My Classroom

Shoot, I had meant to post pictures of my classroom, but then my life turned crazy and I forgot. Anyways, here is my room before.

I love the brightness of the room.

After 2 days of organizing, rearranging, and decorating (not to mention getting tons of free posters and stuff from coworkers), here's my incredibly sparse room.

Word wall and shared reading area

student cubbies with genres posters (borrowed from 4th grade teacher)

4 table groups... which I'm kinda regretting at this point. headaches.

I love that window.

I think I mentioned how some of the other teacher's classrooms looked amazing. I'll try to take pictures of some of them. They are freakin legit.

1st week of hell

Wow. What can I say? I survived. Survived is pretty fitting since I'm pretty positive I was sucktastic my first day. Even though I told my students I taught middle school last year and taught in Michigan, they smelled my noobness and I think I came close to losing my homeroom. Thankfully I'm team teaching this year, so my afternoon class was a lot better because I was able to learn from all my mistakes in the morning and they at least are afraid of not following my instructions.

Teaching Rule of Thumb: Always, always, always start the year off tough and incredibly strict on expectations. Under no situation do you give the kids new freedoms than what you clearly stated unless you are a teaching guru.

I made that classic mistake again when after an amazing first morning, I loosened up and started smiling and being friendlier with the students. Mistake. They immediately sensed that shift in my demeanor and took the tiny inch I gave them, and ran with it. The rest of the week was spent doing damage control. Today I blew up the seating chart and laid the smackdown in taking away all groupwork privileges and implementing a silent independent work probation period of 2 weeks before trying to integrate groupwork again.

No lie, teaching is tough. Many times, I really want to strangle some of the kids, especially the ones that are blatantly disrespectful. But that all comes with the territory, and as many teachers share with me, those end up being the ones you care about the most. Probably the hardest thing right now is the enormity of responsibility that is on my shoulders; based on how well I prepare these kids for the next level (whether the TAKS standardised test or even for middle school), it will play a huge role in defining them. This is what I always say I'm in teaching for... but actually being in that position is terrifying. There's so many things I need to keep in mind, meetings up the wazoo, and continuing to learn better teaching techniques, I am finally realizing that education is so similar to how our faith should be. The moment we think we've learned all we need to know is the moment we've lost that spark.

On one hand, I'm really encouraged to be working with a mentor teacher (and frankly the entire staff) that are so passionate about teaching that I really wonder how I got chosen to teach at this school. There's so many things I want to write about but I should catch up on sleep.

Don't worry about me though... each day is getting a little bit better. I am no longer running around like a headless chicken, although I'm still ripping out my hair trying to figure out how to work with this autistic kid who I have absolutely no authority with... ughhhhhh.

AHHH!!

Ha. I'm noticing my coping mechanism for stress. Conscious obliviousness. All during training the past 2 weeks, I was so surprised at how calm and unworried I was at school starting. Even during Open House, where I met most of the students for the first time with their parents, I was pretty chill. However, the moment the weekend started, I started getting the nerves. Saturday was a full day of OCR, and trust me, I really wanted to be out there meeting new students, but my lesson plans for the week were still incomplete, many of my structures and guidelines: unmade. Pretty much, I needed to spend a good half day working.

It's funny how God always tests our resolves with things that are never a clear "Good decision/ Bad decision". On one hand, I could be justified with taking the day to work, but my main commitment for coming down to Austin was to serve the church. In the end, I believe that trumps my work responsibilities. It is now 11pm and I just got back and I am so scared of crashing and burning tomorrow. If you read this, I really covet your prayers. I'm planning on waking up at 5, drive over to work and try to finalize the final details of the day.

Why am I blogging if I need to work? Because my mind is roiling and I couldn't sleep. This is actually incredibly cathartic for me. =P

On a side note, I'm really excited for the new year for our church... please pray that the froshies that are getting connected end up experiencing Christ's love tangibly and commit to stay. This batch has something special about them... or maybe it's just my delirium. Anyways, good night.

Check Yourself

It sucks when you need to rebuke yourself. A week into 10 hour work days, constant adjustments with apartment moving, and different worries, I found myself succumbing to reacting to irritations and complaining mentally. Although I'm sure I let my annoyance show with some of the snippy comments I made....

How easy it is to forget the blessings and our purpose, huh?

I love my school and teachers!

Wow. I am so thankful for getting the job at my school. I think if I dreamed of the ideal school filled with ideal teachers and administration, this school would be pretty close to it. Every day starts at 7:10am, which is harddddddd, but I get so excited by the people that work there that I get over my tiredness.

I'll start with the administrators. Our principal is so energetic and excited to be there it's impossible to be lethargic around her. It's like she exudes positive energy vibes that charges your battery. Granted, as teachers, she sometimes makes us do really cheesy team building activities, but the gesture is appreciated. But I get so inspired to love my students the way she does.

Today after training, she had all the teachers break up into teams to walk the neighborhood to visit students and their families to inform them of parent night on thursday night. I was personally feeling really self conscious and pretty chicken (since I pretty much forgot all my spanish) but she went right up to all the families and struck up conversations. I'll never forget how the students and parents reacted to seeing their principal visit them in their houses. Most kids' faces literally lit up when they saw their principal walk up the driveway and the parents were so grateful that she cared enough to visit them in person. So inspiring to witness.

As for my coworkers, they are so friendly! I don't know if all teachers are just innately friendly, but I started the week with nothing to decorate my room, and by the end of today, I have a complete library of books and enough decorations and filler stuff to get me past the first month. I felt like I was a freshman again in college, and the upperclassmen were going out of their way to bless me. Maybe this is what it feels like when people first enter our church and experience our community.

So yeah, despite spending over 9 hours at my school every day this week... I'm excited. Hopefully I'll post pictures of my class when I finish setting up.