WEEK 14- Thanksgiving

This week, since we had Thanksgiving break, I wanted to focus on the aspects of my job for which I'm thankful.

First and foremost, I'm thankful that I actually have a job. I spent quite a bit of time without a job, and without even a direction for where I wanted to go, that I am extremely thankful that I am able to work and earn a living.

I am thankful for my department. Nancy, Katy, Lydia, Josephine, and Alissa are some of the most supportive and understanding colleagues I could ask for. Whether they are brand new to Washburn or have one foot out the door, everyone is willing to try new things and adjust their teaching to fit the current needs of the students. We work well together, and I always look forward to lunch when we can decompress together.

I am thankful for my administration and their trust in me. As only a 2nd year teacher, it's very possible for me to totally mess things up before I really get my rhythm, but they keep their hands off and let me teach the way I want to teach, even if it means making mistakes along the way.

I am thankful that I had 2 very great mentors along the way: Robert Tangen, my Spanish teacher in high school, and Jonathan Townsend, my mentor teacher during my student teaching at Southwest High School. I do my darnedest to emulate these two great teachers, and often when I'm not sure how to teach something, I think to my self, "What would Tangen do? What would Townsend do?"

I am thankful that my class sizes are down to under 30 this year. Class sizes do matter, and this year I am able to give more individual attention to the students that need it.

I am thankful that the subject matter I teach can easily be used to open doors up all around the world, and that the students who wish to do so will better be able to compete in a global society because of my class.

Finally and most importantly, I am thankful for my students, both current and past. When I see my students playing around with the language for fun, or when a student shares a story of how they used their new Spanish abilities to talk with one of their Hispanic classmates, or when a student comes in completely excited because they understood something said in Spanish on TV, that's when I know that I am in the right profession. I look back to when I was starting my Spanish classes in 9th grade, then I think about all of the opportunities that I had because of my bilingualism, and I get excited about the variety of futures that lie ahead for these kids.

I took it easy during Thanksgiving break, as I should do every once in a while.

Day	Date	Start	End	Total Hours
Sun	11/18/2012	9:00 AM	10:30 AM	1.5
		2:15 PM	3:00 PM	0.75
		8:00 PM	8:45 PM	0.75
M	11/19/2012	7:30 AM	6:15 PM	10.75
T	11/20/2012	7:30 AM	4:15 PM	8.75
		8:00 PM	9:45 PM	1.75
W	11/21/2012	7:45 AM	4:45 PM	9
Th	11/22/2012			0
F	11/23/2012			0
Sat	11/24/2012			0
	Total			33.25

WEEK 13 - Snot

This week's topic is snot. That's right, snot. It's surprising how many boogers get blown throughout the day, especially during allergy season. One box of tissues rarely lasts a week, and tissues aren't something that teachers are just given. There's no closet somewhere where we can just go and get more tissues (maybe other schools have that, but we don't). I know that our department had to actually put in an order to get a big box full of small boxes of tissues (putting orders in = paperwork = more time doing something other than actually teaching). We got those at the beginning of the year, and they're completely out now. I generally ask for donations, but many times students will bring rolls of toilet paper in from the school bathroom, which hold us over until we can get more tissues.

Teachers (and students) come into contact with many people and germs throughout the day. High school teachers generally see between 130-150 students per day. If we teach 5 classes, that means that every desk gets contaminated 5 times a day. And students touch EVERYTHING. Door handle. Pencil sharpener. Stapler. Light switch. Tape. Markers. Each other. Everything. On top of that, they hand in ONE assignment, and I get to touch 140 pieces of paper that have been contaminated by God knows what was on their hands.  Hand in 2, and I get 280 pieces of paper. Hand in 3...you get the picture.

Because of this, students and teachers get sick a lot. In our language department there are 6 teachers, and in the last 2 weeks, 4 of us have now gotten the same boogery, runny sinus infection. We've all had to take off between 1-3 days (although I could have stayed in bed for a week with how awful I was feeling).

As icky as it might be with all these goopy teenagers touching everything, I must say that it is way worse for elementary teachers who deal with kids who don't yet know how to sneeze properly and probably play with their boogers. Yuck.

My hours for week 13.

Sun	11/11/2012	7:30 PM	10:00 PM	2.5
M	11/12/2012	7:30 AM	4:00 PM	8.5
T	11/13/2012	7:45 AM	5:15 PM	9.5
		8:00 PM	10:00 PM	2
W	11/14/2012	7:30 AM	5:15 PM	9.75
		8:30 PM	10:00 PM	1.5
Th	11/15/2012	8:00 AM	4:15 PM	8.25
		7:30 PM	8:15 PM	0.75
F	11/16/2012	7:15 AM	3:30 PM	8.25
		9:30 PM	10:30 PM	1
Sat	11/17/2012	8:30 AM	9:00 AM	0.5
		11:00 PM	11:30 PM	0.5
	Total			53

WEEK 12 - Substitute Teachers

If you read my blog last week, you'll know that lately, I've been pushing myself quite a bit. And it finally caught up with me. I spent all of Sunday sick in bed, tried to push through and teach Monday (a mistake), then ended up having to take Tuesday and Wednesday off because I was pretty miserably sick.

For teachers, taking a sick day is not just a matter of calling in sick and catching up on your work when you get back. On Tuesday morning when I made the decision to call in sick, I still had to work an hour in the morning, while I could barely think because I was so miserable, to create a lesson for a substitute. 

The idea of a substitute teacher is that they will fill in and continue teaching whatever the teacher was on at the time. This rarely happens, especially for language teachers, since most substitute teachers don't speak Spanish. It's especially hard for lower levels of Spanish, since the lower the level, the more the students depend on the teacher to learn. In contrast, my level 5/6 class is pretty easy to prepare for, because they have enough skills to be able to read articles and write papers in Spanish (which is what they did while I was gone). Spanish 1 is always more difficult, because you can't expect the substitute to know how to teach different aspects of language.

Getting a substitute is a pretty easy process these days. I just go online to a website that Minneapolis uses, put in what day I'll be out, then it'll show up on the website as an opening which any available sub can snatch up when they log in. 

Getting a good sub is very important. Having a bad sub can mean having to do damage control the day you get back. One time last year I came back from being sick and the desks were all over the place, some overturned, books strewn all over the floor, a book that was stuck to the floor with gum, the attendance was recorded wrong, every student in one of my classes got 100% on the quiz (never leave a quiz with a sub) etc... It was a disaster. When I asked the students what happened, they all said that he just sat behind the desk watching Seinfeld the whole hour. One of my classes even said that he put Seinfeld up on the overhead so they could watch because the students weren't doing their work. Needless to say, he was never called back to Washburn. 

A good sub, on the other hand, is one that interacts with students, tries to help them out even if they're not experts in the content area, takes attendance, has the students straighten things up at the end of the hour, and leaves a note on what went on that day. There are many that do this, but they tend to get snatched up as teachers pretty quickly, so you have to find new good subs the next year. 

My hours for week 12, pretty short due to being sick most of the week. 

Day	Date	Start	End	Total Hours
M	11/5/2012	7:30 AM	4:15 PM	8.75
		7:45 PM	9:15 PM	1.25
T	11/6/2012	6:00 AM	7:00 AM	1
		10:00 PM	10:45 PM	0.75
W	11/7/2012	8:00 PM	8:45 PM	0.75
Th	11/8/2012	7:00 AM	4:45 PM	9.75
F	11/8/2012	7:45 AM	4:00 PM	8.25
	Total			30.5

WEEK 11 - Breakdown

I had my first breakdown this week. There are only so many 55-65 hour weeks you can put in before it becomes too much to handle. By mid-week, I was to the point where all someone needed to do was look at me the wrong way and I would snap. What finally put me over the edge was the copy machine continually jamming while I was trying to make copies for the next day. I just sat down and let it out, all the while thinking of everything I still had to deal with before the end of the week. In this post, I will be talking about a few of those things that built up to eventually push me over the edge.

1. It's the end of the quarter. 23 of my 130 students failed this quarter, mostly because they come late, sleep, talk to the people around them, goof off, don't do their classwork or homework, then fail the tests. However, many think they can come in and jump through hoops at the end of the quarter to get their grades up. I take a hard line and tell them to work harder next quarter so that they quit failing the tests. I give extra credit only in extremely rare cases, and this is not one of them.

2. Wednesdays all teachers teach a 7th class not necessarily related to our content areas. I teach Spanish club. This is extra preparation from what we already have to prepare, and really ends up getting very little of my attention.

3. One of my students told me that the kids in his class are picking on him. I haven't seen anything, but said I will remain vigilant. The class he is in is a pretty chatty class, and nearly half of the students have either Ds or Fs, mostly because of apathy. Simply getting them to quiet down and focus on learning is a huge task in and of itself, but having to deal with bullying in my classroom under my nose will make it even harder. I have already spoken with the principal and the deans, and a dean came in to observe my classroom on Thursday. I'll have to sit down with the other students this upcoming week, probably during my prep time.

4. On Tuesday I got an email about a student of mine who was suspended for bringing a weapon to school. I am supposed to get some work together for him to work at home, give him an incomplete for the quarter (because he missed the final test) and stay after school with him (on my own time) when he gets back so that he can take that final test. Really??

5. On Wednesday, the parent of one of my students, Frank (not his real name), emailed to say that one of Frank's friends from middle school was murdered on Monday, and that is why Frank might be a little out of it. Emotionally, this took a toll on me. His friend died a gruesome death (by sword), and just knowing that Frank, a super sweet 14 year old has to deal with this just hit me hard. It has been on my mind for a few days, especially knowing that another one of my students is suspended for bringing a weapon to school.

6. On Wednesday, when all I really needed to do was grade and prepare for the end of the quarter, we had a meeting. Every other Wednesday our department gets together to talk about issues specific to the world language department, but this week it was the last thing on my mind, since I had so many other things to deal with. The meeting goes from 3:15-4:45 (or 4:30...not sure since we generally go past 4:30 every meeting). I didn't leave the school until 7:45pm that night.

7. If you have been following my hours, you will see that since August 20th, I have worked every single day. I have not taken even 1 day off from working on school work. Some might say that this is unhealthy (indeed, I am sick today) and that I'm doing myself and my students a disservice, but with all of the extra work that comes with being a teacher, just keeping ahead of the game keeps me on my toes every single day. Again, if I could just teach, and not have meetings and extra classes, and not have to play parent to many kids who don't know how to function in a large group, and not have trainings, this job would be a lot easier, and probably more in line with what the public thinks teachers do.

My hours for week 11:

Day	Date	Start	End	Total Hours
Sun	10/28/2012	12:30 PM	1:30 PM	1
		3:15 PM	5:45 PM	2.5
M	10/29/2012	7:45 AM	5:00 PM	9.25
		9:15 PM	10:45 PM	1.5
T	10/30/2012	7:45 AM	5:15 PM	9.5
		8:00 PM	9:00 PM	1
W	10/31/2012	7:45 AM	7:45 PM	12
Th	11/1/2012	7:45 AM	6:00 PM	10.25
F	11/2/2012	9:00 AM	12:30 PM	3.5
		1:30 PM	4:15 PM	2.75
Sat	11/3/2012	9:30 AM	11:30 AM	2
		7:45 PM	10:45 PM	3
	Total			58.25