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Dreamwidth? Also, a new school year
I am typing this in Dreamwidth, which tells me my paid account is lapsing in a week or so. I am not sure why I have paid for DW. I do not think I will continue to do so. I will have fewer icons. So what. I can change them to what I want in LJ. I guess I will continue to post here, just so I have a back-up if the untrustworthy Russian carcass of LJ goes under at last.
I think I am friended to, like, five people in DW, and I think all but one of those five are from LJ anyway. It hasn't -- as many others have noted -- worked as a network.
So. I haven't written in weeks. Wow, not since early August. Well, the early school year is often like that; it takes weeks to get settled into it and stop being deeply exhausted. This year has been even more exhausting, because at the beginning of the second week (I think -- it could have been at the end of the first week) my principal dropped by my classroom during my prep period and dropped my jaw by asking if I would please teach a 6th grade English/Language Arts & Social Studies Core class in addition to my two 7th grade ELA/SS Core classes, dropping the two ELA-Support classes I had.
This was going to be a career first, in that I would have been teaching the same thing for a THIRD YEAR IN A ROW. That had never happened. And now, it still has never happened. You can't really say no to your principal on something like that, even if it is phrased as a request. I mean, maybe you could, if you were a year or so from retirement and had unassailable tenure and didn't give a shit about your colleagues. The reason I was being asked was a) one of our sixth grade ELA/SS teachers had emigrated to Australia over the summer. This wasn't news -- we gave her a huge good bye party last June, and it had been in the works for literally years. But the district refused to replace her, predicting that our incoming 6th grade class would be smaller this year. Well, it was smaller. But not smaller enough. The other three 6th grade ELA/SS teachers all had classes that had 45 or more students in them. Our contractual limit is 34 students per class (which is still WAY TOO FUCKING BIG) and the district treats that limit like it is both the ceiling and also the floor. In other words, they try to cram exactly 34 kids into each class, and don't like classes in the 20s.
When my principal first 'asked' me, he said he'd keep my class at 20 students, and would try to compensate me for the vast additional amount of planning and grading by getting me out of after school supervisions... mine have been the school concerts (specifically, recording them on a digital videocamera) and I like them, though they keep me at school twice a year until almost 10 PM. Within a week, he had to admit that the class would be 28, at a minimum (and will probably go up to 34, like all of my other classes... where the Support classes had been nice and small; one was 21 and the other was 14, which was LOVELY -- oh, man, that class was so nice this year! I had kids reading silently in complete absorption and fascination, and working together well in grammar and vocabulary work, and listening intently to read alouds ... sigh. 14 kids is a great class size). And then a few days later he added to the joy by changing my schedule so that I lost my 4th period prep which a) was right next to lunch, thus giving me a long lunch, in effect, and b) got me out of horrible Home Room, which is a pointless ten minutes of announcements and rah rah school spirit nonsense, AND the Pledge of Allegiance. UGHHHHHH.
Contractually, if your teaching assignment is changed once the school year starts, you get two days off with paid subs to plan. So I took them last week. I will meet the new 6th grade classes tomorrow, and try to comfort them for their changed schedules and the fact that they've lost the teachers they've bonded with and the routines they've gotten used to. And now I will be trying to plan for four entirely different subjects and keep up with two entirely different teaching teams and their meetings, all year long. At least I know what I am doing tomorrow; I got that lesson planning done, except for writing a welcoming and explanatory letter for their parents. I have to do that this evening, and then get there early tomorrow to make copies.
One thing I am trying to do more this year is to integrate more technology (I'm eons behind Miss Tabby here, but that's okay). I've been having different seventh grade students volunteer to log in to their Schoolloop accounts to demonstrate how to use that school-home interface program our district bought several years ago... man, maybe almost ten years ago at this point. It has built-in email features, an electronic gradebook where kids can see what assignments are due, have been assigned, are graded, etc. It has lots of room for attachments (including, this year, video) so I put up a lot of models of completed assignments, as well as very detailed instructions, and recurring assignment forms that can be printed out, etc... I also take a photo of my daily Agenda that is handwritten on the whiteboard, and post that on Schoolloop, so kids who are absent or forgot to write down the homework can see it.
I use Goodreads myself -- I made a goal of reading 365 books this year, sort of as a joke, and have so far read 336, 20% ahead of my goal -- and was trying to figure out how I could get kids involved in that, but another teacher found a more kid-focused site which also has the benefit of being a teacher-controlled closed community with parental links/controls. This is important at the middle school level, sigh. So BiblioNasium allows you to create classes and individual memberships for your students, and make bookshelves with recommendations, and search for books by Reading Lexile* levels, etc. I want to have kids finish reading a book, reporting weekly on their Reading Logs, and then come up in front of the class, log in to BiblioNasium, and personally add that book to our classroom library shelves. I'm hoping that will get them starting to talk about books and write about them and compete a bit with one another.
I finally, finally have my classroom set up so I can show my students sites and YouTube and what have you from the internet via my LCD projector. Thank fuck. That's been overdue. More slideshows via PowerPoint (yeah, I know, but with good art images, they're not bad) and perhaps some Prezis, and ... well, I'd like a good platform for making a class website, for free, which I can moderate and not have outside visitors, but I don't really know what to look for, for that. Something easy, not something that is going to kill me to learn it. Suggestions?
*Lexile levels... they're a brute measure of how difficult a text's vocabulary is. The measurement system has severe problems in my mind ... you can look up books which have established lexile levels, and the results can be mind boggling**... but it IS true that trying to read a text where you do not know AT LEAST 95% of the words is a recipe for frustration and lack of comprehension. Students need to know their lexile level and try to read at or just above their lexile range to improve.
**An example: Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Lexile Level = 770 Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. Lexile Level = 950 No, I did not make that up. You can look it up.
I think I am friended to, like, five people in DW, and I think all but one of those five are from LJ anyway. It hasn't -- as many others have noted -- worked as a network.
So. I haven't written in weeks. Wow, not since early August. Well, the early school year is often like that; it takes weeks to get settled into it and stop being deeply exhausted. This year has been even more exhausting, because at the beginning of the second week (I think -- it could have been at the end of the first week) my principal dropped by my classroom during my prep period and dropped my jaw by asking if I would please teach a 6th grade English/Language Arts & Social Studies Core class in addition to my two 7th grade ELA/SS Core classes, dropping the two ELA-Support classes I had.
This was going to be a career first, in that I would have been teaching the same thing for a THIRD YEAR IN A ROW. That had never happened. And now, it still has never happened. You can't really say no to your principal on something like that, even if it is phrased as a request. I mean, maybe you could, if you were a year or so from retirement and had unassailable tenure and didn't give a shit about your colleagues. The reason I was being asked was a) one of our sixth grade ELA/SS teachers had emigrated to Australia over the summer. This wasn't news -- we gave her a huge good bye party last June, and it had been in the works for literally years. But the district refused to replace her, predicting that our incoming 6th grade class would be smaller this year. Well, it was smaller. But not smaller enough. The other three 6th grade ELA/SS teachers all had classes that had 45 or more students in them. Our contractual limit is 34 students per class (which is still WAY TOO FUCKING BIG) and the district treats that limit like it is both the ceiling and also the floor. In other words, they try to cram exactly 34 kids into each class, and don't like classes in the 20s.
When my principal first 'asked' me, he said he'd keep my class at 20 students, and would try to compensate me for the vast additional amount of planning and grading by getting me out of after school supervisions... mine have been the school concerts (specifically, recording them on a digital videocamera) and I like them, though they keep me at school twice a year until almost 10 PM. Within a week, he had to admit that the class would be 28, at a minimum (and will probably go up to 34, like all of my other classes... where the Support classes had been nice and small; one was 21 and the other was 14, which was LOVELY -- oh, man, that class was so nice this year! I had kids reading silently in complete absorption and fascination, and working together well in grammar and vocabulary work, and listening intently to read alouds ... sigh. 14 kids is a great class size). And then a few days later he added to the joy by changing my schedule so that I lost my 4th period prep which a) was right next to lunch, thus giving me a long lunch, in effect, and b) got me out of horrible Home Room, which is a pointless ten minutes of announcements and rah rah school spirit nonsense, AND the Pledge of Allegiance. UGHHHHHH.
Contractually, if your teaching assignment is changed once the school year starts, you get two days off with paid subs to plan. So I took them last week. I will meet the new 6th grade classes tomorrow, and try to comfort them for their changed schedules and the fact that they've lost the teachers they've bonded with and the routines they've gotten used to. And now I will be trying to plan for four entirely different subjects and keep up with two entirely different teaching teams and their meetings, all year long. At least I know what I am doing tomorrow; I got that lesson planning done, except for writing a welcoming and explanatory letter for their parents. I have to do that this evening, and then get there early tomorrow to make copies.
One thing I am trying to do more this year is to integrate more technology (I'm eons behind Miss Tabby here, but that's okay). I've been having different seventh grade students volunteer to log in to their Schoolloop accounts to demonstrate how to use that school-home interface program our district bought several years ago... man, maybe almost ten years ago at this point. It has built-in email features, an electronic gradebook where kids can see what assignments are due, have been assigned, are graded, etc. It has lots of room for attachments (including, this year, video) so I put up a lot of models of completed assignments, as well as very detailed instructions, and recurring assignment forms that can be printed out, etc... I also take a photo of my daily Agenda that is handwritten on the whiteboard, and post that on Schoolloop, so kids who are absent or forgot to write down the homework can see it.
I use Goodreads myself -- I made a goal of reading 365 books this year, sort of as a joke, and have so far read 336, 20% ahead of my goal -- and was trying to figure out how I could get kids involved in that, but another teacher found a more kid-focused site which also has the benefit of being a teacher-controlled closed community with parental links/controls. This is important at the middle school level, sigh. So BiblioNasium allows you to create classes and individual memberships for your students, and make bookshelves with recommendations, and search for books by Reading Lexile* levels, etc. I want to have kids finish reading a book, reporting weekly on their Reading Logs, and then come up in front of the class, log in to BiblioNasium, and personally add that book to our classroom library shelves. I'm hoping that will get them starting to talk about books and write about them and compete a bit with one another.
I finally, finally have my classroom set up so I can show my students sites and YouTube and what have you from the internet via my LCD projector. Thank fuck. That's been overdue. More slideshows via PowerPoint (yeah, I know, but with good art images, they're not bad) and perhaps some Prezis, and ... well, I'd like a good platform for making a class website, for free, which I can moderate and not have outside visitors, but I don't really know what to look for, for that. Something easy, not something that is going to kill me to learn it. Suggestions?
*Lexile levels... they're a brute measure of how difficult a text's vocabulary is. The measurement system has severe problems in my mind ... you can look up books which have established lexile levels, and the results can be mind boggling**... but it IS true that trying to read a text where you do not know AT LEAST 95% of the words is a recipe for frustration and lack of comprehension. Students need to know their lexile level and try to read at or just above their lexile range to improve.
**An example: Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Lexile Level = 770 Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. Lexile Level = 950 No, I did not make that up. You can look it up.