KontansPlace

Ready for vacation

I had such a great outlook last week. Ahhh, just one more week and then I can enjoy spring break. Yes, it will be filled with cleaning, packing, pulling the spring clothes and storing the winter, but it will be student free! Then I realized. Spring break was not one, but two weeks away. Sadness. I am now only one week away and will have to pray myself through next week.

Students can be so frustrating. At the beginning of the year I expressed amazement at how likable this group was. I really do like most of them. So why the frustration? I don’t know how to teach the apathetic student. These guys see no benefit to learning history, or note-taking and study skills. They have NO desire. The ability level is so low and the motivation level is lower. I just flat out do not know what else to do.

Searching the ‘net tonight and ran across this website explaining how to deal with stress. Great tips and an ease of writing that keeps you reading. Now…I’m off to bed to listen to my calming music and relax from head to toe.

Preparing to decorate

I am putting together my portfolio and need to add room pics to it. Sounds easy enough, and I’m sure it is…if you have a room to photograph. I do not. I wanted to use the math room that I use each day. He didn’t mind but suggested just taking a pic of one of the history rooms. Not to be rude, but these guys are not very creative in their decoration. Although, using the history room sounded like a good idea since I wouldn’t have to take anything down, I could just add to. When I looked at the history room I was pretty impressed. It was creative and cute. Very classic. Not what I would normally do, but it was a clean and calm atmosphere. I decided not to use that room though. I will be modifying my afternoon room. Ease of access was the deciding factor. No keys to borrow and I spend most of my time in there so I can get some decoration done while students are working tomorrow.

As I went through what I will take for display I realized how much I miss having my own teaching spaced. I miss having a space to reflect me, and my teaching style. I miss having my posters, time lines, and pictures to refer to while teaching. I miss my bulletin boards and artifacts from here and there. It is nice not having to maintain a work space, but it is better to have a workspace to call your own. Besides, the coat closet in the living room could be put to better use than as supply storage for my teaching and grad school materials.

Looking forward to having at least one day in a history classroom. *sigh* I will say the science room is the worst. It’s big. It has great lighting, and good desks. But *ew* during dissection time and I really despise teaching with a jar of roundworms on the desk beside me.

Went to the park this past weekend and took a few pics…enjoy

The worst screw up…EVER

What is the worst thing that you can do on evaluation day? The worst thing that can happen to you or, in my case, you can do to yourself? Think…

Go on, I’ll wait.

Got something?

OK, let me share.

Yesterday was “one of those” days. I
didn’t sleep the night before. I spent the night tossing and turning, worrying about my NC license requirements. If I wasn’t worrying about that I was having sinus and congestion issues. I’ll spare you the details. FINALLY sleep was had, but it made getting up very difficult.

I crawl out of bed a little after 6:30. I harass the kids to get a move on. Shower and figure out what to wear. Make-up, dry the hair. Grab coffee and something for a snack later. Out the door I go. It’s a little later than normal but surely I will make it. Hmmm, do I turn right and hope traffic isn’t too bad or go straight and come in the back lot? I chose to go straight and take the boulevard. BIG mistake. Everyone else apparently had the same idea. TRAFFIC!!!! Crud. I get to school right. at. time. Oh my. Stop by my end of day room, grab the text and off to my first period room, two minutes late.

uh. freakin. oh.

The room owner is there as usual and beside her…admin.

My face had to say “oh $#!^^”

What do you do? I just walked in talking. Said something about giving them a lesson on driving rules, but it wasn’t the best time given the mood. Told them to open books to page 397 and I taught like mad. It was a great lesson and I am told that admin liked it. But DAMN! Of ALL days! Grrr. Crap. Crud. I did not need that. ugh.

To submit my post observation questions I went to admin later in the day. At that point I addressed the tardy issue. He sort of waved it off and said he wasn’t going to pretend he had been on time 100%.

Crap. Seriously. crap.

Serious prayer needed here

If I have to take another PRAXIS test to be licensed in NC I’m going to be violently ill. Please pray for reciprocity. To get a license in NC you have to take Social Studies Content Knowledge and Social Studies Pedagogy. I would do fine on the World and US content knowledge. I would do well on government and pretty good on geography. Economics…oh not so good. The only reason I did OK on it when I took this test was because I had just taught the subject. That was in 1999 and I haven’t touched it since. My economics instruction stops at supply/demand and inflation. In all of my Soc.Sci. education I have had 3 economics courses…two were histories masking as economics. Please, please, please no take again. Why would I need to take if I have already taken it? The pedagogy scoring would be subjective…I think. I do not want to bank on a test with subjective scoring so I would want to boost my content knowledge score. I just reviewed the licensure app and it looks like I just MIGHT not have to take the tests since I am HQ in AL.

And since I’m begging for prayer support…I have my eye on a cool charter school that would be perfect for my girls and it would be totally cool to get to work there. So like could you totally pray for it? LOL, long day and my head is full of allergy issues. Lovely. Pray that goes away too.

God, I really need calm nerves and peace about this transition.

Quotes for thought:

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
Epictetus

What worries you, masters you.
John Locke

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever
Mahatma Gandhi

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
Henry Ward Beecher

Waiting on the rain again

Here we go again with another round of stormy weather. Really this weather is strange. Warm, sunny skies to cloudy gray…then stormy on to snow, back to warm.

Last Monday I posted radar images of the expected rain. Looks like we have a similar outlook this evening. I use weatherunderground for all my weather watching needs. I must tell you, this site is way cool. You put in your location and have several choices for radar watching. The local radar lets you animate and storm track. Regional radar gives you a broader view, and you can also animate. The newest feature I love…The wundermap is an interactive radar using Google Earth images with the storm overlay. You can animate and track. Very similar to the local radar, but you have the ability to put in exact addresses. Love it, love it. I can put in my address, animate and track, and be able to see the storm systems moving this way. I’m not sure how up to the minute it is, but it beats relying on pathetic news coverage like we had in MS. Such fun…

End of term projects and papers to be graded. Lovely. Nothing like reading to the patter of rain.

Waitin’ on the rain to come

I really love a good rain storm. I’m not fond of severe weather, although I do find it exciting. I have a healthy fear of what severe weather can do. However, I enjoy rainy days. No, rainy days and Mondays do not always get me down. It’s just the Mondays. Back to school today and the students thoroughly enjoyed my inability to speak correctly. In croaking tones I conducted recovery activities.

No, you are not allowed to take a zero. No, you will not receive full credit for the essay that you should have researched and turned in last week. I pulled the information, printed it, and gave it to you. Write the paper in 45 minutes and take your 1/4 credit, you had a chance to complete it for both full and half credit last week! ZERO is NOT ALLOWED!

When will they learn? I must say, it was great to have FULL backing of my asst. admin today. There were a few students who did not take me seriously when I let them know that they would do the assignment or be removed where they would do the assignment in another environment. I received all but one recovery essay. That one will likely not be returning for a few days. I don’t know what happened, but when he returns he will be handed the research material and be asked to complete a one page essay. I WILL have 100% of the students complete the assignment. It is the principle of the matter. Wrong? Maybe. I can accept poor ability. I can not accept laziness.

Now…here’s my weather:

Higher Ed Meme

Stealing a meme from Tense Teacher. Three questions about higher ed and personal goals.

1. Would you ever go (back) to college in your mature adult life?

Absolutely. I completed my MA in ‘05 and am contemplating PhD work.

2. If yes, what would you study?

American History, emphasis on the South or the role of women in industrial development

3. If you’ve already been, what were your favorite/least favorite classes and why?

I will have to come back to this one. I hated historiography. Loved Civil War studies and Colonial development.

Today’s Windsday…

Glitterfy.com - Glitter Graphics

I love the windy day Pooh cartoon. Today is Wednesday, but it feels like Thursday to me. Slightly depressing. I feel terribly guilty for wishing life away, but I’m ready for this school year to be over. It isn’t that it has been a terrible year. It really hasn’t been. The students are better than what I had before, even if they are less capable. Well, let me say less motivated. I don’t know, maybe even not that. The last group was pretty unmotivated. I don’t know what the issue is. Maybe they are all average and below where before they were average and above. Either way, I feel like I’m pulling teeth many days. I still like to teach and I like teaching these students, most days. What gets me down is not having a classroom. It is SO much harder than I ever thought it would be. I thought, get organized and make it work. That is true, but there is no settlement.

I am not the only floating teacher in this world. I am not the only floating teacher in my building. There are schools and teachers that have it so much worse. I know this. It still doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Bright side…there is one.

I have a job. I have a job using my degree. I have a job that I care about.

For this, I am thankful.

Sights, sounds, and smells

It’s late afternoon. The boys are dancing and jiving to the music in their head. . . trying to impress the girls of course. Silliness abounds. A spider or two lurks in the corner. The girls look on, they are not amused. It’s loud. It’s smelly.

2:45 and we were still stuck in the locker room below our classroom. *ew*

As afternoon approached many schools around us were preparing for early dismissal. Severe weather was expected and the schools wanted to get the kids home before it started. My system decided not to dismiss early. This actually makes sense to me. Not all parents can come get their kids and not all kids have a weather safe home to go to. Nothing is stopping parents from checking their children out of school either. Parents started coming just before lunch. It was rather amusing to watch. By 9th grade lunch/study I had several students in first study and only one in second. The next period six of 16 students were there. I let them hang out. We talked about birds in the state and how weather radar works. It wasn’t a total educational loss. We were watching how the storms were splitting just before our city when the announcement was made to get to our safe place. It was really a surprise. No thunder. No lightening. No rain. Just wind…lots of wind.

I told them where to go and gathered up. From that classroom our safe place is in the hallway beside the gym. Since that hallway is nothing but a wind tunnel we moved the students into the boys locker room. Again I say *ew*.

Parents were still coming. We’re under a tornado warning and announcements are being made for this, that and the other student. My students were great. They did exactly what I needed them to do and took it seriously. The others were pretty good as well. The storms were all around us, but all we were getting was wind. By 2:20 students were restless and not thrilled with sitting in the locker room. By 2:40 the warning was lifted. We didn’t return to our rooms, but around 2:50 we allowed our locker room hostages to move to the gym and await the end of school.

The local forums are back and forth on the bus issue. Being the fence rider that I am, I can certainly see both sides. I still lean on the side that it isn’t necessary to let school out and has the potential to be even more dangerous. If parents are able to pick up their kids then fine. If not, follow the emergency plan.

What do you think? Close, send students home early or stay open, follow plan while allowing check outs?

My Waterloo

For the past several nights I have been working my tush off on a PowerPoint of the French Revolution. Here’s the deal, it may or may not get used in class. Not all of the rooms I float to have the capability to project. Sometime when I’m not having to correct every other spelling error b/c I’m so wiped out I will share why. I worked and I worked and I worked and I worked…Then I made my first publish to slideshare.net

My current message:

I hope it posts b/c I would love to be able to post the thing on my school site. Here’s my big issue. I create in Office 2007, but have to save in then 2003 format. Crudmuffins, it always messes up the fonts or spacing. This means that if I desire to continue publishing on slideshare.net I will have modify all my publications to accommodate for their lack of updating. Is it really worth it?

OOOEEEE guess what! It worked and I don’t have to edit the spacing! This makes me very happy.

Now I shall share…It is rather simple, but VERY wordy. Students will have a printout that does not include all slides. They will have to condense the information, based on the “so what does this mean” slides that they will not be given in the handout. Watching, listening, and notetaking will be key activities.

Since this is for the purpose of review I lifted the content from a Sparknotes summary and will be adding to it in class. woo-hoo.

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