Back to school!

A quote from Billy Madison (1995):

"Back to school! Back to school, to prove to Dad that I'm not a fool! I got my lunch packed up, my boots tied tight, I hope I don't get in a fight! Ohhhh, back to school! Back to school! Back to school! Well, here goes nothing!" Watch the clip here.

Well, I'm back into the swing of things at school. We had professional days on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday was a day of meetings. Wednesday was freshman orientation. My team came up with creative ways to present the four major goals of freshman house to our students. The entire freshman house was divided into four teams and then each team was divided into groups of twenty. Each group had a 30 minute presentation from each of their core teachers (History, English, Bio, and Math) about one of the four goals of the freshman house. My goal was "9th graders will take responsibility for their learning."

This is what I did:
1) Welcome to World Studies and quick intro on me.
2) Broke them up into groups and gave them a big piece of butcher paper with the word Responsibility on it and a marker. Told them as a group, to try and come up with a definition of what responsibility means. After 10 minutes, they hung up their sheets and presented their info to the class.
3) Hung up the "real" definition of responsibility according to Mr. Webster (I wrote this out the day before on a piece of butcher paper) and we compared the dictionary version to their own.
4) I then asked them what are some ways that they can take responsibility their learning. Wrote out the ways on butcher paper. We discussed what they wrote.
5) The freshman house has a rubric for each of the goals. I passed out a copy of the rubric goal, went over the expectations with them, and the kids checked off where they thought they were on each of the expectations. Some of them admitted that they "needed improvement."
6) I passed out a strip of paper and a marker to each of them. I asked them to think of one goal they could work on this school year on how could they be responsible for their learning. They were to write their name on the paper and then write their goal for the year of the paper. I then told them that I will take each of these strips of paper and connect them into a chain. A chain of responsibility! After I connected them (stapled) together, I hung the chain across the classroom. It's a huge chain! :-)

The activity went very well. Afterwards, my team members and I met to check in. We all agreed that there will be one class that may be a bit on the rambunctious side! :-) We all agreed to keep them in check right at the beginning.

First day of school on Thursday went well. I have a small section of Salem in History class. My co-taught class is large and of course, I'm receiving no support from my SPED teacher. He just sits in the back of the classroom. We have some severe cases this year that really need some help so I don't know what is going to happen. I can only provide the support that I can provide to these kids. Last year, I advocated for support in my classroom. When I went to the head teacher of SPED, her response was this, "Suck it up. He's retiring at the end of the school year!" Nice support, eh?

My second day (White Day) is going to be rough. I teach the first, third, and fourth blocks. The second block, I have 45 minutes of duty and 45 minutes of common planning with my team. I need to point out that my schedule is a serious violation of contract. We are supposed to have a planning period every day. I have two planning periods on red day. None on white day. There are only five freshman teachers that have the same kind of schedule as me and no one wants to "cause any waves" since they are not tenured (I am only in my second year at this school). Since I've worked in other schools and this is my 9th year teaching, I do SEE what is going on and how wrong it is for the administration to take advantage of us. I was so exhausted yesterday when I came home. You need that break in the day away from the kids. Those of you that teach now EXACTLY what I'm talking about! :-)

Plans for the weekend:
*Going to a psychic party this afternoon. I really don't believe in this stuff but thought it would be fun!
*School work!
*Cleaning the condo.
*Quality ME time???? Maybe????? :-)

Enjoy your weekend folks! :-)