There's no pretty way to word what I need to get out. This is a painful post for me to write, and it has been even more painful to experience.
The dream is dead.
I have been back and forth. I have loved teaching. I know that it truly is a calling, and for so long it was my passion and it consumed me. That's not the case.
Now, I come home in the evenings and I spend all of my spare time searching job postings to find something that I am qualified for that has a comparable salary. That, and crying.
I spent a long time before this staring blankly in the evenings or absentmindedly scrolling through facebook posts that I didn't care enough to read.
I'm pretty sure this is what depression feels like.
I wake up in the morning, every morning, sick at my stomach because I have to go to work in my own personal purgatory. I'm not sure what I'm paying penance for, but every bit of joy has drained from all but the couple of hours I get to spend with Zoe.
She is my heart.
But my soul is crushed.
My marriage is crumbling. I struggle to make myself care some days. Other days, I just wish I could convince him of how desperately I need to get out of this job. I fault him when he doesn't see how it breaks me. I don't want sex. I don't want food. I don't want much of anything except for this year to end.
I spend every Monday wishing it was Friday, and every break wishing it was summer. When we come back from a break, I always wish it was the next one.
I am wishing my life away.
And if this is life, well, why not?
I do not teach.
I don't know what this job is.
I am disrespected by students, pressured by parents, insulted by district level supervisors, and am NEVER supported by administration. I have had students who are almost my size ball up their fists at me, and I have jumped between them and another student because if not, I would have been held responsible for the injuries that would have occurred. I have called parents to tell them that their child almost started a fight with another student but that I jumped between them to keep their child from being suspended, only to have the parents verbally attack me over the phone because their child has a right to defend himself and accuse me of allowing him to be bullied for the past 2 months despite the parent catching the child in a lie while we are on the phone. I am told that students running across the classroom, hitting each other while screaming at the top of their lungs is "not a referable offense unless someone got hurt" while less than 24 hours later being told that I am responsible for improving these students' test scores using an incredibly ineffective teaching method that is micromanaged at the district level with little to no room for autonomy to meet my own students' needs and learning styles. I spend hundreds of dollars each year on supplies for my students to steal and break "accidentally." Teachers in my building face death threats and are told to have lunch with those students to "heal the relationship" with the student, who faces no consequence. Last year, a teacher in my building committed suicide after being WRONGLY accused of "inappropriate behavior" with a student and having his career ruined, while the student and her family face NO consequence for the slander AND libel they committed. During the entire ordeal, we the staff were told not to communicate with this teacher at all. How different would his story have turned out if he had been able to face this ordeal with the support of his friends and colleagues by his side?
I don't know what the exact definition of PTSD is, but I'm pretty sure there are several of us who at least have some of the symptoms.
Again, this is not teaching.
I don't know what this is.
But somehow there has to be a way out of it. Because I can't do this job for too much longer.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Getting Organized
I don't know about everyone else, but I usually find myself spending the month of May limping to the finish line. It's so stressful, and I feel like I always just spend the entire month in survival mode, counting down the days until my kiddos are gone for the summer (and then I may just shed a tear when I realize that I will never see some of them again). For some reason, this year was sort of the exception.
Don't get me wrong. There was still some limping involved! This year, though, I spent a lot of time during the last month of school trying to get my students' input on what would help make next year better. I spent a lot of time rethinking some of my procedures and planning how I would make next year better. I don't know where the extra spurt of energy came from, but my creative drive kind of kicked it up a notch, and I can't seem to turn off the flow of ideas for what I want to do differently next year.
One of the biggest areas that I wanted to get organized was my filing cabinets. I will have to share that system another day because I left my camera in my classroom over the summer. It took me an entire day to do, but I went through every paper in both file cabinets and reorganized the whole shebang, What a chore, but it will be so worth it next year! I also made new binder covers for the materials that I am not storing in the file cabinets. You can check them out by clicking the picture below.
Don't get me wrong. There was still some limping involved! This year, though, I spent a lot of time during the last month of school trying to get my students' input on what would help make next year better. I spent a lot of time rethinking some of my procedures and planning how I would make next year better. I don't know where the extra spurt of energy came from, but my creative drive kind of kicked it up a notch, and I can't seem to turn off the flow of ideas for what I want to do differently next year.
One of the biggest areas that I wanted to get organized was my filing cabinets. I will have to share that system another day because I left my camera in my classroom over the summer. It took me an entire day to do, but I went through every paper in both file cabinets and reorganized the whole shebang, What a chore, but it will be so worth it next year! I also made new binder covers for the materials that I am not storing in the file cabinets. You can check them out by clicking the picture below.
I have been rethinking my classroom rewards. Most of them worked really well and were things that my kids were motivated to earn, but I didn't have a good system for how I used these rewards. I wanted to work on that. I made a set of reward coupons for all of these free or really cheap rewards so that I can print them on card stock, laminate them, and hopefully use them all year long instead of reprinting them like I did this year.
I have a love/hate relationship with Schoolwide Behavior Systems. When we got out for the summer, I think that our schoolwide behavior system was being revamped, so I'm not sure what that will look like next year. That's a little bit frustrating to me since I seem to be in creative overdrive right now and would love to start really planning ahead. In the past, we used "Pioneer Pay" to reward students, and then they could use their Pioneer Pay to purchase other rewards. My new coupon cards will work really well with that system, but I will have to set prices. I've also used ClassDojo points as a means of purchasing rewards. I'll probably have a post with more specifics of our new behavior system when school starts back. You can click on the picture above to snag my reward coupons from my TPT store.
I also wanted to revisit my Class Job board. I can't wait to print and use this cute set of jobs that I made to match the other two resources.
Last year was my school's first year of dabbling in the Leader in Me. We are officially getting training this coming schoolyear, and I'm really excited about learning more. Does your school do the Leader in Me? Has it helped your students? I think I'm most excited to learn more about the Leadership Notebooks because I think that will really help my students to take ownership for their learning.
**Bundle information: I am offering the materials above as a part of a bundle in my TPT store. The individual products cost $8 altogether, but I am offering the bundle for $6. Here's the best part of this bundle, though: I'm just getting started with the new chevron theme, and I will be adding to this bundle as I continue to plan how my classroom will be organized for the coming year. If you snag the bundle now, you will get these 3 products PLUS any other products that are added later for just the $6 price. As new products are added, the purchase price for the bundle will increase, so the sooner you buy, the more you will save. Click on the picture below to see the bundle in my TPT store.
Monday, March 2, 2015
Solving Problem Solving Problems
Or here's hoping, at least.
Are your kids like mine? I feel like my kids see a word problem, pick out the two numbers, and add them just because reading the problem is soooo muuuuuch liiiiike wooooork. I was trying to come up with a way to help my students tackle word problems that they would be able to carry over to use with any kind of word problem they encounter.
I already have a problem solving strategy pack in my TpT store, but I wanted something that was more versatile and, honestly, I wanted to be able to use it with my students who needed some intervention on bringing those critical reading skills into the math block. I feel like so many of my kids genuinely came into this year believing that you read in reading class, and you do math in math class, and the two never overlap. I've made it my mission to disprove their little theory this year. Bwahahaha! (Just picture me reading that in my best mad scientist cackle.)
Anyway, that's where this problem solving pack comes in. It's worked out so well that you can expect me to make them for every topic.
This set includes two versions of a graphic organizer that my students are using to help them break down word problems.
One version of the graphic organizer includes a blank space at the top for the word problem strip to be glued to the sheet. The other doesn't. I am currently using the second version with my students. We started out with the first one last week, and they glued their problems onto the sheet, and then we walked through the steps together in a whole group minilesson. At this point, I have given each student a copy of the second version, which they are keeping in a sheet protector with a vis-a-vis marker in their math binders. The problem of the day is going on the board so that we can go over it together after they have worked the problem. This has become my new way of doing our Problem of the Day/Math Review, and so far, it's working really well.
I've actually gone a step beyond this set with my class. For each problem, I am giving my students time to solve the problem for the day, and then I am posting 4 possible answers and having them use their activotes to choose the correct answer. Before doing this, I had several students who were not solving the problems before choosing an answer, so this has actually helped with that problem as well.
Once I feel confident that all of my students understand the process well enough to use it with any word problem, this activity may go into one of our math centers or I may continue using it the same way. I'll decide that when we get there.
The word problems are on "copy friendly" sheets, allowing you to pick a page and run just a few copies for your whole class. I'm always looking for a way to save on copies!
Are your kids like mine? I feel like my kids see a word problem, pick out the two numbers, and add them just because reading the problem is soooo muuuuuch liiiiike wooooork. I was trying to come up with a way to help my students tackle word problems that they would be able to carry over to use with any kind of word problem they encounter.
I already have a problem solving strategy pack in my TpT store, but I wanted something that was more versatile and, honestly, I wanted to be able to use it with my students who needed some intervention on bringing those critical reading skills into the math block. I feel like so many of my kids genuinely came into this year believing that you read in reading class, and you do math in math class, and the two never overlap. I've made it my mission to disprove their little theory this year. Bwahahaha! (Just picture me reading that in my best mad scientist cackle.)
Anyway, that's where this problem solving pack comes in. It's worked out so well that you can expect me to make them for every topic.
One version of the graphic organizer includes a blank space at the top for the word problem strip to be glued to the sheet. The other doesn't. I am currently using the second version with my students. We started out with the first one last week, and they glued their problems onto the sheet, and then we walked through the steps together in a whole group minilesson. At this point, I have given each student a copy of the second version, which they are keeping in a sheet protector with a vis-a-vis marker in their math binders. The problem of the day is going on the board so that we can go over it together after they have worked the problem. This has become my new way of doing our Problem of the Day/Math Review, and so far, it's working really well.
I've actually gone a step beyond this set with my class. For each problem, I am giving my students time to solve the problem for the day, and then I am posting 4 possible answers and having them use their activotes to choose the correct answer. Before doing this, I had several students who were not solving the problems before choosing an answer, so this has actually helped with that problem as well.
Once I feel confident that all of my students understand the process well enough to use it with any word problem, this activity may go into one of our math centers or I may continue using it the same way. I'll decide that when we get there.
The word problems are on "copy friendly" sheets, allowing you to pick a page and run just a few copies for your whole class. I'm always looking for a way to save on copies!
There are 25 pages of word problems for this topic. The problems are a randomly mixed review, so the multiplication and division problems are mixed throughout the packet.
A few possible uses for this set might be:
- Intervention groups
- Whole group problem solving lesson
- Homework assignments
- Math center
- Problem of the Day
- Substitute plans
I think mine would be adding and subtracting fractions.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Snow Day!
After being out all last week for weather, it's another snow day in Tennessee!
Admittedly, this one wasn't necessary, IMO. Or maybe it's just that I'm like a lot of other teachers and beginning to panic about all that I have to teach my kids in this short time that we have left together. There's so much content that we have left to cover, of course, but there's a lot more than that this year. This group of students has challenged me in a way I've never faced before. I love them, of course, but have you ever just had one of those years where you just knew your kids needed so much more than academics, and there just isn't enough time to meet all of the needs that you see. That's been the story of this year.
I started the year with my colleagues' sympathy and disbelief that all of these personalities had been put into the same room. I cringed when I heard some of the comments because I knew these kids better than that: I knew their hearts, and I saw so much promise. As the year has gone on, I've seen some of them make tremendous progress in ways that no state test will measure, whether that progress is academic, behavioral, or emotional. I'm proud of my kiddos, and I wish that everyone could see what I see in them.
Moving on, I'm trying to find ways to help my students practice their math skills in a way that is both efficient and interesting. In my school, we have a 45 minute intervention block 4 days a week. I am a math, science, and social studies teacher, but for that 45 minutes, I am also a reading teacher. We weren't given any real guidance on what the students who are not in intervention groups should be doing, other than being told that they could not be covering new material. I decided that the best use of this time is review centers. I'll explain my center organization system and how I keep track for grading purposes another time, but for now, I'd like to share a task card set that I just made for my task card center. These have been a great way for my students to review or practice skills that they need a little bit more work on. This new task card set that are available in my TpT store.
We just started working on this topic and our district pacing guide has us only spending a week on it! What?! I know my students are going to need more practice, so I created this task card set with that in mind. I can't wait to start using it later this week when we FINALLY get to go back!
The set includes 20 question cards, a recording sheet, and an answer key to make it self checking and perfect for center use or other games and activities.
Admittedly, this one wasn't necessary, IMO. Or maybe it's just that I'm like a lot of other teachers and beginning to panic about all that I have to teach my kids in this short time that we have left together. There's so much content that we have left to cover, of course, but there's a lot more than that this year. This group of students has challenged me in a way I've never faced before. I love them, of course, but have you ever just had one of those years where you just knew your kids needed so much more than academics, and there just isn't enough time to meet all of the needs that you see. That's been the story of this year.
I started the year with my colleagues' sympathy and disbelief that all of these personalities had been put into the same room. I cringed when I heard some of the comments because I knew these kids better than that: I knew their hearts, and I saw so much promise. As the year has gone on, I've seen some of them make tremendous progress in ways that no state test will measure, whether that progress is academic, behavioral, or emotional. I'm proud of my kiddos, and I wish that everyone could see what I see in them.
Moving on, I'm trying to find ways to help my students practice their math skills in a way that is both efficient and interesting. In my school, we have a 45 minute intervention block 4 days a week. I am a math, science, and social studies teacher, but for that 45 minutes, I am also a reading teacher. We weren't given any real guidance on what the students who are not in intervention groups should be doing, other than being told that they could not be covering new material. I decided that the best use of this time is review centers. I'll explain my center organization system and how I keep track for grading purposes another time, but for now, I'd like to share a task card set that I just made for my task card center. These have been a great way for my students to review or practice skills that they need a little bit more work on. This new task card set that are available in my TpT store.
We just started working on this topic and our district pacing guide has us only spending a week on it! What?! I know my students are going to need more practice, so I created this task card set with that in mind. I can't wait to start using it later this week when we FINALLY get to go back!
Just an FYI about this set: I have chosen to focus on just the order of operations and using parentheses and brackets in this task card set. I am working on another activity for working with variables and am hoping to have that completed over the coming weekend.
I hope you find this set helpful! I know that my class struggled last year with the short amount of time that we had in our pacing guide for this skill, so I'm hoping that it helps my class this year. How do your students do with the order of operations and learning to use parentheses and why? Are you feeling an unusual amount of pressure to get everything in due to snow days this year?
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Google Drive, part 2
Remember when I mentioned using google drive this year to share some of my forms and updates with parents? Well, guess what! I've found another awesome use for it, and I'm super excited about this one!
I set up separate folders on my website for our charts that we make and use in class, so those are now shared to my website. I've also added a "student work" section to the site. I'll use that folder to share examples that we have discussed in class so that my students have those to look back at while they are doing their homework. Below is a screenshot from my iPad where I have a few examples from our recent multiplication lessons.
I love how easy this was to do! I used the google drive app on my iPad, so it was literally just a few clicks to set everything up. From there, I just had to tell it to go into my photos and then choose the pictures I wanted to upload. It could not have been easier, and now my kids have a reference from home AND they all want their work to be good enough to make it to the website! I can definitely see how this could motivate them to realize that neatness matters. It's a win-win for everybody!
Do you share student work online? How?
Happy Birthday to me!
Maybe I'm a little bit early on that one! Regardless, I'm just popping in from an extremely busy and stressful week to leave a quick note about some things that are going on this month.
1. My birthday is the 22nd of this month, so in celebration, I'm going to have a one-day-only 10% off sale on everything in my TpT store! My task card sets are my best-selling items, and I've got a couple of new sets that MIGHT be going up before then, so be sure to check those out.
2. I'm positively smitten with Jamberry nails. Have you tried them? They're not one of those things that I would have ever seen myself liking, but I'm on day 5 with this set still going strong. Where have these been all my life?! I'm loving all of the cute designs, and can't wait to put on my next set whenever these decide to finally give out.
Here's the story of nail polish with me:
- Apply first coat. Let dry.
- Decide first coat is dry enough for a much-needed second coat.
- Apply second coat, but get it all over my skin.
- Dab skin with polish remover. Mess up 3 still-wet nails in the process.
- Remove polish from botched nails and repaint those.
- Notice bubbles in other nails. Remove polish. (Note: at this point, I've generally ended up redoing at least 5 nails.)
- Decide I'm over it and just repaint, whether they look good or not.
- Repaint second coat.
- Declare myself finished and watch TV while they finish drying.
- Go to bed, thinking my nails are dry.
- Wake up to nails with imprints from sheet, clothes, and my hair.
- Chip nail polish on the one remaining perfect nail while hitting snooze button.
These, obviously, were much easier. And I got great results, despite how terrible I am at DIY manicures :-)
 |
| This was taken on day 2. I would post a new picture from day 5 (today) but they seriously look EXACTLY the same unless you look at the very tip of my right index finger. It's got just the tiniest bit of a rough edge, but it's not noticeable to anyone else. |
So have you tried Jamberry? What do you think?
I'm considering selling them, just to get the discount because I think this may be my new addiction!
I'm considering selling them, just to get the discount because I think this may be my new addiction!
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Back to school!
Whew! Today was our first day back and I had forgotten how early 6:00 was. Farewell lazy summer mornings. Til we meet again!
I'd like to take just a second and share some ways that I'm using Google Drive this year to help my students and their families. I love google drive, but in the past, my school system has filtered out most of google's handy apps, so this is the first time I've been able to really use it.
One of the things that I'm using google drives for is to share forms on my class website. I share our weekly newsletter, weekly homework calendars, classroom forms, and sometimes extra copies of our homework pages.
One of the things that I'd like to explore this year is how to use google drive to share my students' work. Do you use Google Drive? What are some things that you've used it for?
I'd like to take just a second and share some ways that I'm using Google Drive this year to help my students and their families. I love google drive, but in the past, my school system has filtered out most of google's handy apps, so this is the first time I've been able to really use it.
One of the things that I'm using google drives for is to share forms on my class website. I share our weekly newsletter, weekly homework calendars, classroom forms, and sometimes extra copies of our homework pages.
One of the things that I'd like to explore this year is how to use google drive to share my students' work. Do you use Google Drive? What are some things that you've used it for?
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