First couple of days

Alright, I taught 2 full days, then had 2 snow days to end the week, then had monday off for MLK. This job is awesome! Everyone returned tuesday a little out of control. One because of the extended weekend, and also a pep rally for the girls basketball team. I was surprised in some of the students behavior, but had a better day today. It was a regular teaching day that I do not have any complaints about. I hope its like this for the rest of the days to follow. I plan only a little bit into the future for the class, and it might haunt me if I do not plan at least a week or two into the future, but thats what I hope to accomplish on the weekends. When I am not teaching, I am trying to spend as much time as possible getting the lecture room and labs organized. This will be a while, but the students are telling me it looks so much nicer than before. My systems have been improving, and now I need to grade. More later.

I HAVE A JOB!!!

I just completed my first full day as a science instructor.
It is the middle of the school year, the second week of the new semester, and I interview at a school for an immediate science position.  At the end of the interview, the job was straight up offered to me.  How lucky can this get?
The school is close to home, really close to where I student taught. No worries, its a private school. The catch is that it is all girls, so let's re-state those worries. The teenage thinking, adolescent changing, long-term grudging type of school, and I am their science teacher. I have 3 Physical Science Courses, 1 Chemistry, and 1 Physics class. I am more concerned about the chemistry course because my background is not that strong, it barely exists.
I am fortunate to have nice classroom size for my classes, I average about 18 students per class.

My workspace is pretty amazing, and pretty messy. "Show me a clean lab station, and I will show you where no work is being done." They need to stop working for a couple days so I can organize. I have a lecture room that connects to a chem lab, and in the other direction a physics lab.  It will take forever to get everything situated the way I want it, a few of the ways I picked up in student teaching.

I tried to make it a point of how I wanted the class to be managed.  The day of the interview I met some of the students in a couple of my classes, and they were just a little out of control, today being the introductory first day, I made sure that is not to happen.  Tomorrow will be their first of many normal days in the classroom.  My goal is to achieve a balanced diet of routine between lecture, activity, book work, and something else im missing?  Someone help me out.  So far so good, I just need time for organizing, including the content so I know what I am talking about.  Nothing should be complicated after this semester.

Now What?

Ok, that chapter of my life is over, the unpaid chapter we could call it. Consider this the preface to a new chapter, if that is possible in a literature sense. Its the last friday of winter break for the school systems and I wont be going into a new school to teach on monday. What are my options? I can substitute wherever for the next couple of months. Why not? I am not tied down anywhere, and I can get a peek into different schools. I can join some tutoring group for a little while to make some small change, or go into the private sector and work in some industry not knowing what I would be doing.  Who knows?

All said and done.

During my last "official" week, I had dinner with my supervisors.  They started off with asking me if I was finished.  I told them that I had to make up for the two days I missed over the semester, so I was going to be there a couple days longer.  There is this lab I want to end on, and the students are almost at reaching that subject.  The response in my head when they asked was a little different:  YOU MEAN ITS OVER?  We talked about my portfolio I had for them.  I have two: one is personal that has any documents, notes, lessons, etc for my class, the other is a final, almost like a professional portfolio of anything I personally have wrote up and is legitimately my work.  The supervisors wished to see a hard copy of my final, even though I can make many digital copies.  They told me that I should get that to them since grades were to be posted the next day at 5pm.  It really was over!  I could not believe it.  The feeling I would tell people was that it felt like I was handed an Honorable Discharge!  The war was over, Im coming home!  Only, I am going to stay, this time to get paid!

It was funny when teachers and students would ask when my last day was, before it was never, now I tell them I finished yesterday!  Yet I still show up.  It is "officially" over for me, but I'm still teaching until I say I am finished.  Which will be this week.

Last official week

To sum it up, I guess I got the hang of it. An issue arises, I just keep to my routine of issuing referrals. I dont care how severe the punishment is, just the fact that the disturbing student leaves my classroom, Im happy. Sure you fall behind for the moment. but I intend to catch up. I talked with someone who has been a teacher for two years. Supposedly, a lot of the people with the school think I am an actual teacher here. The new teachers who have to go to new teacher meetings think I've been here a little longer than they have. I took it as a compliment. Anyways, she told me, when the bad students complain, it means you are doing your job. When the good students complain, maybe something needs to change. My mentor is telling me that this is the worst that it will ever get. I've said it before, the bad news is I feel fine, the good news is that it gets better! I would like to leave it at that, but I just have to ask, WHEN? When does it get better? I have one week, and a lot of the students know it. So if they have to go down in a blaze of glory, so be it. Im not the one sabotaging their grade, THEY ARE!

Need some positive momentum going

I glance at a group of chatter boxes in my class and wonder how this happened? How did all of them get together like this. I swear something is not right. Always keep a hard copy of the seating chart, check. Always keep a seating chart with students who were enrolled late in the semester, d'ohh! It worked earlier this week in a different period, and the rough edges weren't as jagged for the rest of that period.

DEMO OF THE YEAR!!!

I am sorry to those who missed it, but I've heard through the grapevine that you can catch it on YouTube! Just kidding, I wish!  This was one of the easiest and best days that I ever taught, yesterday. I forgot to write about it when I got home. Today was a lil rough being under the weather, but I managed.  So what happened? Well, let's say it's a Bill Nye / Mythbusters crash demo. So that set's the stage for a scientific, but overall entertaining show. I had to teach the students about pressure, and instead of giving them a great amount of force through a small area, like through a compressor, why not spread a great amount of force through and even greater surface area!   For the past couple of weeks, me and my mentor would work on something we cannot top. We would shoot nails evenly over a 2x4 sheet of plywood so that the ends of the nails pointed upward when flipped over. If the force of someone's weight was placed on one nail, one small area, then going to the hospital for a deep punture wound would be in order, maybe a tetanus booster too. What if the weight was spread over a few thousand nails? Well, that might get a rise out of a few, meaning the scared. Why not make two sheets so there's nails sandwiching a body together? Still not amusing. Then fine, Steve put a cinder block on the top board I was sandwiched in and smashed it over my chest! You cant top that! We never said dont try this at home, but if I put up pictures, then follow the format. (make it look how we did to not get hurt, if you get hurt, claim you didn't do it our way!) Safety goggles and helmet were in order, better to be safe then sorry, but it's easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission.

Today had to be a bore compared to yesterday. I wrote up a Power point review an hour before classes started and used it for the entire day. It was in the plan to review, but this was a last resort because I couldn't find the resources I needed. Now I have to write a jeopardy PP for tomorrow. I dont know how, but hopefully google can help me.

The wrestling team has their first match of the season today. I was almost going to take off cuz of my close to delerious condition. I dont want to think it's a building year, that means my expectations for them are not high. Not cool.

Wrote up 2 students today, got one kid suspended yesterday. My reactions to incidents are becoming more professional when it comes to things I don't want to happen in the class. It was their choice to go against my word, it was their choice to be disruptive in my class.   Their choices either lead toward consequences or rewards.  Only a few types of choices lead toward reward. Only a couple times a week do I see good choices over bad, but I hold them higher than when I am issuing negative consequences.