Teachers are the worst students?

This week's Learn Me Good comic strip is here!

We've always heard that teachers make the worst students.  Oh well...

It's the final countdown

OK, it's really just one of many countdowns, but there's no cool techno-cheesy song with that title.

We're only ONE WEEK away from the release date of Learn Me Gooder!! Can I get a WHOOP, WHOOP?

Of course, we're only one week away from the first day of school, as well. Can I get a D'OH, D'OH?

The kids don't show up for another week, but today is actually the first day back to school for most of us, as our week of staff development begins. Here's hoping I will have plenty of time to work in my classroom, as I've been moved (along with most of the rest of the school). This will be my 5th classroom in 9 years, and I will be working with my 7th partner in that time. Geez, do I stink or something?

In hindsight, I probably should have started weaning myself off of the 2am bedtimes a few weeks ago, but it's too late for that now.

Here's to a great beginning of the 2011-2012 school year to everybody out there!

Kids have been spotted

I apologize to everyone who is experiencing long loading times for this blog. I've noticed it too, though it seems to only be the background that is taking a long time and not the actual content, which makes it bearable. I hope this is what everyone else is seeing too.

Today was our first official day back to school, Operation: In-Service. In Dallas, we always go back for 5 days of staff development before the kids come for their first day. I showed up around 7:40, as I had been promised breakfast, and on that matter, I was not disappointed. Some tasty breakfast burritos and a cup of OJ later, and I was a happy (er) camper.

However, things were not cool with my classroom. Literally. It was already 102º today, yet the heater was running full blast in my room. It should have been the A/C running, but it was blowing hot air, and when I opened my door, I felt like a victim from the movie Backdraft. Needless to say, I shut the "A/C" off, but the room didn't get much cooler. Thankfully, I wasn't in my room much as we had other things on the agenda.

Item 1 on the agenda was the mystery field trip. We had received an email from our principal last week saying that we were getting on buses and going somewhere, and that we should wear sunblock, shades, and a hat. If you noticed my earlier statement -- it was freakin' 102 degrees outside today -- you might guess that we were not especially pleased to hear that we would be outside for any amount of time.

A few people had guessed at where we would be going, and they were correct. In conjunction with the planned "Meet the Teacher" night this Thursday, we visited our students' apartment complexes and passed out fliers announcing the event.

Now, if I had been in charge of this field trip, I would have gotten a list of apartment numbers at each complex where our kids lived so that we weren't putting fliers on doors of people who had no kids at our school. Or I would have assigned certain people certain sections of each complex to go to, so that even if the wrong doors got knocked on, at least they weren't being knocked on 2 or 3 or 4 times. Or, most likely, I would have just thought of these things and not done anything, and things would have gone exactly like they did today.

The buses pulled up the first complex, teachers grabbed a handful of fliers, and we all started randomly walking around the apartments, knocking on doors. A few people did report getting yelled at by people who were awakened (hey, I would have been asleep at 9 too, if I hadn't had to report to school), and several were greeted by people in various states of undress.

I was walking around (aimlessly) with a colleague when another group of teachers called to my colleague to come see a former student. This girl had been one of MY former students the year before, so I went as well. As we walked over, I recalled that this former student, while SUPER sweet, was also the cousin of one of my worst kids from last year. This was the child that I yelled at so loud last year that the other teachers in my hall all asked about him by name.

Sure enough, as we approached, I see both the little girl and the little boy hanging out the apartment door. The little boy, A, sees me and yells, "MISTER TEACHER!!!!" and runs over to give me a big hug.

Ahhhh, short term memory.

We visited 4 apartment complexes in all, and I can say that the Disney World vacation prepared me well for this morning. Walking around in extreme heat without letting the back sweat overwhelm me.

At our third stop, after the excursion, most of us had gotten back on the bus, and we were waiting for one of the teacher's aides to come back. As she came within sight, so did a mother and her four children. We had seen several people come outside while we were around to talk to us and get fliers, so we figured this was happening again. The TA went over and handed a flier to the mother and said a few words that we couldn't hear, but we presumed pertained to Thursday night. She then turned and got on the bus.

So did 2 of the kids.

The lady wasn't out there to get a flier, she was out there to put her kids on the school bus! Our TA didn't even realize the 2 kids had followed her onto the bus until we started laughing and telling her to turn around. And the kids were just looking for an empty seat, like it was perfectly normal to see a bunch of grownups wedged into the seats.

After lunch, we blessedly stayed inside. Last year, we had done an activity where we had to choose what animal we were most like and then discuss in that group what our qualities were. Fun. I was an owl. This year, we did an activity where we had to choose what shape we were most like and then discuss in that group what our qualities were. The choices were square, circle, triangle, and squiggly line.

I put myself in the squiggly line group for no discernible reason other than that I feel I'm sometimes a bit unusual. But I soon came to the conclusion that I was in COMPLETELY the wrong group. Several of the traits that people in my group wrote were "Creative," "extroverted," and "party animal." Yeah, not really me.

I should have been in the square or triangle group, for sure.

Ah well, day 1 is done. And even if I HAD been a square, after returning to my super-heated room for a bit of arrangement definitely melted me down into a squiggly line.

Staff Development, the First

This year, we only have to do 14 hours of staff development (or as Ed U Cater calls it -- StD) for our professional traning requirement. This equates to 2 day long seminars. I took the first one today.

This was a class on the new curriculum for the English Language Arts/Spanish Language Arts content area in Dallas. As per usual, I was bored out of my skull. The highlight of the day was a Reader's Theater acted out by 3 of my classmates, in which one of the characters talked about being bored at the training and thinking about her impending vacation to Vegas.

BTW, that Reader's Theater was written by another employee of DISD, named Ray, and I wonder if it's the Ray that sometimes reads Learn Me Good?

Don't get me wrong, as trainings go, it was not bad, and the presenters were good at what they did (aside from the first one sounding annoyingly like Harvey Firestein). I just don't get up and excited about these things like many others do, though. Some people get a little TOO excited at these events, in my opinion.

The presenter started talking about the components of the new curriculum -- online tests, boxes of novels, access to lower grade levels -- and it sounded like Oprah Winfrey's Great Giveaway show. WOOOOOOOOOO!!! WHEEEEEEEE!!!!

A few quick hits:

• Early on, the presenter made the comment, "This program is like you just bought a new horse." This made me wonder if we the teachers were going to be cleaning up a lot of shit as a result.
• One of the guided reading books on display was about Helper Monkeys. I will go on record now that this particular book will be read, aloud, every single day in my classroom.
• The word "slit" was used during the presentation, but there was no use of the word "moist." Not that these 2 words need to go together, they just generally seem to be 2 of the most hated words in the English language.
• As I flipped through the Teacher's Edition, I was accosted by multiple misspellings. I would just like to throw my hat into the ring as a potential spell-checker for new curriculums (curricula?) in the future. I would only charge a modest $5,000.
• Exactly when did "conversate" become a real word?
• Want to go online and browse through a jumbled curriculum guide? There's an app for that! Yes, there was a little pitch for using the iphone to access the CPG.
  

At least I don't have to go to another training until after I've been married, had a couple of honeymoons, and possibly a few kids.

What a way to start your day

2nd day of staff development week -- strange beginning to the day.

I woke up this morning to find that one of my smoke detectors was beeping its "Low Battery" beep, a very annoying, yet persistent sound. Since there was still roughly 30 minutes until the time I actually WANTED to get up, I had to choose whether to get up and change the battery, or just suck it up and snooze. Since the latter hardly seemed possible, I got up, got out a folding chair, stood on it, wrenched the alarm off the ceiling and replaced the d*%n battery.

I've been having a new fence put in in my backyard, so I had parked my car out in front of my house last night. When I left the house this morning, I noticed that someone had sprayed shaving foam on 2 of my tires. Bizarre, and just a little weak. It's like they sprayed someone else really good, and then the can ran out when they got to me.

More sitting and listening at school today. We did do one fun activity where a teacher read a story about a star who was sad because she was smaller than all of the other stars, and who got some advice from the moon. Our task after that was to "jigsaw write," which meant taking turns around our table adding a piece of a story that continued where the book left off. I got to add a piece about the main character bulking up on "Starroids" -- Celestial Growth Hormone (CGH) -- and showing those other stars who was boss.

And it begins anew

Today was our first day back to school after a nice long refreshing summer vacation. No kids yet -- well, except for one of my kids from last year who stopped by, I guess to be told that he would be repeating 3rd grade -- but a full day of staff development.

A few highlights:

We were forced to endure the district sexual harrassment video yet again. This thing is at the same time, poignant and repugnant. I feel like each campus should just cast it and re-film it with their own staff and it would be a lot more fun.

We were informed that our presence would be required on Thursday evening for an open house. 4 - 6, we will be in our rooms for parents to come up and meet. Nothing like short notice...

Yours truly got busted (sort of) during an intervention presentation. One of our counselors was talking about each teacher having a spiral notebook to log all of the interventions throughout the year. She made the comment that this spiral would be our best friend. I leaned over to the teacher next to me and whispered, "So should I put out a Facebook friend request to my spiral?" As we were giggling, the counselor noticed and said, "Oh, if there are any questions, we should stop and clear them up." while looking right at me. Oops.

Found out that there will be no paid morning duty this year. Every teacher will have to rotate through a schedule of a week or so at a time, but no more money. I guess this is good in the sense that I won't (always) have to get to school so early, but it's not so good in the sense that I won't be making my roughly extra $2K this year.

Tomorrow is another jam-packed day full of excitement and adventure! OR, more boring sessions...

Spoiled by warm weather

Yesterday, January 3rd, it was 80 degrees here. My brother and I took his two boys out to the park, where people were in t-shirts and shorts.

Now I know that's not normal for January, but I find myself wondering why it can't last, especially since the forecast calls for lows in the 30s for the next couple of days. Days when I have to resume my 7AM OUTSIDE morning duty before school!!

Yes, we have to go back to school tomorrow. The kids don't -- they return on Tuesday. But we have to go back to attend staff development and see what our rooms look like after 2 weeks of inactivity.

Suddenly having to wake up at 5:30AM again, after spending several nights over vacation staying up UNTIL almost that time is going to hurt like jumping off a 10 story high-rise.

Ugh. Bring the pain.

Where's our prep time?

Alas, today is a very depressing time for many teachers, at least throughout the local area. This is the last week day that we have off before returning to class. The kids don't return until next Tuesday, but we have to report back to school on Monday.

The problem is that Monday is not a teacher preparation day. I just learned this yesterday from a fellow teacher. I knew that we would be having some meetings on Monday, but I figured we would also have several hours to work in our classrooms. This is necessary, as we usually return from break to find that all of the furniture in our rooms has been rearranged for the purpose of cleaning the floors.

But according to one of my other friends, who is on my school's leadership team, Monday is strictly a staff development day, devoted to nothing but staff meetings and seminars. January 22, on the other hand, is the designated teacher preparation day. January 22 is a Tuesday, immediately following Martin Luther King Jr. Day which is a no-school Monday.

So two weeks AFTER we return from Winter Break, we get a day to rearrange our classroom and get our papers in order.

It's just nice to know that the district has its priorities in order.

Well, time for me to get out of here and go decorate my Christmas tree and string up the lights on my house!