Jen Butler’s Blog

I realize it’s only Tuesday, but this has already been a difficult week.  This is the week that I have to say goodbye to my students and my mentor teachers and my fellow student teacher.  And this is the week that we celebrate the past 12 months of hard work and our future as “real” teachers.  And yet here I am, snowed in and iced in for the second day in a row.  I’m starting to get nervous.  What if the weather doesn’t let up?  How will I get closure with everyone at Kelly?  I can’t let the GPS units stay in Ms Frizzle’s room over the break.  What if Mr Ruff has already left for Boise?   What if graduation gets canceled because of the weather – it’s been hard enough only seeing my fellow classmates every other week this term – how will I get closure with all of you?  What kind of thankyou gift should I get for Ms Frizzle?  I want to get something at REI that she can use when they drop her in Yellowstone after Christmas for 11 days of snowshoeing from yurt to yurt.  What could that possibly be?

I know that teachers are tired, and ready for Winter break.  I’m tired too.  Just not quite ready for the break.  Hopefully tomorrow I’ll wake up to the news that schools are open again.  I don’t think that I could bear another morning of watching the scrolling on the news channel about school closures three times all the way through just to make sure that Kelly was closed for the day.   Here’s hoping!

It’s hard to believe that our student teaching is almost finished.  With my work sample turned in and no more observations on the horizon, I’m really looking forward to teaching without looking over my shoulder for someone who’s ready to critique my style or content or whatever.  Maybe this will feel a bit more like real teaching – and maybe I can enjoy the students for who they are these last two weeks!  We’ll see.  I don’t know a thing about minerals and rocks so I’ll still be studying to keep one chapter ahead of my students.

Last weekend I was over at Gateway Mall with my housemate.  She teachers at Hamilin Middle School and she gets really nervous when she’s at the mall – worried that students will see her.  We walked into Target and started down towards electronics when I suddenly recognized one of my students.  I smiled and said hello, and she said Hello Ms. Butler and kept on walking.  My housemate started to laugh.  She was so worried about hearing hello Ms. Allen that to here Hello Ms Butler really caught her off guard.  Maybe it’s the reality that I have a new identity – one she hasn’t seen yet.  Anyway, she got away from the mall unrecognized so she was happy, and I ran into one of my students who was kind enough to say hello so I was happy.

A thought leapt into my mind this week in one of those moments when I wasn’t having to think too hard about anything.  Maybe it was the shower!  Anyway, I started to wonder about the students in my morning block.  Should I feel bad for them since they always get the “first attempt” at all of my lessons?  When I was a pastor, the early service got the first attempt at the sermon.  The later service had the benefit of an hour of sunday school for me to reorganize my thoughts and hopefully a better version of the sermon.  Of course I always preached the perfect version as I was driving home.  Last Friday I tried a simulation and it went fine.  However, I had the advantage of 45 minutes of “down time” while Mr. M taught algebra, and I was able to tweek the worksheet for the afternoon class.  Lucky them!  And lucky me – I got a little bit more feedback with the revised sheet and it kept the students a little more focused on the activity.  I know that Mrs Frizzle talked about that the other day as well – she teaches 4 or 5 periods and by the end of the day the lesson and the teacher are finely honed.    Do I owe the morning class an apology when I leave? 

At long last Kelly Middle School has had their parent/teacher conferences.  Charlie and I decided to split them up – I went last night and he’s going today – so that there weren’t too many “teachers” in the room.  I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but I was surprised at what I saw.  Since Kelly runs on a block schedule, each conference included both the math/science teacher and the LA/SS teacher.  So already we’ve got two teachers who need to talk in a 15 minute conference.  For some of the students the spanish teacher, the PE teacher or the technology teacher joined us.  And one occasion the counselor was also there.  I can’t imagine the parents were thrilled to sit at a table facing 6 teachers.  Anyway – the thing that suprised me the most was the amount of paper work/documentation each teacher had to show to the parents.  There were samples of work, grade printouts from last term and current scores.  Mr M and Ms D spent a great deal of the time showing parents where assignments were missing or the poor quality of work.  I also noticed that the teachers were very frank about the students poor grades and behavior.  I guess it’s difficult to disagree if there are two teachers in the room telling the same stories – definately a bonus to the team teaching model.

I also watched as two parents looked at all of the documents presented by Mr M and Mrs D, and then turned on Mrs D.  They said that their son had problems in the sixth grade with the LA/SS teacher (who is no longer at the school) and that the problems were continuing this year.  In their minds it meant that it was Ms D who was a fault – they told her so in no uncertain terms.  I watched in horror as they totally reamed Mrs D out.  They even told her that they had pulled their son out of an elective class so that he could do study hall in the room of one of his former 6th-grade teachers.  I felt bad because it was clear that Mrs D knew nothing about it.  I don’t imagine that that bodes well for staff morale.  Thankfully for me (and probably Mr M) the parents had heard from their son and other students that Mr R and I were cool.  Phew!  Also, as the conference wound down, Mr M supported Mrs D’s claim that the students this year were very difficult to handle, and that he had struggled as well at times.

I asked Mrs D later how she kept from coming unglued, and she replied that first of all, it helped that there were other teachers in the room who could reinforce her perspective about the student and the class as a whole.  Secondly, she remarked that she wasn’t surprised at what she heard since these particular parents never took any ownership for their student’s behavior.

Anyway, it was an eye opening experience!  It felt good when I could show the parents some of their students’ work as well as inform them that I am always in the classroom at 8:00am and that students can come in and work on or get help for any of their science or math work.  (Mr M has meetings several mornings so he can’t always be available.)  I think that they were impressed that the teachers really wanted the students to do well and were available.

Tonight is the 7th-grade Spaghetti Dinner fundraiser.  Should be fun.  In September, the students raised $17,000 for the general school fund at the RiverWalk.The money raised tonight will go into a special fund for the current 7th grade class, but won’t be used until they are 8th-graders – extra funds to supplement their 8th-grade trip and perhaps some extra technology for the classroom.

It suddenly dawned on me yesterday as I was driving home from school that I was going to miss hanging out with Charlie and Mr M (well, Ms Frizzle too). Earlier in the day Charlie was helping me to find an appropriate sized graph paper on the internet for one of my projects.  The day before, I was helping him think through one of his school assignments – related to topics we had already discussed in Bob’s class.  One of the things that I have appreciated is the collaboration I’ve had with Mr M and Charlie, as well as the two other 7th-grade math/science teachers. The two other teachers are new – one was Mr M’s student teacher last year, the other a recent Pacific grad. In many ways I’ve had the privilege of vicariously experiencing what it’s like to be a brand new teacher as I hang out with these two teachers. Mr M has been gracious in not only mentoring Charlie and myself, but these other teachers as well. And because we are new at this business of teaching, we often stop by to bounce ideas off of one another. This week in particular, I walked into the room on Monday and Mr M had placed a textbook in my “work space” open to some information about volcanoes. I also had a copy of the Hawaiian Volcanoes Web Quest sitting there. Yeah – new stuff about volcanoes. Then Charlie walks in with some math work that he’s created as supplemental curriculum for the math book. I’ve got a great exercise about following directions and some other general lab assignments, Krystal has created a data table for an interactive website we are both using, and Evan has created a fun structure of the Earth activity. In a flurry of visits to the copy room, we make extra copies and then trade. I have really appreciated everyone’s willingness to share – I don’t know how often this happens in schools or within departments, but I’m grateful it happens here! Kelly staff are dually certified (math/science or social studies/language arts) and have been paired into teaching teams. What I observe is a lot of communication – about students and about curriculum. Kelly is also committed to project-based learning, so on yet another level there is collaboration. I’ve even managed to get in on the 6th-grade PBL by teaching GPS curriculum in Ms Frizzle’s class. In the spring, the 6th-grade team hopes to resurrect outdoor school and create a new cross-team project – both of which will incorporate the use of GPS units. Yep – I think that I am really going to miss this!

Ooops!  I got behind in my blogging.  Last Friday was mid-term grading day.  I was quite surprised at the number of students who failed to turn in assignments.  I was even more surprised when I graded the students’ science notebooks.  After providing the students with a check list of items that had to be included, and giving them time in class to take care of final details, I was shocked at the number of science notebooks that came in missing one or more items.  And I was even more shocked at the half dozen science notebooks that were turned in empty, or not turned in at all.  And it’s not only the students who are causing problems, but the parents as well.  Two parents failed to show up for arranged conferences, and another promised to bring in their student’s work, but didn’t, and simply sat there as her daughter explained that she couldn’t turn in her science notebook because the dog ate it.  Fascinating!

I even wondered for a while if the reason that one of our ELL students turned in his notebook with only paragraph of notes refused to do the work because he was being taught by a woman (me!)  But then I realized that I also taught the end of the dinosaur unit, and he had all of the material in his book for that unit.  Mr M says he’s just lazy.  Wow – this aspect of teaching (the grading part) has really been an eye opener for me.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since it is the one area of working with middle school and high school students that I never had to deal with.  How do these students make it out in the real world?

This coming week marks the end of the grading period, so Mr M, Mr R and I are reminding students left and right to get their work in.  It amazes me that even after several reminders, students haven’t returned overdue work.  I guess it’s another one of those Britzman things – assuming the student will follow through just because if  I were the student, I would.  Another issue has been that several students have recently missed an entire week of school – because their parents took them on vacation.  Vacation!?!?  In the middle of a term?  I don’t think that there will be any way that these students will be able to make up all of the work before Wednesday, even the strong students.  Mr M has been in coversation with one parent who thinks her student will be getting A’s this term, even though there are assignments missing from when they were on vacation.  I feel bad for the students.  This is the time of the term when they need to be on top of their game, and instead they’re racing to catch up.

On a lighter note, this week KMS has been celebrating Hallowe…oops, I mean Fall Fest.  Starting on Monday the announcment went out to the kids to dress up on Friday.  During the week artwork appeared in the hallways – Jack-o-lanters, witchs, owls……the typical Fall Fest stuff and the staff pulled out all of their orange and black clothing.  On Friday, most of the students and all of the staff wore costumes.  I can’t remember when a school encouraged students to celebrate Hallow…..I mean Fall Fest.  We scheduled fun things in our classes – in Mr M’s class we made oragami talking puppets and decorated them.  In Mrs Frizzles class we made fake blood and made figures with blood and guts made out of cheeze whiz, pretzel sticks and olives for eyeballs.  To their credit, the office included interesting facts about the celebration The Day of the Dead each morning with their announcements.  (Good cultural competence stuff!)

I’m still struggling to figure out how to teach Volcanoes without a text book.  On Thursday we explored a website on Supervolcanoes/Yellowstone which was fun.  I have collected a number of handout-type work sheets, but I can’t imagine handing out work sheets every day in order to convey content to the students.  And copying notes from a powerpoint presentation works for only so long.  Oh well.  I’ll watch what the other 7th grade math/science teachers do and learn.

On Friday I finished my work sample unit and gave the post-test.  i was amazed at the anxiety it created in me as I realized that a good-sized part of the student’s success would depend on how well I taught the content.  Part of this anxiety began when students came in for help on the homework assignment that was meant to be a simple review of the main concepts.  Uh oh.  I was so sure that most of the students had grasped the main points – we even had hand motions for the different type of plate boundaries and the students could use the hand motions to help them talk through the processes at each type of boundary.  The final scores from the post test were all over the board – some students who I thought weren’t paying attention did quite well, and other students who appeared to be right on top of things didn’t do so well.  I even allowed the students to use a diagram/activity that we worked on to help them.  Unfortunately for the students, a third of them didn’t bring it to school (although they were told to keep it in their science folder) or else had lost that project.   I told Mr M that I would return the tests and allow the students to correct their mistakes and receive partial credit back and he agreed, since really the point is for the students to learn the material.  Now that they know what they don’t know, they can go back and relearn it.

This also ties in with another struggle I’m having – that we don’t have text books.  My supervisor and I talked about it at his last visit, and I’ve been wrestling with it as I’ve talked with the other brand-new 7th grade science teachers.  How do you provide adequate material for students who are visual learners – and how do you drill vocabulary?  I’ve had students copy notes off of a powerpoint presentation, but I don’t think that that’s a great way to teach all of the time.  I’ve used models and coloring activities that reinforce content, but I think that the students get wrapped up in the coloring part of it and lose sight of the content and vocabulary labels.  I could photocopy small pieces of articles or Earth Science books, but I can’t do a lot of that either.    Any other ideas????  I’d love to hear them.

Just one last thought.  Mr M just shared with us an internet sight called Brain Pop.  It has great animated lessons on every subject – each segment covers the content well and even has a quiz at the end that you can either take as a group (shout out the answer) or can print off.  It’s expensive, but it’s worth finding out of your school has a subscription.  (Works best for middle school kids – it’s a bit corny with Tim and his friend the robot named Moby – but the kids in my classes really like it!)

On to volcanoes!

This past Wednesday I was out in our 7th grade hallway repositioning diagrams of fossil Pterosaurs so there was room for the Dangerous Dinosaur group posters.  I learned quite a bit while I was out there.  On a not-so-serious note, I learned that three 8th grade boys know the lyrics to the song “baby come back, you can blame it all on me….” and I’m a bit disappointed that I’ll never know who exactly it was in my class who broke out in several choruses of “if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands…clap….clap…..” or why.  But that’s why I love middle school!

On a more serious note, I am frankly surprised and pleasantly pleased that the artwork put out for display in the hallways actually remains intact!  Nobody messes with it.  Really!  One of the by-products (if you will) of a focus on Project Based Learning is that there are projects (duh!).  And one way to establish OPR is to put the the students’ projects on display for others to see – just like we used to do in Sunday School.  Every time I walk down the hallway I feel like a proud parent as I look at each student’s handiwork.  It was amazing this afternoon to watch the faces of the students after 3 full block sessions of intense internet research smile proudly as Mr M stapled their dinosaur posters to the wall. Well done!

I also learned that Mrs D, who is Mr M’s teaching partner, struggles to keep the kids quiet.  Phew – it isn’t just me!  But I overheard her counting on Wednesday – Three……..two………one…….. just like Mr M does on occasion to quiet the room.  Aha – so both teachers use this strategy and the students know what it means.  It’s not a technique that I’ve ever used to get kids to be quiet, but maybe I should consider giving it a try.

I gave out my first two lunch detentions this week too.  Oh, it was soooo hard to do.  But by the time we got to the science part of the day on Thursday, most of the students were one outburst away from spending lunchtime in Room 23.  I had justwarned the class that the next person who talked while I was talking would be spending lunch with me and sure enough, two kids kept chatting.  “Here’s your hall pass, I’ll see you both at lunch tomorrow.”  Ugh – I think that hurt me more than it hurt them.  The funny thing of it is that quite frankly, lunch in Room 23 with Mr M and Mr R and me isn’t so bad.  In fact, it’s kind of fun.  We make fun of Mr M’s giant lunches, and chat about the Oregon ducks and tell funny pet stories and all the while there are other students gathered in the front of the room who have chosen to spend their lunch time working on their math or science assignments and are always interupting and asking for things like glue sticks and red construction paper and hole punchers and giving our lunches a bit of a look.  “No, I can’t share my almonds with you since I don’t know if you have allergies, so please stop asking.”  Earlier in the week, one young man came into the room and plopped down near the three of us and started in on his lunch.  We all had a lovely time visiting – so much so that I didn’t even realize until lunch was almost over that he was in the room for detention.  OPR can even be found in lunch detention.  I wonder if Bob knows that?!

Lot’s of learning to be had in the hallway and during detention this week!

Well, I know that every student teacher has to have that special day when nothing goes right and consists of  horrors that will eventually become legend.  I managed to experience mine on the first day of my official teaching.   No need to beat around the bush on this one.   I’ll look back at this some day and laugh, right????

Going into the class on Monday morning, I already knew that there was nothing positive to note about the content of the lesson that I was going to teach, despite the fact that Mr M really wanted this particular lesson to happen.  The class of course was chaotic as I tried to teach content that was new to me in a style that was new for me, and so at the end of the class there was nothing positive to salvage from the presentation either.  Gee, it sounded like so much fun and like such a good idea when Mr M and I talked it through.  I decided to change a few things up for the second go-round and hope for a better experience.  Unfortunately, 5 minutes before we were going to transition from math to science, one of the students threw up at his desk.  Needless to say we evacuated the room with math books in hand and Mr M continued to teach math outside on the steps while the custodian cleaned up.  By the time we got back into the room the kids were wired, they insisted that the room still smelled of vomit, and my time was slowly ticking away.  Mr M grabbed some spray from the staff bathroom and turned the classroom into a scented vanilla candle ala Glade.  Ugh!   One young man who was sitting next to the sick student sat back in his chair and looked like he was going to be ill as well.  Mr M put him in the back of the room by an open window, in my chair, and we all held our breath.  I checked over there every few minutes to make sure he wasn’t going to throw up in my school bag.  Anyway….the show must go on, and so I had as second go at drawing a scaled model of the structure of the Earth.  I’ll probably never really know if the changes I made in my presentation were effective or not since we didn’t get any farther along in the lesson the second time.  At least the boy in the back of the room didn’t faint or get sick.  Small victories sometimes!

I walked over to Mrs Frizzle’s room for 7th period and within minutes Mrs Frizzle and I were out in the hallway with two young ladies who had traded verbal spars with one another and were both crying foul.  We talked for a bit about letting go and moving on, and then Mrs Frizzle left me out in the hall to finish up the conversation.  At that point both girls dug in their heels and refused to let go of the past and both were adamant that they weren’t going to apologize to each other.  We were still out in the hallway at an impass when the bell rang, and away they went.  I walked back into the room and when Mrs Frizzle looked at me, all I could do was shake my head ‘no.’  l

On all accounts tomorrow is another day – just not yet the day that I’ll look back to and laugh.  Soon I hope!

Well, on Tuesday things shaped up for all of us.  We managed to finish our drawings and not only did I think that they looked great, but so did the kids.  As we added the lines to make the image 3D, several of the kids exclaimed,  “Way cool!”  Mr M told me to remember that part of the lesson and so I will! And somehow the two girls had worked things out on their own and were buddies again!

I think I’m almost ready to look back and laugh!