Post by elementary on Aug 25, 2012 0:54:31 GMT -5
Dear Diary,
I'm depressed today. Those state scores I was so eager to see have come in and they're not as I hoped, though they were as I feared.
I was overseeing a spelling lesson detailing all the ways we make plurals of nouns in the English language when one of the two 5th grade teachers in my mod stuck her head in my room and whispered:
"The CST scores are in. Have you seen them?"
Unable to restrain myself, I set my class into autopilot (I want you to make 25 plurals with objects you see around the room), I popped on the computer, and started scrolling through my former class.
It wasn't all bad news, but numbers don't lie and I felt my mood shifting down to neutral.
You see last year was also a less than optimal class year for teaching. I've already explained that tragedy continually befell the other classroom, with deaths and illnesses etc. that tore into the continuity of the teaching and drove the students farther and farther behind. What I didn't say at that point was the C's (the original 6th grade teacher in that room) replacement (Gt)was a teacher who had never taught this grade before. She was a retired teacher from another district who had essentially taught 3rd grade and below for the past 30 years. She had recently retired and was looking to supplement income by subbing near her home. Now she was being put into a different beast - the 6th grade beast - with boys discovering girls and girls discovering drama and testosterone terraforming these young kids' bodies into things they themselves couldn't understand. Unfamiliar with the standards and forced into a level of discipline much different than what is functional for primary grades, her class slipped - at least in math. Reading she was doing fine, but by the time her husband failed to return from his fishing trip in March, she had already farmed out her better students to myself and Mrs. S for math instruction. When she had to leave for a month to deal with her emotions as well as the obligations of death, I felt compelled to step in and take over the math lessons. I'm not saying I'm a great teacher, but I had to somehow give that class a stable teacher for the rest of the year. I knew my class would be sacrificing some of what I was giving them in order for me to aid this other class that was about ready to receive their 3rd teacher of the year.
Before I finalized my decision I spoke to my class, as I always try to make sure they are part of decisions that affect their education - especially when it entails a less seasoned teacher taking over some of their schooling, but they were troopers and understood my motives.
The biggest change they would feel would be to their schedule. I didn't give up teaching them math (crazy talk) but I shifted my schedule so I taught Gt's class before lunch and I taught my own after. C's substitute would teach social studies to both classes.
I didn't like it, but it was the best solution at the time. What pained me was shifting my math to the post lunch slot, when the kids were all digesting and gurgling and run down from running around after eating. Right away I noticed a change in how they responded to the lessons. Post lunch is great for science and social studies, activity laden classes that you can get the students' attention directed at experiments or pictures of ruins and half-rotted mummies. Math is a more attention orientated skill, and in my class it suffered. In Gt's class, the damage was already done. They were so behind I had to backup 4 chapters to find where at least half of them showed a functional level of comprehension.
By the time May rolled around, I was so burned out doing two math classes that were on different paces that I cancelled my after school tutoring I did for free. I just was feeling drained and I recognized my control after school was slipping.
So when these students took the Math CST last year, I feared what they would score.
My quick check while students converted 'clock' to 'clocks' and 'brush' to 'brushes', showed my fears were justified. Gt's class tanked, and tanked hard. Of my own students, it wasn't as bad, but no one improved to a higher level in my class. This has never happened before. Usually my ration is 3:1 for levels gained vs levels lost. Not so this year. My own class lost four students from the proficient ranking (I admit I expected this as their scores in 5th grade were noticeably higher than their 4th grade scores - so I knew their rank was tenuous at best and needed support - but whatever drove them to success in 5th grade, I failed to identify it in 6th, and their scores suffered.)
Also noticeable was the drop in the scores of my highest math achievers again. My highest raised his score to almost perfect - the rest dropped a dozen to a hundred points on the test.
The news kind of knocked me on my behind a little bit, and I felt my dedication to the spelling lesson waver. I needed a shift, so I had them put away their work, and we held our class election today.
As for as I know, I'm the only class which elects a president, with the runner up becoming vice-president. It great fun to see them all get involved and vying for a chance to be 'in charge'.
The job of president is highly coveted for several reasons. First, there are only three times a president is elected - beginning of the year, post Christmas, post Easter breaks - so it is an honor to hold the spot. Obviously it is an ego boost to be picked by your peers, but more so, this spot actually holds some power: my president can rescind punishments I dole out depending on the severity of the action. Essentially, there are days I either come to school irritated (lack of sleep, daughter misbehaving, chores piling up) or the students press all my wrong buttons. When this happens, I don't always recognize when my punishment is overblown for minor class infractions. One time talking does not deserve detention, but when my rope has reached its end, I may snap out that judgement in order to bring order to a class that has slipped into the fringe of anarchy. A president can recognize that and can eliminate the punishment or downsize it from detention to a missed recess. I always have the last say, but I believe it shows the class that we all need checks and balances in our lives.
The other parts of the job are more mundane: handing out the piles of paper notices the district churns out on every color of the rainbow, picking rows to line up first, monitoring the class while if I am absent and giving me a letter of how the class behaved and if the substitute messed up. They run behavior notes to the office and remind me what I was talking about if my train of thought derails. They are extremely helpful.
The vice president becomes president on days the president is absent, and takes over permanently if the president fails to live up to the need of the office or if the president gets impeached. This can occur through several actions such as receiving a detention, being sent to the office for any disciplinary action, lying to me (gotta trust the president...), and failing to do their homework. Grades don't matter as much, though if these begin to suffer, I will speak to the student and his/her parents to discuss if a change should be made.
(I should also say that these infractions will also lead a student to lose his/her voting privileges for the rest of the year - sort of like being a felon in some places - though I believe some people are trying to change the law in order to allow convicts to vote.)
We took 15 minutes went through the preliminary process of voting for the people who would be placed on the final ballot. The primary's voting is very simple. You write your student number on the ballot and vote for anybody except yourself. If these people could vote for themselves, I would have 36 separate nominations. No, it's better if they can't vote for themselves the first ballot. After that, if they make the candidate list, then they can vote for themselves.
The process went fine and after the second round - we had a tie between a girl and boy. We will have the run-off on Monday and I might put down some more of my thoughts on classroom jobs, but tonight it is getting late and I have a few more thoughts to relate.
During lunch, between bites of P&J, I ran off excell spreadsheets filled with CST scores for the other teachers in my mod. What I noticed was our overall math scores for 5th and 6th were less than stellar. My results were typical of what the others had experience. It didn't make me feel any better about how the students might react to these new scores, but it made me wonder if the test was somehow made harder than before. (One can hope.)
After lunch, we did the multiplication quiz for the 2nd time. This is the one I explained a few days ago and that noone had passed on Wednesday. Today I had three pass. Hurray! It's a start. Monday the rest begin their multiplication homework, but that too, will be discussed next week.
Finally, at the end of the day, I got my students out on the grass and we began our running for the year - maybe 15 minutes or so.
You must know that I am not the most fit person around. It's sad to say but I have slopped on 30 pounds since 2008 and I need to find ways to carve out that spare tire (and snow chains and oversized hubcaps). So today we rambled out to the backstop and I etched out a simple rectangle we would follow as our track. I said that I was tremendously out of shape and that if anybody, at the end of the run, was behind me, I would take away their recess as they darn well sure couldn't have been trying very hard.
So we stretched. (I have to assume my toes are down there as my fingers definitely didn't touch them...though I'm fairly sure I reached my kneecaps...) And stretched...and stretched...and then began the run. Most students hauled off and left me in the dust, but a few girls, shorter and, well, less fit, showed that they were in need as much as I of exercise.
I walked/jogged around the track two times without blowing that tire or falling down. It was great fun. Each time I felt like scattering the slower girls ahead of me like a flock of chickens I would start yelling a loud band song (can't name it but i swear there is some high school band that must be playing it somewhere right now) such as "hail the conquering hero!" and start running as fast as I can. The legs of the girls (and those lapping me by this time) would frantically pick up the pace and I would watch these scampering kids try to not be left behind.
Then the bell rang and I let them all go, and I went in my room and planned and then, happily, I drove off to pick up my daughter from afterschool care.
It was a good day in class. Still no discipline issues. Work interest is still high. Talking has not become more than small pools of noise that disappear quickly with the right look.
It's still the honeymoon phase.
All honeymoon phases end eventually.
That's when I'll see how ready I am for the year.
It's late, and I'm tired, and I really haven't proofread you too much. I hope (being a teacher) I did okay.
Thanks for being here,
L
I'm depressed today. Those state scores I was so eager to see have come in and they're not as I hoped, though they were as I feared.
I was overseeing a spelling lesson detailing all the ways we make plurals of nouns in the English language when one of the two 5th grade teachers in my mod stuck her head in my room and whispered:
"The CST scores are in. Have you seen them?"
Unable to restrain myself, I set my class into autopilot (I want you to make 25 plurals with objects you see around the room), I popped on the computer, and started scrolling through my former class.
It wasn't all bad news, but numbers don't lie and I felt my mood shifting down to neutral.
You see last year was also a less than optimal class year for teaching. I've already explained that tragedy continually befell the other classroom, with deaths and illnesses etc. that tore into the continuity of the teaching and drove the students farther and farther behind. What I didn't say at that point was the C's (the original 6th grade teacher in that room) replacement (Gt)was a teacher who had never taught this grade before. She was a retired teacher from another district who had essentially taught 3rd grade and below for the past 30 years. She had recently retired and was looking to supplement income by subbing near her home. Now she was being put into a different beast - the 6th grade beast - with boys discovering girls and girls discovering drama and testosterone terraforming these young kids' bodies into things they themselves couldn't understand. Unfamiliar with the standards and forced into a level of discipline much different than what is functional for primary grades, her class slipped - at least in math. Reading she was doing fine, but by the time her husband failed to return from his fishing trip in March, she had already farmed out her better students to myself and Mrs. S for math instruction. When she had to leave for a month to deal with her emotions as well as the obligations of death, I felt compelled to step in and take over the math lessons. I'm not saying I'm a great teacher, but I had to somehow give that class a stable teacher for the rest of the year. I knew my class would be sacrificing some of what I was giving them in order for me to aid this other class that was about ready to receive their 3rd teacher of the year.
Before I finalized my decision I spoke to my class, as I always try to make sure they are part of decisions that affect their education - especially when it entails a less seasoned teacher taking over some of their schooling, but they were troopers and understood my motives.
The biggest change they would feel would be to their schedule. I didn't give up teaching them math (crazy talk) but I shifted my schedule so I taught Gt's class before lunch and I taught my own after. C's substitute would teach social studies to both classes.
I didn't like it, but it was the best solution at the time. What pained me was shifting my math to the post lunch slot, when the kids were all digesting and gurgling and run down from running around after eating. Right away I noticed a change in how they responded to the lessons. Post lunch is great for science and social studies, activity laden classes that you can get the students' attention directed at experiments or pictures of ruins and half-rotted mummies. Math is a more attention orientated skill, and in my class it suffered. In Gt's class, the damage was already done. They were so behind I had to backup 4 chapters to find where at least half of them showed a functional level of comprehension.
By the time May rolled around, I was so burned out doing two math classes that were on different paces that I cancelled my after school tutoring I did for free. I just was feeling drained and I recognized my control after school was slipping.
So when these students took the Math CST last year, I feared what they would score.
My quick check while students converted 'clock' to 'clocks' and 'brush' to 'brushes', showed my fears were justified. Gt's class tanked, and tanked hard. Of my own students, it wasn't as bad, but no one improved to a higher level in my class. This has never happened before. Usually my ration is 3:1 for levels gained vs levels lost. Not so this year. My own class lost four students from the proficient ranking (I admit I expected this as their scores in 5th grade were noticeably higher than their 4th grade scores - so I knew their rank was tenuous at best and needed support - but whatever drove them to success in 5th grade, I failed to identify it in 6th, and their scores suffered.)
Also noticeable was the drop in the scores of my highest math achievers again. My highest raised his score to almost perfect - the rest dropped a dozen to a hundred points on the test.
The news kind of knocked me on my behind a little bit, and I felt my dedication to the spelling lesson waver. I needed a shift, so I had them put away their work, and we held our class election today.
As for as I know, I'm the only class which elects a president, with the runner up becoming vice-president. It great fun to see them all get involved and vying for a chance to be 'in charge'.
The job of president is highly coveted for several reasons. First, there are only three times a president is elected - beginning of the year, post Christmas, post Easter breaks - so it is an honor to hold the spot. Obviously it is an ego boost to be picked by your peers, but more so, this spot actually holds some power: my president can rescind punishments I dole out depending on the severity of the action. Essentially, there are days I either come to school irritated (lack of sleep, daughter misbehaving, chores piling up) or the students press all my wrong buttons. When this happens, I don't always recognize when my punishment is overblown for minor class infractions. One time talking does not deserve detention, but when my rope has reached its end, I may snap out that judgement in order to bring order to a class that has slipped into the fringe of anarchy. A president can recognize that and can eliminate the punishment or downsize it from detention to a missed recess. I always have the last say, but I believe it shows the class that we all need checks and balances in our lives.
The other parts of the job are more mundane: handing out the piles of paper notices the district churns out on every color of the rainbow, picking rows to line up first, monitoring the class while if I am absent and giving me a letter of how the class behaved and if the substitute messed up. They run behavior notes to the office and remind me what I was talking about if my train of thought derails. They are extremely helpful.
The vice president becomes president on days the president is absent, and takes over permanently if the president fails to live up to the need of the office or if the president gets impeached. This can occur through several actions such as receiving a detention, being sent to the office for any disciplinary action, lying to me (gotta trust the president...), and failing to do their homework. Grades don't matter as much, though if these begin to suffer, I will speak to the student and his/her parents to discuss if a change should be made.
(I should also say that these infractions will also lead a student to lose his/her voting privileges for the rest of the year - sort of like being a felon in some places - though I believe some people are trying to change the law in order to allow convicts to vote.)
We took 15 minutes went through the preliminary process of voting for the people who would be placed on the final ballot. The primary's voting is very simple. You write your student number on the ballot and vote for anybody except yourself. If these people could vote for themselves, I would have 36 separate nominations. No, it's better if they can't vote for themselves the first ballot. After that, if they make the candidate list, then they can vote for themselves.
The process went fine and after the second round - we had a tie between a girl and boy. We will have the run-off on Monday and I might put down some more of my thoughts on classroom jobs, but tonight it is getting late and I have a few more thoughts to relate.
During lunch, between bites of P&J, I ran off excell spreadsheets filled with CST scores for the other teachers in my mod. What I noticed was our overall math scores for 5th and 6th were less than stellar. My results were typical of what the others had experience. It didn't make me feel any better about how the students might react to these new scores, but it made me wonder if the test was somehow made harder than before. (One can hope.)
After lunch, we did the multiplication quiz for the 2nd time. This is the one I explained a few days ago and that noone had passed on Wednesday. Today I had three pass. Hurray! It's a start. Monday the rest begin their multiplication homework, but that too, will be discussed next week.
Finally, at the end of the day, I got my students out on the grass and we began our running for the year - maybe 15 minutes or so.
You must know that I am not the most fit person around. It's sad to say but I have slopped on 30 pounds since 2008 and I need to find ways to carve out that spare tire (and snow chains and oversized hubcaps). So today we rambled out to the backstop and I etched out a simple rectangle we would follow as our track. I said that I was tremendously out of shape and that if anybody, at the end of the run, was behind me, I would take away their recess as they darn well sure couldn't have been trying very hard.
So we stretched. (I have to assume my toes are down there as my fingers definitely didn't touch them...though I'm fairly sure I reached my kneecaps...) And stretched...and stretched...and then began the run. Most students hauled off and left me in the dust, but a few girls, shorter and, well, less fit, showed that they were in need as much as I of exercise.
I walked/jogged around the track two times without blowing that tire or falling down. It was great fun. Each time I felt like scattering the slower girls ahead of me like a flock of chickens I would start yelling a loud band song (can't name it but i swear there is some high school band that must be playing it somewhere right now) such as "hail the conquering hero!" and start running as fast as I can. The legs of the girls (and those lapping me by this time) would frantically pick up the pace and I would watch these scampering kids try to not be left behind.
Then the bell rang and I let them all go, and I went in my room and planned and then, happily, I drove off to pick up my daughter from afterschool care.
It was a good day in class. Still no discipline issues. Work interest is still high. Talking has not become more than small pools of noise that disappear quickly with the right look.
It's still the honeymoon phase.
All honeymoon phases end eventually.
That's when I'll see how ready I am for the year.
It's late, and I'm tired, and I really haven't proofread you too much. I hope (being a teacher) I did okay.
Thanks for being here,
L