September 24th-October 12th

You can probably tell by the dates of my posts how stressed out and preoccupied I've been with teaching. I NEVER stop thinking about it. In fact, I've had several dreams, many of those nightmares about teaching. My worst nightmare so far? I showed up to class with not a thing prepared for all three of my 45 min. classes. I'm not kidding when I tell you that would truly be a nightmare to have 35+ 7th and 8th graders stuck in your class for 45 minutes bored and with nothing to do. When they get bored for even 5 minutes, I feel like a zookeeper trying to keep the peace among a pack of sugar riddled hyenas. Blast those suckers and cotton candy they sell at lunch!
 The last three weeks have flown by. We are nearing the end of the first quarter in a couple of weeks! Yes! I made it! I survived the 1st quarter! The best news is that I am now prepared at least a month out and I am really excited about next quarter because I am teaching a Holocaust unit for both the 7th and 8th graders and  we will be reading a couple of books, watching a movie, and having a Holocaust survivor come and speak to my classes. I think and hope and pray that everything goes as planned!
Classroom management is still a struggle, but I am doing by darndest to be consistent with my classroom rules and for the most part my students are great. There's just a few who make it miserable for everyone else, but I have contacted a few parents and that has seemed to help. I also think I finally found a seating arrangement that will work AND I bought myself a really loud silver bell to ring to get their attention. Using the mic around my neck also helps a lot because I never raise my voice, but my voice is always louder than their voices are and it works well to keep them quiet AND it saves my voice! My next major purchase for classroom management will be a Yacker Tracker. It's a really cool unit that looks like a stop light. You set it when the kids are doing group work or whatever and when the light turns yellow, that means they are getting close to being too loud and when they are too loud, the light blinks red and a little alarm goes off. I saw Mrs. Irvine use one and it was very effective in managing noise while she worked with students one-on-one. Her rule: If the light goes off three times, you've got homework tonight. I think I like that rule. I have GOT to find me some BORING, TEDIOUS, REPETITIVE, and downright LOATHSOME worksheets to hand out. I don't want to punish them with writing because I want them to learn to love writing and I don't want them to consider it a punishment and therefore defeat my purpose of trying to get my students excited about writing.
Speaking of writing, I went to an AWESOME writing conference a couple of Fridays ago. It was AMAZING! I learned about how to teach argumentative writing, how to get kids excited about words, and how much of a responsibility I have as a teacher to be a role model for students so that they are excited about reading AND writing. We also listened to three authors, one of them the author of Goose Girl, Shannon Hale. I haven't read her books, but I will definitely put them on the list. She is such a down-to-earth  person and she gave me hope that even someone like me can get the stories out of my head and into an actual book. She is a happily married mother of four and is incredibly humble about her success. One of her books is actually being made into a movie, so super cool! Her first book Goose Girl was rejected like a hundred and something times before someone finally gave her a chance. She's inspired me to get busy on finishing the stories that I've started. I like telling stories. I always have. I also like a good story. I spent most of my high school career with my nose buried in a book. My mom would nag me every weekend to go out and do something, maybe get into a little trouble (but not too much!). Most of the time I preferred spending my time at Hogwarts, learning legal terms from John Grisham, or traveling across the plains with the pioneers in The Work and the Glory. I am a sucker for books and I really don't prefer a particular genre as long as it's a good story. It's always been a goal of mine to write a book and after going to that conference, I feel like I can do it. Maybe I've found my calling in life? Teaching and writing. That's what I want to do, although I will still pursue fashion design as a hobby. I still can't quite let that go and since I am kind of artsy-fartsy, it's a good outlet for me. I can honestly say that even with all the challenges of teaching, I still haven't had a day yet where I dread going to work. My biggest goal as a teacher is to influence at least one student to change their life for the better and hopefully they learn something from me too!