2 month Countdown!!

I cannot believe I am at the point in my life where I'm counting down to college graduation!! I just started, and I definitely am not mature enough to be responsible for myself! :)
With Spring Break over, I feel like we are officially on the downhill slide. There's not much left but interviews, job fairs, and waiting VERY patiently to find out where I will be next year! I can't wait to see where God is going to place me and what children I get to spend my days with!
I feel quite blessed already, so I am just anticipating a lot of awesome things to come in the near future.
With all of that said, I have lots of projects, research papers, lesson plans, etc. to finish for the year but I'll try to keep everyone updated!
I already have one phone interview lined up with Delay Middle School and have been invited to the invite-only job fairs of grapevine/colleyville, lewisville, and plano isd.

62 days and counting...

Who wouldn't want to hire me?!

After completing 7 school district applications, this whole "I'm gonna have a real job in less than 6 months" is really starting to get to me. I am getting anxious, excited, and incredibly stressed all at one time!

This was my journal from the first week back: It was an easy segway back into full teaching for the spring semester. I am a little worried about how to fit 5 weeks into the semester, so I am determined to just get them all done right away. We’ve already had 3 days of testing, a tornado drill, and have a fire drill planned for this next week. I also wanted to jump right back in because I love the unit that we are currently on. I love teaching about graphs and central tendencies. I taught this when I was a TA, so I liked the feeling that this wasn’t the first time that I have taught this subject before. I was able to bring ideas to our planning time that the other teachers hadn’t heard of before. (i.e. Range Dog!) On the day that I taught mean, median, mode, and range I had Range Dog playing as the students entered the room. It was awesome to see their reactions to the corny song! I think the best part was when I’d play it for them later and after it was over I’d say, “What was that? You want to hear it again?” They would all groan and say, “Noooo!” I loved that part of the day, and the students definitely are still humming it in the hallways. At the beginning of the week, many students got excited when they found out it was my week to teach. That always makes me feel good, when they want me to teach. I’m excited for this last semester of teaching, for the ctctm conference, for the opportunity to teach teachers the kaleidoscope lesson, and for my last semester with my middle school math family! 

This past week was a tad more interesting. I had my first gun scare. The gun has still yet to be found (a firearm sniffing dog searched our campus), but it put a lot of things back into perspective. I still teach in WacoISD and even though I'm teaching 6th grade this year.. they still have serious issues I have to be aware of.
Here was my journal from this week:
This was by far the scariest week I’ve had in middle school. This week proved to me I still have a lot to learn about schools and their policies. Once the mention of a “gun on campus” I would have thought the administrators would have at least told the teachers. By not telling us anything it seemed more like they were trying to hide things from us, and that is not how you build trust. During our faculty meeting one teacher said, “Reality is better than rumor,” and I agree with that one hundred percent. I would much rather receive an email saying this is what is going on than know nothing at all! I understand the aspect of not wanting to create a panic; but when it’s something that important, it’s a different story. To have root beer floats in the teacher lounge the next day just confirmed my feeling of an “oops, sorry for the mistake” attitude from the administrators. I want to be able to trust my administrators, but when it comes to illegal weapons I would rather error on the side of caution. From the whole experience, I just have a lot of questions. When is it appropriate to go into a lockdown? Or since they didn’t know where the gun was, should they go into a lockdown potentially locking a student in a class who has the gun? When should the teachers be notified about certain things on campus that effect a lot of people? It also came out in our faculty meeting that on Friday a kid brought a plastic, bb gun pistol with him and I had no idea that ever went on. If they have any suspicion of a kid, can they search him and his backpack? A lot of these may just be opinion/instinct calls, but it’s definitely one part of the school system that I am not aware of. I never would have thought, especially in 6th grade, I would be worrying about this, but it is a part of today’s society. I feel partly upset with myself for not knowing these procedures and not being aware of what should be going on (except for the fact that I’ve participated in 2 lockdown drills). But I learned on Wednesday it’s a lot different in reality, than in a drill.
While the events were scary, I think the worst part of it is the students weren’t scared at all. They are too young to know about Columbine or Fort Gibson, and they don’t understand the effects of bullying. They still think guns are cool and don’t understand how deadly they can be. I also think they can’t logically process the consequences of their actions and what shooting a person could potentially do. In a way, this is the most frightening part to me.

Moral of the story is - Who wouldn't want to hire me?!?!
I've had the pregnant girl, I've had the gang members, I've had the 17 year old 8th grader who's been convicted of attempted murder, I've broken up a fight in my classroom, and I've now had a gun on my campus. I have so much experience that I'm sure teachers who have been teaching for 10 years haven't experienced!! But I'm ready to show some principals what I've got and that I can deal with these type of kids, but I can also handle the middle-class white kids!! :)


Psalm 18:2 "The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.
He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold."

Soap Box

As my last full teach week approaches, I was writing a journal entry and it turned into a soap box time. I ended up apologizing for getting on my soap box, but not for the issue at hand. Here was my latest journal:

I am realizing just how much our kids are tested to death! This past week we decided we needed to test them over adding and subtracting fractions because it’s a huge part of the 6th grade. So we collaborate to make a 13 question test. I made a Jeopardy review game to go over all the concepts and still on test day I see 3/8 + 1/3 = 4/11! I just want to be like when have we EVER just added straight across! All of that is really besides my point though, back to testing. This week we have to administer the Unit 3 CScope test. It’s over fractions, decimals, order of operations, gcf, and lcm. It is a long test and we must have our kids complete scantrons for it now, which leads to setting aside 2 days for that testing. The very next week is the end of the 6 weeks, so we have the district 6 weeks test. That always takes 2 days. So for 3 weeks in a row now, my kids have been tested for a total of 5 days. That’s a whole week - 33% of my time is spent administering tests. This makes me want to only do in class projects, out of class projects, anything else besides a multiple choice, written test for my students’ major grades in my class. I feel like my time could be better put to use if we weren’t testing our students so much. I also don’t think this follows a very progressive learning mindset. Even if we are doing hands on activities to lead up to the tests, there’s still too much testing going on. It’s like they aren’t even giving us real time to teach. They want us just to shove everything in their faces so they can be ready for the next district test. Discovery learning takes time. You can’t tell a student they have to discover the concept of common denominators by 10:45 am when it’s 10:20. I know scores are important in Texas and, of course, I want my students to do well, but it can’t be everything. We spend more time teaching our students test taking strategies, then concepts that are going to be on the test. I know that may be an exaggeration and I may be on my soap box a little bit, but I think it’s an important issue.

I read it to my roommate and her response was "I love when teachers get on their soap boxes, because they're just so passionate about everything!" I figured this was a good way to look at it. As far as my personal life, everything is fantastic and I'm just loving where I'm at in life right now. Hannah reminded me this past week that I've reached the 200 days and counting until I graduate. Kind of scary! ha

Through my good friend Emily's death, my eyes were opened to her favorite Bible verse. It has become the verse I go to now when I find myself missing her (4 months last Thursday), but I also think it has an awesome message: "Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. Hebrews 11:1" I think "faith" is a word that is thrown around a lot in today's world, but this verse does a great job of defining what it really is and how we can apply it to our lives. I also love to listen to this song by Natalie Grant called "Perfect People." Being a natural, first born perfectionist, it helps to remind me that I don't have to be perfect to come before my God. Here's just the chorus lyrics:

There's no such thing as perfect people
There's no such thing as a perfect life
So come as you are, broken and scared
Lift up your heart and be amazed
And be changed by a perfect God

Hardest week EVER!!!!!!

Last week was the hardest week of middle school I’ve ever had. I think all the middle school interns at some point have reached the point of tears, but that has never happened for me. This last week I was just ready to cry.
We have timeout chairs in the back of my room and I’ve never had to utilize them once. On Tuesday, my 1st and 2nd period were terrible. I normally have to beg them to talk and I couldn’t get them to stop talking. Throughout these periods I put one student in the timeout chair. Timeout chair total: 1.
My 3rd period is a more difficult period and they were just that on Tuesday. Multiple rude comments to other students, to me, and there’s so many of them! Once again I put someone in the timeout chair; timeout chair total: 2.
I thought my morning was rough, but it turns out it was the better part of my day. In 5th period things were going ok, when I started putting the students into groups to “jigsaw” their review. Apparently I put two girls together that had been in an argument for the past 2 weeks in the same group. They started yelling at each other and I heard the typical “Get closer and say it to my face!” As I’m making my way over there, I get a desk shoved into my leg as one girl tries to shove the other. I immediately send both of them to the timeout desks and tell them I’ll deal with them later. I was just so dismayed that they would even begin that in my classroom, while I’m busy teaching!! I later went over to them and told them I would not stand for that behavior in my classroom and how dare them act that way. Timeout chair total: 4.
By this point of my day, I was just wondering what was in the water and why the kids were so crazy. I am now a full believer in weather changes the kids! The barometric pressure does wonders on students. My 7th period is a small, great class minus one student that I struggle with daily to cooperate with me; she is angry, rude, and distracting. I had a very rough day with her and ended up giving her a STEP (a big discipline consequence). After multiple disrespectful comments to several students, she told me “Why do your eyes look like that? You look like you got punched in the face.” I try to just love on the students that are like this and build them up, but I am struggling with her. Timeout chair total: 5. I haven’t used the timeout chair once and in one day I used it 5 times!!!
Later on Tuesday I was at my 3 hour class and it was going better. We were not doing anything but working on our exercises independently and I was busy joking with my aggie teacher about the aggies losing to Arkansas. Our class gets out at 9 and at 8:30, I checked my email to check a grade – I lost allllll the work I’d been doing for the past 2 hours. I ended up just asking my professor if I could leave. I guess she could tell I was ready to cry and she let me go. Ahhhh! I almost go sideswiped on my way home and I had a 9 o’clock flag football game I was trying to make it to. Tuesday was CRAZY!!!!
My week went on and things got better than they were on Tuesday (I did score a touchdown in our football game), but this is the first week that I felt the weekend could not have come sooner. This week I’m just trying to get to Friday for Fall Break!

"Ms. I didn't know we were having a test!!"

First test day!! Ahh!! We decided to give our students a 12 question equivalent fraction test. We’ve covered fractions many different ways and matching the equivalent fraction should not be that difficult for them. We wanted a major grade to be in our grade book for 3 week progress reports and felt this was a good way of testing their knowledge. It would also allow us to assess how CScope (our new curriculum that were using for the first year!) is really going. Our math department at Lake Air has decided while CScope has great hands on activities, it is a lot of application and not a lot of practice for the students. We only assign homework on two nights a week (I think this is a Lake Air policy), but our homeworks so far have been over division and not fractions. I graded all the tests on Thursday as they were coming in. I do not like doing a 12 question test for the fact that if a student misses 2 they are already down to an 84! When I have my own classroom I will not do it this way, or I will not make the questions be worth so many points. I think the scores were a good representative of what I was expecting. I didn’t have a grade lower than a 44 and they were several 100s in all of my class periods. I didn’t have a chance to talk over with my mentor teacher how she felt about the grades, but I think this is a great start to what we have been doing. Having 120 kids is so different than having 30 (like last year!). I like it because it allows me to have a better comparison to how the students are doing. I know which classes of mine are the brighter ones and which ones are going to be my slower ones! I don’t know if it’s bad to categorize them this way, but it’s definitely true. I definitely feel like my students respect me and that’s nice to feel that way. When I taught the warm up in one of my classes I had a little girl say, “Oo, Ms. L are you teaching today?!” and when I replied just the warm up she said, “Aw, ok.” I thought it was so cute that she was excited for me to be teaching and I hope many more of the students feel the same way! I kind of feel behind since I haven’t started my full teach yet, but I like our plan of on and off every week. So by next week, I will be ready to start and get my full teach rolling!!