Still here

Just really busy, as I'm sure the rest of you are. I have a messed up schedule but you dont want to hear about that. At this point, I have accepted the fact that my opinion isn't relevant and so I now just go about my day, doing what I'm paid to do. Kinda took the fun out of it for me but oh well. It is my hope that things get better or things will get better than just "getting through the day". it seems like everyone i've come into contact with has been feeling the same so hopefully we can all start to feel better :) until then, back to work.

The end of the day...

This is going to be a downer post. I might as well warn you ahead of time. It's 3 weeks into the year and already I feel like I'm drowning. It could be that I'm in charge of 7 periods out of 8 periods a day. That 2 of my classes are double-duty and one might be a triple here in the near future. I have one conference period to take care of these classes. I teach 2 different subjects right now, but my main focus is math. It wouldn't be so bad if I was teaching business or something since that's what I got a master's in, but I'm teaching Yearbook, all the HS math (Alg1, Geo, Alg2, Math Models, and Pre-Cal) and then this year I picked up Theater Arts. Two periods of the day, I am teaching two different subjects (Yearbook and Math Models the same period with Alg2/Pre-Cal). Its a bit overwhelming and I dont mean to just dump on you... but I kind of need to spill. I do my best to not whine at home cause I know they dont want to hear it, plus theres the whole privacy thing that I dont want to mess with. So day after day, I sit here wondering how it is possible that I am supposed to handle this situation and still be able to do my best. This year I really wanted to try Interactive Notebooking. I felt like last year, I didn't do very well and this year, I wanted to do better. In some classes, its working, in others, I'm over my head. Luckily, Alg1 is the only testable class, but I still need to focus on making things better in there. I need to be farther than I am now. We are behind and its because of something I can't seem to get right. Little frustrating. The rest of the classes, its like pulling teeth to get them to do anything. Its as though the honeymoon period has come and gone even faster than previous years. Top it off with the fact that I had a parent today tell me how her child did on a make-up state test, when I should have already had that information so I end up looking like a jackass. Is there a plan in place to help her child? The hell if I know. Its not my call, and yet, when things get dirty, it will be all my fault. Nevermind that there are years of catchup for this kid to do. Nevermind that I suggested getting some tutoring software. It will fall in my lap and I will get the blame and then be reminded at each meeting, despite everything I do.
You see where I'm sitting at? It wouldn't be so hard to take, if I knew that I had my superiors looking out for me. If I knew that my opinion mattered. It doesn't or half my problem would be taken care of already (or at least part of it and I wouldn't be teaching a dual Alg2/Pre-Cal class).
Anyway. Its getting late. I think my yearbook stuff is handled. I probably need to look over lessons once more but its time to get rest. Early mornings come early and there are not enough hours in the day.
Sorry to whine and complain. Things will be better once I get into a decent routine and things will be ok. I just need things to get better, sooner. All right. I hope this blog entry finds you doing better than me. Have a good night. :)

Am I ready?

The beginning of a new school year is coming up. While I wish I could say I was extremely excited, there has been some drama from last year overlapping into this year. Add to that the weird schedule problems and our lack of a custodian at the school and its already becoming a little stressful. While I should be excited about the last of required EOC tests, instead I'm trying to think of how to handle all my math assignments as well as my usual yearbook assignment and my additional assignment of Theater Arts. Have I mentioned how much I dislike drama? I took a drama class way back in 8th period. That was the end of my desire to have anything to do with theater, except to watch the occasional play or movie.
Oh well. I guess we will do a lot of impromptu games and the occasional dramatic moment, then we will watch movie clips that emphasize the lesson concepts.
Come the start of the year, I'm sure I'll get back into the swing of things and the outlook wont look so bad. Just need to jump in and do my best. I can at least do that. The kids deserve that much. This would hardly be the time to strive for perfection but I can do my best. Right? Time for sleep. More inservice tomorrow and more cleaning to get done. Lates!

First day back

Another school year is about to begin. We had to go in today and work in our classrooms. I'd have preferred to have today off since it was a good day to do anything but go to work but eh, what can you do?
I got to meet the new English teacher and right now, she seems ok. time will tell (for her and myself, i'm sure).
The schedules for our classes were sent out to us yesterday and I had some places I thought could be changed so I emailed the admin to voice my observances. Since i was kind of frustrated with the present schedule, I wrote a note, then slept on it so I wouldn't reply in anger. Turns out today i felt the same so i proofread the note and then sent it off. Seems like things might be ok, I hope, and things will change for the better. Its easy to feel frustrated with how things are but i hope to not jump to conclusions too quickly or let the drama get to me this year. I really just want to get my teaching done and come home mentally intact.
Things I thought were funny, the two kids I first met at the school are the same two kids that came to say hello today. Makes me wonder if it's a sign.
We went to get 1/2 price cheeseburgers today. The waitress took our order and then asked if we wanted cheese on the burgers. I said, "if they're cheeseburgers, don't the already come with cheese?" She said, "no, the cheese is extra." so i said, "you're telling me, i have to pay extra for the cheese on a cheeseburger? they're cheeseburgers. isn't the cheese supposed to come with it?" My youngest son cracked up and finally the waitress agreed that cheese were supposed to come with cheeseburgers. awesome.
my classroom is a mess. there are dead spiders everywhere. the roof has a leak so one of my ceiling tiles broke and crashed down, again. its a mess on the floor since no one has come in to clean it up, but whomever has been checking on my room or doing i don't know what in my room, managed to track it all over the floor and somehow got it on the desks that are 10 ft. away.
tomorrow i meet with a friend to go over lesson plans. i'm excited to meet with her since she always has great ideas and i love catching up with her.
next week is in-service. goodbye summer. it was nice having you. see you again in 9 months.

3.24.12- late late late

I couldn't sleep so I'm working on lesson plans. I keep hoping that we will get to see everything we need to by the time the test is here. Some days I feel like we won't, others I think we are ok. The class I'm worried about is the juniors. They've been tough to teach this year and while you know they want to pass the first time, you can get the feeling they also don't want to work at all. Very frustrating. I think they want to me put a boot in their butts, when I do though, they whine and complain and are slow to do the work. I want to smack certain ones for being this way and I want to smack myself for letting them.
I hope my freshmen do all right. They are starting to gain confidence but aren't consistent. Maybe with our journaling, they will start to gain that confidence. Already I can tell where they've grown but they don't believe me when I tell them. It will be ok.
In the meantime, it's coming up on contract time. Big changes on the horizon and I don't know if its just a teacher thing or if it will be more than that. I've had many thoughts cross my mind about the future and I can't figure out what would be the best though. Too many factors. Guess we will see what events transpire and react accordingly. Time to get sleep. Lates.

3.22.13 - where did you go

Here are pictures of some note booking we have done lately. I'll update this post later since I already wrote out a description and then I accidentally deleted it all. Argh. I shouldn't post from my phone. Anyway, more to come from Algebra 1.

*Update*
The first 4 pics are showing the different symbolic representations of quadratics. I made booklets we could paste in our journals and we took a page per problem. The last page we had our homework on the left side.

The remaining pics are from solving quadratics - showing factoring, graphs and tables. This time we created a foldout to paste in our books. I had them use graph paper so they could draw their graphs with ease for examples but the note section was done on the notebook page.

This is being done at the request of my students. They've enjoyed the days we journal and wanted to do more. Luck would have it, the printer was on the fritz and thus we did our work in our journals. More to come as we continue our unit. Just one more month till our big test. Hope we get things tied together so they do well.
More to come! Lates.

2.21.13- making the rules work for you

Alg2- we learned about imaginary numbers today. It went pretty all right. Tomorrow we practice more and I hope that goes well too. Getting farther than I have before. Gotta keep this up.

Alg 1- factoring practice today. Good grief their minds completely reset overnight. We did a journal entry on two different methods of factoring, And then it became horrible. I know how to factor. I've explained it many times before and it's almost as though MY brain was wiped clean. I ended up tutoring hardcore after school and I forced kids into the factor box method. Not my finest moment but when your kids don't know how to do something, is it ok to make them do one certain way, provided you've shown them other ways?
Hope tomorrow is better.

The rest of the day. Eh. Turned into helping kids finish work. Lets call it "assessment on an individual basis" day. Yes.
Catching up on grades, had to do STAAR training and still need to finish updating my lesson planner. I'm good to go on Algebra 1, way behind in alg2, ahead in MMA and falling behind in Geo and today didnt help. Gah. Is there no balance to this mess?

I better jet. Lates.