Hey! Teacher!

Yesterday was the first day back at school after a wonderfully relaxing 2 week break.

I’ve decided to be relaxed, to phrase everything in the positive (note: rather than saying “… to not be stressed,” I write, “to be relaxed.”) and to stay on top of things (maybe).

For now, I’ve started by rearranging my room into groups of three. I sat my students based on their exam scores: High, Medium and Low all in one group. This week is a review week for the district ACP (benchmark) exam next week, so I’ve given the groups a series of different worksheets on brightly colored paper that they need to complete.

Each student needs to do the work on a separate sheet of paper. Only one student can present their answers to me and must be prepared to answer a series of questions (“How did you get that?” “Why did you put that there?” “What does that mean?” “How could someone make a mistake to get this answer?”)

No student can present to me twice in a row.

Every student needs to present to me at least once by the end of the week.

It’s forcing the students to work together and to make sure everyone is on board.

Yippeeeeeee.

PS: my birthday is Friday. Take note.

I started a new consequence system.
Never again will I assign a detention.
From now on, I am sending disruptive students in the hallway and telling them to come up with an appropriate consequence for their actions. I check on them every two minutes until they can tell me what their consequnce is.

It’s great. I love it.

Also, for my kids who decide detention is a fair option, I make them look up old tests and find their weak areas while they are sitting in my room after school.

Oh, you need help on rational numbers?

Bam! Here’s a bunch of help and problems on rational numbers.

My goal is to have my detention kids become my smartest students.

We’ll see…

The second six-weeks is coming to a close.

On Wednesday and Thursday I’m giving my students the Greiner Benchmark. Considering my kids averaged a 52% on the Dallas District Benchmark, I’m a little nervous.

Gulp.

Guess who’s chaperoning the homecoming dance?

And the faculty advisor of the DASH committee? (Dash stands for drugs, alcohol, smoking and… something that starts with an ‘h’ that no one seems to remember…)

AND guess who’s going to Austin with 2 student council members so they can learn about being effective student leaders at a huge, Texas-sized conference?

ANNND guess who didn’t officially sign-up to do any of it, but is kind of okay with taking on more responsibilities as long as no one expects her to get the million other things done that she’s supposed to do?

Answer: ME!!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes I feel like I’m back in middle school… meaning I get really excited when I don’t have to go to school and my jokes are getting bad.

Thursday, I had professional development (just for 8th grade math teachers) and did not have to go into school. I went in at 8, left at 2:30, was home by 3:00 and couldn’t have been happier

Friday was Fair Day which means no school for anyone. Students and teachers get the day off and a free ticket into the state fair. I didn’t go to the fair (it was raining) but I think I’ll check it out next weekend. Eat some fried oreos, fried pickles, fried chicken, fried fried fried.

Instead of going to the fair, I played tennis. I’m getting pretty good (bring it on Mom.)

Last night I played Wii at my friend’s mom’s house. I’m thinking I might need to get one for myself.

Today I think I’ll go see Whip It. God I miss going to the Roller Derby.

Then it’s back to school… back to paperwork and pen explosions…

I did make a new graph to track student progress though! It takes up a whole chalkboard by my desk and has each objective my students will learn this year. So far, we have a 75% and a 60% for the two objectives we’ve covered…

…yikes.

Monday after school:

I hold one student after (as per a parent teacher conference where I told her mother she was way behind and needed to retake the quizzes she got a 30% and 10% on). She give me so much sass I can hardly stand it.

In walks another one of my students. He’s been in the US for about 2 years and is making incredible progress. He works really hard and comes to tutoring after school – mostly just to practice his English and make sure he’s reading the math problems correctly. Honestly, he’s one of my favorites. I’m just so impressed with his work ethic and attitude.

There I sat – literally between two polar opposites, giving myself whiplash trying to deal with their COMPLETELY different issues.

To my right:

“You just need to show me how you got that answer… No, circling does not count as work. Remember when I spent ten minutes going over how we show our work to get full credit? No… this work does not look anything like the work I showed on the overhead… How about this? Start by showing me how you set up the problem… add… subtract… multiply…”

To my left:

“Okay, so read this sentence again. Very good. So how do you think you’re going to solve this? Add. Okay, what are you adding? So you’re going to add 22 beads to 1/4 inch? You mean that doesn’t make sense? Okay. What are you going to do? Multiply. Show me. Wow! Awesome!”

Back to the right:

“I’m not showing my work. I already took these quizzes. I’m not coming back for tutoring. I hate math. I’m never going to use any of this stuff ever. I’d like to see you try and keep me here ’til nine o’clock. Fine. Call my mom. I don’t care. I’m not going to do it.”

Back to my left:

“Is this the answer? I’m done? Thank you, Miss. Bye.”

I have to remember that not all my students are going to sit on my left and that I got into Teach For America so I could teach kids like the one on my right.

… sigh.

I chaperoned my first middle school dance on Friday.

It was pretty hilarious.

There was a lot of group dancing where everyone did the same exact move, a couple songs where kids just walked around in a huge circle around the cafeteria and then a few dirty dancers that I had to give the stink eye.

“Ms. Rieth, why can’t we dance?”

“You can dance.”

“No, you know… DANCE.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m a teenager.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“That’s why you can’t dance like that.”

That was a highlight of a week filled with paper work, parent conferences and kids failing a quiz on adding and subtracting fractions…

Officially done with my first two weeks of school.

WOW.

I gave my first quiz on Friday. It was a review on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimals – something that they’ve been learning since 4th grade but still seem to mix up.

I was pretty happy with my results. I got a lot of 90s, 95s and a few 100s… but then there were the occasional 40, 50 and 65…

Even though the quiz was multiple choice, I graded all the work. In order to get the full 4 points for each problem, you had to show EVERY step and get the answer right.

One girl managed to circle every correct answer, but when I asked her to show her work, she stared at me with an “Oh sh*t” look in her eyes.

No cheating in Ms. Rieth’s class. She got a 30%.

In other news, Mark’s mom is in town and cooking delicious food for us every night. Mmm…. food tastes so much better when I don’t have to make it!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day! Mine was spent grading some papers and taking an online course… though I did find time to walk 9 miles around White Rock Lake in downtown Dallas. I’m still a little sore, but it was definitely worth it!

I am officially done with my first three days of teaching.

8th graders at Greiner Middle School have been a dream so far.

I have a few chatty ones, a couple of jokesters, and a sass-quatch or two… but overall I was so relieved to walk into my room and see, well, kids.

Monday morning my stomach was doing somersaults. I have NEVER been more nervous for a first day of school. Because I have first period off, I went to the gym and helped register students for classes. I decided to sit at the 8th grade table…

I was anticipating 8th graders with tattoos, beards, and huge attitudes.

Instead, I got, well, 8th graders.

Regular ol’ (and by “ol’” I mean “young”) 8th graders.

It’s only day three, but it’s already been so much better than my summer school experience.

Hopefully I can keep it up and keep my kids in line, too!

One week in Rochester and two weeks of New Teacher Orientation down – one week until the start of school!

I can’t believe it’s so close!

I had a GREAT TIME in Rochester (hi mom!) and can’t wait to go back for Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday). It was nice to be out of the Texas summer heat and back in a place I know really well. Not getting lost everytime I left the house was another plus. I’ve learned that I’m not the best instinctual driver in places I’m less familiar with (i.e. Dallas). If there is a oneway street, I’ll turn on it with the intention of doing a U-turn. If I want to cut through some side streets to get somewhere faster, I pick the No Outlet roads.

All-in-all, it was wonderful to spend time with family and friends back home.

Here in the big D I’ve been learning a lot about teaching in Dallas ISD. Almost everything they’re preaching is aligned with Teach For America’s education philosophy… which is awesome. There aren’t stupid kids here in Dallas ISD. There may be kids who choose to not do work, but they are not inherently less than those who work hard. Intelligence and ability are based on effort. The harder you work, the better you will understand a concept. YAAAAAY!

Eighth grade math is also getting a brand-new, discovery-based curriculum. Last Thursday I picked up over $2000 worth of new curriculum, courtesy of Dallas ISD. I got a USB drive with the first 6-weeks worth of powerpoints presentations, worksheets, homeworks and teacher notes. I also got a bunch of expo markers, graphing paper, a projector, colored pencils… etc, etc.

I almost cried I was so excited.

… I almost cried over school supplies…

I’m turning into a teacher, aren’t I?

I’ve also been learning about a lot of fun math stuff. That’s right: FUN and MATH. They were in the same sentence.

I might also be turning into a huge math nerd.

ONE MORE WEEK ‘TIL TAKEOFF!