Christmas Cards a la Teacher Style

I used to send out between 25-50 Christmas cards/photos/letters every year. Back in the good ol' days.

And then our school started ending the 1st semester before the winter break. Finals, finishing grading, and semester grades took over and held my life hostage.

Now, I am lucky if I can pull this together for blog world on the Scribble Lite app that my grandkids love.

Year #1

Year #2 was actually drawn on my whiteboard at school.

Year #3

Year #4

Pathetic, I know. Stick figures are my forte.

My aunts are starting to hate me. 

The upside is that my grades are finished.

Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Just Don't

I don't care how many times they beg, don't put a countdown to break on your board. Students bounce off the walls, and now I am too impatient for break to arrive.

I never do this. This year I succumbed to the begging. I am an idiot.

You have been warned.

On the upside, there are now only five school days left until break. *sigh!

Hanging on by a thread...

Magic Moments in the Classroom

After a slow start to this year, the last few weeks have been so much better. I like to call it classroom magic. (Magic because it just happens. I can't really plan it.)

Magic Moment #1:
Students read part of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and then searched for ten photos that showed people enjoying those rights or people denied those rights. (One student took it a bit further and showed people protesting for those rights.)
   
The next part of the assignment was to merge slides with a classmate. Together, they searched for a song that shared the theme of their photos and turned it into a musical slideshow.
     
To say that these were powerful would be an understatement. "The Sound of Silence" by Disturbed, "Imagine" by John Lennon, and Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" and "We Are the World" were just some of the songs backing some pretty haunting images.
     
Magic. (It didn't hurt that the students were pretty proud of their work.)

Magic Moment #2:
My classes memorize "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrea for Veterans Day. We study the structure, rhythm, and rhyme of the poem, but mainly we study the significance of the poem for Veterans.  Tiny Town High has a close relationship with the military in our community and many military kids attend our school.
     
Anyway, the students have been practicing the poem daily. Today, I had my classes on the stage in my room for another activity. When they finished that assignment, I had them recite the poem in a darkened room with only the stage lights. There was a haunting quality to this every hour, but 7th hour gave me chills.
       
My small 7th hour class has nine boys and no girls. These young men gathered in a tight group and this is part of what they recited:
       
   "We are the dead, short days ago
          We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
             Loved and were loved, and now we lie
                In Flanders Fields.
     Take up our quarrel with the foe,
            To you from failing hands we throw
                 The torch, be yours to hold it high
                    If ye break faith with us who die
                       We shall not sleep though poppies grow
                           In Flanders Fields."

Those nine young men could have been the soldiers of the past and some will be the soldiers of the future. Those youthful faces made the poem so much more significant. I don't know about them, but I will never forget that moment.

I'd like to think that I control the magic in my classroom, but I don't. I think magic just happens, and these are the moments we teach for.

End of the 1st Nine Weeks

We are already 1/4 of the way through the school year, but it doesn't feel that way.

For some reason, I am just starting to feel comfortable with this class. It has taken me awhile to figure out the dynamics of some of my combinations. Usually, I feel this way by week three.

If I weren't so buried in grading, I'd think the year had barely begun; but no, my inbox tells me differently. Or it would if I still had an inbox for papers.  (Google Classroom has made my classroom nearly paperless.)

The end of the nine weeks always gives me a pain in the neck-- a real pain in the neck. It comes from too much grading and too much computer work.

Throw in a rotten head cold that my students (the darlings) have shared with me, and I am tempted to pull the covers over my head and have someone wake me up late next week.

If you have any great tips for getting through the end of the nine weeks, please feel free to share. After 37 years, you'd think I would have figured it out. *sigh

Choosing a Play

I am the All School Play director.  (Nonmusical!) Directing is fun, but I HATE choosing the play.

Why?

1. I need shows that can cast quite a few students. (Small casts are easier to find.)
2. I need an equal number of girl and guy parts. (Most HS plays are heavy toward girls.)
3. We have no counterweight system (a tragic oversight of administration when they built the new school), and building sets is a pain.
            A. If you have a show that changes scenery, everything has to be on wheels.
            B. The traditional box set is a nightmare.
4. There are quite a few shows out there that are written for big budgets.
5. In a fairly conservative community, there are quite a few shows that border on inappropriate.
6. I need a show that will bring in large audiences.

Did I mention that we have almost no money?

So, what have I done so far?

*Curtain Going Up
*Our Town
*The Outsiders
*Three Musketeers
*Father of the Bride

Father of the Bride was probably the best show, but The Outsiders had the largest audience.

Where am I headed this year? No idea. And I have a couple more weeks until a decision needs to be made. Gulp!

I have seen so many play scripts that my head hurts. Stay tuned.

Seating Arrangement #237

The title of this post is an exaggeration, but I do rearrange my desks frequently. I keep playing with arrangements and discover some that work well for some activities, and others help me separate some problem areas. (OK! The talkers!)

I am trying this for the week.

This is a huge open rectangle. I should be able to see every face from my desk. When we are using the board or the document reader, one row will have to have chairs moved to the opposite side of their desk.

Is this going to work? Stay tuned.

The First Days of School

We have completed the first two full weeks of school, and I am exhausted:

Rosters
Seating Charts
Pre-testing
Computer assignments
Setting up Google Classrooms
First faculty meetings
First PLC's
Grading
Last year's State Assessment results to analyze**

And my feet are killing me. (My Apple Watch thinks I am a rock star in the "Activity" app.)

If you think I'm complaining, you should know that I'm pretty sure I have the best of the sophomores in English and incredibly talented students in Drama and Forensics. I really like my classes.

Friday's footwear. My feet deserved a break.

**Analyzing meant going back to see if their grade in my English class was an indication of their success on the State Test.  Ideally, since we use Standards Based Grading, it should be an exact match. It wasn't. About 12% of the lower scoring students did not have scores that were reflected in their grades.  Another 4% of the higher scoring students scored higher on the test than would have been expected by looking at their class grade. I know there are quite a few factors that figure into this, but it serves as reminder to be very vigilant when grading.

**I also marked the areas that were our weakest overall. I will use that information in planning and teaching for this school year. 

So, how is your year going?