First Week Down

Number One- my class is awesome.  I am going to love this year.
Number Two- two weeks in a row and I have my week's lesson plans done.  So I'm doing pretty good so far.
Number Three- I've even already gone over their initial assessments and made note of them in the computer, so I am on my way to maintaining my grade book.
Number Four- Things are still organized in the room, it's looking good.  I've been able to find everything when I needed it- and the kids even know where everythign is too!
Number Five- I just haven't had time to decorate still, or blog.  I'll have to find the time somehow.

Here's some pics:

 

Let's Just Plus/Delta this Situation...

Gosh darn it, Kittens- I do not have skills when it comes to estimating organization.  Which probably stems from not having organizational skills.  Regardless- NOOOOOO, I didn't get it all done like I wanted, planned, goal workshopped. Delta.
But, hey, let's PLUS this out by saying that I cleaned the Beejezus out of the mess, and at least I'm not ashamed of anyone looking in on it anymore. 
Delta. I just don't have any cute paper up.  I didn't get to make my conifer tree for my library. I don't have a cupcake pillow on my chair. Blah.

Plus: I sure as Shazam It won't have to do this again next year.  I got RID of at least half of it.  Not so sure that Good Will truly appreciated my donation- but I care not! It's NOT COMING BACK.

Plus: Packing up should be breezy easy, and not the nightmare that it was last June.
Plus: I know where EVERYTHING is now.  I DYMOed the H- E-double hockey sticks out of everything,
Plus: I know what to spend my instructional money on this year.  And it sure as West By-Golly won't be OFFICE SUPPLIES.  I'll have to take pictures of the amount of pencils I have at this moment.  The soul of a small decidious forest cries out in the dead of night...

Delta: I am disappointed that I didn't get the decorating done.  Like, seriously bummed out.  Which led to some emotional eating, and the scale gave me the ugly finger today when I stepped on it.  It'll be a week of nothing but bananas for sure now...

Pictures then:  And I've noticed that some of them are not showing up well, and I can't fix it, and sorry- but I AM GOING TO BED so I can teach tomorrow.  But hey! PLUS: I have my whole week written out on my computer.  Delta: I haven't actually photocopied anything that I need.  And whooooooo will be going in as early as possible tomorrow? Yes, dears, meeeeeeee.

I didn't link up with a classroom reveal, because it's not decorated yet.  I hope it is still ok to do that in a couple of weeks when I actually get it all pretty.

Oh, and how did all of that "You have so much Shtuff" naysayers situation work out?  Throughout the whole process my team was great.  Karen helped me out loads on Friday afternoon as I started to mentally hemmorage during a ridiculous unneccesry staff meeting.  Gads, my one eyebrow was sweating uncontrollably.  The folks that had made such a point of saying how much I had, never bothered to come back and retract their statements.  I even had one lingering on Thursday saying over and over "I just don't think you're going to get this all put away" over and over again.  And that was hard, since I REALLY like that girl.  I decided that I needed to excuse myself to the bathroom to keep myself from flinging myself upon her in a rage.  She sleeps easy tonight, babydolls- don't you worry.  And in the end- I guess it doesn't matter what they said.  I've got it cleaned up now- and therefore no one can come in and say anything in the future.  I'm dedicating myself to keeping it like this.  I hope hope hope I can do it.  I really like how clean it is.

Happy Teaching tomorrow everybody!  It'll be my first day with the cherubs.

Getting My Act Together, Part Deux

And I think I should add, that making a plan based upon a goal without educating yourself on the parameters of the situation FIRST is also just as foolish.  At least I know what is going on this week though with the job I need to accomplish, however.

So, in the attempt to educate myself on my situation, I've looked up this week's agenda at school.
There are only two one-hour blocks available on Monday to work in my room.
There are four one-hour blocks available on Tuesday morning.
All day Wednesday should be available.
There are five one-hour blocks available on Thursday BEFORE open house at 2pm.
All day Friday should be available.

1) I know that I have my student desk groups full of stuff I'm trying to give away.  Looking at it sitting there brings me down, and prevents me from moving about the room freely, and draws people in to my room to either ogle or shop.  It's gotta go.  Monday at 3:30, I'm tossing what's left of it into bags and taking it down the street to Goodwill.
2) I know that the largest job left undone in the room is sorting the library books.  I also know that this takes HOURS.  I also know that I don't have hours to do this at school.  Soooo, it's got to come home with me.  Since most of it is still in boxes, I've got to load the car with the boxes  on Monday after I've taken the load to Goodwill and bring it home to sort Monday and Tuesday night.
3) I know that out of those library books, I have too many to fit in my library.  So the purpose of sorting is to reduce my inventory.  Pull out books that go with my PYP units and set aside to put in the bins so all of my unit stuff is kept together. I know I have repeats of some titles, so that will be easy to take care of. Repeats that I bought with my own money keep here at home for my kids to use. With the rest, I'm going to have to be really picky and only keep the good quality books.  Good quality being defined by not only condition of binding, but also quality of story.  Some books are stinkers, and you know it!
4) Place books that I am not keeping in boxes in hallway outside of room until Thursday afternoon.  Allow teachers and visiting parents to select at will.  Keep it out of the room so they aren't coming IN to bug me.  Anything left on Thursday afternoon take down to McKay's used books and get a credit.
5) The only places left to store my items are the built-ins on the far wall, and five plastic bins under the student computers.  Oh, and I have a filing cabinet that I have to fit in that room somewhere...  Use my super supply of clear plastic shoe boxes to pack my keepers in and fill the built-ins, use the plastic bins under the computers to put away Fairy Tale Unit supplies, Measuring math manipulatives, and the excess folders/mailing labels/divider sort of office supplies.  This should leave two bins empty for any future need. Put my reading A-Z stuff and extra hanging file folders, and other office supply sort of paper stuff in the filing cabinet. I also still have half of my pull-out drawers left free so I can finish putting away my paper clip type stuff.
6) Label all of the bins and drawers with the fancy Dymo machine my Dad got me. Loooove it.
7) And Hey! I totally forgot about my teacher desk!  I really don't use it ever, as I sit at the small group table to teach or I'm on the carpet with whole group meetings.  But it does have three drawers.  I will need to be selective about this area.  I suppose this is the best place to store my lesson planning tools and student data.  And THAT'S IT.  Nothing else is getting jammed in there.  That way, any time I have a sub or an administrator needs to come in and look at my things, all they need to do is search the desk. Excellent. I feel good about that plan.
8) Gah, I almost forgot about the ribbon I was going to put on the library book baskets.  Ok.  Here's an idea:  take the ribbon in a bag with me to the all day staff development meeting and cut it into sections while I'm "listening".  That's terrible isn't it?  Especially after I posted about acting like children during these things.  Arg!  Why did I have to develop a conscience about this?  I guess add that to the list of things to bring home Monday. Sheesh.

Having the room organized and decorated by Thursday at 2pm is my goal.
I have to concentrate on the organized portion first.  If the kids come to visit on Thursday and the colored paper isn't on the bulletin board yet, no big deal.  It's more important that things are clean and orderly first.

So my steps are:
1) Spend the two available hours on Monday putting away the remaining office supplies, and organizing the math and language arts materials in the plastic shoe boxes.
2) Take the left over freebies to Goodwill, and bring my library boxes  and ribbon to cut home.
3) Bring back the library books I did manage to get sorted on Monday night and place in baskets Tuesday morning to keep it tidy.
4) Spend the four hours available on Tuesday finishing up putting things away and labeling with the Dymo machine.
5) Make sure that I've dusted, wiped off surfaces, cleaned my windows, and vacuumed the blue carpet.
6) Get a plug-in air freshener.
7) Wednesday morning, bring in remaining sorted library books, attach ribbons to baskets, add hanging tags, and arrange books by 11am.
8) Use the rest of Wednesday and Thursday morning to decorate.

If this works, my evidence that I met my goal will be that I will have the room completely organized and clean by mid-morning Wednesday and decorated by Thursday at noon. Re-assess Tuesday evening to create decorating action plan. I'll be sure to take pictures, so I can do a before and after decorating post.

Here we go, folks!  Let's try to knock this out of the park.

I hurt all the way down to my pancreas.

At the beginning of this week I had big plans.  Lots of posts, lots of pictures, lots to celebrate.  But kittens, that room swallowed me whole. This is the only picture I'm sharing of the room today.  I just want you to understand that EVERY. SINGLE. TABLE. in the room looked like this one.

So what the eff happened, eh?  I had a goal chart, darn it!  That should have been enough! And do not doubt that I have not over-analyzed this week's failures and successes to figure out just what the hey is my problem. Let's go back to the tape, Steve, and see why this chick is such a loser...

See how I have number 3 and 4 in the steps section?  I found it impossible to sort without having anything to sort on.  So I arranged all of my furniture first.  And then I stacked all of the things I brought from my old room on the carpet- and when I looked a that the previous teacher had left me, I discovered this: Every shelf, drawer, cabinet, surface was filled.  You can't put your own things away without anywhere to put it.  So I had to do number 4 on the list first.  I took EVERY. SINGLE. THING. off of the shelves, and out of cabinets and drawers and sorted them into said piles.  This is the point where people started feeling the need to drop in and talk about how much stuff "I" had. And I've got plenty to say about that, but I will wait to rant.  Then I decided that I couldn't possibly make a decision about what to keep or what to get rid of unless I also knew what I had.  So I unpacked all of my boxes and sorted them by subject area right on top of the stuff I was left.  This made for extremely high piles. I understand that this is the twelve-year old method of cleaning, and horribly inefficient.  But I have ZERO SKILLS here.  So I'm doing the best I can!  And then of course the earlier folks went and told other folks and then THEY had to come in and talk about how much stuff I had.

I thought it would only take me two days to do this sorting and putting away. Barf.  I took the whole week and I'm still not done.  The first day I wasn't able to get into my room until one o'clock, and I had to leave at three-thirty. This was mostly spent furniture arranging.  I got the closet and first shelf of built-ins emptied and sorted. The second day, I had to take Sweetie J to the doctor so I only worked from nine until one. I finished emptying all of the shelves, drawers and cabinets by the time I had to leave. Then I had three full days of nine to three-forty.  And as of yesterday, I had managed to sort through everything but my library, pile five student desk grouping high with things to give away, organize my storage closet, put away all of my craft, science, and social studies supplies, and get a third of my office supplies put away.  Things left sorted, yet untouched: language, math, 2/3 of office supplies.

I did invite the teachers in to take my stuff on Friday.  I sent an e-mail out announcing the frenzy Thursday evening, and even had some late night early-bird shoppers.  More shoppers on Friday,  and I did get rid of a chunk of it.  I am running the freebie frenzy one more day on Monday, as the entire staff will be in the building that day.  But as of Monday at three o'clock- what's left is going to Goodwill.  I need to get my stuff put away, and I've got to decorate the room, and I can't do it with that stuff staring at me, and people coming into the room to make comments about it.

Ok- I'm going to rant for a moment. It will not be pretty.  Skip to the next paragraph if you want the world to remain all lollipops and rainbows, or continue believing that I'm an overly pleasant person.  GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK!  I did not move into an empty room.  It was FILLED.  And I bet if they went into their rooms and emptied their drawers and shelves and cabinets that they didn't have to pack up back in June they would have STUFF too. Thanks for the encouragement people.  I'm so happy to know that you are responsible for building up and encouraging the youth of today when you cannot spare a supporting word for someone you work with or at the very least hold your M-F tounge. Freaking hypocrites telling kids "I believe in you!" when they can't have a second's pause for the attempts of a grown adult woman trying to become a less cluttered and organized person. And if you are not in here to take some of this stuff out of my room, then get the eff out! Slam door and lock it.  But then open it again because I need the darn people to come in and take this stuff out of the way. Gaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Annnnnnndddddd END SCENE.

Things I am proud of myself for:
1) I did not leave the room to go socialize.
2) I did not leave work to go eat/shop
3) From the moment I got there to the moment I left, I set the timer for thirty minute chunks.  When the timer went off, I said to myself OUT LOUD "Great Job! You did a lot!" and then I sat down and ate a piece of fruit.  Put timer back on, and went back to work.
4) Every time I emptied a box I celebrated it.  Because it was an accomplishment to my progress. It was fantastically relieving to shout out "An Empty Box!" and throw it onto a pile.
5) Even thought there was some really super cool stuff left in my room- I looked at it and decided if I knew how to use it.  If I didn't, I put it on the give-away table.  I have too many goals this year in teaching to add one more on top of it.  Give it to someone who knows how to use it and will.
6) Every item that I recognized that I hadn't used an item the last year of teaching, I put on the give-away table.  I've been teaching ten years already, if I hadn't used it, I'm most likely not going to.  Plus I can always go borrow it later if I really need to.
7) If it was broken, I threw it away.
8) I cleared out the indoor recess box.  It was hard to do.  I am a nut for games. But our recess is only 15 minutes.  Seriously.  No longer.  If they can't take it out and get a game finished in fifteen minutes, it's not worth it.  Put it on the give-away.  Except for some super cool games that I had bought with my own money.  I confess to packing those up to be brought home.
9) Every time I did put something on the give away table I did say very loudly to myself "You do not need that!" If I threw it away I said " It's broken! Stop being ridiculous!"
10) I got all of my teacher stuff out of my house.  Except for those games I brought back.  But oh well.
11) I didn't curse out the people that came in to ogle.  I saved that for private when they couldn't hear me.  But by Thursday afternoon, when most of the piles were give away piles, and you could see my carpet, and I was clearly working on putting things away- I did make sure I said to them "I've made a lot of progress this week, and all of these five tables are give aways, thank you." This actually had no effect on them though.  So if they kept going, I just stopped even looking at them or answering and went back to work.
12) I used cereal boxes my friends had collected for me over the summer to create sections in my drawers to help me put away my office supplies.  They are super organized and I'm getting everything put away wonderfully.  I just have a box of paperclips to attack on Monday.

I would like to point out that my team was great.  They were encouraging as I sorted through my things and made me feel like I was accomplishing something.  If I've learned something this past week in regards to my teaching, it's definitely about the power of words.  If we're willing to say something negative to ANYBODY about ANY PROCESS, it's most likely trickling into our classroom dialogue with the children.  I've really got to watch for this during this upcoming year.  And not to say that at times someone will need to be corrected- but how am I going to go about telling them? Yes, I like sarcasm.  But it's really only something that should be used with close friends that really get you and understand where you're coming from in that moment.  I don't think any of the teachers in my building meant to be rude.  I don't think they meant to upset me.  I'm left wondering though how often I've said something that has hurt someone though and I never meant it?

Tomorrow I'll develop my goals for this next week.  Going to be tricky though- balancing the clean-up, decoration and all the meetings....

And so it begins, again...

Tomorrow will be my first day back at work.  The idea is to use this week to get all of my belongings organized and the room put together.  And I absolutely must get it accomplished in these five days because next week I'll be in meetings and planning for the entire week.  And then Tuesday the 4th it all starts with the kids.  Looking back over the summer, I don't know that I accomplished what I thought I would.  That's my standard routine, of course. But, I did enjoy the time off, and what I did manage to do I am happy with- so it can't be all bad. 

I am moving rooms and I am not relishing the idea of all the sorting I have to do this week.  Even though I am sooooo happy to be going downstairs to be with my team, I know I have to throw out half of my old things and sort through what was left for me before I worry about my NEW things that are clogging up my house at the moment. Or decorate.  Which is what I'm more interested in doing.  And I'm very easily distracted when I'm doing a chore I'm not in to.  So I'm making myself a powerpoint to flash up on my promethean board while I work:

Snarf.  They sort of make me happy.

And I put the goal setting method I learned to use, and made myself a page for my first two days this week:

Overall, my plan is to spend two days cleaning, sorting, and tossing.  Wednesday I'll work on furniture arrangement and wall coverings.  Thursday my Dad is bringing my hoard from home, so I'll be putting that away.  And Friday for finishing touches.  I'll make another goal sheet for my decorating days to keep me on track.  I'm hoping for a look that is tasteful and not busy looking.  We'll see though, I have never pulled off that style before.

Goal Setting

Well, training is over.  And although it was pretty intense, I actually feel like I came out of there the better for it.  I definitely have a firmer grasp of the PYP program, so it's not a complete mystery to me any more.  Tons more to learn of course, but at least I'm not in a fog.  In reflection on that process of training though, the only reason why I'm not in a fog is because I really made the effort to pay attention. 

Which has led me to meditating on the post I wrote the other day about how I don't like get to know you games and having my attention called for in a way like I do to my students. If I'm uncomfortable with those things as an adult, isn't it possible that my kids are too?  On the last day of training I really tried to make a mental effort to let go of feeling annoyed at the method.  Because I had to admit that I couldn't think of a better way to get our attention.  And, shouldn't we experience what it might feel like to be one of our students? It was an opportunity to gain perspective.

I'm wondering how much I've missed out on in the last ten years of my teaching career because of a ridiculous feeling of self-entitlement that I was above having to pay attention? Hermmmm....I still have a lot of work to do on myself as a person.

There was a lot of great little tid bits that came out of the training aside from the real meat of the concepts- one of them being a goal setting activity.

At the beginning of every year, my school has the kids set a goal, and they write it up in some sort of thematically cute way and post it outside of the rooms.  In second grade, they are as simple as "I want to be a better reader".  In training though, we did this tri-fold activity with our goal setting.

So yes, the first part is to set a goal.  So a student could, of course, still write something as simple as "I want to be a better reader". But the deeper meaning and ownership comes in when the student reflects on how they will know they've met their goal- the evidence of achieving it, and then analyzing how to get to that point.

Simply fold a piece of paper in thirds, and label the sections across the top from left to right, Goal, Steps, and Evidence

Setting the goal is the first step of course:



 But then skip over to the right hand side and write down how you'll know you've met your goal.  I used this one about Junie B. Jones because I had a low reader this last year who loved Junie B. When we talked about good fit books, she was very disappointed that she couldn't put Junie B. in her book basket.  So then I showed her the reading levels, where she was and where Junie B. was on the scale.  She made a decision to get there, even though it was two years worth of growth for her. Showing kids exactly how much work they have to do to get where they really want to go can never be a bad thing. You can also write more than one way you'll know you met your goal.  Maybe you've met this goal also by UNDERSTANDING the story, or being able to write a book report, or performing a skit.

 So now it's time to go back to the middle, and think of AT LEAST three things that you could do to help you get to your goal.  Why not one or two?  Goals are something you really have to work for, aren't they?  If you only have to do one or two things, then isn't that just something to put on a to-do list?  Anyway- so here are three things I thought of that might work.  I suppose I could even add a fourth one and say practice reading with my parents. Or older brother/sister and whatnot.

And there you have it- a road map to success.  I definitely want to pump up my goal setting with this method this year. And I also think it would be great for keeping myself and my lesson planning on track as well.  And how easy is it to just fold a piece of paper?  I always have one lying about....

I also loved this pin I ran across:


click the picture to go to Kathy Barbro's site  Art Projects For Kids with the directions and printable. And then join her blog!  She has AWESOME art projects and does an excellent job of making them seem doable by even someone with very little art skills.

I'd really like to do this incorporating the trifold method- just separate the notebook paper horizontally.  Or actually, I wouldn't even have to.  We could make it a little 3-D by pasting our trifold over the self portrait part and then have the hands come out and wrap around....oooo, feeling excited!  I think it would be a great first week project.

Always in Training

Confession: Every time I see a post about "editable" documents, I immediately think it says "edible".  And I'm all "Why on earth are we eating documents?" for a ridiculous amount of unnecessary seconds.  Clearly, dieting is affecting my brain in disturbing ways.

Yes.  Diet.  I suppose I could file this under a Monday Made It- although, truth be told, it looks like I used ALL of this summer's Mondays to make the twenty extra pounds I seem to have put on.  I did make myself one of those jars with pebbles deals on Pinterest where you have a pebble for each pound you want to lose in one jar, and then you plink them over to the other jar as you lose them.  I made mine in very teeny soda bottle bottoms though, so I'd feel like I did something.  Which, I have to say, I did manage to lose five pounds my first week doing the weight watchers thing.  I will be lucky to lose one pound this week though, as I've been sitting on my butt in training, and falling off the wagon to a bag of Hershey's Treasures, and, um, I sort of also made those nutella frosted crescent rolls I saw on Pinterest.  The saving grace is that Pillsbury only puts eight crescent rolls in a tube.

Confession Number 2: Not too long ago in my life I was sporting a good 220.  And then I went on this no gluten, no dairy, no anything except cardboard diet for my son with Autism.  The thought was, if nothing he couldn't eat was in the house, he'd deal with the diet better. Rubbish.  He pitched a major fit anyway.  But, happy accident, it did drop me down to a generally stable 160.  But I weighed myself a week ago, and gahhhhhhhh, I went crazy with the baking this summer.  And the raw frosting eating.  And the cheesecake, and whatnot.  When I realized the pants I was wearing were my maternity pants- I decided something had to be done.  So hey- if I can drop two pounds a week, I'll be 140 by Christmas.  So we'll see.

Training though.  This is where my mind actually is today.  It's one thing when you go to a workshop and you learn how to divide your kids into workable groups, or how to incorporate the pan flute into your math lessons, or how your kids will become better thinkers if you take time to massage each other's soles three times a day- but the intensive training where you're being downloaded with a 1000 page program in two and a half sessions pretty much leaves my brain zapped.

Admittedly, I am trying very hard to be a bit of an over-achiever at this training because I took on this PYP program as being my grade level duty for the next year.  And I want to make sure I am doing it right, and a bang-up smash of a job of it, and make everyone happy.  You know that annoying teacher who keeps asking questions during training?  That one who is clearly waaaaay too into it?  The one who volunteers to share first right away every time? Yeah, that would be me these past two days.  Dudes, I even ate lunch with the trainer today to get extra help.  And it has not been the least bit subtle.  I have already noticed that both the trainers make a point of coming near whatever group I'm with for every task, and I know it's because I'm doing the whole super participation thing.  If I wasn't me right now, sitting in that training, I would totally loathe me.  I would have made up a nasty nickname for me and been drawing horrible cartoons about me to giggle over with my friends. If I had ended up in a group with me, I would be cursing my rotten luck. Ah, well, just another thing to add to the list to discuss in therapy...

One thing I have not preferred about this training, and any training for that matter, is the need of the trainers to treat us as children.  Clap once if you can hear me.  Clap twice if you can hear me.  Let's go around the circle and introduce ourselves by using a food that the first letter of our first name begins with.  Hello, I'm Heather Horseradish.  Okay, we didn't do the horseradish thing- this time- but I have had to do that as an adult.  And I can still remember being partnered with Tammy Taco.  But in my horrific role as the over-achiever this training, I guess I kinda can see WHY the trainers are doing that.  Because, ahem, we are ACTING like children.  Seriously, there was a constant low hum of adults talking to each other OFF TOPIC I might add, and clicking of cell phones being texted upon, and a good half of the folks not even bothering to turn and face the presenters.  For my over-achieving self, it was down right distracting.  I'm smirking though, because I am usually NOT the overachiever in these settings.  I'm the one drawing cartoons, remember?

And this leads me to this thought that I'm going to leave off with- if we get so mad when students do this to us, why do we do it to other adults?
*Is it because we are being forced to go to this training?
Wellllllll, aren't the kids being forced to come to class?
*Is it because the topic does not interest us?
Um, yeah, and I expect every second grader to be interested in erosion.
*Is it because the presenters are not conveying the information in a way that is engaging or valuable to me?  Ok, peeps, seriously- do you think you're on fire every day up there in the classroom?  Surely you must stink once in a while with the delivery?

So what should I take away from this ah-ha moment?  I am being an over-achiever in this particular setting because I have a vested interest in doing a task related to this information to the best of my ability. Without this information, I cannot do that task.  So maybe, the thing that's missing from my lessons when I'm getting ignored by the kids, is that they don't have a task - that they think is important- that cannot be accomplished successfully without the information I have to offer. Now, how do I go about making that happen?

Thoughts anyone?