Donate Now Today marks the halfway point of my first year of teaching, and, perhaps more importantly, the first day I have actually enjoyed what I do – not just for a few minutes here and there, but for the whole day. To be fair, I spent the day on a field trip to Sony…

Donate Now For the month of January I’ve had a TFA intern of sorts – Ms. Go, a junior at MIT who is interested in maybe joining TFA after she graduates, though God knows why she’s even still considering it after all the stuff she’s witnessed this month. TFA is really trying to step up…

Firstly, while it is somewhat embarrassing that it took me five months to figure this out, I finally learned how to access scantrons and the scantron machine at my school. Goodbye, five hours of grading after every test! I feel like I’m teaching in the future. Secondly, my school recently got a $25,000 grant to…

I got a surprise phone call sixth period today to let me know that I had to take my next period class to the auditorium to get their class photo taken. Their homeroom teacher also came down so she could be in the photo, but since I don’t have a home room class I ended…

Not that I’ve been on a break from teaching, but this week my graduate studies unfortunately resume. Unlike last semester, when I had one class and its sole requirement was that I be physically present, this semester I have to take three classes. Lehman College, as prestigious as it is (it advertises itself on the…

I hope you all appreciate my brilliant and hilarious title – while some may claim that sarcasm is the lowest form of humor, I think anyone who has experienced my punnery skills would disagree. Today was the much-anticipated field trip to see “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.” While I’m pretty sure that it was one of…

I got to spend another relaxing three periods administering the ELA test to my four ELLs this morning, I’m really catching up on my reading list! Too bad standardized testing is over until the math test in March now… There was one exciting blip in the testing calm, though… Right after my group finished the…

Today was the first day of the super high-stakes NYC English Language Arts exam. If kids don’t pass, they don’t go on to the next grade – regardless of trivial little complications like whether or not English is their first language or if they have a learning disability. No wonder two kids were in tears…

It’s always rough waking up to go back to school after a three day weekend, but it was made a little easier today by the knowledge that the entire school would be taking a break from business as usual at 11:30 to watch the inauguration. Given how excited the kids were the day after the…

I’ve started to realize that many of my students respond to sarcasm and teasing better than they respond to straightforward orders. For instance, today Troy smacked Nadeira in the face for no particular reason, and she jumped up screaming “He violated my face! He violated my face! I’m going to violate HIS face!” She got…

Today I had my sleeves rolled up and was leaning on a table helping a student when I suddenly felt a warm wetness on my forearm. I looked down to see Wolverine Boy (remember him?) licking my arm and grinning up at me, with an expression that very clearly said, “Yeah, I’m licking you… what…

…I have the awesome scratch in the back of my throat and ache in my joints that lets me know fun times are ahead. Stupid children getting their germs all over me. We did the classic baking soda and vinegar experiment today to demonstrate chemical properties (as opposed to physical ones). I only let one…

I hate lunch. Before lunch the kids are relatively calm and ready to learn, afterwards they are crazy little nightmare children. Today I got through my first lesson on the periodic table in one beautiful, quiet 42 minute pre-lunch period; after lunch the same lesson took a full 84-minute double period of screaming, fighting, and…

Today we moved into the new science classroom! I had grand hopes that having a room with rules and consequences posted on the wall instead of just a cart would somehow make things drastically improve, but alas, no luck. Because it’s a new room with a new arrangement of desks, I had to give them…

Because I was so infuriated over yesterday’s corn starch fight, I went back downtown before six and bought dry ice for the good kids. Today I hit the culprits with a double whammy: they had to give up lunch and recess to clean up the lab, and then during their class period they had to…

Corn starch fight.

Unit 5 is Properties of Matter*, and it starts off with phases and phase changes. In seventh grade you only have to know the basic ones, but after spending all this week on melting, freezing, evaporating, and condensing, I really want to blow their minds with sublimation. So I planned a dry ice fun day…

A few of my more…charming…girls have started an Official Clique. Or, in their spelling, a “click.” I discovered this because they left a few applications in one of their science binders. Yes, there are applications. Click Aplacation Name: Birthday: Favorit Color: Favorit Animal: You can’t just invite anyone to join you got to come talk…

I had been kind of hoping for some sort of teacher rebirth over the break that would make me not dread getting up for school in the morning, but no such luck. I tried to make myself feel better by wearing a nice outfit and blowdrying my hair, but literally the first girl that walked…