A fresh start

This week was the first week of the new semester. What doest that mean?  Well, it means that, although I still teach the same kids, they have all moved to be in different class periods. I'm still trying to get used to the new dynamics (especially when you put "loud-student-from-period-1", "loud-student-from-period-5", and "loud-student-from-period-7" into the same class period. Yup, my new crazy class is 5th and 6th period because all my yapper students are condensed into those 2 class periods. I actually feel really bad once again for the good students. I had one girl come up to me and say, "Ms. Mayans, this class is so talkative. I don't know if I like it." It is so frustrating for me to see students robbing their peers of their opportunities to really learn and enjoy learning just because they can't seem to find the self control to stop talking.

Well, the change isn't all bad, and I love seeing my students interact with each other in new ways as they get comfortable with these new classes. This week we went over rules and procedures again, introduced prefixes and suffixes, and talked about the difference between fact an opinion in anticipation for our unit on persuasive/argumentative writing. I think it will be a very busy (and hopefully fun) term.

So another surprise came my way this week. My BYU professor, Dr. Coombs, sent me an email this week asking me if I would like to work with her and a few other new teachers on a proposal for NCTE. NCTE is the "National Council of Teachers of English" and they have a conference every year where teachers from across the country meet and teach each other the great things they have done in education. This year's theme is "(Re)Inventing the Future of English." Basically, my professor wanted us to talk about how we have taken a classic text that has been taught in classrooms for years and changed the way we have taught it so that it relates to our students better. Let me tell you, it was an exciting yet intimidating invitation to work on this proposal. Once again, I will admit that I went to Dr. Coombs' office and shed some tears as I told her how to felt like an impostor teacher and inadequate to the task. But I will also admit that I have an awesome mentor in Dr. Coombs and she helped calm my nerves and remember all of the good qualities I have as a new teacher. It is so hard for me, but I need to stop comparing my weaknesses to the strengths of others. Anyway, we brainstormed some ideas and wrote up the proposal with the other ladies who are participating. If our proposal is accepted, we will be presenting in the national conference in November in BOSTON! Woo hoo! It would be such a great experience. We will just have to wait and see what comes of it.

Finding Support Through My Many Freak-outs

I wrote the following on January 12th... and then I forgot about it. Sorry I didn't post it earlier

Yesterday was a tough day for me. I still had to come into work although none of the students came. It was an in-service preparation day because we have just finished term 2. I was comforted by the thought that I could come to school in sweats, but I was horrified by the fact that I had to drive in a Utah blizzard to get there.

Freak-out #1: So, leaving my house around 7:05, I began the perilous trek. There was so much snow on ground, snow on the roads, snow still falling from the sky, snow everywhere. The snow plows had yet to come clear the streets. I drove so slowly, yet I still could feel my car sliding from time to time. The freeway was especially scary since cars around me expected me to go faster than I was actually willing. The scariest moment of the whole thing was when I tapped my breaks while on the freeway and my car freaked out on me. I lost control and spun around a full 360 degrees before coming to a stop in the middle of the freeway. IT WAS SOOO SCARY! Luckily, there weren't any cars around me, and I spent the rest of the car ride to the school thanking Heavenly Father for protecting me. ....and then I got stuck in the snow right in front of the school parking lot. A few helpful souls helped push me out, but I didn't appreciate their judging scoffs at my not-made-for-snow car. Well, to end the morning, I finally parked my car, got inside the school, and burst into tears. :( What a stressful morning.

Freak-out #2: End of term means grades go out. Grades going out means that I look at a multitude of Ds and think, "What am I doing wrong!?" (I swear I had this exact same experience at the end of 1st term. Will I ever learn?). I had one class that had 13 Ds (I'm not even exaggerating here). It is hard to balance grades so that they reflect what students have truly learned and not just what they have or have not turned in. For example, most of these Ds were the cause of missing Articles of the Week and monthly Reading Logs. So, with tears gathering in my eyes, I rushed to a neighboring teacher to ask for advice. The tears did come as I told her of my predicament and asked her for advice. She suggested that I lower the worth of those assignments so that they not monopolize my grades so much. Instead of having a Reading Log be worth 50 points, she suggested that I lower it to 25 and see what that did to my grades. Her argument was that the students who turned in the Reading Log on time and got 50 out of 50 in the first place were probably already A students and the extra credit they would receive from getting 50 out of 25 points now wouldn't change the high grades very much. Well, I tried it out....AND IT WORKED! Yay! So, what did I learn? I learned that you need to make sure the points you assign your assignments balance each other out. A reading log should not be an unseemly amount of points compared to assignments you do in class where you see your students learning in the moment. It is a hard concept to actually put in practice, but at least that is one more freak-out that I can put behind me.

Starting a New Year!

I wasn't excited to come back to work, but my day was made so much better when I heard this:

Student: "I decided to write in Biblical language, Ms. Mayans." (then he begins to read his bell work about winter break, which was supposed to be written in 3rd person) "It came to pass that on the fourth hour of the 20th day of the 12th month of the 2012th year, there was a 13 year old boy named Jarom. Having a tummy ache, (and great was the ache thereof), he ran to the bathroom and spat food into the toilet. Nevertheless, Jarom did brush his teeth and went back unto his rest, and good was the rest thereof."

hahahahahah. I usually don't want to know about my students being sick, but this seriously made me cry, it was soooo funny!

To be honest, today wasn't the greatest day. It seemed that all of my classes were chatty and off task. We did some goal setting for the new year and upcoming new term, and we finished off the class period by reviewing some old stuff and reading a short story. I really didn't think my students would be in the correct mindset to learn something new, so we will wait a few days for that.

The final project for The Devil's Arithmetic is due on Friday, but some of my kids have already turned them in. THEY LOOK AMAZING!!!! Oh my gosh, I am so impressed and so proud!  Everyone who turned it in today got an A. I could tell they had really spent a lot of time and effort on these projects and they learned a lot. 

I now have to worry about planning my next unit plans. I need to teach argument writing, essay writing (5 paragraph essays), how to have discussions, The Outsiders, words for the spelling bee competition (coming up on February 7th), prefixes and suffixes,.... um, and I think that's it. That will last us a few months. I hope I survive! In addition to that, I also need to think about what I can do to prepare my students for the state testing in March. Even though I will never see the results, I want to help my kids do their best (and of course also demonstrate through their test scores that I am a decent teacher). So much to do, and the time just whizzes past.