A new blog adventure

Greetings! :)  I'm a teacher.  Kind of.   I consider this my first real year of teaching because I am actually starting out in a classroom right from the beginning of the year.  I really enjoyed blogging while I was in Peace Corps, and it was a great way to keep a journal of thoughts, learnings, and memories along my journey.  I think life is one big journey, so I hate letting it go by without a trace.  And so, I am embarking upon a new blogging adventure.

To begin:

I'm READING:

Let's just say that my last teaching opportunity, in my eyes, was a big failure on my part.  And so, I'm digging deep, doing some serious reflection and preparation, and I will go into this coming teaching year hopefully not making half of the mistakes I made initially.  I'm giving myself two years, and if I don't feel like I'm leaps and bounds better than I was last semester, then I'm finding a new direction for my life.  This book is helping me step back and remember the popular mantra among educators, "Students may not remember what you teach them, but they'll remember how you made them feel."  I think this is true, and I cringe at the thought of how I must have made my students feel last semester.
    I have only ten pages left of this book (why don't you just finish it before you write this, Mary?)  and my big takeaways so far are the following:

From Chapter 2
Follow the four guidelines:
1. Don't let students fast talk you (I ALWAYS let this happen in my last job)
2. Stay focused on the problem (Things would start as a simple misbehaving issue and turn into a drawn-out multi-layered saga)
3. See the big picture (I feel like I did an OK job with this last semester, but I would almost negotiate too much in order to accommodate some situations)
4. Don't sell out your values (In order to do this, I think I'm still figuring out what it is I value the most.  I value honesty, integrity, creativity, high-quality/effort, order and respect.  I'm sure there's more...)

    What I like about this book is that Ridnouer discusses several typical situations that teachers face, and she describes how to approach each one with keeping these four guidelines in mind, all while treating the student with respect.  Like several classroom management books, she gives a case study of the "bad" teacher here and there, and sadly, I could imagine myself doing and saying many of those same things that the "bad" teacher did, in my last placement.  I remember scoffing while reading these case studies in college, saying, "what self-respecting teacher would run a class like this?  Does this teacher find any joy in teaching even?  Her students must hate her."  Ha.  This makes the following quote really hit home for me (from author Ashly Lorenzana)

“No one truly knows what they will do in a certain situation until they are actually in it. It's very easy to judge someone else's actions by what you assume your own would be, if you were in their shoes. But we only know what we THINK we would do, not what we WOULD do.” 

As I say all of this, I realize I could make these same mistakes this year, and feel crappy at the end of each day, just as I did before.  What I'm working hard towards is that those same mistakes won't be made, and I will face each day with an attitude of excitement, joy and the readiness to inspire readers and writers!  (Ok, I know I sound like a Hallmark Teacher card, if they even have those...)

I'm DOING

   Aside from stockpiling inspirational pieces on pinterest, I've been slowly setting up my room.  :)  It's a process.  My goal with my classroom is to make it feel less institutional-y and non-typical cutesy-classroom-ish (i.e. the rampant trends of chevron, owls and comic-sans inspired fonts).  Here are my before pictures:

Completely empty filing cabinets!

Most of my storage--up high

Some of my bill-boards

Corner 1950's-style table

Divider wall

Staple-able wall

Lots of wall...

The semi-smart board ;)

And here's what I've done so far:

Like I said, work in progress.  I have some stuff to hang up on Monday :)  Thank you Pinterest.














This is the start of my blog.  I don't know how consistent I will be, but I'm hoping this will be the space where I can track my ups and downs in my new teaching position, as well as share inspiring or hilarious stories that emerge from my classroom.  Sixth graders can be hilarious.  I can't wait :)