Holy Crap!

 

This realization hit me hard this morning:

In 2 weeks, I will finally be wih my students. Alone. With no one to bail me out in times of trouble.

Eek.

The Secret To Classroom Management Is … a Scowl?

There is something about a harried-looking woman buying school supplies in bulk that makes people ask said woman if she is a teacher. I visited four different stores today trying to finish up my school shopping, and at each store, at least one person asked me if I was a teacher. People seemed thrilled to learn that I was a first-year teacher, and, of course, they just had to offer their sage advice. Do you want to know what advice each layperson gave me? Don’t smile until Christmas.

 

While I can understand the thought process behind it (start out tough and loosen up as the year progresses), I think this is quite possibly the worst piece of teacher advice I’ve heard. And I hear it A LOT. If I were a student in a classroom in which the teacher refused to smile for months on end, I would come to hate the time I spent in that classroom, but I wouldn’t be a better behaved student. If I were a teacher who refused to smile for four months, I would hate my job and my time in that classroom, and I wouldn’t be a great teacher.

 

I make a motion that we abolish the “Don’t Smile Until Christmas” rule and come up with a better, more humane approach to establishing our authority as teachers. How about “Develop and introduce rules and procedures that students can understand and respect, present a consistent discipline policy (and make sure all students fully understand the policy), and establish quality and positive relationships with students?” The title is a little lengthy, I’ll give you that, but let’s give it a try.

 

Here is why I believe it will work:

 

1. Rules and procedures are the heart of any teacher’s classroom management plan. Each rule and procedure is set in place to make both the teacher’s and the students’ lives more pleasant, but many times, students don’t understand this. Instead of just telling students, “Raise your hand for permission to speak,” I would argue a better approach would be to tell the students, “Raise your hand for permission to speak. This is an important rule in our classroom, because it allows for everyone to have the opportunity to speak and be heard. When you have something to say, raise your hand. When you are acknowledged, you may then speak. This keeps the order in our classroom, and it lets everyone in the room know that it is your turn to speak. When it is your turn to speak, no one else will be talking. That way all ears will be on you.” Now students know your reasoning for this rule, and they can respect it because they understand how it applies to them.

 

2. Nothing makes (middle school) students angrier than feeling like they are being treated unfairly or are being disrespected. That is a guaranteed way to obliterate any semblance of student cooperation. And isn’t student cooperation what we really want? Effective discipline is not about penance but about remediation and a change of behavior. So, above all else, teachers should have an appropriate discipline procedure set in place. Appropriate discipline is not punishment; appropriate discipline is giving students the opportunity to realize what they did wrong, how it affected others, and what they could do better in the future. Another element of appropriate discipline is consistency on the part of the teacher. I have a poster in my classroom that lists the steps of my discipline procedure. The poster helps me to stay consistent from student to student and reminds students that they are being treated fairly. Students also know that once they’ve been warned, the next step is a conference, followed by a parent phone call, silent lunch, and detention. Not only does this keep students accountable, but students also develop a sense of ownership of the discipline when it is given consistently.

 

3. One teacher in my county once said, “I, for one, have found [building relationships with students] a sucessful method. So tell your kids about yourself and listen to them tell about themselves. They are far less likely to trample someone they find interesting.” I love what this teacher said. Students love to hear crazy or interesting stories about their teachers (last year, I told my 6th graders about my family’s tradition of shopping on Black Friday. I told them stores have lots of great sales, and you can usually find people fighting over $5 toasters at Wal-Mart. They loved that story and brought it up all semester long. When we returned from Thanksgiving break, they all wanted to know how many fights I saw on my shopping adventure. By sharing the $5 toaster story, I became more human in the eyes of my students. Not only that, but I became an interesting person. I attribute the relationships I had with my students to my great experience in that classroom. Of course, kids are going to test boundries and see how far they can get (they’re kids!), but the prospect of an all-out student revolt dwindles the more a teacher becomes a person in the students’ eyes.

 

Mmmm … the smell of books.

I saw this over at Mildly Meloncholy, and I thought I’d play, too.

“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”
1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your own blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien — I have absolutely no interest in reading this.
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling — I have never had any desire to read this series in the past, but I’ve heard that it’s a great series. At the moment, it just seems like too much of a fad.

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee — Is it sad that the first time I read this book was to teach it during an internship? I LOVE this book, and Harper Lee’s life is fascinating to me.
6 The Bible–I’ve read the Bible in its entirity a couple of times, both as an historical text and as a religious text.
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell– This book and Animal Farm are seriously the two most fascinating books on any shelf.
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott–I read this book cover-to-cover at least 6 times when I was a kid. This is a fantastic read.
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy–Read it in AP English in high school. This book made me hate my life.

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller–I read it because I heard too many people rave over it. I didn’t get the hype.
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare–With the exception of a few sonnets, I have, in fact, read the complete works of Mr. Shakespeare. And I owe it all to Dr. Collins, who made it a requirement to pass Shakespeare class. I hated life that semester, too.
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien–Another never. Sorry.
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliott
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell–I really should read this book. I love stories set in this period, and the movie is one of my all-time favorites, so I’m wondering why I’ve never read the book.
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald — This is one of the best things I took away from college.
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy–No freaking way.
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky — this was actually a really intriguing book.
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck– I probably read this book once a year. It is my absolute favorite (along with East of Eden and Of Mice and Men — yes, I have three absolute favorites) of Steinbeck’s.
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres–Maybe someday; I heard it’s really good.
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden–I love the movie, so I guess I should try the book
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown — no interest
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez–Also been on my list for years.
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving– Apparently this is a good book, so now my interest is sparked.
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery–This series was the staple of my childhood.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding — another staple in my library

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime — Mark Haddon — I really loved this book
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez–Heard it’s good.
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck–Oh, Lennie, couldn’t you doing anything right?! Why do you have to go and make me cry that way?
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac– MY Intro To English Studies professor raved about this book, so I’ve always been interested in giving it a try.
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding–Again, loved the movie(s), so why not? 
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville — blech
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens — I have to say, I’m not a huge Dickens fan, but this one would probably be my favorite of his.
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett–Childhood classic.
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker–I would marry this book if that kind of thing were legal

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White–Another childhood classic
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom–Blah. Too overhyped.
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl–I was a huge Dahl fan as a kid. I guess I still am. But he’s got better books out than this. The movie gives me the creeps.
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Preparing Students for the State Writing Assessment … and never argue with a teacher

About a month ago, my Language Arts AP approached me about an opportunity to attend a seminar on my state’s 8th grade writing assessment. The director of assessment would be speaking, and she thought it might be a good idea for me to go, even though I will not be teaching 8th graders. I agreed, partly because it was something to do with school (and I am so ready to start!) and partly because I was interested in hearing what this man had to say. He does, after all, grade the all-important assessments.

The seminar was available to any teacher in Huge School District who wanted to attend, but it was focused mainly towards middle school Language Arts teachers. Huge School District lives up to its name, so I was surprised to see only about 50 teachers in attendance, 4 (myself included) from my school. I guess other teachers aren’t as excited about starting the new school year. On a sidenote: I sat with two sixth grade LA teachers from my school. I probably will not become best friends with them (waaaaay too gossip-y), but they were nice to me, nonetheless.

My state’s writing assessment focuses on two genres: expository and persuasive. Students are given a prompt  and allowed 120 minutes to write a 1-2 page essay. Student writing is then assessed based on four criteria: Ideas, Organization, Style, and Conventions, with Ideas worth twice as many points as the other criteria. Student writing is graded by two raters on a 5-point scale (1 = lowest, 5 = highest) for each criteria, and the scores are added together. The lowest passing grade is 24, and the highest grade possible is a 50.

Ideas

For an essay to earn the lowest passing score, students need to demonstrate limited to generally consistant focus on the assigned topic and purpose, limited to generally consistant ability to develop a controlling idea, and a demonstration of genre awareness.  Passing score-point essays also contain supporting ideas that support the writer’s controlling idea.

For an essay to earn a high passing grade, students must demonstrate consistant focus on the topic and purpose, well to fully developed controlling ideas, strong supporting ideas, and few to multiple specific ideas to support the supporting ideas. In fact, body paragraphs with lots of specific details (draw on personal experinces is a plus) will allow students to score well on the Ideas component of the exam.

Organization

For an essay to earn the lowest passing score, students must demonstrate a generally clear sequence of events, an introduction, body, and conclusion, and related ideas that are generally grouped together  within paragraphs. They may or man not contain appropriate transitions.

For an essay to earn a high passing score, students demonstrate the ability to craft an effective introduction, body, and conclusion, logically group ideas within paragraphs and across the paper, and include varied and effective transitions (explicit and implicit).

Formulaic writing will drastically lower a writer’s Organization score.

Style

For an essay to earn the lowest passing score, students establish language and tone that are generally consistant with the writer’s purpose and appropriate to the assigned genre. Word choice will rage from simple and ordinary to generally engaging with occaisional lapses into simple and ordinary language. The student will demonstrate a limited awareness of the audience, inconsistant to clear and appropriate voice, and little to some variation in sentence length and structure.

For an essay to earn a high passing score, students demonstrate carefully crafted phrases and sentences that create a sustained tone and engage the audience. Students use varied, precise, and engaging language appropriate to the genre. Students also exhibit an evocative or authoritative voice that is sustained throughout the response.

Conventions

For an essay to earn the lowest passing score, students craft simple and compound sentences that range from sometimes to generally correct with generally correct end punctuation. Students demonstrate generally correct usage, but may have errors in subject-verb agreement, word forms, etc. Students also demonstrate generally correct mechanics (some errors in spelling, capitalization, paragraph indention, and punctuation within sentences).

For an essay to earn a high passing score, students must demonstrate clear and correct simple, compound, and complex sentences with correct end punctuation, a variety iof subordination and coordination strategies, and correct usage and mechanics with few errors.

Correctly written compound and complex sentences will earn students higher scores on Conventions.

 Of course, with so much discussion of what teachers need to teach students in order from them to be sucessful on the writing assessment, you know there would be some teachers who just had to voice their opinions on (what I consider) useless crap.

For instance, one teacher claimed it was unfair for students to earn a 1 on the Organization component of the test if they include an introduction but no conclusion, or vice versa. She claimed they should earn a score-point 2.  Uhm, the last time I checked, essays contain introductions, bodies, and conclusion. That’s basic writing — especially in formal writing. Besides, a score-point 2 is still a failing score, so what difference does it make? The student will still fail that component. Just teach your students the correct way to write an essay, and you won’t have to have this discussion. But this particular teacher had to harp on this perceived injustice for more than 10 minutes. And do you know why? Because she just couldn’t be wrong — which makes me to my revelation of the week: if you want to strike up an argument with someone, don’t pick a teacher — we’re always right.

The best Freestyle Friday ever!

Though he’s not appropriate for the classroom, this man is a genius with words, so I decided to post my favorite poem of his. If you like this poem, I encourage you to look up his other poems, “Kite”, “Compliment”, “Op Talk”, and “Hobo”.  They are my other favorites. Oh yeah, and “Mockingbird” rocks, too. Seriously, he’s that good.

Enjoy!

P.S. I got so excited I forgot to mention that his name is Rives. So if you want to look any of his other poems up, now you know his name

The Teacher’s Job Interview

I have noticed over the last few weeks that the overwhelming majority of search engine terms people use to get to my blog deal with interview concerns. While interview season is long gone for me, there are many other fellow teachers out there still searching for a job. I wish you good luck and hope you find these interview tips helpful. 

1. Dress in something that makes you feel confident. I wore the same outfit to every interview: a red sweater, black skirt, and black heels. I felt very professional. Feeling good about myself allowed me to open up to my interviewers and be more friendly. You smile more and make better eye contact when you feel confident. People like that. I’ve also heard from other teachers that principals like to see potential employers dressed in a manner that they could walk into a classroom and start teaching immediately. Whatever you do, make sure your colthing is clean, ironed, and free of rips or tears. 

2. Get there early. Being early is better than being late. Plus, you have a few minutes to sit in your car and breath, pray, or practice some common interview questions without feeling rushed. I arrived at the schools about 20 minutes before the scheduled interview, gathered my composure, and entered the school about 10 minutes before the interview. Arriving early let me meet the secretaries and have nice conversations with them. You never know what say secretaries say about you, or what say they might have in your employment. 

3. Show off your skills. I brought a mini-portfolio filled with a sample syllabus, procedure packet, a positive reinforcement worksheet I created, a lesson plan I created, a unit plan I created, some really great student work, and “report cards” my student wrote about me. The principals were really impressed with the material I brought, and 2 actually photocopied some of the material I created– with my permission, of course (those 2 principals offered me positions at their schools).

4. Be honest about yourself. Being honest is way less stressful than trying to come up with the answers you think your interviewers want to hear. Plus, if you do fib through the interview and get hired, you’ll spend the next year being someone you are not.

5. Research the school and district and create some questions and conversation starters based on your findings. Principals like to know that you made the effort to know their school, and it enables you to contribute to conversations in the interview. The best interviews I have participated in felt more like conversations than question-and-answer sessions.

6. Make sure you make eye contact and pay attention to each person at your interview. No one likes to be ignored. I learned this the hard way. My first interview was a panel interview at a job fair, and I was so nervous that I focused all my attention on the principal. I totally neglected the AP and other teachers at the interview, and I came off looking unfriendly and rude.

7. Follow up. Always follow up an interview with a nice handwritten thank you letter. Include in the letter your desire to work at the school and a few reasons why you think you would make a good fit within the school. Be friendly and positive. Mail or hand deliver the letter the day after you interview.

Feeling Funny?

Go on over to http://scholastic-scribe.blogspot.com/ to participate in this week’s silly sweepstakes. Just don’t come up with a funnier caption than mine, because then we’d have issues.

 

Freestyle Friday

I did some teacher shopping today. Spent even more money that I really need to save. Where’s the money gone?!

Today’s poem is called “Money,” by Poetri, and it feels like the story of my life. Has money left you, too?

Enjoy!

What is happiness on a Monday?

 

115 1 subject spiral notebooks at .05 each – $5.75

4 poly binders (1 1/2 inch) at .25 each — $1.00

400 pencils ( .01 for a pack of 8 ) —  .50

115 folders with the prongs at .01 each — $1.15

20 packs of crayons at .20 each — $4.00

Experiencing the joy of power shopping for my very own classroom — PRICELESS (with a $12.40 tab)

Freestyle Fri … er, uh … Thursday!

Happy 4th of July, y’all! I am going out of town for the weekend, so I decided to go ahead and do Freestlye Friday a day early.  Today’s poem is called “POW” by Alicia Keys. I like using this poem, because, well, it’s Alicia Keys. The kiddos are interested immediately, and the message of the poem is one my middle schoolers like to discuss.

When I present a spoken word performance to students, I always introduce it with a a few questions related to the content of the poem. Usually, these questions are a way to get the students to think about the topic and start to invest themselves in it. Students are more likely to understand content when they understand that it is relevant to them. Here are my questions for this poem:

1)What does it mean to be a “prisoner of words unsaid”?

2)Have you ever remained silent on an issue and later regretted your silence?

3)As a middle school student, do you think your words have power?