Birthday at School

A birthday doesn't get much better for an adult than one at school. My birthday was announced in front of the whole school, so the rest of the day I had all of the kids saying, "Happy Birthday!" It was great.

After lunch my class came in with huge card they made during lunch recess. It was signed by 50 or more students and teachers. The whole class then sang Happy Birthday to me in about 3 or 4 keys. I laughed and smiled the rest of the day. It was truly one of my best birthdays ever.

Some Things Never Die

I had a minor flash back last week. I overheard a fun conversation from my grade school days:

"Hey! What weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks?"

And naturally, the response:

"A pound of bricks!"

"Nope! They both weigh a pound! Ha Ha!

It is good to know that some things never die.

A rough day...

Today, a Monday, was a tough one for me. Nothing really seemed to click in the classroom. My kids seemed to be a little squirrelly today and the things I tried didn't really work. In the end, I got through the day, but don't feel like I was a very good teacher.

A friend shared a good teacher quote for a day like today. It goes like this:

"Mondays are my favorite day of the week because
I haven't %&*#@d up yet."

In the end, as I reflect back on today, I feel good that I survived and I think the kids may still have learned in the process. I know I will encounter many more days of this in the future, maybe tomorrow, but I know they will pass. I will have another day to try my hand at teaching and helping my kids learn and grow.

First Day of School

I survived the first day of school. It took forever or so it seemed. I only had one "crying" incident.

Most interesting fact I learned about one of my students...One boy won a competitive eat contest this summer. He told me not to ask what happened afterwards.

Movie Confusion

Some of my summer school kids saw the new Pixar movie and they thought I would like. They recommended I go see the movie "Rat-patooty". I had to laugh.

I had 2 thoughts: 1. Is this is a common mispronunciation for "Ratatouille" and 2. I wonder if Disney gives a rat's *ss. :-)

The Unknown Perils of Fruit Punch

I have a soon-to-be 4th grader in my summer school class who was working on a math problem. The problem featured a bar graph with amounts of beverages served by the school cafeteria. He was answering the question, "If the cafeteria can only serve 2 beverages, which 2 should they serve?"

The student had only filled in one blank with Milk, which was the highest amount. Fruit punch was number 2 on the chart.

So I asked the student, "Why didn't you finish this problem? You need to put the 2nd highest amount on this line."

He replied, "Mr. B, I can get behind them serving milk because it has the most sold. But, fruit punch makes you go to the bathroom."

I said, "Well, the question is asking for the top 2 drinks and fruit punch is the 2nd highest."

His response, "OK, but Mr. B. fruit punch make you have to go pee!!!"

At that point, realizing he had thoughtfully considered his answer, I relented and said he could put whatever beverage he wanted for the second spot.

Kid Quotes...

"It's not about the cheating. It's about the winning!"

--First grade girl, while playing concentration (matching game) after I asked if she was peaking at the cards.

Not much fun...

I substituted for a 6th grade class last week and I got my butt kicked. Not physically, but mentally. The class was rambunctious and I couldn't really get them to focus on anything. And to finish the day off, a student told me that he had just "sharted" in his pants.

Just Different

"It's not new. It's different"

Applying for a teaching job is a totally different than applying for a job in the business world. For my last 2 jobs in the business world I had to have a resume. A sleek, refined, professional resume. That piece of paper was then submitted online to companies or posted on dice.com or monster.com.

Well, for teaching here is what you have to provide:

1. A completed school district or county application
2. A cover letter or letter of interest
3. A resume (still sleek and professional; no apple or schoolhouse graphics)
4. Copy of your teacher credentials
5. 3-5 Letters of recommendations

Needless to say, I was a little overwhelmed at first by this "different" process. But teaching is a "government" job, so I should have expected a lot more paper.

A Realization...

Last week, as I was washing sand and dirt from "linker cubes" (similar to Legos) after building mountains and building models in the school sandbox, I realized that I have taken quite a turn in my life.

Four months ago, I was sitting at a computer developing "business intelligence" applications for a multi-million dollar company. Yesterday, I got to play "Father Nature" by pouring water (flooding) on sand mountains and "linker buildings" constructed by my students during an erosion simulation. Let me tell you Father Nature is a pretty bad dude, wiping out mountains in about 30 seconds.

The good thing is I don't really miss my old job. I miss the people, but not the work or the corporate red tape. Yes, schools have plenty of bureaucracy, but I think it's for a better cause...kids.

An "A-HA" Moment

This week in my college class I was asked if I had any "a-ha" moments to report from my teaching experiences in the past few weeks. My mind was blank. Nothing to share.

Over the past two weeks, I have been teaching a science unit on geology and rocks. The kids have had varied interest in what I have been teaching, but love to spend spare time in class examining, rubbing, playing and hanging out by the "Rock" table (a table covered in all sorts of rocks and minerals) in the back of the class.

However, yesterday I taught a lesson based on erosion. I started the lesson with a brief 7 slide Powerpoint with photos of erosion in the natural world. One of the pics was of a beautiful sandstone arch in Utah. Then we did "experiments" to simulate erosion by blowing, crushing and dripping (wind, pressure and water erosion, respectively) on sugar cubes (rocks). After blowing and crushing the cubes, the students got into groups and slowly dripped water on the sugar to watch the effects it had. In one of the cubes, as the water crumbled away, an arch formed. The kids were so excited to see that this photo they had viewed 20 minutes ago was recreated in their sugar cube.

I had my "a-ha" moment and I had to smile.

Let's Get It Started

So, you know the Black Eyed Peas tune, "Let's get it started", right? In my classroom the other day I was trying to get started on a task and said something to the effect of "Hey guys, please have a seat. Let's get it started!"

All of a sudden, one of the quiet, shy kids jumps out of his chair and starts belting out the song complete with his own 2nd grader dance moves.

Let's get it started (ha), let's get it started in here.
Let's get it started (ha), let's get it started in here.
Yeah.

That's what I love about kids. This boy was totally comfortable to "lose control of body and soul" in front of me and his classmates. It was a definite high for me.

Teaching Quote

"You don't have to be perfect to be excellent." - Mr. B, Sr.

My brother reminded me of this quote that came from an influential educator and person in my life, my dad. After having a rough day where classroom behavior issues were rampant and I felt a little on edge, this quote helped me out.

I am going to have days where I am not a great teacher or even a good teacher. Days where I feel under-prepared or have less tolerance for chaos. I'll make my share of mistakes, big and small, along the way. Despite this, I can still be an excellent teacher.

Exhaustion

The past week has been a challenging one for me. I have been lacking energy due to little sleep and lots of stuff to to. It's at the time of the school year and semester when all things start to come together into a storm of stress and sleeplessness. My final projects/portfolios and essays are due this week. Deadlines for job applications have come and gone. And I am in my last 10 days of student teaching.

Last night, after dinner with friends, I came home and crashed. My head hit the pillow and I don't think I moved until my alarm sounded 7 hours later. A sweet seven hours that have been in short supply. Today I felt a little more energized.

I guess this means I'll need to find a better routine (earlier to bed) when I have my own classroom next year.

Petrified Poop

My class has been studying dinosaurs and fossils. Earlier this week, we had a wonderful guest speaker who brought in her collection of fossils and petrified objects.

The speaker was telling the class about each of her pieces and where they came from. Then she came to this round and lumpy brown rock and said, "This one is petrified dung." She then paused to see if this got a reaction from my kids. My supervising teacher interjected that "dung is poop". Recognition started to set in, when the guest continued on, "Some people call it sh*t and others call it feces." I just about fell off of my chair with shock and laughter. Luckily, most of the students didn't really pick up on it. However, they spent their free time that day sniffing the petrified poop.

The moral of this story: "Kid say the darnedest things and so can guest speakers!"

A Smile!

Today, one of my students put a smile on my face. She said, "if you were going to teach 2nd grade next year, I would want to be retained next year so I could be in your class." My heart melted right on the spot.

Vacation

My perception of the day or two before vacation was that you just try to survive the energy and excitement of the students. Now, having lived through those two days before vacation, I know that is mostly true. Art was sprinkled into the lessons pretty heavily as well as activity-based lessons. But today, with all of the energy, I was able to actually get about 40 minutes of decent math instruction and assessment completed in the middle of the day. Wow! The more I think about it, I pretty proud to have accomplished that.

Now it's vacation time and I need it. I've had too many "up past midnight" nights combined with 6am mornings. Vacation will be nice break.

Pole

Today, I walked into a pole in front of a lot of people. I was walking my students back to class following a school-wide meeting, including parents, and was so intent on listening to a student's story that I didn't see the pole. Totally caught off guard, like getting blind-sided in football. Wham! And several people were looking on. I had to smile and swear internally.

I guess I'm lucky I didn't fall down.

Teaching Secret

My secret weapon to getting through long days.

Low Riders

Today's funny story occurred during garden time. Yes, the school I teach at has several garden spots that the kids love to pull weed or play with insects in. While I was pulling up a dandelion, to young girls said, "Mr. B, you need to pull your pants up!" Naturally, I was afraid my crack was hanging out, which I have always been (or tried to be) conscious of. Besides, who knows what a 2nd grader might do. So I did a quick reach around check to make sure. I confirmed no crack was visible, but possibly some waistband was showing. Needless to say, I was a little embarrASSed.

In actuality, my pants are getting big for me. I have lost 8-10 pounds since I have started teaching, which is a good thing.

A Big Challenge

One of the biggest challenges I have encountered while teaching is trying to stay healthy. In the past 10 weeks, I have had 5 colds (or recurrence of the same single cold). Nothing too terribly serious, but just enough to distract you or drain a little more energy.

A colleague of mine said, "Don't worry! Your immune system will build itself up in 2-3 years!" Great, I can hardly wait.

On a side note, teachers (myself included) drink Airborne tablets like they are a miracle remedy. I wonder if teachers would use it as much if it weren't invented by a teacher???

Sniffed

I was sniffed last week by one of my second graders. Yes, sniffed. A young boy leaned over to me while I was reading a story to a small group and inhaled my shoulder/armpit area. Then he interrupted my reading to announce to the group, "He smells like deodorant!!!" To which the group laughed. I had to smiled and thought to myself, "I can think of worse things to smell like."

After IEP

I survived the IEP in one piece and only managed to break one law, according to my supervisor. Not too bad in my book. The meeting was a long one, but overall successful according to the people participating. I had a minor internal debate to bring the meeting to a close without full input and dialogue with the student's parent. However, I realized it would be best for the school and parent to take the extra time and hopefully have both parties feel they are on the same team. Most importantly the student will now receive the additional support they need to succeed in school.

The IEP Meeting

Tomorrow, I will be leading my first IEP meeting. What's an IEP? IEP stands for Individualized Education Program, which is used to track and manage educational progress for students with learning disabilities. The IEP meeting is a meeting with the student's parents, school administration, teacher(s), psychologist and other staff. The meetings can be long and an enormous amount of paper work is passed around to review, read, and sign.

I am a little nervous about leading the meeting as this is my first official school meeting and this is the initial review of testing data for a student's parents. I have lead meetings with CIOs and CFOs of major companies, but I perceive a difference between corporate bigwigs and parents. I guess you never know how a meeting will go when you are sharing with parents that their student performs tasks slowly.

I am hopeful that the meeting will go well. I'll report more following the meeting.

Welcome to Highs and Lows

Highs and Lows is an attempt for me to capture, share and remember the high points and low points of student teaching over the next 5 weeks. I have been student teaching for 10 weeks now and have learned many lessons and had quite a few laughs as well.

Hopefully, you will check in on this blog from time to time to see what's going on in the life a student teacher.