A day in the life of a summer school teacher...

Summer school is exhausting! Allow me to share some info about my days with my 19 little ones. First off, the curriculum is designed for small group instruction, and 19 students is BY NO MEANS a small group. I am obviously not happy about this.

7:45am - Pick up all 75 first graders in the gym. Break up approximately two fights and answer the questions "When is lunch?" and "Today are we going to recess?" about 16 times on the short walk to our classrooms.

7:50-8:00am - Students journal while the breakfast-eaters trickle in. Replace at least 3 pencils which have now been broken within the first 10 minutes of class.

8:00-9:15am - Fluency and Word Work practice. Explain (again) to many students that there will be no recess in summer school. Question the fact that they all "manage" to read 60-80 words per minute of the fluency passages, yet only read about 20 words on the benchmark measure. Sing word wall songs and try to make students stop laughing at me when my voice cracks with the high notes.

9:15-9:30am - Restroom break. Stop at least 5 boys from scaling the bathroom walls to look out the high windows and/or splashing each other with water. When they see the playground out the window, explain (again) that there will be no recess during summer school.

9:30-11:00am - Attempt to do small groups and learning stations. Pick a team leader for each of the three groups, who hopefully will not let the "power" go to their heads. Put on reading hat to (attempt to) convey to students that I cannot be bothered during small group work. See each of my three groups, while simultaneously supervising two other stations. Tell about 15 students that they cannot go to the restroom, since we just went 5 minutes earlier. Replace 12 broken pencils, and ask at least 4 students to "make dots" for unnacceptable behavior. Explain that there will be no recess during summer school, and answer the question "WHEN IS LUNCH???" about 9 times.

11:00-11:30am - Wrap up reading instruction with a culminating activity. Pass out crayons again, as this is typically creative. Threaten students within an inch of their lives not to break my crayons intentionally. After the activity, throw away at least 8 (intentionally) broken crayons. Oh yeah, and replace 4 pencils.

11:30-11:50am - Lunch. Try to enjoy your lunch while dining with 7 year olds for 20 minutes. Do your best to ignore the fact that the kid next to you just sneezed on your sandwich and reached over to touch your apple. Answer a lot of questions, some of which are about recess. Pretend to understand kids with speech impediments who are speaking with their mouths full, by saying things like "Oh wow," "that's cool," or "You're kidding!"

11:50-12:00pm - Restroom break. Read above account of restroom breaks.

12:00-1:15pm - Math block. Attempt to control the now out-of-control students who are ready to go home. Make many of them "make dots" and threaten many others within an inch of their dot-free days. Attempt to teach an entire concept every day and move onto the next concept the next day. Try not to let it bother you that half of the class is staring at you with a glazed-over look.

1:15-1:25pm - Pass out the day's work and attempt to use what little is left of your voice to talk over the chaos in order to give instructions. Repeat the exact same thing at least 12 times before seeing any results. Pack up and head out.

1:25-1:45pm - Supervise dismissal. Try your best to make sure that every one of the first graders gets onto the correct bus to their home school. Explain to panicked parents that you will find their child. Frantically try to think of the word for "last name" in Spanish (apellido, I believe). Answer two more questions about why we didn't go to recess that day.

Who wants to teach summer school???

Finally!

I'm sorry it has been two weeks since my last post (AGAIN)! Let me give you a little photo tour to explain how busy I have been during those two weeks:

This is my first grade classroom all packed up, with all of my things ready to move to third grade for next year:








Imagine packing all of that stuff up and moving it during the last (crazy) few weeks of school!

My parents, who are absolutely amazing and the best parents that have ever walked the earth, came in with Kevin on Thursday after the kids left for the summer and helped me move a bunch of furniture. Then they came to school with me on Friday during the staff development day to help me set up my new room. We actually got it ALL FINISHED and ready for August. When I go back, I will have very little to do :) Here are some pics of my new third grade room. I have decided to go with a red carpet movie theme:

This is my classroom library, some storage, and some of my movie theater decorations. The organizer boxes will be for fluency partners and centers organization.


My reading table


I love this new poster! It's a ketchup bottle that says "Catch-up on your work!" I'll clip work that absent students missed on the clothespins and they can take it when they come back to school.


Lights, Camera, Vocab! This bulletin board has "boring" words that the kids should try to get away from in their writing. When I go back in August, I'll hang words of synonyms on the pegs underneath the words. These words will be good for TAKS prep as well. On the bottom there is a yellow incentive chart where if the kids correctly use 10 of these words in their writing, in place of the boring words, they can get either a prize or a number of tickets.


This is my math wall. It's very full already!


This is my Focus Wall. It will be used to display all the information that goes along with each Reading theme and selction throughout the year. I have these printed and laminated already, and some very sweet first graders helped me cut and bag them by selection during the last week of school.


My word wall is across the alphabet strip above the white board. I will clip the words onto the ribbons under each letter as they're introduced. This was my parents' special project.


The next two pictures show the organization around my desk.




This is where I'll have my calendar, and down the left side I'll have announcements and reminders. The cart under the board is for students to turn in homework and notes from home. They'll clip a clothespin with their class number on their homework before placing it in the basket, making it easy for me to see who has not turned it in.


More organization. The closed in cabinet is where all the messy things go, lol.


I love my little cubbies! These will be packed full of math manipulatives and supplies, but I had to pack several boxes up to take to summer school.


Ah, summer school - my other stressor the last few weeks. Yesterday was my first official day of summer, and I spent it at my summer school location preparing my classroom and lesson plans for school, which starts on Monday. It will go through July 1st, and there are 17 struggling 1st graders in my room. I think it will be fun, though, an it pays really well!

I feel so much relief after ending this tough year, getting moved into my third grade room, and also preparing my summer school 1st grade room! Maybe life can go back to normal soon!

I hope you've had a wonderful week, and I wish all of the teachers a fantastic summer vacation - I know you deserve it!

Happy Memorial Day!

Kevin and I had a fun-filled weekend, as I hope all of you did as well! We spent most of our time at my grandparents' land near their home in Bryan. They have a bunch of 4 wheelers, a Ranger, and a trailer set up down there. We grilled, ate way too much, and got waaaaay too muddy. But it was a blast! We also went fishing, which brings me to a funny story:

We were fishing in the Navasota river, which apparantly is not supposed to have any bass in it. But I was feeling silly, so I declared, like in the movie Napoleon Dynamite, that I was going to catch a "delicious bass." Everyone laughed at me, saying that there was absolutely no way that it was going to happen, and that I was fishing in the wrong body of water. Seriously, no more than 5 minutes later, I caught a DELICIOUS BASS!!! My family justified it by saying that the recent flooding had introduced new fish from nearby lakes into the river. I chalk it up to my favorite saying:


If you believe, you will succeed!!!!

Don't pay attention to the extreme fashion crime I am committing in the above photo.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time this weekend with my family, as we always do. We left early this morning to head home because we HAD a lot of stuff to do today. I say HAD, because all of that went out the window when we went to "look" at bikes. We ended up buying one for each of us, and then spent the afternoon riding around our neighborhood and others close by. A neighbor kid came with us one time and showed us some "sweet trails and jumps." Apparantly we should be training on those before we head to Grapevine lake and tackle the 18 miles of off-road trails that we want to. Sounds like a good idea to me! We didn't get any of our stuff done today, but we had a good time together, which is more important to me :)

In other news, there are only 8 MORE DAYS OF SCHOOL!!! This year has been stressful and has truly tested my patience and strength. But I have learned more this year than I probably ever have or ever will in another single year. I'm a better teacher because of this year, so I'm thankful for the experience.

That having been said, let's hope these last 8 days FLY BY.

After that I'll begin teaching summer school, but only for 18 days. My summer will officially begin on July 2nd, and then I'll be done with first grade! I'm looking forward to my move to third :)

I hope everyone has a wonderful, short week!

Guest bedroom and funny quotes

Yesterday was a rough day at school, so I did what any girl would do to ease the pain of the day: I went shopping! I've been wanting to do something different with my guest room for a while now, and I found the perfect thing at Ross. I got this awesome comforter, RL sheets, and the cute down throw pillow all for less than $60! Then I moved some decor around from other areas of the house and I think I got the perfect combination! I love it; the only thing that would be better is if I would paint the walls. I'm just afraid that if I did that I would open a can of worms and decide to paint every room in the house!









Yes. I know I need to iron the wrinkles out of the comforter and bed skirt, I just havent gotten to that yet :)

I also have some funny quotes from the end-of-the-year book pages that we are working on in my 1st grade class. Most of the students said something about me in their page, which was very enlightening! While most of the comments were sweet - Mrs. White is the best teacher, Mrs. White is pretty, I love Mrs. White's class, etc., a couple stood out:

E: Mrs. White is sometimes angry.
A: Mrs. White is pretty nice. She is usually annoyed with us, but she's still a nice teacher.

They really do pick up on everything, don't they???

Catch-up, funny stories, and guest bedroom

This week was so long! I had an interview at school that lasted until 6:15 on Tuesday evening, then a PTA meeting Thursday night, and we did our first grade Teacher Treat last evening. For the teacher treat, we (the three 1st grade teachers) took the five highest bidding students from the PTA auction to bowling and pizza. We decided to drive my car, since we could all fit in it. It seemed like a good idea until the boys had been playing dodgeball in the gym up until our departure time at 4:30. They then proceeded to have competitions over who could rub the most sweat and "oil" on my new leather seats. Nice. We had a good time, though! Let me recap with a few short words: "ninjas, tooting, sweat, "oil," I C-U-P jokes." The best was probably when I asked the boys at bowling "Hey, who am I beating?" And they all yelled "No one!"

Yesterday was also a funny day with all my students in class. At our faculty meeting on Wednesday, we talked about using "Love and Logic" with the students. Yesterday T was very upset with me about math and I tried it out:

T - I HATE THIS MATH! I CANT EVEN DO THIS CRAP!
Me - That's so sad.
T - OH! SO YOU THINK ITS SAD THAT I CANT DO THIS CRAP???
Me - That's so sad that you think that.
T - OH? SO NOW YOU THINK ITS SAD THAT I THINK YOU THINK ITS SAD THAT I CANT DO THIS CRAP?
Me - Yep.
T - I think I need to go out in the hall for a brief cool-down.

Later in the day, C and T were butting heads, as usual. C is a new student in my class and him and T have a lot of tension and animosity toward each other, for some reason. I heard:

C - T, stop making that sound you are driving me nuts!
T - Oh? You want me to come hit you in your face?
C - You wouldn't dare.
T - Oh yeah? I'll show you how to respect me!!!
C - Don't use that tone with me, young man.

While the kids were sitting in line for the restroom yesterday morning, one of them came running out yelling "There is a small kid stuck in the restroom!" As I walked into the restroom muttering "just what I need..." I saw C dragging a kindergartener out of the restroom by the arm. He said "I saved this dude's life!!!" I said "Good, C. I'm glad you saved his life." I didn't have the energy to explain how I'm sure he would have found his way out and lived a long, fulfiling life.

A, on the other hand, apparantly did have the energy. She said "Actually, Mrs. White, he didn't save his life. He could have lived in there." My class then had a very SERIOUS conversation about it:

O - Yeah, but how would he eat?
A - Well, he would have all the water he needed to drink.
As - Yeah, and he could go to the restroom whenever he needed!
(the class laughs)
As - NO, GUYS! I'm SERIOUS. That is very important!

These are the things that are going to make me miss first grade.

After lunch I picked them up to take them back to class, and D was very upset. He sat down in the hall holding his little head with two hands and crying. I got the kids onto the rug to play the quiet game and sat to to talk with D. He was upset originally because he "asked for brocolli with sheese" and they gave him french fries instead. He then told me that he didn't eat any of his lunch because he had "all food that needs a fork" and he didn't have a fork. He didnt ask the teachers in there because they seemed too busy. I went to talk to one of them and she told me he had a burger and fries! Explaining to D that he, in fact, does not need a fork to eat a burger and fries seemed fruitless. Insetad I talked him back into the classroom and gave him some peanut butter crackers to eat. He acted like he wanted nothing to do with them until I started ignoring what he was doing and went along with my business. Then he scarfed them down.

These are the things that, while they make my job fulfilling, I will not miss ALL that much about first grade.

Regardless, as the year winds down I am torn with how I feel about the grade switch. I some ways I am SO excited. In other ways I'm feeling nervous, and a bit reminiscent. I'm just going to move forward with faith in my decisions and a smile on my face! (I've found this year that often times a smile is the only thing that keeps me from losing my mind, haha).

So that's the week. I forgot to do the guest room portion of the bedroom tour yesterday. So I just included a quick picture, in case you were interested.

Show Us Where You Live Friday - Living Room Edition

Welcome back for another week of the home tour, created by Kelly! This week we're touring living rooms!

Kevin and I have two living areas, so I decided to post about them both today. We only really use the TV room, but occasionally we will sit in the other room with company. Our decorations are a little bare, since I like to add a little at a time and we've only been here a year. I am looking forward to getting some good ideas from others participating today!

Here is the view of our TV room from the kitchen.


Here you can see our Guitar Hero supplies - one of our new favorite activities, haha.


I love my new cross that I got at Canton last week!


The rooms are connected with a see-through fireplace. I love it, but am sad to admit that we have actually only used it twice in the year that we have lived here.


These are on the mantle on the TV room side of the fireplace. They're my favorite, simple decorations because I love the message.


If you walk around the fireplace you enter the family room.






From the front door:


Through the half wall in the dining room:


So that's our living room situation! You may have noticed quite a few candles - I am obsessed! I usually have at least 4 going around the house at any given time!

Check back tomorrow because I plan to blog about the week's happenings - fits, funny comments, teacher appreciation week, and arms stuck in chairs. It should be fun - just like this week.

Show Us Where You Live Friday - Kitchen Edition

A great blog that I have been reading lately, Kelly's Korner, has started a fun Friday thing where we get to show off our homes. Okay, I realize that it is SATURDAY, not Friday. Last night I was too busy finishing my Action Research Proposal to read blogs and I missed out on this fun thing. So better late than never, I like to say.



Kevin and I moved into our first house almost one year ago. We have really put a lot into making it ours, but there are a few touches we still need to add. For example, we have no master bedroom furniture. I mean none at all. We have mattresses on a frame, and we use those clear pull-out container drawer things for bedside tables. He does have a dresser, but I use our old dresser which is now in the guest room. Thus, I had to move necessary items into my "bedside table" drawers so that I don't have to trek across the house to find my underwear. Bedroom furniture has just not really been a priority, but I think we'll start looking soon!

The other thing is our countertops. I love everything about our kitchen except for the old white formica countertops. It's not just about look, either. They stain so badly! I always have to use Mr. Clean Magic Erasers to get iced tea and some other certain things off of them.

So anyway, on with the kitchen tour:

This is my kitchen. I like that it is open to the TV room, and the office is on the other side so I can talk to Kevin when he's working while I make dinner :)



Here is a slightly different view:



I love cute things with our initials on them!



I have it decorated with apples. I actually didn't take a picture of my adorable clock, the artificial apples my mom brought me from Brazil last year, my paper towel holder, or basically anything good. My bad. But I do like these canisters I found at Garden Ridge!



My breakfast nook, also known as home to my plants.



We have only three sets of dishes the green and white and the black are both everyday sets. I found the black and gold in an entire set of eight place settings at the Target after Christmas sale for half off. The best part is that they can be use year round! Maybe when I actually use them I'll take some pictures of the whole ensemble.



Am I the only one who gets excited over teeny tiny organizational things? This is my latest organizer, found at Walmart for only $4. It stores my pot lids so I don't have to stack them and they won't fall when I reach for one!



Today I was at Canton and I bought these things, which are supposed to be great. One is a bread bag which claims to keep bread fresh for two weeks. The smaller bag is a potato pouch. If you haven't heard of it, it cooks a potato perfectly in the microwave in 5-7 minutes. It can do up to four at a time. I'll let you know how it goes once I get some potatoes, lol.



So that's my kitchen. Hop on over to Kelly's blog next Friday for the living room edition!

Now that I have a month off before my next grad school class starts (after completing the most terrbile course I have EVER taken in my entire 17.5 years of school) I may actually be blogging more, so check back with me in a few days! I have some funny and good stories to show you from school. I also have some HILARIOUS video to post, titled "First Grade Dance Off," but before I can post it I need to figure out how to edit it for confidentiality.