When The Smoke Clears

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was moving from my comfortable classroom job and throwing myself into a job outside of what I am used too. I am not going to lie, I thought I was going to be able to handle the demands of this new teaching job but the fact is, it scares the heck out of me!

I am so afraid that I am not doing enough teaching and that I am failing my students by not pushing them for more! I am constantly coming home and crying because of things that are outside of my control. I moved away from my buddies and co-workers and have been going through all the feelings with my isolation! For the first time in years, I felt defeated by my job!

I want to paint you a clear picture of what it is like to be a behavior specialist. With the students, you can almost guess at what you are getting. Behavior Specialist get to see all the documentation on students and learn their quirks before they even meet the student. However, you know what you do not learn in those files? You don't learn that now you get to listen to the complaints of others because "your" student doesn't know that they need to sit quietly during activities that they do not want to do. You get to sit there and smile when you find another error in some paperwork. You get to nod when someone tells you that they do not want "your" student in their classroom.

When I say I come home and cry, just know it's never about the kids. I love my "kids" and will go down swinging for them because I know that they need someone in their corner. These kids need someone to fight for them and change the conversation. Not every day in my classroom is bad and some days we learn more about ourselves than we do about the content standards. Some days we have more hugs and laughs than we do screams. Some days, we are getting by on the fact that we did not have to call any parents.

My new job isn't walk in the park but it is an adventure!

Change is a good thing, right?

At the beginning of the month, when I started this blog I was so excited  because I was finally getting the technology that would make my classroom everything I wanted. Little did I know that by the end of that month, I would be switching jobs. I had the dream job but I am trading in my fifth grade classroom for a self-contained behavior classroom.

I will be working with students in fifth through eighth grade. I was in my new, and bigger classroom today and it hit me that I am in for the ride of my life. This is the year that I will either find out what I am made of or crack under the pressures. However, I am still taking with me my idea of a one-to-one environment. I have big plans but first I will settle for getting the room in order.

I hope you are ready to take this journey with me! I am so ready for the challenges that are going to come of this job.

However, lets talk about my concerns for my new positions.

1. I have heard several times since applying for the position that my kids are the worst and I won't like it. I have an issue with students receiving labels.

2. There is so much clutter in the classroom, it gives me hives just thinking about it.

My plan to change my concerns:

1. You do not get to talk about my kids! We are going to be changing the conversation this year. Being a difficult kid does not mean you are always going to be the "problem". I do not feel like I am going to have time for people who are not going to be willing to make an effort to connect with my kids.

2. If it isn't my stuff, it's gone! If you are looking for magazines from the early 2000's, stop by my room.

This is the start of something great, I hope. Only time can tell!

And the beat goes on....

We, teachers, should not stop preparing even though the school year is over. The summer should be time for professional development and growth. That is not to say that we have not earned ourselves a little fun. One thing I hate hearing from my fellow teachers is how they shut down in the summer.

However, I have spent the summer analyzing my career and thinking about my next move. I attended a week long training on implementing STEM in the classroom and collaborated with a great team of teachers from my school on making our STEM club fantastic in our final year as a school. Next week, I get to attending a two-day training on Chromebooks and how the county wants them to be used in our classes.

I have previously shared my amazing crossover between Harry Potter and Class Dojo that I plan on implementing in my classroom on the first day of school. I hope to be able to present Class Dojo to the parents of my students, at a meet the teachers night before school starts. This great implementation is not my only idea that I have for next school year.

So on to the important business of this post. I want to start by telling you all about my failed expectations last year. Last year, was my first time teaching reading (outside of student teaching and subbing). I thought I would do monthly book reports and they would be all artsy and the students would love them! Guess what?! Students hate book reports and they do not turn them in! I went into the experience believing that my students would meet this expectation, and sometimes they did but most of the time, they did not! I felt defeated and was sure that I would never do mandatory book reports again.

Since my classroom will be exclusively 1:1, I figured that I would try to go as paperless as possible. This is when I decided to use all the tools that the county has provided to make sure that my classroom had a completely blended and technology experience. With Microsoft Forms, I created a digital reading log for students to access (number of times a week that this will be required to be filled out is still up in the air).

Reading Log

Above is the reading log that I shared with my co-teacher. It is the rough draft of what I want to use. I plan linking this to my county page and my class dojo that will be set up for my reading students. I have not decided on if this will be a nightly requirement or three times a week. However, this my plan. As students grow throughout the year, questions will change and evolve. I also want to add how many minutes they read. This is just one more thing I cannot report back on the success or failure of this endeavor! Have a great weekend and remember to keep up the great work!

Classroom Management

Happy July fellow teachers! The coming of July can only mean one thing for me...

However, I am really looking forward to August because I get to take a tool that I have used the last three school years (successfully)! One of my favorite tools is Class Dojo! I cannot rave about how it has connected families and my classroom. Over the years, it has become less about the points and more about the stories that students and myself share.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Class Dojo, let me give you the five second run down. Class Dojo has you create your rosters for your classes and then decide what positive behaviors you will be looking for in each student (assign those behaviors positive values) and which behaviors will be considered inappropriate (assign those behaviors a negative value or zero). Once your class is set up, you can then print parent invites. They can link up to their child's account and monitor their behavior from home. Parents can also view the class story and message the teacher at any time. I use the app on my phone for access to students and points at all times but like to keep Class Dojo opened on the desk top so students can hear the chimes when they get points.

Here is a few shots of some of the stories on my Class Dojo (ELA and SCIENCE) Class Story...

Now for why I am excited for Class Dojo this coming school year! I have decided last school year to use Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone as a novel study and paired it with my mixtures and solutions science kit (potions). This coming year I am taking that idea to a whole new level. Room 103 is going full Harry Potter. I will be teaching four different groups next year. Each group will be assigned a Hogwarts House (Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin). These groups will compete in a House Cup, just like the houses in Harry Potter. The best part of this, is that Class Dojo is completely customizable (that includes the avatars that I will be using to keep track of the house points).

House Cup Main Page on Class Dojo

Point Screen

This will be displayed every day so each class will know how they stand between the other classes. Each nine weeks there will be a small reward for the winning house. At the end of the year, there will be a large award for the house with the most total points throughout the school year.

My school is making a large movement toward more Positive Behavior Support, so on top of each individual class having their own dojo and their own monsters, I will be keeping up with this one. I cannot wait to report back after the first nine weeks and letting everyone know how successful (or unsuccessful) this adventure has been.

Let me know if you have a management system that works for you!

Answered Prayers

Every teacher dreams of having the perfect classroom; all of the students are pleasant, there is enough supplies for all of the students, and there is working technology. Those rose-colored glasses are great but when you work in a county were all of the students get free lunch, you tend to figure that it will never happen. But what if it did? What would you do to bring your students into the 21st century?

Last week was a roller coaster week for me. There were a lot of changes to my current life but I was very excited to receive an email from my superintendent that lifted my spirits and made me excited for the #finalwave (since the school I am teaching in is going to be consolidating and taking on a new name after the next academic school year). We will be going to a 1:1 teaching environment for the next school year. This helped lift my spirits because the reality that I would be entering my final year as a fifth grade teacher had me in complete panic.

Now is the fun part! I have been going through my delicious account reviewing all of my tech tools that I have in my tool kit! I feel like a kid in a candy store because there are so many new tools that I hadn't found before this week. I am very excited to look into tools like Flipgrid and Edpuzzle. The idea of being able to flip my classroom has me feeling like a first year teacher again!

I cannot wait to tell you all about the training that will be taking place in the next few weeks and sharing the success of 1:1 in my classroom. It will be interesting to see how this will work when I know that I will be seeing four different groups of students and teaching all the general education subjects. Every part of me hopes that I will be able to use the technology in a meaningful way but there is a small part that knows that there will be a lot of training to ensure that the students are using the tools to make products that exhibit learning. This might mess with the curriculum maps that I am working one (do not fear, you will get a glimpse of that... in time!)

Until the training, I can just sit here at home, pin my ideas, and share them with my co-workers!

First Time Blogger

This blog is something that I wanted to set up last year, after my boss threw my team a curve ball. We went from being fifth grade teachers that taught two subjects and switched students with one other teacher, to a team of teachers that taught all of the five subjects and seen several different groups of students. We were whisked from our comfort zones and asked to quickly adapt. Needless to say,  my blogging idea took a backseat to learning new curriculum.

Fast-forward to the end of the school year, and now we have landed in summer. I made it through the transition and have started planning for the coming school year. I am beyond overjoyed for the chance to share my classroom with others and give them insight into what it is like to live in my world. I am the type of teacher who tries to push the envelop and make my students live the curriculum. I hope that you come with me on the journey of discovering what year four of teaching fifth grade will bring me.

Thank you!