The Bow Tie Teacher

Didn't see that coming at all.

I found out this week that I'm going to be team teaching with another teacher starting this Tuesday. Pretty cool, I guess. Thankfully she doesn't have a ton of stuff to bring to my class and I get to stay in my room. She's on the ELA Common core so I'll learn a ton from her. Just didn't plan for this change. Oh, yeah I'm getting 9 new students. Can't complain.  

This week was DRAINING! So much going on. Going to enjoy this 3 day rest and recharge. Got family in town so the BGE is and will be fired up. Crossfit is on the schedule tomorrow and I'm so ready!

Don't play the game...play the man.

Everyday we play a game. Sometimes we're up. Sometimes we're down. No matter what we're in a game and we need to win. You have to know the defense and the offense, that's a given. But do you know the players better than they know themselves? 

 

A person once said "Don't play the game, play the man." In my case it's "play the children". I need to really, really dig down into the fine details of each of my students to raise them up to where they need to be. If I play the "class", I'm only going to reach 60% of them at best. Some way I'm going to do a better job of dealing with each student and each of their abilities so I can help raise up 100% of them. Like I've said this is an All Star class. They have a lot of talent and they're sharp. It's going to be tough, but so is getting beat down everyday. I just choose what hard job I'm going to do, cause I'M playing the children not the class. 

As a recap, my time frame analogy was spot on! For literacy, it worked like a charm. Now I need to improve my content. Thankfully, I do have the times down. Looking for a timer that I can set multiple times for, if anyone wants to suggest one. Next I'm going all in on my math times. Haven't had any feedback on it, but I'll get myself on a better schedule and time this week. By end of 1st 9 weeks I have the SuperLearner Central running like a well-oiled machine. 

I already have my lessons done and sent off for next week. I have my emergency sub plans done. I have my new BBoard ready. Just need the kiddos to work on their work to put up.  Not sure what I need to do to get the "authentic" student work quality up. I do models and I have them follow me, but they're just not that creative and imaginative. Wonder how to teach that. 

Crossfit South cobb will see my carcass tomorrow. Can't wait. Today's WOD was fun looking. I didn't get in there. No excuse will be given. I will be there tomorrow and I will have down that gallon of water to keep me hydrated. 

I figured it out!

Not to go on and on, but I really appreciate that God gives insight to those who are willing to ask for it. Allow me to explain. 

Today I was having a discussion about the Common Core "Literacy Block". This person let me know that what was seen during my segement of the block wasn't impressive. Ok. Continuing they explained what they were looking for. 

As I listened a light went off. We have been talking about doing the same thing, but we were going at it totally differently. 

I told them this story. When I was a child I was able to eat as much food as I wanted on my plate. The only requirement is that when my mom said dinner was over, I had to have a clean plate. I didn't matter what I ate first or last. All that mattered was being done when time was called.

I've always thought the Literacy block was like my childhood eating. I can do what I want to do, when I want to. I only have to ensure that I'm done when time is up. 

What they had described they were looking for was more this example. 

 I have to eat as much as I can from each compartment, but I only have so much time to do so. I can't jump all around the plate like I did when I was young. In this situation I have 15 minutes to eat my potato salad. I can finishe in less than 15, but I can't take more than that. Next I have 15 minutes to  eat my corn. Same thing, I can eat it in less time, but I can't go over and taking my time and eating it in 14 minutes would be ideal. This goes on until the Literacy block is over. If anything is left over it can be wrapped up and taken care of the next day.  

I say that was a divine revelation, because NO ONE has made that clear to me or to many of the other teachers. We've all been figuring it out. Since I wasn't clear WHAT I didn't know I wasn't able to ask for more help. I just knew that some segments were good. Others were horrid and I had to press through for 90 minutes. 

The name also adds to the confussion. I think of a block as a large "unit" of time that can be divided and sub-divided as I see if as long as all the parts of literacy get covered. Was I wrong or what? I really see how this is supposed to work and I can certianly hit the ground running faster tomorrow. 

In honor of this revelation I made a cafe tray anchor chart with the time slots for each part on it. Now if I could find a huge timer that allows me to set different alarms for different times I'd be GOLDEN! 

 

Getting it done central

Ground zero for high quality instruction. I also have a satellite desk aka the Whit-mobile for teaching on he go. 

What's your work area look like? 

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This has to be my favorite. I just roll it to where I'm working. Doesnt' feel like I'm standing all day. I guess because I'm having fun at what I do. 

Just realized how messy my little desk looks. The crazy thing is I rarely sit at it. What's up with that? 

I Quit!

I year ago I read a book called "Quitter". The short premise of the book is that we as people are doing to much. We need to start quitting things that we're not going to be excellent at so we can focus in on those few things that make us stand out. *I never said I was a book reviewer. I just like books a lot

So this week I made a list of things I quit. 

I quit making sorry excuses for being lazy. 

Oh, yeah, not wanting to be original. I gave that up, too.

I quit giving myself permission to not be a really good teacher.

No reason to come to me with gossip. I quit that as well. 

Oh, you want me to bend over backwards to please you? Snap, I just quit that. 

I take my life far more seriously than I did a few years ago before I quit being a pitiful dad and husband. 

I quit beating myself up when I don't do something perfect. Hey, I'm moving aren't I? 

I quit NOT doing a budget. This flying by the seat of my pants is for the birds! Going back to doing a regular budget every month. 

I quit thinking that each of my students come fro backgrounds like mine or my own kids. They need a lot more TLC than I may require. 

Being that I have a house full of little girls, I quit focusing on the boys behavioral issues over the girls attention issues. 

Yeah, that yelling thing. I gave that up, too. 

I'm a contract employee with sarcasm, but I'm planning on dropping my 2 week off soon. 

I've almost finished reading and re reading Og Mandino's 10 scrolls from the Greatest Salesman in the World. Each day for a month I've read the small chapter 3 times. I'm on 8 and I have 2 more chapters to recite. It's been really helpful. Might start over again just because it's been such a habit. 

I also need to come up with a seriously fun activity for Friday. I want to tie in all the concepts we did this week and make it LIVE! Let me process that for a minute. 

Been at Crossfit South Cobb a lot more. The first part of the school year was beating me up, but I got in the habit and I was in there 4 times this week. I feel so much better and I think it's showing in my mental game. I have a lot more to do on my physical game, but my mind and heart are in the right place. 

 

What a great week!

This week has been great. I really, truly have been blessed with a fantastic group of kiddos. They don't do a lot of things right, but wow are they open to correction and redirection. 

Now, if I could get the guy I shave with everyday to really understand this literacy block I'd be golden! There's just a lot of moving parts to this new Common Core and just when I think I have an idea of how one part works I find I was looking at it wrong. I will say that my teammies are on it so I'm learning the fine art of begging for help. In all seriousness I'm gaining better understanding and it's starting to make sense. I need to dig through more teacher blogs to find ideas and resources. 

Next post I'm going to talk about the things I quit doing and some things I started. This is one. I'm going to have a Super Learner of the Week. My kids are so fabulous that it's only right to celebrate them. So this Friday I'm going to roll out a new award with my classroom jobs. This is going to be my 1st SL of the Week. I have some VERY helpful kids and if I could I'd give this out to 4 or 5 of them. This little guy is the best because he's been overly helpful with new kids coming to the class. I know he understands the class procedures and he shows them to others like an all star. He's mindful of his work and always puts in the time to make sure he's doing everything right. He doesn't do everything right, but he's making an effort and will correct himself when directed. He's really the epitome of a Super Learner to me.  And besides he's a snazzy dresser for 7!  Nevermind, he was moved from my room today with no explaination. SMH

 

 

Some new class decorations

I scored some new superhero toys from a consignment sale. As I find them I'll add more to my city scape. Even got a black suit Spidy to swing from a building. 

Got to have our friendly neighborhood spiderman guarding the city. 

Ready for a restful weekend, NOT! I have so much to do I'll be coming to work Monday to rest. Dear Lord!

A pretty fun lesson

I told you before that I'm working on keeping my lessons sticky. I want to see how I can tie one lesson to the next and keep bringing up old lessons and fore shadowing future lessons. So we'll be using our graphs from this week to talk about base ten and the such. We'll pull out graphs again when we start skip counting by 2's and 5's. I introduced the idea when we made pictographs this week by using 1 picture to represent 2 votes on a project. Ok, here we go. 

Been teaching graphs to the BEST 2nd grade class in the world this week. Been a lot of fun. We also did tally marks. We had a great idea to survey the school. So each group picked a topic and went to survey. Some counted the different color bulletin boards. Another counted the Teachers and Students we saw in the hall during our 10 minute tour. We had a lot of different surveys. 

So this group is counting the number of 1st grade boys and girls that came from the the Cafe. They're legit for sure. 

Here are their results. Pretty good job. Soon we'll have to use our new found survey skills if we want to partake in school wide academic fair. So hopefully by then my entire class will be truly legit surveyors. Might have them do these throughout the year as centers or something. 

It's tempting to do some surveying about the up coming Presidential race since in SS we're talking about the roles of President/Govenor and Mayor. 

If someone could help me come up with ways to help my students improve the quality of their work, I'd appreciate the hints. Right now they're busy trying to hurry and not to turn in a quality product. Takes a lot of effort and modeling to get even a descent product from them sometimes. I know they can do better. After much probing and proding I get some nice work. Begging for ideas. 

Another great Wall.

This wall greets my visitors. It came out great. 

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Slow and Steady Fast and Fragile

In another lifetime I'd be REALLY stressed at how little I grasp of Common Core. However, in this life I feel really good and confident that my class is going to stand up to any test. A lot of time is needed, but the end results will be amazing. This year's "rewiring" has helped me tremendously to get my mind out of the conflict, out of the issue and focused on solutions. 

This past week was great. The kids took to the Super Learner theme like fish to water. They're going to need some help with the procedures, but I won't fuss. They understand them. Now all I have to do is get them to become first nature. Right now the procedures are somewhere around 4th nature. Right after yelling out answers.

I know I have to do a lot, but I'm not as fretful as I was in the past. I can clearly see that the road is ahead. It has some slick patches. There's a branch in the way and so on. I'm not as worried as I used to be. Either God's got me where He wants me or He doesn't. I know for a fact He'll move us when the latter is true.