untitled teaching blog

I have a student who hasn't shown up to class since the first week of school. This isn't anything crazy, a lot of students have sort have dropped off the face of the earth, which is sad. But a couple days ago this student emailed me asking for help with all the assignments she missed. I was ecstatic! I offered to meet her virtually, but she just asked for a bit more detailed instructions. I sent her an email with detailed instructions over the assignments she missed and then I didn't hear from her again for a while... two days later I get an email from her basically saying "Mr. S, I'm not going to be doing any of the work you've assigned because it's way to overwhelming and I have no idea what to do." She apologized and everything, but it still sucked to hear that. But then I remembered that I'm the teacher now, and I get to make decisions! I went over the assignments real quick and was able to narrow it down to three assignments that she could do to demonstrate mastery, and asked if she would be willing to just those three. She said she could, and today I got the first of the three assignments back! It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty darn good! I went ahead and gave her full points, and I have to admit it felt good to watch her grade jump from an F to a passing grade.

It was a weird day yesterday. It was a teacher work day, and the first contract day, so we all came in and set up our classrooms. Only thing is we are starting out remote, and I'm not too sure we're going to be opening up anytime soon. With that in mind it felt really weird to be decorating my classroom.

Yesterday and today were "new teacher bootcamp". I'm terrible at this kind of stuff in the best of situations. I have a hard time paying attention to lectures and find my mind wandering unless I'm super invested. This year it's all over Google meet, and when you put 80 some.people in one Google meet its so easy to just turn off your camera and start wandering the internet.

Later today I get to tour my new school with my mentor teacher, so that is just super exciting. We're starting the school year with distance learning, which I appreciate, but the teachers will be working from the school, which I also appreciate. I think this is a sort of good compromise, I hated working from home last year, and I felt like I was supposed to be "home" even though I was at work.

I had a friend come up to visit and one of the things we spent the weekend doing together was build some gundams. Obligatory toy pictures!

I applied for a part time position at a local high school and just got a call saying I didn't get the job.

Welp, this quarter for sure didnt go as I had planned. The quarter is over and I've turned in final grades and now I just need to figure out how to turn in my work laptop. I'm disappointed I didnt get to spend more time with my students in person, but I'm so proud of all of them for staying so strong through this pandemic. I sent them all a short email letting them know I'm proud of them, and that I wish them all the best next year.

The school I've been working at ended up hiring someone else for the full time teaching position so I've been looking for a new job for the fall. One of the high schools has a .8 time position available, so I have an interview for that on Friday! I'm a little nervous to work with older kids, but I also know I cant be picky. And when I first started working towards being a teacher I had wanted to be a high school teacher, so.... I guess this works?

During my office hour today I had two students break my heart. I let the kiddos know today that the 8th grade graduation will likely just be a PowerPoint this year. The VP had us all the teachers put in some comments for different students so that every student has some personalized comments. Most of the students thought that was pretty neat, but one girl just said, "I bet all the teachers will say I was super dumb." And that just broke my heart. I went on a bit of a gentle rant about how all the students have been so hard on themselves, whether it be like what that student did, or in their reflections about how they know their poetry isn't that great, it in their journals about how they know that aren't too good at school. I told her I call that a sneaky hate spiral, and soon you begin to really believe those things about yourself, and the kids need to start working on building themselves up. I have no idea if anything I said stuck with any of the kids, but I hate seeing them do that.

After that little rant one of my more quiet students said "I wish you could be my teacher next year" and that just killed me even more. I found out the position I'm subbing for got filled, and I didnt even get a chance to interview. I let her know that I wish I could be all of their teacher next year, and that I will miss every single one of them.

One of my hobbies is building gundam models, and I'm building a replacement for one of my favorite looking models. I decided to take some silly pictures during the process.

Today I held office hours for the kiddos over Zoom. It was slightly awkward, there was a lot of sitting in silence waiting for someone to say something. But it was nice to see some students, and they seemed really happy to get to socialize with each other if even only for an hour. At the end of the hour I had them share their "personal weather" with me. This was something I learned from a past professor, which I thought was really cool. The kids just tell me how they're feeling using weather as a symbol and they are free to give as much or little detail as they want.

After that I got a call from one of the other english teachers saying that one of the kiddos had gotten editing privileges to our google doc worksheet. That was my fault, I had misread the email and thought I was just giving him viewing privalages... oops.... it was an easy fix and I adjusted the instructions to let the kids know they were supposed to make a copy of the document to turn in.

I figured out what day it is! I spent today grading work and it made me feel a lot better about everything. My eighth graders were supposed to analyze a poem with one solid paragraph, and since this was their first experience with something like this, and I wasnt able to help them in person I think most of them did really well. Even if a lot of them just listed rhyming as the only poetic device they found in their poem.

We will be hearing from the superintendent either today or tomorrow about what to expect for the rest of the school year. There are rumors that we're just going to cancel school after the 11th and I really hope that isnt true, while also knowing that may be best for some of our students. We already wont be assigning grades to these kids, and with the area we live in, most of the kids of bigger things on their minds than school work. I know as a teacher I shouldn't say that, but whatever.

The first week of distance learning is officially done, and the second week starts tomorrow. I was surprised by how much the students seem to miss school and just want things to go back to normal. Their first assignment was due on Friday and I really expected almost no one to turn anything in, but it looks like I got almost 60 or so assignments turned in (maybe a little less than half!). We just got an email telling us that the kids will get NG for this quarter, meaning that there's insufficient evidence to give the kids a grade. This makes me worry that they wont take this distance learning stuff seriously, I know I wouldn't have at their age.

So we are jumped into distance learning today. The district let us know to plan for kids to do 2 and a half hours of school related stuff a week, meaning to plan about half an hours worth of work per class per week. For some reason this simultaneously stresses me out and makes me feel better. We have the 8th grader's next 4 weeks planned out and ready to go and tomorrow we will be working on the 7th graders. It's kinda nice because our principal wants us to just team up with the other teachers and have one set of assignments for all the students no matter the teacher.

Its hard to want to keep up with blogging with all this craziness going on. We spent all last week not sure what was going to happen, so our job was to try to figure out what distance learning would look like if the kids didnt come back to school. Well on Friday night the governor announced that schools will be closed until May 1st. I feel bad for the students, I know we arent really set up for distant learning and I feel like we're setting up some of our students for failure. I want to plan cool lessons for the kids to do, but we have no idea how many students have internet access, or how many have the support needed to succeed, or even how many will even participate. Its weird and scary and I just wish for the best for my students.

Today was the first official day of me being a full time teacher and I spent it in an empty classroom. Since the school is shut down for the next two weeks the teachers are expected to come in and create some engagement activities for the students while they're gone. I partnered up with Mr. L. and he came up with some pretty cool ideas while I tagged along to feel like I was doing something.

It was a weird feeling being in an "empty" school. It was weirdly stressful actually, and I came home just drained. I hope the next two weeks dont continue on like this.

I've been super nervous about next week, and every possible stress dream you can have about teaching I have had. That being said, I've also been super looking forward to finally having my own classroom and starting my new career. That's why I had mixed feelings when we got an email from the district superintendent that spring break will be extended another week thanks to this whole Corona virus thing.