The First Week Hangover

Screenshot of my Saturday
morning Facebook status

Well, the school year has begun.  Yeah?

My district made the wonderful (🤔😒😕) decision to start school about three weeks earlier than it normally would.  It also made the decision to start with a completely full week of school.  I really like getting eased back in with a half week.  When does your school year start?  Full week? Half week?

The week before, when I was planning out the first week, I was really grateful for my blog (someone has to be right?).  It was great to go back to this post and see what I had done and how it had worked the year before.

We had shorter class periods all week this week for Week of Welcome (WOW).  We had our now elusive seminar at the beginning of each day this week.  I'm having a hard time connecting with this group of kids.  I don't know if it's the "chemical" makeup of this particular group, the fact that I barely know them (I could maybe remember 3 of their names outside of the students that are also in my English classes - though I don't really know their name and faces yet either), or that I just had such a great relationship with my previous seminar that my gauge is off.

Anyways, since we had shorter class periods and an entire week, I broke things down a little differently this year.

On Monday, I passed out all the important first-day documents, and I read through portions of the syllabus with the kids, pointed out the late work policy, and that they needed to bring Chromebooks, but if they didn't I had them covered.  I then showed them the class set I accumulated in 2014.  I told them it would cost them a class participation point though if they used one of mine (by the end of the week, 2 of the classes all had theirs and in the remaining 3 only a few needed to borrow one).  Then, we did a Kahoot that was about me and the room.  It was the same one we did last year.  It worked really well and helped me begin crafting relationships with a few students who found that I liked to watch Game of Thrones because of it.

The day was interesting in the way that the energy between me and the students really had a drastic change between Periods 2 and 3 where I switch from CP to Honors.  The 10th-grade honors students just really gave back nearly the same amount of energy that I was giving to them.  Just really drove home that this group of kids is my niche.

The next day, I had them take a first-week survey.  There were some memorable responses to some of the questions.

For instance, I had a question that asked if there was another name—other than their name on the roll—they would like to be called.  One of the students said I could call him a stick of butter as long as I was consistent.  I'm going to like this kid.

This was an intriguing answer to what they liked most about the previous year.

Here is an unedited sampling of some of their favorite jokes they shared with me (you are welcome):

• What did the buffalo tell his son when he left to college? Bison
• I told my girlfriend she drew her eyebrows too high. She seemed surprised.
• Why did the quadrilateral get late to school? Because it was on the Rhombus
• Q: What did the DNA say to the other DNA? A: Do these genes make my butt look fat
• why did the duck go to rehab? because he was quack addict!
• what's forrest gump's password? 1Forrest1
• Teacher: "Kids, what does the chicken give you?" Student: "Meat!" Teacher: "Very good! Now what does the pig give you?" Student: "Bacon!" Teacher: "Great! And what does the fat cow give you?" Student: "Homework!"

Wasn't sure how to take that last one, but thought I would share it anyway.

This transitioned them into the updated BreakoutEdu from last year.  There were, of course, those that didn't like it because it was a challenge but when surveyed, the students mostly seemed to like that they were challenged and had to think critically.  Here are the some of the survey results from that activity:

Wednesday and Thursday, I got kids signed up for NoRedInk, Verso, and Actively Learn.  Thanks to the Breakout, they were already signed up for Google Classroom.  I had practice activities for Verso and Actively Learn and a planning diagnostic for NoRedInk.  The purchase order for Actively Learn hasn't come through yet, so I'm back to a free plan.  I'm anxious to get back to the Team Plan, especially since I have a cluster of ELs in my two 11th-grade classes and would like to set up some differentiation for them.  A lot of students, including many of those ELs, didn't complete the Actively Learn assignment (answer 2 questions and make one annotation shared with the class), so I sent out a comment on Google Classroom encouraging them to finish it this weekend and I'll look at them again on Monday.

Friday was spent getting student's blogs set up and showing them how to make a post.  I had planned on doing a reflection on Kid President's Guide to Being Awesome, but I think I'll have to find time to fit that in next week.  I might push back the narrative essay a day and have students do it Monday.

I've also realized, after a week of doing the exact same thing in all my classes, that I wouldn't want to teach the same prep all day.  I did it once about 6 years ago, but I need the change of pace more now I think.

How did your first week go?  I hope it was a good one.

Kid President Blog 3

Namaste!

It's actually #6 for my students, but I'm behind so I checked and the last one I did I labeled #2, so this is the 3rd one where I've decided to participate and model for them as they write their own blog posts.

I had them read #68, "Be Kind".  I think it's especially important to try and be kind to people right now, so that is why I chose it.
The helpful prompts to help the students out for this reflection were:

1. What do you think about kindness?
2. Do you find it hard or easy to be kind most of the time?
3. When is it easiest for you to be kind?
4. When is it hardest for you to be kind?
5. Was there something KP said that really stood out to you?

I think kindness is an extremely important trait to have and to show to other people.  I think grace goes hand-in-hand with kindness because you don't know what other people are going through and often need to forgive and show grace to others who don't show kindness to you.  "Killing" people with kindness is often quite an effective weapon, and when others are shown grace when they feel they don't deserve it, it can have quite a transformative effect on them.

Most of the time (I think), I find it easy to be kind most of the time.  I actually think I find it more difficult to be mean to people, but that's not necessarily the same thing.  The absence of kindness is not cruelty, and sometimes I think it's worse to be apathetic than it is to be in the negative about something instead of the positive.   As the saying goes, "there is a thin line between love and hate", but apathy is often a blurred line and it's hard to figure out how to cross it.

I think it's easiest to be kind when others are kind to you, so - obviously - it's hard to be kind when someone is being mean to you.  I do think there are people out there that make it impossible to be kind to them.  But, you need to at least try.  And, if your kindness doesn't have an affect on them, then don't be mean to them, that's when apathy is acceptable. 

Kid President's advice to pause and remember that that when someone is making it difficult to be kind to them, or are being mean to you, to remember that they are a person too.  I watched something once where a man explained what his wife did when people were just not being their best selves.  She always assumed that they did it for a very important reason.  For example, if someone cut them off in the car, she would say something about how they must be trying to get to the hospital, etc. I think that's really good advice that I especially need to heed when I'm driving.

The Read Report Lives

Since the new semester has begun and both my preps are working on research papers, I have a little more time to be a better blogger.  It will, of course, catch back up to me when these papers are due.

I haven't done a Read Report in a really long time (about a year), but I have been checking up on my Feedly and saving posts.

This will be a nice way to refresh my memory about things.

Going all the way back to October of 2015, Jennifer Gonzales, gave her Big List of Class Discussion Strategies.  She breaks them down by high-prep, low-prep, and ongoing strategies.  Of the high-prep strategies mentioned, my favorite and the one that has basically replaced my attempts at Socratic Seminars is Philosophical Chairs.  I haven't done one in a while, but I plan to do so soon with the anticipation guide for The Joy Luck Club.  I find that anticipation guides are good ways to incorporate Philosophical Chairs.  I usually give them a "worksheet" where they can mark where they stand on a big idea or theme from the novel.  I also usually have them write down why they agree/disagree.  Then, usually the next day, we move about the room and defend our positions, seeing if we can persuade others with our analysis to move on over to our side.

Jacqui Murray also wrote in October of 2015.  Her post was about Let[ting] Student Learn from Failure.  I think this one caught my eye way back when because I completely agree that it is necessary.  I tell my kids all the time that we learn best from our mistakes, but that doesn't seem to deter their fear of failure.  She suggests many things in the post, but the two that stood out to me were her comments on the "Mulligan Rule" and letting students see you fail.  Now, the former is something I offer, but probably not explicitly enough since no one ever takes me up on it.  So, I need to find a way to make it clear that students can resubmit essays or projects to make them better.  The latter is something my students see me do all the time.  It usually appears in the typos of the work I present to them, but it can run the gamut all the way up to a lesson that just totally bombs.

Again back in October 2015, my friend Crystal Kirch talked about the TeachMeet she did with her colleagues.  They "had three 2-minute sessions of teachers sharing something awesome they do in their classes with technology followed by 1-minute of reflection and debriefing with colleagues."  So, each session was probably around 5 minutes, for a total of 15.  I would love to do this with my staff.  I think I'm going to take it to my tech committee and see what they think before I go to the admin to ask for time.

Another Jacqui Murray post (still 2015, but I've moved on up to November at least), talk about what she thinks are the 5 Best Typing Tutors.  The ability to type on a normal keyboard, rather than one on a smart phone, is a skill that is severly lacking in many students.  I honestly feel that we need to bring back some technology course that many schools and districts have done away with.  These skills are especially pertinent with the onslaught of 1:1 programs.

We finally jettison into 206 (February) with a post from EdTechTeam about Google's Revision History.  I love this tool, not only for fixing my own mistakes, but to catch kids who I suspect of plaigarizing their work from another student.  If things go into a document in one fell swoop with minimal entries in the revision history, it stinks of copy and paste.

Going back a month with a post from Jennifer Scott about Living in the Learing Moment.  She talks about when to sit and give synchronous feedback to students and when we roam around the room.  This is something that I think I will always struggle with, but am better at than I was when I started my blended-learning endeavors.  I think if I can get my workload down, I could feel more able to roam around the room than I already am.  I use many different "formulas" to keep myself out on the floor with my students.  Somethings I do the half-and-half:  5 minutes at my desk and then 5 minutes on the floor.  Other times, especially if I'm grading, I do the quota:  After every X number of assignments, I'll get up and roam around the room.

I think I'll leave it there for now.  Maybe in a day or two I can work on getting all caught up.

Kid President #2

Source: Wikimedia

It's actually #3.  Or, it is for my students.  I didn't model blogging for them last time (shame on me).  But since it has been a while from my last post, I decided to do it for them today.  It's not that I haven't had anything to say.  I've just been busy.  I'm sure all of you more than understand that.  I envy those of you who are better blog stewards than I am.

So, this time around, I had my students read #8 in the book:  "Focus on the Awesome."  One thing that I think that is awesome is that my students are blogging.  They don't all particularly enjoy it yet (but they will), but one thing I've noticed about my students over the years, anything that is different = hard = don't want to do it.  Once it becomes easier for them, I anticipate that they will enjoy it.

Another thing that I think is awesome is the fact that one of the authors of the book is now following me on Twitter.  Never thought that one day I would get excited about who was following me on Twitter.  But then again, I never really thought I would be anywhere near active on Twitter either.

I'm hoping that the students will eventually not need the prompts I come up with the help them write their reflections, but here are the prompts they can mix and match for this particular assignment:

3. Reflect on #8: “Focus on the Awesome”
1. Do you agree with Brad and Kid President? Should we focus on the awesome?
2. What might be some benefits on focusing on the awesome?
3. What might make it difficult to focus on the awesome?
4. Who is someone in your life that helps you to remember to focus on the awesome?

I do agree with Brad Montague (the one now following me on Twitter) and Robby Novak.  We should focus on the awesome.  It makes you feel better mentally, which will only help you feel better physically.  It's not particularly easy to do, especially if you're predisposed to being negative.  It's going to take practice.

There are some days that will happen where it just seems like nothing is going right.  Those days might make it difficult to focus on the awesome.  But, the fact that you can survive days like that and come out on the other side is pretty awesome if you think about it.

I think Robby Novak himself is a pretty good reminder to focus on the awesome.  I especially feel this way since I've learned that he and his biological sister both have the same "Brittle Bone Disease" and were adopted by the Novaks.  If he can focus on the awesome, I certainly can.  The people who are currently in my life that help me to focus on the awesome are my best friend of 20 years, Christel, and her two boys (her youngest has a smile that can't be called anything other than awesome), and my students.  My students can also make it hard to focus on the awesome, depending on the day and/or period, but the fact that I can be a part of their lives and maybe make a difference for them is absolutely awesome.

Kid President Blog Post

I'm doing a little modeling for my classes today (two of them at least) and writing a blog as they do their first one of the school year.

Over the summer, I began to read Kid President's Guide to Being Awesome.  I thought it would be kind of neat to have my students read and respond to some of the vignettes in the book.  Today, with my 11th graders, I began that journey.

On Sunday, I went to four Barnes and Noble bookstores to get eight paperback copies of the book (one for each group in class).  Yesterday, I started the 11th graders on their blogs.  I helped them get their blogs set up and a draft post for their first blog post, which they are doing right now.

It was really cool to walk around the room and hear the students reading "The True Story of Kid President" to each other.  I'm really hoping they get something out of this.

They can write about whatever the story made them think or feel, but if my 11 years of teaching have taught me anything, it's that you need to have prompts anyways.  So, I came up with two to help those that need a little push:

1. What reason can you find to dance?
2. What could you stop complaining about? What could you start celebrating?

Source: WikiMedia

The fact that I had students reading to one another, and reflecting (in writing) during the first week of school without much push back is definitely a reason to dance. I'm kind of known for doing happy dances anyways. When students seem to take to something I took a lot of time to plan out for them, and it seems to go well, it is definitely dance time. I sometimes do it in front of the students too. Other times, I do it in my head.


I could probably stop complaining about how tired I always feel. I should probably go to the doctor and see if there is anything I can do to get a better night's sleep. That would probably help a lot. I could also work up my stamina again and do more walking. That's supposed to help sleep, or so I hear.
I am celebrating, on a small level, the fact that I did pretty well in maintaining my weight loss over the summer. I didn't really lose any more weight, but I was able to keep myself from really gaining any either. I might have even gained some muscle since many people are commenting that it looks like I lost more weight. I could also celebrate the fact that I was born without any debilitating disorders like Kid President was. I had a student a few years ago with "Brittle Bone Disease". I loved his laugh. It was infectious.