Treats

Yesterday someone left a delicious muffin on my desk. I have a suspicion it was Mrs. B, but haven't confirmed that fact. I should, because it was so good I want the recipe. Today I found a chocolate truffle on my desk. Later, an 8th grader told me she left it for me, just because.

I really needed the chocolate today... it was a rough one. Lots of chitchatty people, none were super loud, but when there are a lot of not-too-loud talkers, it makes things pretty noisy. Two of the boys were hard to settle and had trouble with impulse control today. One tried taking his spelling test and crumpled it up TWICE. The third time he actually finished it.

The 7-8th graders were awful during their lab, goofing off and messing with the supplies in ways they shouldn't. We were doing a lab on the three kinds of rocks, sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous, by shaving crayons and compressing them (sedimentary), heating them over a lit candle (igneous), then cooling them with ice cubes. The fire was too tempting for some of them. Then they threw pens at each other across the room, so I gave them sentences. Sigh. You'd think they'd know better.

However, most kids turned their stuff in. By the end of the day only one kid still had a chunk of memory work to say. All handwriting was turned in, as were the spelling tests. I was definitely ready to send them home!

Last night I took my car in for an oil change and tire rotations. Afterwards they always give you a 'this is what we found when we checked everything out' speech and a lot of times it's news you don't want to hear. But my car is doing just fine! No other maintenance required. Since my car was so good at her 'doctor's' visit, I said she could have a treat. I was thinking ice cream, but she wanted a lime green 8ft kayak we found at Walmart. Eight feet fits in my car! And it was on clearance! So, I splurged. :D Hopefully I'll have a chance to take it out this weekend!

Books!

Today has been a very good day as far as books go .. I got an email from my favorite college professor saying the Mankato library book sale is this weekend! Always a great time to stock up on books.

I recently got an email from an education site telling me about this new book called "Emotional Poverty" by Ruby Payne. It sounds like a book that would help me with figuring out my students, but it's not in the library system and I don't want to pay $30 for it. One of my teacher friends had marked on Goodreads that he read it but he borrowed it from one of the other teachers at his school, so I can't borrow it from him.

On a whim, I asked my old college professor about it. She hadn't heard of it, but after doing some research, decided it was one the college should buy. She put in an order request and will let me know when it comes in! She really is the best!

On another note, thank you for the prayers; they've been helping! My kids were pretty good today and yesterday. Keep 'em coming!

Coupons

My class talked about the new coupons 'for sale' starting Mondays and Tuesdays. Hopefully it will be a good incentive for them to earn tokens. The cheapest ones are 5 tokens (skip DOL, draw with whiteboard marker during read aloud) and the most expensive is 30 (use the couch for the whole day). That last one got them really excited. Other cool ones: use legos during read aloud, use special markers during read aloud, use a beanbag all day, eat lunch in another classroom. Those range from 10-20 tokens.

Overall we had a decent day. Not the absolute best day, but a far cry from our craziest. The 7-8th graders and I moved the couch and side bookshelves around a little bit. Now the couch isn't facing the desks, so people can't back into it. The whiteboard easel is tucked between the couch and the bookshelf; I'll pull it out when I want to use it. Now it won't fall over when people walk past it! This year it's fallen down more times than I care to count... bean bags knock into it, the couch got bumped and it fell over (domino effect), people were messing around by the legs of the easel...

Stormy

My kids had a good day. Unfortunately, I think that's because of the storm and not because they're making any internal improvements. Sigh.

There's supposed to be some severe weather tonight. Mrs. L and I talked after school and her class was really good too. Mr. D's class (normally good) had a loopy day. Can I turn my classroom into a big barometric pressure chamber and set it at just the right pressure to get these kids to focus??? Wouldn't that be a neat science experiment?

We finished presenting our Native American powerpoint presentations today, finished learning about plant adaptations, read a TON this morning (lots of people picked Read to Self), and practiced a new bell song.

Maybe tomorrow I'll have a chance to wade through all the stacks that have accumulated on my desk... I did get the majority of my papers corrected and handed back, although more have piled up today. I have a bunch of new books to catalog and book order flyers to manage, plus a few stacks of books for curriculum planning in English and Reading. 

Mondays...

Ugh, Mondays are always tough- kids haven't seen each other all weekend and want to chat. My class was particularly chatty and giggly today (and mean to each other with trash talk).

They were even that way during our end of the day prayer! So much so that I had to stop praying in the middle to chastise them. We ended up being five minutes late to the bus because they couldn't get their act together. Sigh. And then the New Ulm bus left without my class. Normally they wait until a teacher waves them off, but it must've been a substitute driver today because he just went. Mr. E called someone who called the bus driver and he turned around and came back to pick up my left behind kids.

On a positive note, the IT guys brought a temporary projector over the weekend. My ceiling tiles around it are a little off kilter still and there are a few short cords dangling, but the projector works! Hopefully they will be back soon with my regular projector.

Arboretum

What a day. The field trip was good, but it could've been better. I had a bunch of crazy kids who wouldn't listen, stay with the group, or keep their hands to themselves. They got everyone else wrapped up in their crazy tornado (except the girls, although some of them got fed up and yelled at the boys, at which point I had to tell them that I was the teacher and I would handle it). Sigh. I'm not sure how Camp Omega is going to go.

I remember my 5-6th grade teacher giving us 'the talk' before we went: if anyone is misbehaving/not listening, they will be calling their parents to come pick them up to go home. I think we're going to have that rule. 

Aside from behavior issues, we had a beautiful day! It was a little hot (mid-80s), bugs weren't too bad, sun shining. The gardens looked lovely. The kids had a pretty good time looking at all the stuff. We took an hour to look at gardens before our apple class, then went to the apple class at the research orchard five minutes away, then came back to the Arboretum to eat lunch and look at more stuff.

The orchard was neat. They plant apple seeds (around 10,000), let them grow for 8 years, and specifically pollinate certain flowers to try to create new varieties. Then they taste the apples, only one bite per tree. If it's a good impression, they keep the tree. If not, they cull it. If it's good, they keep it around for about 20 years to keep more data on production, apple quality, etc. And at that point, if it's still good, they start selling the apples and graft cuttings of those trees to sell. Pretty neat!

We got to taste two varieties of apples (Wealthy, the one first invented by the starter of the research orchard, named after his wife, and Sweet Tango, the newest variety that's supposedly even better than Honeycrisp) to test for sweet/tangy, juicy/dry, crisp/soft. After that we made cider in a cider press, basically each kid got to put an apple in the apple press while the teacher spun the wheel to grind it up/press it. 

After that, we went back to the Arb to eat lunch, then took a drive around the 3mi loop. We made one stop along the path to check out one of the many gardens before realizing that the boys were in no way able to handle being out of the car. They were shouting and running and being hoodlums, climbing on everything in sight. It took a while to get them rounded up and back in the cars. After that we stayed in the car and just looked at things as we drove past. We did stop at the hedge maze and stayed for a while to burn off energy. That went all right.

Now, I just got a call from a parent driver who learned that on the way back, one of the boys was pulling his pants down to show off his underwear in the backseat. And the other kids in the car were laughing, thereby egging him on. Lovely. Why can't they just make good choices?

Student Teacher

I met our student teacher today after school. He's very laid back and seems super nice. We'll work well together, I can tell. I think my boys will like him; Mr. W is pretty sporty. He's a junior hoping to be a high school social studies teacher. He hasn't had a ton of clinical experience, but he's student teaching next semester, so I'm the last chance to learn how to be a teacher before he actually has to go it 'alone'. He told me he was very thankful how quickly I responded and how nice I was in my emails. His other clinical teachers would take weeks to respond to his emails and when they did it was very short responses.

The 7-8th graders know; I told them today. I haven't told my 5-6th graders yet (unless I did and forgot I did, which is totally possible). When Mr. W got here, I showed him around the school and introduced him to the staff. There were a few kids in Mrs. L's room. After he left, Mrs. L said that one of her students who'd stayed after school asked who he was. One of the 7th grade girls who'd been in the room too said, "Oh, he's going to take Miss H's place when she leaves. He's going to be the new teacher." Uhhh, what?

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how rumors start. My class is going on a field trip tomorrow, so I won't be at school... will that add fuel to the fire? Probably not. Hopefully that is a rumor that won't take off the ground.

In other news, the IT guys did not come last night to give me a replacement projector. Sigh. I should've been prepared, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Apparently the 'loaner' projector they thought they had access to was already being used by another client far enough away they couldn't just go get it. So. I had to cobble together a plan for today again.

One group of 5-6th graders presented their powerpoint on a laptop set on a shelf in front of the class. We all sat on the floor so we could see the screen. Not the smoothest plan ever, but it worked okay. The 7-8th graders brought laptops down to my room with them, I put the powerpoint on the website, and they followed along on their screens. Again, not the smoothest, but we made it work. Then for American history with my 5-6th graders, I had a laptop set up front, me on a stool, the rest of them on the floor with clipboards so they could follow along on their notes sheet. We survived. But I will be so glad when my tech issues are fixed.

Our field trip tomorrow is to the Arboretum up in Chaska. I can't wait! We have enough parent drivers I get to ride with a parent instead of drive. It's one of my favorite parents (I know we're not supposed to have favorites, but each teacher totally does). I had planned to have us back in time for buses, but there's so much to look at, I want us to get our money's worth. After school I messaged parents to see if anyone had an issue with us getting back a little later. So far, no one has!

Jello and Projectors

So my projector bulb finally died today. It was a dramatic death. We had just finished correcting DOL on the board (basically editing grammar mistakes in a sentence) and I was giving instructions on what to do next. Suddenly there was a large popping sound and the bulb went out, screen went dark. The fan on the projector hummed loudly for a long time and when I pressed the shut off button, it took a long time to shut down. So. I had to think on the fly how we would do school the rest of the day.

Thankfully we were doing a demonstration/lab thing for 5-6th grade science, the jello plant cell model, and didn't need a projector for that. The 7-8th grade lesson involved the projector though. Mr. E and I ended up switching classrooms for the hour so I could use his technology. He used my whiteboards to teach my kids math.

The IT guys are coming out tonight to give me a loaner projector until they can get a replacement bulb for the new one (a bulb they were supposed to have ordered and replaced last spring). One of my kids asked how we were going to do school without a projector... could we maybe cancel school? Ha. Nope. We're just going to have to pretend we are in the olden days before technology.

It actually wasn't too bad of a day for it to go out.

Lunch was late again today (the stove was out, hence cooking at church again, but we had substitute cooks instead of our normal cook). I took the time to go over the organelles in a cell and what fruit we'd be using in our plant cell model to represent them. The afternoon session of putting the cell together took way longer than usual, but that's the way of this class. We got it done and had a nice long recess. It was super hot today so they didn't actually want to have that long of a recess.

They thought we should go in early and then we could clean up and watch a Youtube video before going home (we've been trying to watch all the Lucas the Spider videos). Good idea! Too late, I remembered we had no way to show it to the whole class... Thankfully, the laptops were working, so I set one up in front of the class and we all huddled around to watch. Eh, could've been worse!

Soccer

There were two soccer games today after school. In the past, it hasn't been a huge deal. This year, all but two of my students stayed after to wait for the games to start. This means instead of getting work done, I get to supervise/entertain/keep busy all the kids who stick around. It also meant I got to corral students and herd them back to the classroom because they kept leaving. Whew.

Our school day was also a bit frantic. The kitchen stove quit working again, making our cook haul the food over to church to cook it, haul it back, then serve it to us. The helper told me lunch would be about 20-30 minutes late. It ended up being 50 minutes.

My kids were starving and didn't hesitate to tell me so. We did science class while we waited. We actually accomplished quite a bit during that time. I had thought some of the classes had been served already, so when we found out the cook was back, we wrapped up the lesson, got ready for lunch, then washed our hands. And that's when I found out no one had been served until now, so the 3-4th graders were just starting to be served. So we waited in line a long time, had a short recess, and pushed math class back until 1pm.

This has been the fifth or sixth time the stove hasn't worked in the morning, and it's been very frustrating to our new cook. Hopefully the stove works tomorrow, or we might not have a cook anymore...

Quietish

The morning was actually pretty quiet! They didn't distract each other too bad until they came back from Reading Buddies with the 1st and 2nd graders. Still, I didn't really have to keep track of blurts today. It was kind of nice.

I got free pens in the mail today, my favorite kind too: papermate marker pens and some papermate gel pens. I think I entered a teacher promotion giveaway thing a while ago. I got an email saying the company was sending me pens! Yay! I needed some more at home, so this is perfect.

A bunch of kids stayed after school today because it's our first ICY event of the year (church youth group). Probably about half the class stayed. I told them I had a few things to get done and we could go over to church sooner if they were quiet so I could get my work done. Of course they all had things they wanted to ask me (mostly about if they could use the computers). I called church and asked Pastor if he would keep an eye on them for a bit. He said yes and I sent them over. So now I'm wrapping up just a few things before going over there. We're doing games and a bonfire.

After that I'm heading to Theater Physics with some college friends. My summer sand volleyball league has our tournament tomorrow and Sunday the kids sing/play bells. Just another typical weekend!

Frazzled

Sigh. I have a feeling a lot of days this year are going to be like this: always on the go, hardly a chance to think, constantly separating students who are not on task... I have a 40oz water bottle in my desk to help me drink more water during the day. I've noticed I typically have a lot of water to drink at the end of the day because I haven't had time to drink any during the day! And lunch is always a rush. Hopefully settling into a routine will calm everyone down.

Our PTL meeting got over at 7:45, then the 5-6th Pork Chop planning meeting got over at 8:30, so I finally got home at 8:45 and ate supper. As is the case after most meetings, my to-do list has grown exponentially. I thought I'd have a bunch of time to do stuff today, but I ended up talking on the phone with lots of people (people I needed to talk to), so I didn't get as much accomplished as I wanted to.

Tonight is bible study night, so I better be off!

Powerful Prayers

Your prayers have helped! The IT guys dropped off four laptops last night and cleaned the gunk off my board. Some of the tech issues have been fixed, not all, still enough to be annoying, but now I only want to pull half my hair out and not all of it. So, progress!

My kids were more settled today too. Not nearly as many laps to run at recess!

We got word from the family of the girl who had brain surgery today... the doctors were able to get it all! She's doing well. Praise the Lord!

A parent also dropped off four white buckets with lids (a little smaller than five gallon pails, but decent sized still) to make into compost bins. We have a PTL meeting tonight which should give me time to deal with all the plant stuff I have on the lab table. (Although my mini greenhouse is still at the farm... I forgot to get it out of my brother's car before I left last weekend).

My October BLC student teacher emailed me today asking if I wanted to get together before his first day. Of course! He'll be here for two months in the afternoons twice a week to teach social studies. I'm super excited to see how my class reacts to having a young man as a teacher. He wants to be a public school PE/social studies teacher when he graduates, so I have a feeling he'll be a good fit for my rowdy class.

Computers

No, the IT guys didn't come last night... So I had lots more tech issues today. Sigh. Now three out of six computers aren't working in addition to all the other issues I have. We did accomplish one of the FAST tests, though it took a long time and was a bit chaotic. We used the laptops/chromebooks from the 7-8th grade room after the 1-2nd graders took their test. Half the 5th graders forgot their username from last year. Thankfully one smart cookie remembered her classmate's usernames for them and everyone was able to get logged on.

On another positive note I got a ton done from my to-do list today. The church year chain got hung from the ceiling, my lights got hung in the front of the classroom, we found two stopwatches to use for spelling practice, I ordered the Christmas program and placed a Scholastic book order, I emailed a potential guest pastor for NLSW, and I updated some assignments that had typos in them!

Now, I am going to go home and go for a walk since it's a beautiful day outside.

Flower Dissection

Another rough and tumble day in 5-6th grade... As I've said before, Mondays are generally chattier days, and today was no different. My squirrely boy had trouble settling all day.

The morning was full of tech problems, bad enough problems that I called the IT guys (they actually answered for once). The kids couldn't log onto their accounts, plus once they did then powerpoint had issues. While I had them on the phone I mentioned all the other computer problems I've been having to them. Hopefully they'll remember at least some of them. Two of our six computers don't work and it's an error that has happened in the past. It's also one that can't be fixed remotely. The tech guy said he would 'hopefully' be able to stop by tonight. It was a lengthy phone conversation and half the class was productive during it. The other half goofed off and was noisy. It's hard to do classroom management when you're trying to talk to someone on the phone.

The 7-8th graders were squirrely too, though we did accomplish everything I wanted to with them. We did a lab on Moh's scale of hardness (testing how hard rocks are by scraping reference materials against them). I had a box of cool rocks donated by a local church member that we sorted through. There are some native american artifacts, coral/seashell fossils, and just generally neat looking rocks. I wanted to leave them out for my 5-6th to look at, but with their behavior today I figured they couldn't handle it so I packed them away.

For 5-6th science, we examined a giant slab of tree trunk for the different parts and dissected flowers we picked outside. They were able to find most of the parts of the flower! A lot of them said it was their favorite part of the day.

They are so slow to pack up at the end of the day. Every day we are the last class down to the bus. The lunch lady switched us with the 7-8th graders because we just can't get cleaned up/set up in time. Gah!!! I know it's the kids and not me, but it's hard not to feel like a failure when I can't get them to do stuff quickly. Sigh. The year is young. We'll work on that.

A Day

Man, it's been a day. It's really been a day.

The morning was pretty good to start with; surprisingly, mostly everyone was quiet. Spelling tests were a bit of a mess. I discovered the IT guys wiped my class iPad of all music/sound files, including the spelling tests. Thankfully I have those files saved in another location, so it's not the end of the world, but it's adding more work to my plate and it was really frustrating to be down a device when I needed it and expected it to work. Grr...

We had our four student council hopefuls give their speeches to the class (there can only be two). One girl (who wants to be president when she grows up) had pages of speech written down. Another boy brought a poster he'd made with reasons why people should vote for him. The other two had notebooks of ideas of things they wanted to accomplish while in office. The speeches were interrupted by reading buddies with the 1-2nd graders, which sparked an idea in my mind. Since the 1-2nd graders don't have representatives in student council, why couldn't they vote for the 5-6th grade representatives? Mrs. L thought it was a great idea, so she typed up ballots and her class came back to mine after recess to hear the speeches. It gave the candidates a chance to change their speech if they wanted to. The girl who wants to be president won one seat, one of the kids who wrote things in notebook paper won the other seat. Someone asked him a question right before he sat down that gave him an edge. When asked why he was running now when he didn't like being on it in the past, he answered truthfully, something along the lines of now that a different teacher is running it, he wants to give it a try, plus he likes to decide things and if he doesn't get to choose and he doesn't like what someone else chose, he gets crabby. So why not try to make the decisions? I thought it was a good answer.

We ran into a time crunch before lunch because I had to wrangle papers. Spelling workbooks, tests, and handwriting were due today, all before lunch, so it took a while to check all those papers. The school cook asked if I'd like to switch times with Mr. E's class to give me more time. I really don't want to switch since I will end up eating all my lunch outside if we do (since the 7-8th graders eat super fast and will be pushing for recess), but that may have to happen since it takes my class so long to pack up. Sigh.

Then, during lunch the student sitting next to me stood up to go dump his tray, tipped it because he wasn't paying attention, and ended up dripping lunch liquid all over my sweater, shirt, and pants. Thankfully it dried clear and wasn't very noticeable after it dried. I remembered to unload the dirt from the back of my car, but the bag had a few holes and I got brown dribbles on my pants too. Another sigh.

We made our church year chain for art today. My rowdy boys got waaaay too rowdy and couldn't settle down. It was all I could do to keep them in the classroom. We did finish the chain, though I need to hang it up still.

The worst part of the day happened after school. A pair of parents asked to talk to all of us teachers together. Their student has been having some atypical health issues this year and a recent doctor's visit revealed that this child will need brain surgery next week. They still don't know a lot about the situation, and I can't share much, but this student needs lots of prayers. So please add her and her family to your list!

Plants, Plants, and more Plants

I ended up running the most pressing errands last night. I now have a ginger root being prepped for planting! I found topsoil from Walmart for only $1, so I bought two bags. I read that if you mix it with sand, it can work for certain types of plants in containers, otherwise you are supposed to use potting soil for container plants (better drainage). One of my bible study ladies found out I needed lots of potting soil and volunteered all her extras. She dropped them off sometime after study or before school this morning, so I now have a giant bag and a half of potting soil, plus some really nice planters. Yay! If only I had enough time to get the pots ready...

I have to dash off again after school today. My travel buddy and I are doing archery painting at a nature center close to her house. Still, the time crunch has made my short time at school extra productive! I got a bunch of little things done off my to-do list (and some big ones too). The preschool teacher offered to give me a break and watch my kids at recess, so I had just enough time to type up a permission slip for our field trip to the Arboretum and also a note about a bake sale fundraiser for my class. Printed them off and sent them home in the last five minutes of the day. Whew!

Time Crunch

Today went better than yesterday, blurt-wise (and otherwise too). I cut up a mango and brought the seed to school. Surprisingly, it was already germinating inside the husk! I followed the instructions I found online, which say to wrap it in a damp paper towel and put it in a dark place, checking it every so often to make sure it's not moldy or dry. Our dates will be ready to move to the next phase of germination tomorrow (they've been soaking for 24 hours so far). One student brought in pea seeds to try planting. Another has plans to bring in an avocado or two next week. Yes!

We had a staff meeting after school and I have bible study tonight, which means I don't have a ton of time to work. I wanted to run my errands before bible study, but I'm running out of time! I'm torn between trying to squeeze it all in, doing half today and half another day, or waiting until Friday when I have more time...

Ten

Sigh. I wanted to pull my hair out after school today. Actually, it started sooner than that. A bunch of my students could. not. stop. blurting. One kid had ten by noon recess. He got another four in the afternoon. It was all snide comments, plus laughing at the snide comments, plus tipping chairs over and touching classmates. "But it's just a joke!" I really hope every day isn't like this... I don't know if I can put up with a whole year of it.

Mondays are typically a chattier day than the rest of the week. Even though it's not Monday today, it feels like it since we had yesterday off. Everyone hasn't seen each other over the long weekend, so they like to talk. Hopefully that is the majority of the problem.

I passed out spelling books today. My class is divided into four groups this year. The 7-8th graders are divided into three. Of course everyone wanted to know which was the smartest group. Yeah, I wouldn't tell them. The 7-8th graders tried so hard to guess!

In science class we made a list of things we want to try to grow: pineapple, avocado, starfruit, potatoes, cactus fruit, jalapeno. I have a few other things not on the list that we'll try to grow too. Lots of them had more ideas, so I thought I might see if I can get a container for each kid and let them pick what goes inside/take care of it. When it gets too big, they can take it home. Looks like I'm going to need a bunch more potting soil...