Failure or success?

Failures and successes are just a part of life and that's certainly true in the teaching world. The thing is, I'm not sure if this story is a success story or a total failure on my part as a teacher. But here it is:

I pretty consistently push the "reduce, reuse, recycle" philosophy in my classroom. It's something I'm passionate about and I think it's important that my students learn to use their resources well. When that really back-fired on me was when I started receiving homework assignments on reused paper. They were literally squeezing words in wherever there was space on the already-used-once page. My first reaction was disgust because it made my life more difficult as I tried to read and grade their assignments. My second response was a pure amusement -way to take me seriously, kids.

As another story, last week I reached my limit in picking up/vacuuming little tiny scraps of paper. So I removed the scrap paper box and had a demonstration with my students about what scraps are acceptable to keep and be used again and what pieces are too small and simply need to be thrown away. I had a couple of students who were devastated at the scraps I was throwing away. They very respectfully asked me if they could keep a personal stash of the scraps and that they would use them.
Thus began the masterpieces... and today I received the first one with the following note: "This is to prove to Miss Sjoberg that we want to save scrapes to make a piece of art."

Ok, so I need to focus on spelling and grammar and not resourcefulness. Here's to another day of teaching!

What's happening in the silence

It's been 6 weeks or so since I posted. Let me start off by saying the very nature of my blog and the fact that I've been silent for a while now are no indication of how my life (in general, but more specifically as a teacher) is going. In fact, the last several months have been some of the most rewarding months of my life.

I LOVE WHAT I DO EVERY SINGLE DAY. My first year of teaching was a lot of "I should have done that differently" and "Why didn't I plan for that to happen?" and "Just put one foot in front of the other: one class period at a time." Now, I'm no perfect teacher --I'm still learning from my mistakes every day. But I've taken my rookie teacher failures and turned them into opportunities to learn about myself, my teaching, and my students.

Teaching in a small, private school gives me a unique opportunity: my class is tight-knit --for better or for worse. That's a truly beautiful thing: we see each other at our best and our worst because we spend 40 hours or so a week together. We celebrate our victories. We learn from our mistakes. We console each other through losses. We're navigating our ship through the delicate preteen years of life, and while I may be the captain of this ship, it's an effort from my whole crew that keeps us above water and headed in the right direction.

For those who know me personally, life's thrown some curve balls at me the last month or two. In those challenges I've been humbled by the families at school, and more specifically by my students. For someone who finds it difficult to accept help, I've been given no choice at times. Many would argue that 10, 11, and 12 year olds are rather preoccupied with themselves. I'm here to tell you that not all of them are. My students have shown me compassion, love, and grace in some of life's finest moments of defeat. The maturity and responsibility that they have demonstrated at times is admirable, to say the least.

My hiatus from blogging could be summed up in this way: I've been too busy loving life to sit down and write about it.

It's almost Christmas, don't stress...

Sometimes, when you are a teacher, you have really cool ideas. With those ideas, generally one of the following things happens: 1.) you plan, you account for possible reactions/behavior from your students, and the lessons goes without a hitch (these are rare, but beautiful moments). 2.) More likely you plan, you account for possible reactions/behavior from your students, and something goes wrong, if not terribly wrong (the internet stops working, the groups you made are much more argumentative than you planned for, the students are unable to come to the conclusion you had hoped to lead them to, etc.) or 3.) you plan this really cool project and it ends up being much, much more time consuming than you anticipated and now you feel the stress of time. You don't want your students to hurry and finish in a sloppy fashion, and yet, how much more time can you afford to give up?

Well, I'm currently dealing with the third scenario. At the beginning of the school year a publishing company contacted teachers all over the country, offering them a free publication of a book their classes could write. Going with the confidence of a second year teacher, I jumped at the opportunity. I have to say, my class has worked really hard on this book and I've been really impressed, but we have a bit of a ways to go. And our final draft for submission is due this Friday. It's going to be a week of authors' and illustrators' workshops. Wish us your best! :)

The life of a teacher

Here are a few memes to give you a fairly accurate glimpse into my job:

Just Take the First Step

It's quite possible that a day doesn't go by that in some form or another I ask a student or several students to step outside of their comfort zones. I may not say it like that, but the content may be beyond what they are comfortable with, the learning setting might stretch them, they might have to work with people they don't get along with...and the list goes own.

I suppose it's only fair that I demonstrate to them how I've been pushed outside my comfort zone. Today was a perfect example. The P.E. teacher had mentioned (more than once) that if I "ever wanted to join them for P.E." she could use an extra person (with eleven 5th & 6th graders I guess that's fair). Well, anyone who knows me knows how much I love the outdoors including hiking, biking, canoeing, and swimming. However, I am far from athletically coordinated. Anyone who knows 5th & 6th graders knows how brutally honest and judgmental they can be --you can imagine my excitement about participating in P.E. Yet, I did it. I got out and played soccer --a sport I never spent anytime doing. As in, zero energies from my childhood were focused on soccer. I wiped out. I got tired. I wasn't confident in my abilities. And I would totally do it again.

A day in the life of...

Like I previously stated, every class is unique. I have a group of 5th & 6th graders who like getting stickers on their papers -especially scratch and sniff stickers. Who would have thought?! My class last year would have mocked and teased me incessantly if I had marked their papers with stickers (even if they had secretly enjoyed it).


In other news, I have picked up an additional job this semester working in our childcare/preschool after school two days a week. I have to say, they test my patience sometimes, but overall it's proven to be quite entertaining (no, I don't miss teaching preschool full time -still not my calling). There is one particular enthusiastic, extremely animated three year old girl. The first day I met her she acted like we were (and had been) best friends. As she was leaving one day (a day that I was not working in childcare) she stopped by my classroom to tell me about her day. When I saw her the following afternoon she ran to me, hugged me and exclaimed, "I haven't seen you in a long time...like 4 days!" I guess when you're 3 going 24 hours might feel like 4 days.

Pollution

Well we're here back in the swing of the school year. Every class has it's own uniqueness and that keeps life interesting.

We've been learning and talking about pollution in science and today I had my students respond to a writing prompt where I asked them to explain pollution to someone who didn't understand it. Here a few snippets of their responses:

"Polluted mean careless people leave junk around and so it can go into the water. It can make it hard to purify our water when that happens."

"Things that are okay to throw out the car window are apple cores, banana peels, orange peels, etc. The things that are not okay to throw out your car window are paper, Styrofoam, egg cartons, plastic, etc."

"Littering and pollution shouldn't be happening because we need stuff to eat. We need air, but if this keeps happening we will die."


I think they get it.