Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

It surprises me how I seem to have so little backbone lately; I have never been fond of controversy especially when I am still acclimating myself. I find myself in a sticky situation. I am becoming increasingly unhappy with the attitudes and actions of some of my colleagues. I was told coming into this urban teaching environment that I shouldn't smile for the first 10 weeks and that I would need to be tough to get through to "these" kids. This does not bode well with my style as a teacher. I smile because I enjoy what I do, I can be stern but not angry, I refuse to yell but I will raise my voice, and I will never humiliate one of my students by insulting them in front of their peers. I am not sure how many details I want to give but basically I am getting fed up with hearing aids yell at students in my class and make insulting remarks. It is completely unprofessional the manner in which I sometimes hear statements being made to or about students. Who am I to say anything though, I feel like if I were to make a comment I would be disregarded because I am a first year teacher, a resource teacher to top it off. What is the chain of command when a classroom aid follows the students to their resource class? I am the one teaching, it is my classroom, my lesson, but do I have the right to tell them how to talk to their students? I am extremely disappointed with myself for not saying something to the teachers who are causing me concern. I do not want to accost them openly in front of their class but I feel like I should talk them in private at the very least; yet, the thought of bringing it up seems incredibly difficult.

My brain is a mess right now; I am trying to decide how to work this out with my colleagues while trying to get my emergency plans finished for my principal. I am supposed to develop three emergency lesson plans and I pushed it off while I was trying to get everything else worked out like my 23 class rosters that change every time I have a class. Three lesson plans normally would not be a problem, except that I am supposed to be planning for when I am unexpectedly absent and when you have 23 classes each in various grades it is not easy to make just three generic review lessons that meet all of the abilities/demands of those students.

Despite all of this I still feel like I had a great day with my students. I have modified my keyboarding lessons without creating a program from scratch and I feel like it is far more effective and efficient for me as well as the students. I am uplifted by my students accomplishments, especially students who are still learning English and from another country. I love that technology can be a universal language that transcends the oral language barrier. It was so great to see the excitement emanating from my students as they completed an activity while moments before they were frustrated but what seemed to be impossible. I keep telling my students that we are in training, like athletes, working to improve our skills and be professionals. They seem to like that analogy, even if it is just learning to type, I might just have to create a type-athalon.

Win some, Lose some

It amazes me how each of my classes has such a wide variety of skills and abilities. The tricky part has been adapting my lessons to meet the wide variety of needs especially with the oh so exciting topic of keyboarding. My activity this week was a flop for the most part. It was too frustrating for the majority of my students. I found myself frustrated as I tried to come up with new ideas to make it an easier concept and now it is back to the drawing board as I try to develop a computer program in the next 4 days that will engage my students while providing a chance for them to develop their keyboarding skills.

I would like to have an intensive focus for the beginning of the year on developing keyboarding and mouse skills so that we all have the right foundation for all these ideas I have racing around in my head. I have been pouring over the state standards as well as the National Education Technology Standards and I think I finally have a timeline/curriculum hammered out for the year, now all I have to do is try and get the lesson plans formally typed up and printed as well as all of my materials together.

I was uplifted when I was leaving on Friday, one of the 4th grade teachers commented that she thought it was great that I was trying to teach the students how to type and to see that we were actually doing activities based on standards. It made me feel like I am headed in the right direction and I just have to refine my efforts a bit more. Don't get me wrong I did have classes and groups of students that enjoyed the lesson and were doing really well, but it still gets me down when even just a few have a hard time or are not interested. I encourage my students to provide constructive feedback and I have received numerous suggestions on ways to make my activities more interesting. I wish I had more time with each class, they end so quickly and I feel like we always have so much more to do. It was very uplifting to hear students call my name so I could see that they passed the required level and were moving on to the next stage. I think I will save this activity for an assessment rather than a teaching resource. I have a great deal of work ahead of me to turn it around into a successful set of lessons for next week.

Keyboarding....and stuff

I keep waiting for my optimism to run out but unfortunately for all of you pessimists out there I do not see that happening any time soon. Each day I am finding myself trying to solve new problems and I LOVE problem solving. I thrive on it, it feels so good to take a situation that others have given up on or turned their backs to and say...WAIT this might work. My current challenge is to find a way to make keyboarding a more engaging and invigorating activity than it really is. We had our first go with an activity today and I was not impressed, it makes me want to design my own application because I feel I could adapt it to be more engaging for my students, but this would take a great deal of time that I currently do not have.

I am thinking about creating a program that would act as my evaluation of keyboarding skills so that we would work through these tougher activities and have a motivating activity to look forward too. The truth of the matter is that my strategy is to create meaningful lessons that feel like games for my students, I had success with this during student teaching and last weeks activity was a hit but they take so darn long to make. I am working on a program that will act as a review game for classroom teachers and I want to get a classroom Web site created before too long as well. I wish I knew how to slow down and take everything in stride but my head is constantly racing with new ideas and I want to try them all now.

The Promethean ActivBoard is proving to be a great tool though it will take getting used to after having a SMART Board. The students love using it and if I can find a way to keep an entire class from getting too excited and noisy it will be even better. I have a higher tolerance for classroom noise than most teachers as long as it is stemming from the activity and the students are just excited, but its borderline ruckus and I don't want any administrators getting the idea that I can't control my classroom. I have decided that the best way to avoid students causing problems in line is to work until their teacher comes to pick them up. I managed to time it well today and was even able to finish my class summary before they were whisked away. I'll keep trying this and see if it becomes too hard to get the room ready for the next class, so far so good.

And then there was rain...

The most interesting happening today was when the school had a fire drill and as soon as we began to walk outside the skies opened with a down pour of rain...man did I feel stupid. We were told to come back into the building and that we would try again tomorrow but the damage was done, my students and I were soaked by the time we made it back into the building. I can laugh now but at the time it was not very funny, though my students thought it was great.

My search online has found a great resource for teachers using the Promethean ActivBoards and software. You may want to check out PrometheanPlanet it offers a wide variety of free materials for teachers to use covering lessons in almost every subject area. The free materials are offered by other teachers who have submitted their materials for download. There is a collection of materials that can be bought as well, though I havn't really explored that area much, I love free stuff.

I am making my first activity with the software for lessons this week. The best way I can describe it is that it reminds me of powerpoint but much more interactive and dynamic. The students can click and drag any of the things I place on the screen plus we can use the pen tool to mark up the page or highlight important ideas. I am excited to explore the capabilities of these tools together, what many of my students do not realize is that this can be just as exciting for me as we find new tools.


I am going to need to try some new strategies this week when I dismiss my students to line up at the door because so far this is when I see the worst student behavior. I end the activity for the day and suddenly they think it is time to fight over who stands where in line. Each teacher has their own way of lining up their class which makes it difficult for me because when I try to line up my students they are arguing with me about where they are supposed to stand, maybe I should just keep them working until the teacher calls them? Time will tell what my solution will be.

How sweet it is

What a great week I had last week! My first week of lessons went very well and the students enjoyed the activities that I created. This week I will be trying my hand at using resources that I have not created. One thing that held me back while student teaching was my inability to use other materials other than my own; I have the bad habit of trying to do everything myself. I have been scouring the internet and have managed to find a plethora of resources available that I think will be very effective. Friday was pay day and that was my first pay check which felt great! Plus I was invited to spend time with some staff members after work, the bitter sweet news is that I was unable to make it there because the crew had arrived to install my Promethean Board! Now my room is set in place, no more moving desks and rearranging cables, or so I hope.

I feel like each week is filled with new "firsts", this week I had my first Pre-K class, first after school staff development, and first time with my Monday classes. I am starting to get into a routine wth my schedule and how many classes I have, it is easier to turnover the classroom and prep for the next class. My plan is to try and get some plans knocked out this week so I am ahead of the game for next week. I want to try and get ahead now before I find myself overwhelmed in the middle of the year with projects. Well, it's time to find some more resources for class.