Donate Now Today was pretty crazy, since the kids were just as ready for the long weekend as the teachers. We had another fire drill (this one went better than the last – no one ended up in tears), and one class lost the Bill Nye video we were going to watch because they were…

Donate Now Okay, fire drills actually aren’t that exciting. We’ve had four of them since Friday, because apparently there’s some quota every school must meet by a certain day and we only started having them three days ago. But today one happened in the middle of our unit test on rocks and minerals, and it…

I skipped grad school and stayed after school for several hours today working with kids on their projects, vocabulary logs, and studying for the test tomorrow. I am still amazed how some kids are totally paralyzed by working independently, and insist that they “can’t” do things unless you hold their hand the entire way. I…

That’s how many kids I called on the bus ride back from Boston, to remind them that their Unit 3 Projects are due Tuesday and to study for the test. I left 21 messages and actually talked to 39 kids and/or their parents, and 10 of the numbers were disconnected. It took four hours and…

I got straight on a bus to Boston after school yesterday, and straight off the bus into bed, so I apologize for the delayed update. I’ve heard a lot from other TFAers about students giving up on themselves/their ability to do things, but for the first few months I was so overwhelmed with behavior management…

Today was day two of parent teacher conferences. It was a half day for the kids, and then the parents came in the afternoon (the thought being that parents who can’t come in the evening can still get a chance to meet their kid’s teachers). At first I was really excited when I found out…

Today was the first day of parent teacher conferences! They started at 5, so between the end of school and the start of the conferences there was a school potluck. It was really nice to spend time with the other teachers and school personnel outside of the context of meetings, and also to hear lots…

…because today he paired it with giving me a big hug, right before running away from the line to do acrobatics. Sigh. Tomorrow is day one of parent teacher conferences. I think I’m more nervous than the kids.

I didn’t post on Friday because I had a guest speaker and didn’t actually teach much – thanks, Mr. B! He might eventually write a guest blog post about his experience in my classroom, in case you’re dying to know exactly what happened on that particular day. I will say that the class that had…

I am getting increasingly frustrated with how much time I have to spend on behavior management as opposed to actual teaching. I spend hours planning lessons and preparing labs, and then we don’t get to do them because we spend the whole period trying to come up the stairs from lunch. I try to have…

Today was day one of our SQR, and of course they picked my class to observe. It went surprisingly well, though, since the principal and assistant principal accompanied the reviewer, and as a result the kids actually did the minerals lab I had planned for them instead of throwing minerals in each other’s faces or…

You can read the article that accompanies it here. It’s scarily accurate up until now, so I’m crossing my fingers that things will actually start getting better in January.

I was still feeling under the weather today, so it was nice to sleep in stay in my pajamas instead of herd 32 kids through one of the most over-stimulating museums in America. But even though I didn’t go to school, I did spend most of the day doing school-related work. The big thing that…

So, today started out great with me waking up two hours before my alarm to throw up repeatedly. Any other day I would have called in sick without stopping to think about it, but today was FIELD TRIP DAY and it really didn’t seem like an option. So I choked down some Pepto-Bismol, paid a…

It was definitely interesting to be living in Harlem last night. I went to bed before they officially called the election, and was awoken a few hours later by throngs of people partying on the street – including one man right outside my window who kept screaming “BLACK PRESIDENT! BLACK PRESIDENT! BLACK PRESIDENT!” over and…

Today was our professional development day, and it was really nice to be at school but not have to worry about screaming/fighting/breakdancing preadolescent children. However, with the SQR coming up next week it was still a very stressful day. There is so much that all the teachers have to get in place over the next…

I’m writing in grad school again, almost everyone in the class is on their computers entering grades, emailing, etc… I think teachers are terrible students. My school is kind of in a frenzy right now because next week is our SQR – School Quality Review. This is when people from the NYC Department of Education…