5 Down, 25 To Go

I can't believe I've been through 5 years of this. When someone only teaches for one year, that's kind of pathetic. If they manage two, that's still not great. Three is not bad and four is respectable. But five? THAT is legit. And if you survive for that long, work finally becomes fun.

My goal at the beginning of the year was to NOT have a dread-class. There's always at least one (or three, if it's really a bad year) class that you dread. Students that you just KNOW were born to make your life miserable. This year, NONE of my classes were like that. It got dicey for about a week in one of my Study Skills classes, but then I stopped PMSing and got back my rapport with the students. This has been the best year for teacher-student relationships, I think.

Achievements / Milestones for this year include:

1. Got nominated "Employee of the month" in November. They put my ugly school picture on the website and said very nice things about me, even interrupted a class and embarrassed me in front of my class (which isn't a big deal, I guess, since I do that myself on a regular basis)

2. Went back to teaching 7 periods. The extra money was nice, and I survived not having a prep period. My OCD reached a new low though--for a while I was coming to work at 6am. We don't HAVE to be at work til 7:20am. Yikes.

3. I only taught one Engineering class this year, but it was nearly a full house--I had 31 students. On the first day, I asked which of them actually wanted to be engineers. About 75% raised their hands. It was a nice change from the 10% of last year. Towards the end of the semester, we got into building mechanism stuff with lego-like parts called Fischertechniks. At this point, I could barely keep up with the enthusiasm of my students. We built pull-toys like this one:



I got so excited about these that I took my students on a Pull-Toy Parade around the school--through a couple of classrooms, the media center, the main office, and outside a few times. I think MOST of the kids thought it was pretty fun, even though one of the pull-toys fell apart every five steps.

4. I was put in charge of the committee that does stuff like luncheons and retirement parties and other fun holiday-ish things. I was pretty pissed at first--like I don't have ENOUGH on my plate, with no prep period and 4 different classes to teach, plus they didn't even ask me first--but I managed and even volunteered for it again next year. I know what I'm doing now, so it won't be as bad, I think. I was pretty awesome at handling my principal and getting us out of certain jobs, if I do say so myself. I got us out of throwing baby showers (that should really be the responsibility of friends and department coworkers) AND the end-of-the-year luncheon. Hah!

5. I taught ALL 500 7th Graders this year, because, for the first time, I taught all four sections of CTE Tech & Engineering. It was such a weird feeling, going to a 7th Grade assembly, looking around the Kiva and recognizing everyone in the room (it's a big room). That means I've overseen the production of over 1000 tubes of lip balm. I should start a business! We went to the foods lab for that activity, and I now have a new respect for the foods teachers. How they handle all those kids and the mess they must make with food ingredients...the first time I went to the foods lab for the lip balm activity, I thought I would cry from all the caster and shea oil...EVERYWHERE...

6. Speaking of 7th grade, I added Scratch to my CTE curriculum this year. Scratch is a programming language developed by MIT to teach programming, and you can make stuff as simple or as complicated as you like. I still had kids who hated it, but by third quarter I had my teaching methods down. I had my students make animation shorts--30 seconds long, simple storyline that involves some kind of movement and dialogue. I had students staying until 4:30 one day finishing up, and they inspired me to start the Scratch Academy Awards: I got a button maker at the beginning of the year, so I made these sweet Oscar-buttons to pass out as awards. Then I had kids sign up to show their videos, and students voted for four categories: Best Picture, Writing, Visual Effects and (Original) Costume Design (meaning they drew their own characters and background rather than finding them on the Internet or using the ones provided by Scratch). I only had to interfere a TINY bit to make sure it wasn't a popularity contest. And then I put together an epic award presentation video. This is the one I made for fourth quarter (with all names removed):

7. I got another award--at Faculty Meetings, we pass out SoJO Shiners. Basically, someone nominates a teacher for doing something cool--like the guy who pops popcorn for everyone on Fridays, a teacher with high test scores, when our shop teacher built a long board stand to put in the office. The award is a candy bar and a certificate with a picture of the principal giving the "two-finger point." Hah! I got mine at the last faculty meeting for putting on my awkward pull toy parade.

8. I got my first negative parent email to the principal. Not directly--the mom emailed me an essay about how confused she was about her son's citizenship grade in my class, and she copied my principal. The citizenship grade is a meaningless grade we give our students to try and force them to behave. An H is honors, an S is satisfactory, an N is needs improvement, and U is unacceptable. I gave this kid an S. Satisfactory. Most kids get that grade, because they are satisfactory but could still improve. Teachers have to pick their battles, and this was one that just wasn't worth it--I changed the grade and didn't bother to read the 2nd essay she wrote in response to my concise reply message. Egads.

(On a random side note, some of our worst students end up with an F and a U in citizenship. ...An F U. Get it?)

9. In more unhappy news, I didn't really come out on top from the annual enrollment battle. I scored 1 measly section of Exploring Technology and 2 of Engineering. The counselor putting the schedule together for next year never bothers to consult us teachers, and so my schedule was a nightmarish mess of three room changes and 4 different classes. I'm back to teaching Keyboarding again, and the counselors thought that I could teach it the Business teacher's classroom one period and the other keyboarding teacher's room another period...she clearly had never had to switch classrooms during the day before. My frustration reached it's peak and I almost lost it in front of her. I have a bad habit of crying when I'm angry, which is really inconvenient. If I didn't have so much pride, maybe I could actually use crying to my advantage. We smoothed things out, so my schedule isn't as much as a nightmare as it has been in the past, and I SHOULD be able to teach keyboarding in my room, if we can get the keyboarding program installed.

So that about does it. I am a mere 4-5 hours away from complete and utter freedom. My celebration plans include a trip to a delicious cupcake shop, a birthday party, maybe some swimming, and a camping trip back in the middle of no where with Mom and Dad. And then my summer is jam packed: a week in Colombia, 3 weeks (at least) internshipping at a software company where a friend of mine works (working on Plan B), a few days in Minneapolis, a few days in NJ, a few more days in Bakersfield, and then right back to work. Whew!