Sorry it's been a while. I've been off track going on three weeks, and the week before that was parent/teacher conferences, and the week before that was the lead up to conferences (just as busy, if not more, trying to get report cards and everything all ready). Anyways, enough with the excuses. I've a funny story to share.
Before we went off track, there was a school fund raiser going on, collecting spare change for a Thanksgiving drive. There was a school goal to reach $200 by a certain date and then we would have a PJ day. So I guess we hit the goal and the student council advisor just emailed the teachers to tell us to tell our students that Friday would be PJ day. Well, the first thing my students would tell you if you asked them to describe me in one word would be "forgetful" (it's kind of a running joke in our classroom that I forget EVERYTHING).
So the email came on Tuesday. That meant I had 3 days to let the kids know. Really, that meant I had 3 days to forget to tell them. Because that's what happened. I only ever remembered when I was not with them, and I failed to be smart enough to write myself a reminder on the whiteboard so that someone else could see my note and remind me. Thursday night rolled around and I was like "CRAP! I totally forgot to tell my students about PJ day, but there's no way that I'm gonna miss this day to wear my PJs to school!" And then my husband gave me the best idea. "You've been complaining a lot about the fact that your students never listen to you...."
The next morning, I wore my pajamas to school like a boss. The bell rang and I stepped out onto my lovely portable porch to say good morning and I was immediately attacked, as I thought I would be. "Mrs. Lawrence, you didn't tell us it was pajama day!" they all cried. I looked at them sadly and shrugged, saying, "You mean you didn't hear when I told you that it was today?" As they all shuffled inside with puzzled and disappointed looks on their faces I added with another shrug, "I guess you guys really need to pay better attention to everything I say, huh?" Not another word about it all day long. Ha!
Okay yeah, I'm probably gonna have to pay someday for that white lie that I told them, but seriously, they don't listen to like 60% of what I say. Maybe that will serve as a little lesson so they'll remember to listen more carefully to the things that I say!
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
And the Crowd Goes Wild
It's so late and I should have been asleep an hour ago, especially because I have a meeting at 7:45 in the morning, but I have to write this so I don't forget.
I was having a horrible day today. I got a new student yesterday who speaks little to no English. I already have one student who can speak decent English, but can't read or write. I went to bed last night and woke up this morning feeling stressed and overwhelmed about how I'm supposed to teach them and reach all of my other students on their various levels. Then I had printer problems all day and missed my entire lunch trying to get any printer in the school to print what I needed for that afternoon. (Long story short: I didn't.)
So I walked in the faculty room for the last 5 minutes of lunch, just long enough to warm up my ramen and take a bathroom break. I then let loose complaining to my team about how frustrated and overwhelmed I was. They helped me carry my armfuls of stuff and our team leader offered to go with me to talk to the principal after school. I was very grateful for their support and help, and we walked outside to go to our portables.
And then we saw my students.
As soon as they saw us come out the doors, they started just cheering and clapping and going crazy. Then they ran to make a bridge with their arms for me to run through. It was possibly one of the sweetest moments of my teaching career and almost brought me to tears right then and there.
My kids have actually been doing this most days for the past couple of weeks because one of the other classes would sometimes clap when their teacher came out after lunch and I teased my class by saying, "Come on guys, don't I deserve a warm welcome like that?" And then they decided to one up the other class by doing the bridge.
But today it was something I really needed. I needed to know that I'm loved and appreciated and that my kids think I'm a great teacher, even when I feel like I'm not.
Who cares if they all make proficiency on the end of year tests? (I mean, sure it would be awesome, but does it really matter?) As long as I can help them enjoy school, like learning, and be decent people, then I can rest well at the end of the year.
I was having a horrible day today. I got a new student yesterday who speaks little to no English. I already have one student who can speak decent English, but can't read or write. I went to bed last night and woke up this morning feeling stressed and overwhelmed about how I'm supposed to teach them and reach all of my other students on their various levels. Then I had printer problems all day and missed my entire lunch trying to get any printer in the school to print what I needed for that afternoon. (Long story short: I didn't.)
So I walked in the faculty room for the last 5 minutes of lunch, just long enough to warm up my ramen and take a bathroom break. I then let loose complaining to my team about how frustrated and overwhelmed I was. They helped me carry my armfuls of stuff and our team leader offered to go with me to talk to the principal after school. I was very grateful for their support and help, and we walked outside to go to our portables.
And then we saw my students.
As soon as they saw us come out the doors, they started just cheering and clapping and going crazy. Then they ran to make a bridge with their arms for me to run through. It was possibly one of the sweetest moments of my teaching career and almost brought me to tears right then and there.
My kids have actually been doing this most days for the past couple of weeks because one of the other classes would sometimes clap when their teacher came out after lunch and I teased my class by saying, "Come on guys, don't I deserve a warm welcome like that?" And then they decided to one up the other class by doing the bridge.
But today it was something I really needed. I needed to know that I'm loved and appreciated and that my kids think I'm a great teacher, even when I feel like I'm not.
Who cares if they all make proficiency on the end of year tests? (I mean, sure it would be awesome, but does it really matter?) As long as I can help them enjoy school, like learning, and be decent people, then I can rest well at the end of the year.
Monday, October 24, 2016
A Teacher's Worst Nightmare
Alright, I've got a double complaint for today. *I just finished typing the first complaint and decided that's more than enough for today. The other complaint won't go away, so you'll get to hear about it another day.
My complaint: Sub plans.
That's enough to make any teacher shudder. But I wish that people who aren't teachers could really understand how incredibly it sucks to not go to work. In most jobs if you call in sick or have a training or whatever the reason is that you're not going to be at work, it's not a big deal. Someone can easily cover for you, or the work just waits to get done until you're back. Not so for a teacher.
Yes, someone covers for you, but not until after you've done all the work planning and preparing what they're going to do all day for you.
That's a screenshot of my sub plans for tomorrow. Almost 3 whole pages. I'm going to a training because next year they're changing our science curriculum and also altering the way they want us to teach science. It's not exactly a mandatory training, but it seemed like a really good idea to have an idea of what I'm supposed to teach next year, plus as a teacher you do have to go to enough "professional development" classes and trainings to add up to a certain number of points/credits to renew your license every few years. (That's another topic for another day.) Anyways, my point is I don't have to go, but I feel like to be a good teacher I should.
But do I get any paid time to come up with these sub plans? Nope. Not really. I worked on them a bit over my break, meaning I filled in each subject box with the general idea of what they were going to do.
Math: dividing fraction review
Reading: story
Social Studies: Greek mythology
Then today I worked on actually typing in the detailed instructions that I feel like a sub needs and deserves in order to do what I expect. But did I have time to do that during my contract time? Not really. It was an inside morning because of rain, meaning I had kids in my room like almost as soon as I got there, plus I had a couple quick things I needed to get ready for the day. I didn't have a moment of rest all day either. It was one of those days where my kids were especially needy, even when I didn't think they would be. So it wasn't until 3:30 that I was able to fill all of this in. Although, that meant I had to actually decide what I meant by "Greek mythology" and "dividing fraction review." I had to find worksheets and activities and then go make copies of all of them too.
So 5:10 rolls around (the building closes at 5:30) and I'm not quite ready. I've got everything printed and copied, but I need probably another 20-30 minutes to finish getting it all organized and adding finishing touch instructions. So I have to go in tomorrow morning. My training isn't until 8:30 and it's only 10 minutes away from my house. But I have to go in to school (25 minutes away from my house) at like 7:30 to make sure I have my 20-30 minutes to get everything ready and get back to my training in time.
Okay, I know this is my fault because I could have been more organized and planned a little further ahead, but I really thought I'd have time during the day today. And honestly I was just tired over the past several days. I took 3 hour naps like almost every day of my break. I really needed a break from work, so I didn't do anything. And now I'm reaping the consequences. It just sucks that that's the nature of a teacher's job.
Then there's the times when you're sick. You feel like crap, but you know that if you decide to take a day off to stay home and sleep, you have to do a ton of work to get ready for that. All the plans you have to type up, all the activities and worksheets you have to find then print and copy, not to mention the cleaning you have to do because your classroom is probably a mess. At that point it often seems easier to just suck it up and come to work sick the next day. Then again, any good teacher has some emergency sub plans tucked away in the cabinet, ready to go with easy review worksheets and activities that can be done in a moment's notice. But no teacher ever really wants to have to use those emergency plans because 1) that means they have to make new emergency sub plans (which again is a lot of planning and copying); 2) it is pretty much all busy work and review, meaning a waste of a day; 3) if you don't get to teach those lessons that you had planned for that day, your whole week that you have planned is going to be off a day, which could be a big deal. Long story short, don't get sick unless you want more work.
And of course I won't even go into how much you stress about how your class is behaving for a substitute. About how it's in the back of your mind all day, and you dread coming back the next day to find the report about how horrible they were and then having to come up with a fulfilling punishment. No need to mention that.
Well, that's my rant for today. It really sucks for teachers when they have to miss work, no matter the reason. It's always just as much (if not more!) work than if they were just able to go to work. So next time you're able to call in sick, be thankful you're not a teacher.
My complaint: Sub plans.
That's enough to make any teacher shudder. But I wish that people who aren't teachers could really understand how incredibly it sucks to not go to work. In most jobs if you call in sick or have a training or whatever the reason is that you're not going to be at work, it's not a big deal. Someone can easily cover for you, or the work just waits to get done until you're back. Not so for a teacher.
Yes, someone covers for you, but not until after you've done all the work planning and preparing what they're going to do all day for you.
That's a screenshot of my sub plans for tomorrow. Almost 3 whole pages. I'm going to a training because next year they're changing our science curriculum and also altering the way they want us to teach science. It's not exactly a mandatory training, but it seemed like a really good idea to have an idea of what I'm supposed to teach next year, plus as a teacher you do have to go to enough "professional development" classes and trainings to add up to a certain number of points/credits to renew your license every few years. (That's another topic for another day.) Anyways, my point is I don't have to go, but I feel like to be a good teacher I should.
But do I get any paid time to come up with these sub plans? Nope. Not really. I worked on them a bit over my break, meaning I filled in each subject box with the general idea of what they were going to do.
Math: dividing fraction review
Reading: story
Social Studies: Greek mythology
Then today I worked on actually typing in the detailed instructions that I feel like a sub needs and deserves in order to do what I expect. But did I have time to do that during my contract time? Not really. It was an inside morning because of rain, meaning I had kids in my room like almost as soon as I got there, plus I had a couple quick things I needed to get ready for the day. I didn't have a moment of rest all day either. It was one of those days where my kids were especially needy, even when I didn't think they would be. So it wasn't until 3:30 that I was able to fill all of this in. Although, that meant I had to actually decide what I meant by "Greek mythology" and "dividing fraction review." I had to find worksheets and activities and then go make copies of all of them too.
So 5:10 rolls around (the building closes at 5:30) and I'm not quite ready. I've got everything printed and copied, but I need probably another 20-30 minutes to finish getting it all organized and adding finishing touch instructions. So I have to go in tomorrow morning. My training isn't until 8:30 and it's only 10 minutes away from my house. But I have to go in to school (25 minutes away from my house) at like 7:30 to make sure I have my 20-30 minutes to get everything ready and get back to my training in time.
Okay, I know this is my fault because I could have been more organized and planned a little further ahead, but I really thought I'd have time during the day today. And honestly I was just tired over the past several days. I took 3 hour naps like almost every day of my break. I really needed a break from work, so I didn't do anything. And now I'm reaping the consequences. It just sucks that that's the nature of a teacher's job.
Then there's the times when you're sick. You feel like crap, but you know that if you decide to take a day off to stay home and sleep, you have to do a ton of work to get ready for that. All the plans you have to type up, all the activities and worksheets you have to find then print and copy, not to mention the cleaning you have to do because your classroom is probably a mess. At that point it often seems easier to just suck it up and come to work sick the next day. Then again, any good teacher has some emergency sub plans tucked away in the cabinet, ready to go with easy review worksheets and activities that can be done in a moment's notice. But no teacher ever really wants to have to use those emergency plans because 1) that means they have to make new emergency sub plans (which again is a lot of planning and copying); 2) it is pretty much all busy work and review, meaning a waste of a day; 3) if you don't get to teach those lessons that you had planned for that day, your whole week that you have planned is going to be off a day, which could be a big deal. Long story short, don't get sick unless you want more work.
And of course I won't even go into how much you stress about how your class is behaving for a substitute. About how it's in the back of your mind all day, and you dread coming back the next day to find the report about how horrible they were and then having to come up with a fulfilling punishment. No need to mention that.
Well, that's my rant for today. It really sucks for teachers when they have to miss work, no matter the reason. It's always just as much (if not more!) work than if they were just able to go to work. So next time you're able to call in sick, be thankful you're not a teacher.
Friday, October 21, 2016
Teaching: The Good, the Bad, and the Funny
I am a teacher. This is the profession I willingly and excitedly chose. I knew I wanted to be a teacher when I was ten. I knew I wanted to share my love of learning with others and inspire them to be more.
I think about that dream I had, even as I started my first year as a naive teacher. I thought I could change the world. How different and difficult reality is. There are so many things about our education system that are broken. That seem unfixable. That don't make sense. That suck.
But having said that, it's not all bad. As teachers we tend to focus on the negative aspects of our job, I think because there are a lot of them. A lot of big, bad negatives that make our lives hell. But there are also a lot of wonderfully amazing aspects as well. The things that make us go back everyday. The things that help me realize that I am fulfilling my dream, even if only for one student.
I want to start blogging again. I want to start sharing my opinions, my thoughts, and my stories from teaching. The good, the bad, and the funny. Some days will be about the positives. Some days I'll focus on the negatives. Some days I'll just share funny stories, because let me tell you how hilarious 6th graders can be sometimes.
Today I simply want to share a meme I saw earlier that made me laugh. It's fall break right now, which means two days of catching up. Yesterday I caught up on laundry, vacuuming, other cleaning, and sleep (a three hour nap in the late afternoon). Today I'm catching up on anything else that I can do to avoid catching up on grading.... Grading really is the worst. I've been way better about it this term than I ever have in the past, but I've still managed to get far enough behind that I'm avoiding it. It's just not much fun having to waste my time looking at students' perfunctory work and taking the effort to grade it when they obviously didn't take any effort when they did the work in the first place. (I looked up synonyms for half-assed because I didn't think that sounded very professional. I thought perfunctory sounded like a good vocab work that I'm going to teach my kids on Monday when I give them their progress reports.) Anyways, the meme:
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
24 Days!
Okay. Well, you're not gonna get a day-by-day update this time, because I've forgotten. But, we're almost there.
Sometime at the end of last week Nick messaged his aunt who had offered to make our cake and said we'd love to have her do it. We had debated a bit just because I feel like with weddings it's better not to hire family or friends for anything, but in the end I decided with a cake it shouldn't be a big deal. And she might do it a little cheaper, so that would be great. We're still hashing out all the details of that, but I think it's pretty much a done deal.
I guess we spent a couple nights last week trying to get my printer up and running so we could print envelopes for invitations. I didn't want to use labels because I guess it's considered "tacky" by some (and I guess I agree), but there was no way I was gonna sit there and handwrite 300 addresses (because my handwriting would look good on about the first three), so I wanted to print them. But my printer apparently decided to be lame and not work anymore. So Saturday we went to Provo to borrow Jeff's printer, and then had to go to Walmart twice for ink. Gah! But we finally got it up and running.
Sunday was spent printing and stuffing envelopes.
Monday was a good productive day. In the morning we went to the florist and ordered our flowers. Then we went a few places to look for suits for Nick, but we realized that he'll definitely have to go to a nice suit store to get what we want instead of just a department store at the mall. Which is fine, we just thought we'd take a look. Then we got all of the invitations ready to send. That was so exasperating. Just trying to figure out if we got everyone or not is so overwhelming! And then throw in trying to figure out exactly who to invite to the sealing...it's crazy. Oh, also we had a slight mishap ordering our sealing invitations, so we don't have those yet. But we got all of the other envelopes, sealed, stamped, and ready to go. The ones that need sealing invitations will go out by the end of the week, we hope.
Today we got a photographer! I had emailed a girl that I found on Facebook who I really liked on like Friday night, but had never heard back from her. So I messaged her again and it looks like it's a go! Yay!
Also, Nick's mom got the wedding luncheon/dinner booked and planned, so that's done too! Things are really coming together. It's getting stressful though. Or at least the past several days have been.
Now, on to the reception planning! We're just gonna do an ice cream sundae bar, so we're not gonna have caterers for that. Decorations and layout kind of stuff is the big thing.
I guess in addition to that, we've gotta both have our outfits and accessories for the day finalized. OH! Mom found some lace that almost perfectly matches my dress so she can make sleeves! I'm so excited about that!
Whew, busy busy. And Nick's moving on the 30th, so that's coming up quick. Things seem to be working really well though!
Sometime at the end of last week Nick messaged his aunt who had offered to make our cake and said we'd love to have her do it. We had debated a bit just because I feel like with weddings it's better not to hire family or friends for anything, but in the end I decided with a cake it shouldn't be a big deal. And she might do it a little cheaper, so that would be great. We're still hashing out all the details of that, but I think it's pretty much a done deal.
I guess we spent a couple nights last week trying to get my printer up and running so we could print envelopes for invitations. I didn't want to use labels because I guess it's considered "tacky" by some (and I guess I agree), but there was no way I was gonna sit there and handwrite 300 addresses (because my handwriting would look good on about the first three), so I wanted to print them. But my printer apparently decided to be lame and not work anymore. So Saturday we went to Provo to borrow Jeff's printer, and then had to go to Walmart twice for ink. Gah! But we finally got it up and running.
Sunday was spent printing and stuffing envelopes.
Monday was a good productive day. In the morning we went to the florist and ordered our flowers. Then we went a few places to look for suits for Nick, but we realized that he'll definitely have to go to a nice suit store to get what we want instead of just a department store at the mall. Which is fine, we just thought we'd take a look. Then we got all of the invitations ready to send. That was so exasperating. Just trying to figure out if we got everyone or not is so overwhelming! And then throw in trying to figure out exactly who to invite to the sealing...it's crazy. Oh, also we had a slight mishap ordering our sealing invitations, so we don't have those yet. But we got all of the other envelopes, sealed, stamped, and ready to go. The ones that need sealing invitations will go out by the end of the week, we hope.
Today we got a photographer! I had emailed a girl that I found on Facebook who I really liked on like Friday night, but had never heard back from her. So I messaged her again and it looks like it's a go! Yay!
Also, Nick's mom got the wedding luncheon/dinner booked and planned, so that's done too! Things are really coming together. It's getting stressful though. Or at least the past several days have been.
Now, on to the reception planning! We're just gonna do an ice cream sundae bar, so we're not gonna have caterers for that. Decorations and layout kind of stuff is the big thing.
I guess in addition to that, we've gotta both have our outfits and accessories for the day finalized. OH! Mom found some lace that almost perfectly matches my dress so she can make sleeves! I'm so excited about that!
Whew, busy busy. And Nick's moving on the 30th, so that's coming up quick. Things seem to be working really well though!
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
32 Days...
Well, silly me, thinking I'd have time to do this. Ha.
Let's see if I can do a rundown of everything that we've gotten done since the last update.
Friday, Jan 1: We took a break to pack and fly home.
Saturday, Jan 2: We got an early start and picked up our luggage from the airport that didn't make it on the flight with us the night before. Then we went and checked out the Chase Mill at Tracy Aviary and put down a deposit for the reception. After that we spent the afternoon apartment hunting and found one that we really liked. That took several days to get the application and everything done, but the deposit is down and Nick moves in on the 30th.
Sunday, Jan 3: Hmm...I don't remember that far back. I'm sure we discussed different things.
Monday, Jan 4: Got our engagements back from the wonderful Whitney Gossling. There are some of them that I absolutely love! She did great.
Tuesday, Jan 5: I was researching invitation stuff and saw a 50% off sale going on for Shutterfly, but it was ending the next day! We starting looking and putting that together.
Wednesday, Jan 6: We spent lots of time on the phone nailing down our parents on open house dates, locations, times, etc. (which apparently we still didn't get one of them scheduled as desired), as well as proofing our invitation. We were up till 1 am working on it, but but got our 50% off, AND we got 200 out of our 300 pictures for FREE! (We're keeping it classy and doing a separate picture and invitation.) Oh, and we also had our first interview with our bishop that night.
Thursday, Jan 7: I don't remember...
Friday, Jan 8: Researched suits for Nick. We decided brown or tan.
Saturday, Jan 9: Got the honeymoon booked! Nick did all the researching for this one (he's so great...I don't have the patience for that like he does). We're going on a cruise to the Bahamas. I wish it was tomorrow, I'm so sick of the cold.
Sunday, Jan 10: Took a break so I could catch up on grading that I had neglected that week.
Monday, Jan 11: Our invitations came! Now just waiting on our pictures, which will hopefully be later this week.
Tuesday, Jan 12 (TODAY): We took a break and went to see Star Wars. For the fourth time. Yep. I love it.
So, there's the low down. The next big things are: photographer, cake, florist. I'm hoping to get all of those figured out in the next week. Then we can move onto getting the reception planned and outfits finalized for bride and groom.
So exciting. So exhausting.
But, mostly exciting.
Let's see if I can do a rundown of everything that we've gotten done since the last update.
Friday, Jan 1: We took a break to pack and fly home.
Saturday, Jan 2: We got an early start and picked up our luggage from the airport that didn't make it on the flight with us the night before. Then we went and checked out the Chase Mill at Tracy Aviary and put down a deposit for the reception. After that we spent the afternoon apartment hunting and found one that we really liked. That took several days to get the application and everything done, but the deposit is down and Nick moves in on the 30th.
Sunday, Jan 3: Hmm...I don't remember that far back. I'm sure we discussed different things.
Monday, Jan 4: Got our engagements back from the wonderful Whitney Gossling. There are some of them that I absolutely love! She did great.
Tuesday, Jan 5: I was researching invitation stuff and saw a 50% off sale going on for Shutterfly, but it was ending the next day! We starting looking and putting that together.
Wednesday, Jan 6: We spent lots of time on the phone nailing down our parents on open house dates, locations, times, etc. (which apparently we still didn't get one of them scheduled as desired), as well as proofing our invitation. We were up till 1 am working on it, but but got our 50% off, AND we got 200 out of our 300 pictures for FREE! (We're keeping it classy and doing a separate picture and invitation.) Oh, and we also had our first interview with our bishop that night.
Thursday, Jan 7: I don't remember...
Friday, Jan 8: Researched suits for Nick. We decided brown or tan.
Saturday, Jan 9: Got the honeymoon booked! Nick did all the researching for this one (he's so great...I don't have the patience for that like he does). We're going on a cruise to the Bahamas. I wish it was tomorrow, I'm so sick of the cold.
Sunday, Jan 10: Took a break so I could catch up on grading that I had neglected that week.
Monday, Jan 11: Our invitations came! Now just waiting on our pictures, which will hopefully be later this week.
Tuesday, Jan 12 (TODAY): We took a break and went to see Star Wars. For the fourth time. Yep. I love it.
So, there's the low down. The next big things are: photographer, cake, florist. I'm hoping to get all of those figured out in the next week. Then we can move onto getting the reception planned and outfits finalized for bride and groom.
So exciting. So exhausting.
But, mostly exciting.
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