Time Flies

I'm not sure how it's been so long but the time has certainly flown by I wrote last.

When I last wrote, I was chillin at the bottom of the roller coaster of the school year. The disillusionment phase hit me pretty hard and I was completely ready for the two week winter break. I don't know about everyone else, but two weeks is such a great amount of time. I felt like I was able to get all the traveling and visiting done in the first week and then rest, reflect, and recover in the second week. It was just what I needed to come back refreshed for the second half of the year.

Coming back into the classroom, I tried to shake things up a bit. I spent some time looking back on the things that worked and the things that did not. Based on my experiences and some advice, I entered 2018 with a few new strategies for my classroom. The exciting thing is that some of it has actually worked. There were some things that I have tried that have not panned out all that well but that's okay, it just means I have a few new things on my list of ideas to try again next year (with some tweaking of course).

Something that worked for me last semester that I have expanded on this semester was the creation of student jobs. I started the year with only two jobs in my rotations: a table captain and a time keeper. I added a pencil person (I could not think of a better name so that is literally what the position is called) halfway through the semester to eliminate yet another task that would otherwise fall to me (sharpening and distributing pencils). Students enjoyed these jobs and they increased learning time, even if only by a minute or two a day.

This semester, I added a classroom helper and a committee to the list of jobs that students could occupy. Technically, the classroom helper was already an unofficial position, but I decided to solidify it so that students could apply from all rotations as opposed to me selecting the same three students every time. More students were asking to help around the classroom and I am not one to deny students without a fair and valid reason. Creating this position allowed me to do so without feeling like I was giving any students special treatment.

The committee has proven to be more of a burden actually. It is a group of students tasked with meeting during lunch every other week to discuss ways to improve the classroom. Ultimately, this group just meets during lunch and talks in circles about changes that cannot really be applied to this classroom. I do not blame the students for this. I had lofty expectations but did not give the tools for students to be able to meet those expectations. That failure falls on me and this is a position that I will have to give far more thought and structure to in the future.

I also tried to come back into the semester stricter than I was in the fall. The results have been mixed at best. I yell more, which does not feel great. I have far more power struggles than I need to. I feel a bit more drained by the end of the week. I certainly do not think I will keep this up for the rest of the year. I set the tone for my classroom at the start of the year and while it wasn't perfect, it also wasn't terrible so I think I am spending far more energy than it's worth trying to "change" things. I feel myself slowly returning to my more natural style of teaching, I just hope that my shift did not cause too much irrevocable damage to the relationships I had with my students.

In brighter news, my students' pencil usage is much lower from the fall semester. I am sure that in the course of 18 weeks, we went through at least 150 to 200 pencils. This semester, we've been working with the same 30 since we came back in January. I am sure part of that change came from the fact that I duct taped (shiny bright silver duct tape) erasers (bright multicolored erasers) to my pencils. This made it much harder for students to accidently remove pencils from my class. I also let students know that I bought materials (including colored pencils, markers, etc.) for them and would not be doing so again, so whatever materials they break would be left like that and they would have to do without. Things are still looking pretty fresh, but I will have to refresh the pencils from use, which is better than replacing pencils that constantly disappear.

2018 also marks the year that I got the flu for the first time. I will say that it was miserable. I absolutely would not recommend it to anyone. Luckily, I only had it for about 48 hours and only had to miss one day of work. The stress of missing school is so intense. I was really aiming for perfect attendance, mostly because I really did not want to prepare for a substitute. I think I did alright, but it felt like I stayed behind almost all week. In the end, I am grateful that I recovered so quickly, especially during a year like this one with such a particularly dangerous flu strain.

There is always so much going on. I will do a far better job in the future keeping up with my reflections. It is especially important for this year of teaching to keep myself aware so that my growth in consistent. I also just feel better after writing and sharing my struggles and my successes. It's been a solid start so let's keep 2018 going smoothly!