Donate Now And yes, I did make it home safe and sound. We had a “rapid dismissal” – meaning we got out 10 minutes early, all the kids went straight out the back gate, all the teachers went out the side entrance, and the entire building was closed by 3. It was kind of disconcerting…

Donate Now …but I will be waiting until tomorrow to write an actual post. The last time I skipped a weekday post, though, I got many concerned emails and phone calls. And since I wrote about gang initiation rituals yesterday, I thought I’d let you all know that I’m not posting because it’s taking forever…

As frustrated as I get with my students sometimes, I am constantly being reminded of why it is they act the way they do, and why I signed up to do this in the first place. Today was especially loaded with these little reminders, such as: A student told me he was going to “beat…

There was a group of principals visiting my school today, and they picked my class as one of the ones they randomly walked into. Thank God they picked the CTT class I co-teach with Ms. V, because that’s the only class where I actually get through lessons and don’t have to constantly tell kids to…

Is happening right now! Half an hour left in class, and I’ve already entered all the day’s grades into my gradebook, and the day’s “earnings” into the spreadsheet I use to generate their paychecks. I can’t believe I’m getting a Master’s degree from this. I gave out the first round of paychecks today, some kids…

In addition to being the last day of the week, Fridays are also awesome because I only have to teach four periods – woohoo! Every other day of the week I have three classes for a single period and one for a double, and the doubles are pretty killer. But Fridays I have three glorious…

Wasted an entire period with one class today because there was supposed to be a 7th grade assembly in the auditorium, and the speaker never showed up… Is it bad that even though most of me was annoyed, part of me was relieved that I didn’t have to try and teach them that period? We…

Nothing too out of the ordinary today, except reading this article made me realize that I need to do a better job of keeping up with absent students. Also, several students constantly get pulled from my class for ESL, reading, or counseling services (since they aren’t allowed to get pulled from math or English, science…

Regular school today ended on a low note when the AP had to come into my eighth period class and break up a seven person paper-ball throwing fight, but the workday ended positively with Science Club! Today we learned how to use microscopes, and the kids were SO EXCITED, except they kept calling them either…

Not much out of the ordinary today; it’s depressing that things that used to surprise me (e.g. kids randomly punching each other in class) have become routine. But today I rolled out a brand new behavior management system that I got from my North Star visit, which involves the kids earning weekly behavior-based “paychecks” that…

I forgot to bring my camera today, so the bulletin board pictures will have to wait until Monday. I know, you’re all very upset. We had a quiz today. Once again there was a huge range of scores, from a 0% (only one kid) to a 110% (eight kids). Argh. I am not a good…

I did not realize this when I was a student, but teachers get homework too. And not just the daily lesson planning and grading, but actual projects. So I’ve spent all this week mildly anxious about the fact that my first big assignment is due tomorrow, and I had no time to start on it…

Today was a day of many private conversations with students and what TFA calls their “influencers.” Some students misbehave once in a while because they’re bored, tired, sitting next to someone cute of the opposite gender, etc… and can pretty easily be refocused with a Teacher Stare or small consequence. Other students… need a lot…

It was hard coming back to school after spending the long weekend in Boston, but I started implementing some of the changes I’ve been planning and I think/hope that they will start to make a difference once they become more routine. Also, tomorrow I’m rolling out the dorkiest purchase I’ve ever made to help keep…

Today was better than Wednesday, but not by all that much. I’m waiting til next week to deploy some of the things I learned at the workshop yesterday, since I didn’t think trying to introduce a whole new classroom system would go over well on a Friday. My “bad” class went pretty okay today, but…

Yesterday was incredibly frustrating for a variety of reasons that I should not write about all over the internet, but for the first time I came home and really considered how much better my life would be if I was doing (almost) anything else with it.I went to bed incredibly disgruntled, both because of events…

Okay, I pretty much hate Unit 2. There’s the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere, which consists of the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. Then the earth itself has even more layers – from the inner core to the outer exosphere, that’s 11 layers the kids need to learn, and I’m not entirely sure…

Sometimes my kids just really confuse me. I have one student, Tareque*, who is one of the terrors of seventh grade. He spends a ton of time in the Principal’s office, and there were two days last week where he was not allowed to come to school unless his father, who is quite an imposing…

Points of interest from today, in alternating positive/negative: (+) Ms. L made me a chocolate cake for my birthday, which we ate at homework club and it was delicious. (-) One of my students told me I talk “like a white girl,” which her neighbor elaborated with “No offense or anything, but in Spanish we…

It wasn’t the most exciting birthday ever – I gave my unit one test today, so I spent pretty much the whole evening grading. The test was out of 30 points – the high was a 27.5, the low was a 3, and the mean was 18. I don’t know how to feel about the…