons? assessing student work? recording grades?), many of these meetings are indeed helpful. A large organization has to have meetings.
Today, however, I attended a first in my meeting-strewn career: we had a meeting about upcoming meetings. A meta-meeting.
Scout
Rainbow
The Boy discovered today that he could make his own rainbows.
First Friday
Somehow, we all survived the first week of school.
After School
First Day 2018
A lot of new things this year: first, we have homeroom classes for the first time since I’ve been teaching at this school, which is about eleven years now. The new schedule takes some of the time after lunch (or rather, all the time after lunch) and moves it to the beginning of the day. It’s odd: I have several students in my homeroom that I don’t teach at all for the rest of the day. Then I have two students in my homeroom class as well as one of my English I classes and my journalism class.
Another big change: I have not two but three English I Honors classes this year. That means about 80 well-adjusted, well-behaved, hard-working students, and that’s a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing for the obvious reasons: there will be few if any behavior issues, and they’re all fairly motivated. The curse is connected to this: they’ll almost all do their work, which means an increased workload. I control how many assignments I give, so I control my ultimate workload. Still, what I’ve done in the past works, and I’m inclined to do the same thing even if it means more work.
The kids had a good first day as well. E’s worries about school turned out to be for naught: he loves his teachers already, and this evening he declared that his school is surely the best school in the world. L’s worries about the uniform disappeared as soon as she saw everyone else in a uniform — she suddenly didn’t feel like she looked so stupid.
The Show Begins Tomorrow
The first day of a new school year is like the moment the curtain rises on a play that is often improvisational and responsive to the audience's reaction. Each year, I reinvent myself as a teacher a little bit, especially during those first days when I'm setting a tone for the year. Always looking for that sweet spot between commander-in-chief and coach, I waver between the "don't smile before Christmas" type of teacher and the warm-and-welcoming-almost-a-friend type of teacher. Neither is sufficient in and of itself, and I really like the coach mentality more than the authoritarian mentality, but kids will be kids, and sometimes, I have some really emotionally damaged students who add a whole new dimension and need that forceful approach -- if only for a second, like a splash of cold water to get their attention -- so I waver between the two in the beginning.
And yet it always depends on the class: some groups come in and I see immediately that Joey in the back is going to be a living terror if I don't make sure I set the right tone (which might not be the authoritarian despite the initial impression that he needs a "strong hand"); other groups come in and I see, though not immediately, that there aren't any students set on hijacking the class, and I breathe a bit easier. Still, that hint of "I can become the strictest, meanest teacher in the world if I need to" must be there, around the edges, because you never know what's going to happen in October when the honeymoon is over.
So the night before, I sit thinking about who exactly I'll become tomorrow. I know who I'll end up being: I have enough experience that I can get to the coach stage fairly quickly once I've established that I know how to drop the hammer, but those first few days -- I never really know.
The magic begins tomorrow, too. I'll see wave after wave of totally foreign faces and look at attendance sheets that are just a bunch of names, and by the end of the first quarter, I'll be able to predict how each student is going to react to a given assignment. By the end of the semester, I'll even know what words a given student might use.
Getting Ready
We’ve been getting ready — getting the Boy’s room ready for the reality that he’s a little boy and deserves a little boy’s room (as opposed to a hand-me-down toddler’s room, which he had), getting the Girl’s desk (and room, but mainly the desk) ready for the new school year and all the work that comes with being in middle school.
The room took 200% longer than we thought it would: instead of three days, it took ten. Through it all, the Girl helped like a real adult — very little fussing, very little complaining.
“L, come on — it’s time to work,” I would say, and she would simply reply, “Okay.”
Her desk looks as new as E’s room. She’d created a real mess of it — fingernail polish from playing, magic marker from art endeavors, and mysterious stains from who knows what. With the help of a paint scraper and a lot of muscle, she got it looking almost new.
“I had a couple of accidents,” she began explaining, and I thought she’d perhaps cut herself with the paint scraper, but in fact, she had simply removed a bit of the finish from the desk.
As should be the case, not all the work was work — some of it was quite fun.
Lake Jocassee, Addendum
The Boy took a few pictures during our last camping trip.
