#secondyearteaching

Last week, I was up at school past 5pm on both Tuesday & Wednesday trying to “lesson plan” with another 3rd grade teacher. And by lesson plan, I mean watching her chat on the phone for 30 minutes and do various other tasks that are not, in fact, lesson planning. After she gets off the phone, she mostly just uses the lesson plans from the previous year word for word and I just have to sit there as she reads over everything.

On top of that, I realized as I attempted to follow the lesson plans this week that they are absolute GARBAGE. I mean they are just all over the place! Jumping from one thing to the next with no rhyme or reason. No guided practice, no independent practice, no closure. I’m just mad at myself that I didn’t notice it sooner. I felt so bad for my students today because I submitted them to that mess. I had to re-work today’s entire lesson during my lunch break after it was a catastrophe with the first group. Maybe the more experienced teacher in the cluster can somehow “decode” the plans she wrote to make sense in her classroom, but I certainly can’t.

I took a half day a few weeks ago when my parents visited, so I figured I might as well use up the other half. It’s super easy to be out because I already had the sub plans written for what we do basically every Friday (testing, testing, & more testing). I’m justifying it because at this point last year, I had already taken 1 full day to go to North Carolina for my grandma’s birthday. So I’m right on track with that. And I’m pretty sure I didn’t even use up all 5 of my personal days last year. I had at least 1, potentially 2 that rolled over into this year.

It’s wouldn’t be a day of professional development if it didn’t leave me feeling overwhelmed at the end. I always feel like there’s so much for me to do. This week I’ve got to come up with a plan for implementing guided reading groups in my class. Then next week I’ll introduce it & start the plan.

I just wrote this super long post reflecting about my day, and then the Tumblr app on my phone crashed right as I was almost done 😩

I guess long story short, I'm doing OK with teaching right now and I'm being reflective as to how I can improve.

This parent just messaged me about the school fundraiser we just had, and said "my son never got his prize for selling 5 items.... We only bought those items so he could get the prize."

What I wanted to say: Okay sorry? I'm not even in charge of handing out prizes. I turn in the forms and that's the end of my job. Maybe don't spoil your kid by buying stuff just so he can get a prize? Maybe instead check his grades online once in a while so you can see that he's failing every single subject? And maybe read with him at home sometimes & have him do his homework? Just a few suggestions....

But instead I said "I'm so sorry to hear that. The PE coaches are in charge of handing out the prizes, I will see what's going on tomorrow."

Today was third grade's Birds of Prey field trip, and so we went to this place where they had a bunch of different birds of prey like vultures and owls and stuff. At one point during the presentation, a VULTURE got away from the presenter and LANDED ON ONE OF MY STUDENTS BACKS!!! As if that wasn't enough, then the bird CLIMBED ONTO HER HEAD before the handler could get control of it again!!!!! This was right after the guy had just talked about how sharp their talons are and how he has to wear a special glove to hold it! The student is completely fine, just a little shaken up that she had a VULTURE land on her head!!

Just rub it in my face that I have to go to work and can’t go get coffee with friends at 10am on a Monday morning.