A Day in the Life

     Let’s see... my days usually begin after midnight when I am finishing up my powerpoint or worksheet for the next day, or simply winding down from finishing my lesson at 11:30 and enjoying part of a movie or a book before going to sleep. I wake up at 5:20 to my first alarm and keep hitting snooze until 5:50 or 6. I could just wake up right at 5:50 and get straight into the shower, but I think I enjoy doing that because it gives me the opportunity to suspend the reality of having to go to an at-risk school where good behavior and a high priority for education are not a common occurrence. From the time I get out of bed, get ready, and get breakfast at the gas station up the road, it’s about 6:20. I am supposed to be at school by 6:50 and it takes about 30 minutes to make it from the gas station to school. Suffice it to say that I have this down to a science. When I get to school, I load the powerpoint up to the Promethean Board and start printing out copies of the independent practice for the day.

School usually goes by as normal: notes, modeling, guided practice, and then independent practice. Second period planning usually involves me tweaking any errors or inefficiencies experienced during the 1st period lesson, finishing the week’s lesson plans, going to a PLC (professional learning community) meeting, or talking to our consultant about the kids’ test scores.

Lunch is always fun. First, I always seem to be starving after 4+ hours of walking around a room, trying to keep kids quiet while I put problems on the board, and hoping that the transmission of information occurs at some point. Second, I get to finally relax a little and complain with other teachers about the students, the school, and whatever else comes to mind.

The rest of school goes by like normal... oh yeah, except after lunch the kids are either too tired from eating a 1,000 calorie meal or are too wired from the sugary foods to be able to sit still. When it gets to 7th period in our extra long school day, trying to corral the kids and get them to learn is a next to impossible task.

Once school is over, and if we don’t have a staff meeting or after school tutoring until 5, the MTC teachers usually meet afterward to eat Chinese, Mexican, or play Settlers of Catan (don’t hate). If I don’t hang out with teachers after school, I will typically work out and prepare my lesson for the next school day... extremely exciting, right?

What I Want to Accomplish this Year

     Though I am already three semesters in, I still feel like there are many things I have yet to accomplish. For one, classroom management is still an area in which I try to improve every single day. While I am leaps and bounds better at it than I was last year, I can realize that it is a long road to mastering that area of teaching. One thing that I have come to realize about it is that, given my personality, quality classroom management is a dynamic technique. Perhaps, though, I should elaborate on hat I mean by “given my personality”. I see some teachers who are able to control their classroom with an iron fist from day 1 to day 180. I also think that the exact opposite, controlling a classroom with humor and “zaniness” from day 1 is, if even possible, extremely taxing on the soul. What I have found in my short career as a teacher is that I am best suited at the traditional approach of coming in hard and controlling at first, and then slowly easing up as the year goes on. I did a fairly good job at the beginning of this year, especially compared to last year, of being mean, but I have found that the process of effectively and efficiently easing up has become my new challenge with classroom management. As far as the rest of the school year is concerned, I hope to continue experimenting with how far I can ease up while still ensuring that learning is occurring. 

Another thing that I plan to accomplish is to surpass my state test scores from last year. Since we have two Algebra I teachers at North Panola High School, it was thought by the administration at the beginning of the year that splitting the Algebra students into a slow track and fast track would be advantageous for state test scores. I had, and still have, the pleasure of teaching the slower half of the students. Given this, I still feel confident that I can surpass my QDI from last year. From my end, my classroom management and teaching techniques have improved A LOT (mostly because they had so much room to grow). From the students’ end, they could definitely behave better, have a better attendance record, and care more about the work, but they show so much potential and untapped ability. If they hadn’t already shown me this, then I probably would have stopped showing up to work a long time ago.

Either way, I still have much to work on, and even a third year will not mean mastering these aspects of teaching