This is going to be lengthy

It would be embarrassing to begin apologizing for how long I have gone without an update. Let's just skip all the reasons excuses I could give for my blogosphere absence. Let's just say they have to do with planning a wedding, lack of time, and multiple efforts to not think about school when I'm not at school.

 We'll start instead with some lists.


Things I have learned since the beginning of the year:
Papers will not grade themselves.
Kids desperately need you to believe in them.
My lunch is only good if I make it the night before.
Teachers hate change.
Teachers hate being positive.
Teachers are not good friends.
I am excellent at improvising.
Kids take grades wayyyy to seriously.


Goals I have set:
 Start planning like I did during student teaching.
 Visit the gym more to relieve stress
Continue reading personal books
Occasionally include professional books
Move somewhere with a dishwasher so I don't have to clean my coffee tumbler every single day

 

 Little pleasures:
Sharpie pens
Open space in my classroom
Leaving school before 4:00
Successful lessons
Good conversations with ten year olds
Ordering out lunch
Spring is around the corner (a rather large pleasure)

 

We have recently finished the week that the school year revolves around, the week that determines everything, the week that drives the rest of the weeks: testing week. The ISAT is the Illinois version of TCAP, which is what I took  growing up. However my views of it were pretty different from my students' views. I just knew it as the week we got to have a snack in the morning. It also generated some report with a few graphs that I would take home to my parents later in the year and it pretty much just confirmed my suspicions that I was above average.
The way my students see it, it means EVERYTHING. If they fail ISAT, they fail school. I suppose this is an okay view for them to have, because in reality it means a lot more for me than for them. What I don't quite understand is why we don't get their scores back until late August. So in August I get to know who stands where and who grasped what concepts. Useful to a degree, I suppose.

If you're looking for an update since my post entitled "Superlatives" where I labeled teaching as The Hardest Thing I Have Ever Done, it still is The Hardest Thing I Have Ever Done. The way I have come to deal with this is to look at everything as a learning opportunity. Trial and error. And every time I err, I have to remind myself "you did the best you could." Because I really feel that is true. There are a thousand things I will start the year with differently in the future, but that's why I get a fresh start each year. Someone told me at a workshop yesterday to get the core things down that work for me in the way I teach, and just improve and deepen them each year. I'm certainly still in the first stage of this--figuring out what works for me.

In other 5th grade news, we are beginning a unit on Historical Fiction. I told my students how I love this genre because it's a much more engaging and interesting way to learn about history. To start the unit, I assign them a book to read. After they finish that one, they may choose from a few small sets I have of other Historical Fiction books. The first book they read will revolve around the Holocaust. Two of them which I think are amazing are Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen--look them up if you aren't familiar with them. I think this will be a great unit because all the stories (very common in this genre) follow the journey of a victim of some type of historical conflict. We'll be looking at the impact of the conflict on the main character, how they deal with it, how it affects their life. We'll point out how much power the main character has and the reasons why they lack much power over their situation. Some of the books they can read after their first one deal with the Mexican Revolution, slavery, epidemics, immigration, or wars. There's all kinds of stuff to unpack so clearly I'm pretty excited!
As you can tell, or as you might remember from posts last year, I really like teaching History.Thanks to money in the gifted department budget, we just got some sets of books on Chinese immigration, Mexican immigration, German-Jewish immigration, and Irish immigration. Hopefully some great material and maybe even some pictures will come out of this. If so, I'll be sure to post! And more quickly than I have been this year so far....