WEEK 6 - Energy (part 1)

This week and next week I wanted to talk about energy: A teacher's energy and students' energy and how that plays a part in a teacher's career.

Think back to a time when you had to get up in front of a group of people and give a presentation. Maybe it was for a class project, a work meeting, a performance, etc. Now imagine having to do that presentation for 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 9 months in front of a group of 30-40 kids who many times are not interested in what you have to say. It really takes a lot of energy to stand up in front of people all day long and share with them something about which you are passionate, yet they may not even give a hoot about. Public speaking is the #1 fear in the United States, but teachers speak publicly all day every day, to a group of people who are still learning how to function in society. For me, sometimes it takes a lot of energy to interact with people all day, but to rarely have the opportunity to interact with adults.

Every single individual brings with them a certain amount of positive and negative energy, which many times is determined by what is happening in their personal lives, and oftentimes affects their performance in school. As teachers, we really have no control over what type of energy the student brings into the classroom. A student who is dealing with homelessness (and yes, I have had several homeless students in my very short time of teaching) is not thinking about how to get an A in Spanish class. A student whose parent abuses him is not trying to be the star student. A student who is being bullied could probably care less about where Honduras is. I can preach all I want about how important it is to do your homework and do well in school, but for many kids, it's just not the most important thing they're dealing with at the time.

In situations like these, the teacher then becomes the counselor, the confidante, and, often times, the parent. Good teachers care about their students. When a teacher finds out that their student is going through something tough, it can actually be hard on the teacher as well. We want to help and give support, and sometimes we are powerless (or at least that's how we feel).

If we just had to teach, for many of us, the job would be a cakewalk. We know our content area; imparting that knowledge is not necessarily the hard part. It's all the other stuff that surrounds nurturing and forming individuals into functional adults that many times sucks the energy right out of us (not always the case, but many times it is). It is no wonder that I can sleep 10 hours on Friday nights, take 2 naps on Saturdays, and still be able to sleep Saturday night.

My hours for week 6:

Day	Date	Start	End	Total Hours
Sun	9/23/2012	5:00 PM	7:30 PM	2.5
M	9/24/2012	7:45 AM	6:45 PM	11
		8:00 PM	9:15 PM	1.25
		9:45 PM	11:00 PM	1.25
T	9/25/2012	7:15 AM	6:00 PM	10.75
		9:00 PM	9:30 PM	0.5
W	9/26/2012	7:45 AM	5:30 PM	9.75
		9:00 PM	9:30 PM	0.5
Th	9/27/2012	7:30 AM	7:00 PM	11.5
F	9/28/2012	7:30 AM	5:30 AM	10
Sat	9/29/2012	5:00 PM	5:30 PM	0.5
	Total			59.5

WEEK 5 - Observations

In Minneapolis (and most other districts as well, I presume), every teacher has to have a series of observations done by either an administrator or some higher-up from the district. As a non-tenured teacher, I have to do 5 this year. During these observations, the observer looks for certain things, such as how well I communicate the objectives and content, and how well I create a positive climate with routines and transitions, among other things.

The observation itself is actually great, in my opinion. I love it when other people watch my class and give me feedback on what I can do better. The only real negative about the observation is that for both the observer and the observed, it's a lot of paperwork. For every observation, we have to do a pre-conference as well as a post-conference. In order to prepare for the pre-conference, I have to fill out papers that outline just what I'm going to do, how they meet the students' learning objectives, how they meet the "Standards of Effective Instruction" for teachers, what I anticipate might be difficult, why I decided to do this lesson, what data have I gathered from my students' abilities that helped me choose what the lesson will be about, what instructional strategies I'll be using, how I'm connecting my lesson to other classes the students are taking, how I know if they've understood, and how I will differentiate based on the different abilities of the students.

Filling out all this paperwork took me just under 2 hours on Sunday. Then on Monday, I communicated all this information to my observer during our conference, which was about 45 minutes. The observation was Wednesday during my 2nd hour class. Then on Friday we had our post-conference. To prepare for the post-conference, there's another series of paperwork that needs to be filled out outlining what I felt I did well and not well, and how I would rate myself in the different domains of teaching. This took me an hour, then the next day we had the conference, which was another 45 minutes.

Bottom line: there are many more things that teachers do than just teaching.

My hours for this week:

Day	Date	Start	End	Total Hours
Sun	9/16/2012	10:00 PM	11:45 PM	1.75
M	9/17/2012	7:15 AM	4:15 PM	9
T	9/18/2012	7:15 AM	5:30 PM	10.25
		7:45 PM	10:15 PM	2.5
W	9/19/2012	7:00 AM	6:00 PM	11
		8:45 PM	9:15 PM	0.5
		10:00 PM	10:45 PM	0.75
Th	9/20/2012	7:15 AM	5:30 PM	10.25
		9:30 PM	10:30 PM	1
F	9/21/2012	7:30 AM	4:15 PM	8.75
Sat	9/22/2012	3:30 PM	5:30 PM	2
		6:45 PM	7:45 PM	1
	Total			58.75

WEEK 4 - September 11th

It was very interesting spending September 11th with the students this year. For those of us who remember the terror of that day and just how much things have changed since then, it's hard to imagine not taking 9/11 seriously. I was just beginning 11th grade when the attacks happened, so I wanted to share my story with my students.

In my level V/VI class, all but 2 students are seniors. That means that they (the seniors) were born in 1994 or 1995, which puts them in 1st grade on September 11, 2001. For my level I classes, nearly everyone is a freshman, which means they were born  in 1997 or 1998. For the freshmen, only very few had any actual memory of that day, since they were all around 3 or 4 years old.

I wanted to take advantage of the fact that some of my students actually still remember 9/11, so I had my seniors do their first journal entry answering the question, "What do I remember from 9/11?" This was a great opportunity to practice their Spanish in a personal way, and to also work on their preterit and imperfect tense usage. :)

For the freshmen in level 1, I shared (in Spanish) with them my experience, using as many gestures and pictures as possible. Many students were really engaged, not only because of what I was saying, but by the fact that I was saying it in Spanish. Other students shared that they felt like they keep hearing this broken record of how big 9/11 was, but in some ways it's meaningless to them since they don't really remember life before that day.

It's really interesting how 1 decade makes such a difference.

My hours:

Day    Date                  Start              End               Hours
Sun    9/9/2012           1:15 PM       4:00 PM          2.75
M      9/10/2012          7:45 AM      6:15 PM          10.5
                                    7:45 PM      9:15 PM           2
T        9/11/2012         7:30 AM      5:30 PM           10
W       9/12/2012         7:30 AM      5:15 PM           9.75
Th      9/13/2012         7:15 AM      6:00 PM           10.75
                                    9:15 PM     11:00 PM          1.75
F        9/14/2012          7:45 AM     5:00 PM           9.25
Sat     9/15/2012         8:30 AM      9:00 AM          .5

                                                      Total:                57.25

WEEK 3 - Peeing. Yes, peeing.

Teachers can't exactly leave the classroom with students unattended, no matter what the age of the student. This means that if a teacher has to go to the bathroom, he or she is sort of out of luck. At Washburn, we have 5 minutes between each class, but this really isn't enough since there are always students who stay late to ask a question or discuss some issue. Also, at Washburn we have 1 staff bathroom for 2 whole floors. That means that there is only 1 toilet for maybe 40 or more people, and there is always a line to wait for the bathroom. It is no wonder that teachers have the highest rates of urinary tract infections. What other job inhibits your ability to go to the bathroom so much?

Technically, we can call down to the office to have someone come up and watch our class while we go to the bathroom, but then you run the risk of losing instructional time, or you have to create individual work on the spot that students can work on while you are out (and even with individual work, students always have questions). Many teachers just decide not to deal with it, and just hold it until they have a break.

My hours for week 3:

Sun	9/2/2012	5:45 PM	7:45 PM	2
M	9/3/2012	8:00 PM	10:45 AM	2.75
T	9/4/2012	7:15 AM	6:00 PM	10.75
		10:30 PM	12:00 AM	1.5
W	9/5/2012	7:15 AM	6:00 PM	10.75
		7:15 PM	9:15 PM	2
Th	9/6/2012	7:30 AM	5:15 PM	9.75
		9:00 PM	10:00 PM	1
F	9/7/2012	7:45 AM	4:30 PM	8.75
Sat	9/8/2012	11:30 AM	12:30 PM	1
	Total			50.25

WEEK 2 - Meeting the students

This past week was the first week I spent with the students. Because I am teaching level 1 and level 5/6, I basically have 4 classes of freshmen and 1 class of seniors. With the seniors, I spent almost the whole week working on community building and getting the students comfortable just speaking in Spanish. With the freshmen, I spent quite a bit of time talking about expectations and working on nipping behavior issues in the bud right away.

I think my level 1 kids are more afraid of me this year than my level 1 kids were last year. I'm trying to set a serious tone in class, letting the kids know that even though we're in a Spanish class, it's not going to be just tacos and piñatas all year. They've already had 1 quiz, and I've already come down hard on one student who was goofing off in class. I'm determined to avoid the behavior issues I had to deal with last year. My strategy is to come down really hard at the beginning, and ease up later on.

Class sizes are small this year. My level 1 classes have: 31, 30, 28, and 32. My level V/VI has only 18 (13 in V, 5 in VI), but that's pretty rare and only happens because there were so few students who jumped right into level 2 or 3 when the were freshmen.

Here are my hours for the week.

Sun	8/26/2012	6:30 PM	9:30 PM	3
M	8/27/2012	7:00 AM	6:45 PM	11.75
T	8/28/2012	7:15 AM	7:15 PM	12
W	8/29/2012	7:30 AM	5:00 PM	9.5
		7:30 PM	9:00 PM	1.5
Th	8/30/2012	7:45 AM	7:15 PM	11.5
		9:00 PM	9:30 PM	0.5
F	8/31/2012	7:30 AM	5:00 PM	9.5
Sat	9/1/2012	8:00 PM	9:45 PM	1.75
	Total:			61