Chapter 10: Winter Break is Coming

When I was younger, snow days were the single greatest thing on the face of the planet. It was like Christmas, my birthday, and my sister's birthday (because, when you're the younger sibling, you're expected to tag along and enjoy the ride) all rolled into one, with the added fun of it being a complete and total surprise. My sister and I would even do snow dances together to try and get the weather to cooperate.

In that last respect, things have not exactly...changed.

I will also say that snow days are still completely awesome. They are filled with relaxation, books, baking, video games (so...much...Mario Party...), and movies.

So...my taste's can be a little...interesting?

An apple-vanilla pie, sprinkled with cinnamon.

Obligatory picture from my walk. Not pictured: ICE OF DEATH!!

Which all goes to say that I've been enjoying my two extra-days of Winter Break. True, Portland Public took forever to decide not to have school on Thursday, but that's neither here nor there.

Having said that, I'm also kind of disappointed. See, Portland is probably going to add days on to the end of the year to make up for these missed days. However, my time with my kids is much more limited, because my student teaching only goes until April 21st, meaning that these are two-days I will not be getting back.

I really like my kids. I mean, I say that about every group of students that I've ever had, and I mean it every time. It always makes me sad to leave them, and I am always cognizant of how little time I have. So, going into this position, I knew that I would get about seven months to be a part of their lives. In those seven months, I would make whatever impact I was going to make, teach them whatever lessons I was going to teach, and help however I was going to help them.

And now, I have lost two precious days.

My personal philosophy of teaching is that the class works best when the students have some input, and material relates back to them. It kind of means that my lesson plans aren't planned out too far in advance, and that nothing is ever glued down until the last time that I teach it (like Tuesday, when I completely threw out my lesson plan about two-hours before my class because I had the inkling of something better, which turned out amazing). However, these past three weeks I have been a bit more overbearing than I like. Basically, over Thanksgiving break I planned out three weeks worth of material--which is way more in advance than I usually do things--and...I would say that it didn't work out as well as usual, because I feel as though I wasn't giving the kids input. I also diverged from the lesson flow that I'd developed over the passed month.

This last Friday, though, was going to change all of that. We were going to end on a day filled with things that they'd showed interest in. We were going to learn the chorus for the Latin-America-Spanish version of, "Let it Go," and how to tie bow ties. I cannot say how excited I was for that lesson. And now...I may never get to teach it. I want to teach the kids these things, but I don't know when I'll get to do it.

*Sigh*

Lesson learned. I do need to work on finding more ways to let the kids have more roles in class. I'm toying with having kids lead the story creation, with me just there to translate and turn it all into excellent Spanish, and having students draw pictures to help create a Spanish-English class dictionary to add to their Google Classroom. Basic ideas to toy around with, so we'll see if anything comes of them.

One last bit of my personal philosophy.

A lot of teachers use tangible rewards. You do well, you get candy/ a key chain/ the bones of an archeopteryx to divine the future (and yes, Firefox dictionary, that is a word). Personally, I'm more about giving kids experiences. It might be because I like collecting them (why else would I scurry out in the middle of a snow-storm, winds howling away, just to see what my usual walk in the park would be like under those conditions? Or ride my bike through below freezing conditions to school? Or put ketchup and cottage cheese on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?). It could also be that experiences last longer than material things. At the end of the day, given the choice, I will give my students an experience to last them a life time. That's why I made sure to let my kids out to play in the snow for the last few minutes of the last two periods of my day. I even made a deal with them, where if they focused they could go out. It's amazing how great kids act when they have something to work towards. My only regret is that I didn't give the same incentive to my fourth period class. But that was the end of two days of awkward lessons for that class, because that's what they wanted, and that's what they were interested in.

This has been another adventure in the austentatious. If you liked it, tell your friends; if you hated it, tell your enemies; and if you don't care either way, then tell everyone. Good night, and stay warm.

Chapter 9: Shake and Shiver

With shivering fingers the color of a child's ocean, our hero laboriously types out each little letter, letting language convey each idea. Will he ever be warm? Will the sun come again? Or has the world fallen into eternal winter? Our hero will fight on against the darkness, and bring again the days of sun and Summer.

OK, so it's not that cold. In fact, I haven't even turned on my heater tonight.

Last week was a different story.

So, for those who don't know, Portlanders are really weird when it comes to snow. For most of the US, when they get snow, life goes on. It might be life at a slightly slower speed, but it's still a speed none the less. For Portland, however, everything stops when there's even a hint of...this:

heeee :)

Or this:

heeeee :D

Or, horror of horrors, this:

EEEEEE! :D

I still get excited looking at those pictures. And it was because of the threat of all that snow that school on Thursday was canceled. On Wednesday night.

Which is really unusual.

Normally, when there's a threat of snow, the school's wait until the morning of to make the decision to a) have school as normal, b) have a two hour delay, or c) cancel everything and bunker down like the apocalypse is coming. Imagine my surprise, then, when PPS (Portland Public Schools) canceled the night before. It was a miracle. I could turn off my 6:30 alarm! I could sleep in!

Until 4:30am.

I guess you could say that I was a little excited for the snow.

So, I spent the day either shivering in my room near my heating vent (my room mate likes a cold apartment, while I like a little warmth in my life, so we compromise by me just heating up my personal space), and dancing around outside...while still shivering.

Still, the day came to an end, with the promise of school the next day. I went to bed really early, in order to be ready.

Cue 4:30am again--or something close to it--when I receive a text from my mom. "No school for you today." So, what happened?

Well, it had stayed colder than the weather people had expected the night before, and...we had had a bit of freezing rain.

For those unfamiliar with Freezing Rain, it basically is what happens when normal rain hits a layer of cold just above the ground and freezes on contact. It basically turns everything into a sheet of ice, and encases anything left outside in a cocoon of ice. Regrettably, when I took my I-am-insane-but-when-could-I-do-this-again? walk at 9:00 in the morning, I forgot my phone at home, so no pictures.

Where does this leave me, and what does this have to do with student teaching?

Well, I had roughly planned out three weeks of lessons during Thanksgiving break. Using data that I'd obtained by, you know, observing my students, we were going to focus on writing the middle part of a story using a single character. The goal was to give them ideas, with the first story being the character dealing with a problem, the second focusing on the character having a secret, while the third was going to focus on the character having a desire.

But, at this point, I don't think we're going to have time.

Quite frankly, I do want to deal with the character having a desire, but I don't think we'll have enough time to practice the new vocab if we went the way that I was planning. So, I'm going to have to move some things around for it to work, but I think I'll be able to fit it in. Truly, it just depends on how tomorrow goes. If my student's remember the story, and we get through everything at a good pace, then we'll add in a desire. If not...well, then we'll do the desire after Christmas Break with a new character.

One last note, before I sign off: the system works. The system that I made, that I was talking about, works. The students get it, and all that I have to do to get them back on track is pick up the white board and change the number. If it goes down, they quickly shape up. If it goes up, they relax a little bit and feel fantastic about themselves. The best part of the system is that it lets them self-monitor, because that's what I'm really after. If I spend the entire year constantly harping at them with how exactly I want them to shape up, then they'll always expect this input to come from an external source. However, if I can help them self-monitor--and understand when I think that they could do better without telling them how--then I start getting them to be a bit more introspective about their own behavior. Call it an odd quirk, but I'd rather empower my kids to be able to do things on their own than have them depend on me.

Oh, and speaking of which, I've taken a page out of my CT's book, and assigned a BB (Brain Break) person to my classes. This way, when someone thinks the energy is too high--or too low--they can say BB once a class, and we can do something for about a minute that has nothing to do with Spanish to better help them focus on the task at hand.

This has been another adventure in the Austentatious! If you liked it, tell your friends; if you hated it, tell your enemies; and if you don't care either way, then tell everyone! Good night, stay warm, and stay safe.

Chapter 8: Thanksgiving and the Aftermath

Preparing for the week, a naggling thought in our hero's head niggles into the forefront: something must be written. THE BLOG! With a clatter of dropped pans, he dashes to his room, a mess behind him for future events. Time is of the essence: begin blogging...now!

Well, it's been two weeks since my last post. The first week was Thanksgiving break. Two quick stories from there:
1) The day before Thanksgiving is, essentially, not the day for the get it or fail lesson. So, I taught my kids how to sing a Spanish song: En la feria de San Juan. Imagine, if you will, a set of 31 seventh graders--one quarter going gara gara on their air guitar, another going pidi-pidi-piyo pidi-pidi-piyo on their pipes, another going bom-bom-bom-bom on their drums, and one more going chacka-chacka-chacka-chacka on their maracas. And I got 95% buy in on the song. It was unreal, and I wish that I'd thought to film it.

2) I gave blood for the first time. For those who don't know, needles are a) my worst fear, and b) the fear that I have the least control over. So, yeah, I was a nervous wreck--nearly fainted when I walked into the room--but I went through with it anyway. Do I feel proud of myself? Yes. Will I do it again? Maybe? I don't know, it all depends on where my life takes me.

Now, this past week was stunningly productive. I finished my practice edTPA (huzzah! I'm free, I'm free, I'm free...[suddenly realizing that I have my February learning segment due on Saturday morning] DANG IT!), and completely invented a new system to manage my classroom.

Let me explain!

...

No, that would take too long. Let me sum up:

I am in charge of two seventh grade classes. One--being particularly utilitarian--works perfectly with the curriculum. The other...well, they tend to get excited when someone else has a good idea, and then they like the next idea even more, and the next idea even more...it's like a perpectual motion machine of excitement that just keeps going up until they I've all but lost control.

Read: It doesn't work for them.

So what happened? Well, they essentially went into lock down mode to reset the class. They were given a vocab list to study for a quiz on Friday, a dialogue to memorize as well, and grammar based lessons, which they hated. (It also terrified the other class. I came in the day after we started with the grammar in the other class and they were paying the best attention I have ever seen. It was like a group of Stepford Wives looking out for a hoard of weeping angels. Thankfully, I was able to snap them out of it, but the first 10 minutes were pretty unnerving). And they did it. They hated it, and I hated it, but they did it, and it gave me time to develop something new. I did it because...well, the current system was setting them up for failure.

Oooh, a nonsensical graph! That makes complete sense.

Sarcastic captions aside, this graph is their behavior in October. 0 is basically asleep; 1 is focused, on task, and with good energy; and 2 is out of control. After the first 2, they got a seating chart, and we made a set of classroom agreements (theirs were stellar), and we agreed that if they could maintain them for 5 days (in other words, get a 1 for five days in a row) that they'd get class seating back.

They did not do that.

And, looking at the graph, they were never going to. Basically, every one and a half to two days, they'd have a meltdown and lose it. Once they figured out that they'd lost their streak, they would get worse.

In other words, the system was setting them up completely for failure, and as a teacher, I can't abide by that idea.

So, I invented something new...or, probably more accurately, I stole the basic idea from somewhere that I can't really remember, and changed it in a way that will help them kids succeed. Here's how it works:
As a group, they have a certain number of class points. ten and above, and they have free seating. Anything below that, and they start losing privileges. Anything negative, and we go to grammar classes.
So, how do they gain/ lose points?
Every day, they start with 2 daily points. This is the level that I expect them to be able to be at in order to basically succeed in class. If they exceed my expectations, then they can get 3 points (if they get 3s on consecutive days, then I start adding multipliers, up to a x3). If they start to slip, then their points can go down. Although the daily points are only added to the class points at the end of class, I can change my projection at any time. This means that, at any time, I can change the number to let them know that they are either doing an exceedingly good job, or that they need to step it up (minus points are only going to happen if anyone is out of control. Hopefully no one ever gets that bad again).
What do they get out of it?
Three things: First, they get their privileges back. Second, for every multiple of 25 they hit (and it's only once per number), they get a game day. Number three, on those same multiples, they get to pick out two props for me to wear ALL DAY. A chance to humiliate the teacher? I think I've got 'em.
Why is this system better than the old one?
Well, for one it's not an all-or-nothing system. As I said, with the previous system once they figured they weren't going to add to their streak (again, it was every few days) they would blow up a little bit. With this system, having a bad day doesn't completely sink their chances. In fact, it is specifically built with bad days in mind. Number two, there wasn't a whole lot of feedback that I could give to the class with the previous system, except, "I think you're getting a little out of control." With this system, they get constant feedback, and it's going to be easy for everyone to see just what the feedback is. Lastly, it is a system designed around setting them up for success.

And, at the end of the day, isn't that what teaching is about?

I mean, I get that imparting the information and being able to do the skills is important, but I feel that it's also important to remember just where the kids are going. 10 years down the line, I want my students to be able to still speak Spanish, but I also want them to be able to be successful adults. Amazingly enough--and hard to believe while in the daily trenches--but there is life outside of the classroom. It is both awesome and terrifying--like a deity who forgot to put on pants--but one day my students will be entering jobs, deciding on their next elected representative, and populating the globe. And I want them to be incredible at every single aspect of their lives--to make other people stare in amazement that such superb examples of human beings actually exist--and that includes spending some time to focus on the things in life that don't have to do with Spanish. And if that means spending the rest of my free time for student teaching finding a way to make each and every one of them successful, then so be it, at least I can say that in the brief six-month time I was part of their lives, I worked to make a difference. And that, dear reader, is the absolute least that I ever want to say about any of my teaching experiences!

This has been another adventure in the Austentatious--brought to you by a man who is too cheap to turn on the heat, and too cold to have proper dexterity. If you liked it, tell your friends; if you hated it, tell your enemies; and if you don't care either way, then tell everyone.

Peace out!