Interactive Monday -- Field Trips

Hey all,

Thanks to everyone who participated last week during Interactive Monday. Now let's see if we can increase that number this week. Please invite your friends to come contribute as well!

This week, my question is What is your favorite place to take the kids on a field trip? OR, barring that, what place do you WISH you could take your kids?

We have recently been asked to come up with a list of possible places to take the kids this year, and several were immediately axed as soon as they were brought up. Who knew that EVERYONE and their brother had already been to the Dallas Aquarium? We've certainly never taken the THIRD grade there!

We passed an idea sheet around last week, and the 3rd grade team wrote ideas on it. My teammates suggested the Dallas (and Ft Worth) Zoo, the Imax theater, the Dallas Children's Theater, and a few other places. I contributed by writing the Home Depot loading dock and the local McDonald's Playland.

I tend to think frugally.

So where are some places that you like to go? And what do you do 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.

How I Became a Tutor

Thursdays are after-school tutoring days at my school, which just makes them about the longest days ever -- second only to Parent Conference night. Come to think of it, conferences are always on Thursdays.

Tutoring has not been bad this year, but my morning class really got under my skin today. There are 19 kids, yet it always seems to be the same 3 or 4 raising their hands and answering questions. When I call on others, they stare blankly at me or they give me crazy answers. Yet these same kids don't pay any attention to the kids who give correct answers. Very frustrating.

We also went on a field trip today. We went to the Dallas Children's Theater to see their production of How I Became a Pirate.

I enjoyed it. We had read the story earlier this week, so it was fun to note the differences and similarities between the two. We'll be doing a compare and contrast in class later, so it will be interesting to see what the kids come up with.

There was a 10 minute intermission during the play, during which 3 kids begged me to let them use the bathroom -- despite my very stern warnings before leaving the school that they could NOT go once we were there. When the intermission began, one boy in front of me turned and said, "Man, this is boring! All they are doing is dancing!"

His neighbor argued that he thought it was interesting, and the first boy amended his statement to say, "It IS interesting, but it's just a little boring!"

Overall, the kids were really well behaved, and the show was enjoyable. I think the funniest reference was on pirate shouting, "We're gonna need a bigger boat!" when a shark appeared off the bow.

Tomorrow appears to be another shirt and tie day. I really miss casual Fridays. We have them sporadically, but not nearly often enough.

Maybe I can just dress as a pirate and say it's class-related...

You want some Spam with that?

In the past few months, the Internet geeks in my district have done a much better job of filtering all of the junk messages out of our school inboxes. However, for a while there, I couldn't open up my e-mail without having 30 or 40 bogus subjects screaming at me. And that's what led to the idea for this week's Mr. Teacher column over on education.com.

Field trip tomorrow -- if a tsunami doesn't hit. I'll probably have lots to blog about tomorrow.

Also, a last piece of housekeeping. Back when I had my March Monday Madness Contest, I sent out e-mail copies of Learn Me Good to several people. If you are one of those people, I would like to request again (with deep feeling, mixed with just a bit of desperation) that you post a review of the book on Amazon.com. Since it's self published, every little bit of word-of-mouth really helps!

We're walking, we're walking, we're walking... ANNNNNND we're stopping

Yesterday was quite the eventful day, as far as school days go. Any day that involves TAKS scores, a field trip, and a homicidal maniac can only be brought to closure by a margarita (or two). So I was very happy when my girlfriend suggested On the Border for dinner last night. But I'm getting way ahead of myself...

Since our walking field trip was canceled last Friday due to rain and wet weather, I wasn't too optimistic about our chances for yesterday since it was overcast and it had poured for hours on Monday night. But, conditions were deemed acceptable, so we got to proceed as planned.

And so the ragtag fleet set off on their lonely quest, for a shining planet called Earth... Well, roughly 100 kids and 5 teachers set off for a walk to a nearby park (about a mile away).

I always forget just how much I dislike that walk. Kids grumbling about their legs hurting and how they're tired. Kids stopping to touch as many dead animals as they can (seriously -- if you see a dead frog in the middle of a bike trail, don't you have the sense not to pick it up?). Kids moving at approximately the speed that water freezes.

Once we were at the park though, we had a lot of fun. It was indeed very muddy. Not Lollapalooza muddy, but enough so to keep local washing machines busy for the next couple of days. I spent a lot of time throwing a football around with some of the kids, and I would have to wipe the mud and water off onto my shirt before I threw it. So I came back to school looking like I had done an ad for Orbitz gum. But it was fun.

The fun ended rather abruptly, though, when we received a phone call from our principal saying that we had to return to the school immediately. This was about 40 minutes earlier than we would have left otherwise.

So we began the Trail of Tears back to the school. Typically, the walk from school to park takes about 30 minutes, and the walk from park to school takes an hour. This is because kids who were frolicking and playing tag five minutes ago now complain about not being able to feel their legs. The morning walk is paradise compared to the afternoon walk. I swear, I'm going to tell the kids next year to bring cameras so that they can take pictures of dead animals to enjoy forever, rather than having to stop and stare. This isn't the zoo, people!

I actually found myself saying, "Keep moving, there's nothing to see here."

Eventually, we did make it back to school, and we found out that we had been called back because the school had been put into Lockdown. The police department had locked down all of the schools in North Dallas because they had received threats from a guy who claimed he was going to massacre a bunch of kids. What a class act. Thank goodness he didn't stumble onto our group outing!

As for the actual Lockdown, the kids we had left behind (NCLB does NOT apply to field trips) were atrocious. Even though the principal had stated, "This is not a drill," beforehand, my kids were crawling around on the floor, screaming and yelling, and playing around the whole time, according to the teacher we had left them with.

[2 more weeks. 2 more weeks. 2 more weeks. 2 more weeks.]

We also got TAKS scores back yesterday. I was not happy. Seven of my kids did not pass, including three that I had been confident WOULD pass and one who missed a passing score by one question.

Looking online at the answers chosen, I noticed that several kids in my homeroom left questions blank (no answer). Three kids had 4 no answers in a row! This can only mean that they skipped over a page! One of those three did not pass, and he would have had he gotten those four correct.

Once again, I'm aggravated that we are not allowed to test our own kids anymore. I don't know that it would have made a huge difference, but I do know at the very least that I would have kept an eye on who wasn't bubbling properly!

On a high note, I did have 9 kids who got a commended score, so I was very happy for them.

Thankfully, today was not quite as hectic as yesterday. But I may still finish it off with a margarita…