One Month Down, 8 And A Half To Go!

It’s a gloriously cool first Saturday in October.  My favorite month of the entire year!  The intense heat has cooled, it’s rained and the air is definitely cooler, more moist, but not cold.  There is not yet, that frosty bite in the air that signals the onset of winter here.

School has been underway for a month.  It’s been an intense start-up to the school year.  My school went through a remodeling project this summer and I was unable to get into the school ahead of time to do the required unpacking and set up of furniture and materials.  So, I had to add that to my list of things to do in addition to the usual meetings, planning and tasks associated with the first week back to school for teachers.  The pace hasn’t slowed much till just now. 

In addition to teaching, I’ve been asked to teach a professional development course on Technology In The Classroom.  This has absorbed a great deal of my time and energy since the first session was yesterday, only a month into the school year.  Teaching technology to children is tough enough, teaching it to adults is worse and teaching it to educators is the worst of all.  I am seriously wondering about my sanity in agreeing to do this.  In the end, it was a fabulous experience for me.  The teachers, most of them, appeared to benefit from the content.  I have some areas I can improve and that’s what it is about. Getting better.  Helping others get better at what we do for kids.  Putting whatever available technologies there are into the hands of kids is just so important, but so many teachers are hesitant to do so, for a variety of reasons.  It’s my hope that through this class they will be able to be more skilled and more confident in helping students use technology.  After all, if we consider technology a tool, just like a pencil or pen is a tool, is the teacher the only one with the tool?  I think not.

In addition to changing grade levels from first to fourth grade and teaching a professional development course, I have also agreed to do a series of presentations to parents at the school.  This will mean three additional presentations along with the three professional development presentations.   This is great for me, though it will mean some extra effort up front.   My parent presentations focus on assisting parents to effectively and positively implement the strategies and philosophies of Positive Behavior Support at home.  I’ve been applying these principles in my own home with my own four children with excellent results.  As a single mother of four, with a demanding career and after a pretty bumpy divorce, the consistency and positive impact of applying these strategies has really helped my children and I heal and grow much closer together.  I hope to share these successes, as well as the successes I seen others experience with parents.  The stress reduction alone for families, kids and parents, is tremendous. 

With all that going on, it has been tough to make time to write regularly.  I am ready to change that trend.  My classroom is a fantastic environment.  I’ll soon be posting pictures of what I’ve done.  Hopefully, other teachers will respond with ideas and suggestions about what they’ve done as well.  I’d really like to see this become a sort of online professional learning community where we can exchange ideas, get encouragement, and inspire each other to keep at it, even when maybe our energy and motivation are flagging.   I was talking to a friend yesterday, who is not an educator, but who is very savvy and perceptive in life.  He said, “I think it is exceptionally tough to be an educator these days.”  I had to agree with him.  I hope this little blog will help make it easier for all of us.

Back To School Checklists for Teachers

  I remember coming back to school my first several years of teaching.  I remember the ends of those first years also.  They are somehow connected, but it took me a while to figure out the best way to organize the end of my school year so that the start of the next year was smooth, efficient, and relatively stress-free.  In the next few posts, I will be sharing ideas that I have learned over the last decade and a half.  Most of these ideas are not my own, but are gleaned from having worked with some very fine educators far more efficient than I am when I’m left to my own devices.  If you leave comments about what has worked for you, then we’ll all have a larger resource base of knowledge and experience to work from.  So don’t be shy!  Share your great ideas and experiences.

To start it off, I find that a checklist can really help me focus.  I tend to be easily distracted and end up focusing on the non-essentials and then run out of time for the essentials.  A checklist helps me stay with the essentials and only do the non-essentials if time allows.  I’ve done a little bit of research on some checklists you might want to refer to as you create your own.  The links to these sites are provided below. 

In general, a good checklist, should have the following elements for starters:

A Good Checklist…

…will be easy to follow. 

…will provide reminders for things that must be done, before the first day of school, on the first day of school, the first week of school, the first month of school for starters

…will remind you to begin planning now for your parent Open House or Family Night

…force you to consider routines, procedures, traffic flow, and how you plan to teach these things the first few weeks of school

…remind you to revisit your substitute notebook and make any relevant updates for the year

…remind you to prepare any forms, hall passes, incentives, charts, graphs, syllabus, you need to

…remind you to organize your own day so that everything as much as possible is an automatic routine.  For example, every morning, before school,  I have the same routine, every afternoon after school I have the same things I must do before I leave to prepare for the next day.  Revisit these each year to make sure they still hold or if they need to be revised.

…remind you to take time for digital organization:  organize your inbox, document files, group lists for people or committees you routine have to email to, etc.

You will probably be able to add your own based on the needs of your current teaching assignment.

Some helpful sites:

ProTeacher Directory

Back To School Checklist For Teachers

First Day Checklist

Scholastic’s Get Off To A Smart Start

Teacher Planet’s Back-To-School Page

Education World’s Back-To-School Checklist

Back-To-School Checklist: Organizing For Success

First Day Checklist — Primary Teachers

Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educator’s — a list of more checklist links here 

Tools and Templates from Education World

First Days of Middle School

First Days of School — links to tons of sites especially designed with the new teacher in mind

ABC Teach Directory of Back-To-School stuff

Teaching Heart’s Ultimate Back-To-School Stop

Busy Teacher’s Cafe — I think this might be one of my new favorite sites!

I Love That Teaching Idea — not really a checklist, but some good back-to-school resources

Most of the links (though not all) above are geared for elementary teachers.  It would be wonderful to have you comment and provide links to your favorite back-to-school sites or give us your back-to-school checklists.

Happy planning!

Ms. B

P.S. Clipart on this page is created by Philip Martin at http://www.phillipmartin.info/clipart/school.htm

 

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A Writer Is Only So Good As Their Chair

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I once heard someone say that a student can only learn as long as their butt doesn’t hurt.  Pain does have a way of distracting us doesn’t it?  I really want to write, but I can’t.  My chair is uncomfortable, my back, bottom and legs are screaming in pain after sitting here for only a few minutes.  Okay, that was a slight exaggeration to make a point.  Hmmm.  What point would that be?  It’s unclear.  Pain in my lower extremities is distracting me from doing the serious concentration I need to do in order to write anything coherent let alone intelligent. I’m getting fidgety and I’m uncomfortable.  I can’t think, even though I really, really, really do want to write.  Okay, forget it.  I’m going to go do something different for a while. 

Hmmm, I bet this is how my young students feel when they have to sit for hours in their desks doing worksheets…(Gak!  Exactly the reason I don’t expect them to sit for hours doing worksheets! Painful!)