New Term Resolutions

*I will work smarter, not longer hours.

I once took a survey that asked me to figure out how many hours I actually work as a teacher, including planning, grading, and attending meetings and training. It averaged 45-50 hours a week...FOR 50 WEEKS A YEAR! I LOVE my school children, but I also LOVE my home children, who happen to be growing up without me. For them, I WILL find a way to assess English skills in many ways other than JUST essays. I will create multiple choice tests and grade things in class and host writer workshops. I will grade essays WITH students to make it happen DURING class (and to make the feedback more meaningful for the writer). No longer do I want to say, "Oh my word! You've grown so much since the last time I saw you. How are you?" to my own sons. No more I-didn't-see-the-sun-today-because-I-got-to-school-before-it-rose-and-didn't-leave-until-it-was-long-gone days. Or, at least, a great reduction in the number of those days (of which there were FOUR last week because I was behind in grading).

*I will plan for grading. 

Despite tweaks to my assessment techniques, grading will still occur weekly on my own time. I will plan which assignments I'm taking, and I will plan when I will grade and return them. I will not take a trunk-full of projects home on weekends or holidays. I will not grade work in the last week of the term. When I have more hectic personal weeks, I will take less work (or send more back with a check mark). By planning for my students' assessment needs and balancing it with my family's personal needs, I will have enough of the right kind of grades to measure my students' growth without going weeks without seeing my family. (I really, really hope.)

one-man-band-source yoga-source

*I will stop and allow a few minutes for closure before the bell. 

I always feel enormous--admittedly self-derived--pressure to have kids actively engaged and LEARNING until a few seconds AFTER the last bell. I panic when they start packing up as the bell approaches. I will do anything to get them to focus for another minute or two (or our last few seconds together). I will sing, dance, flip (or if I'm in a bad mood, yell, demand, hold after the bell) to keep them in the room mentally and physically. I have realized that we all need time to process and connect (and put our books back in an organized fashion instead of leaving my room looking like a post-Katrina Louisiana, for which I have to form a nightly, heartfelt, contrite me a culpa for the poor facilities staff who must all hate me). Instead of a tension fraught battle of wills over the no-man's-land of the academic period, I will turn these final few minutes into a decompression chamber with assigned tasks that transition students from my class to the passing period. I will have them do things like stand-up, hand-up, pair-up to share things they learned during the lesson. I will have them put sticky notes on the various wall charts to track our learning. I will have them write reflections (that I will NOT grade).

Hopefully these three things will help me to improve my progress monitoring and data management while improving student learning without being arrested for child abandonment.

Have you tried any of these resolutions? Do you have any advice for me on how to manage these issues? What coping mechanisms do you use to balance home and school?

Excuses, excuses...

I am sorry that I did not write yesterday. I have an excuse and photographic evidence. I hope that your shock and awe at the fact that I have learned to post an image will mitigate any crushing disappointment you might have experienced. (My thirteen-year-old just finished giving me the promised tutorial on how to transfer images from my phone to the computer.)

Here goes: I was at school until late grading (and seriously rethinking my policy of collecting notebooks to grade on Fridays).

Now...(insert drum roll here) for the pictures:

Forgiven? May I please have extra credit for the fact that these are actually three different piles and not photographic sensationalism?

In the comment box below, please write to tell me how you manage grading. How do you balance teaching with living?

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday!
I cannot wait for some downtime with the family. Tomorrow I get to wash cars with our oldest to raise money for the band while hubby takes the other children to a cousin's birthday. We'll finally meet up for lunch. All of the kids and I will get to see the last free beach movie at the beach.
Beach, sunset, free movies, reasonable concession prices, entertainers, an evening of family fun for 4 for less than $20...it doesn't get much better than that!
How do you reconnect with your family over the weekend? What fun time treasures did you discover over the summer?

Not There Yet

My second year of teaching was much more difficult than my first. I actually allowed myself to relax some that first year. I forgave myself for my ignorance and mistakes. After all, I was new to teaching.
As an ambitious perfectionist, I felt as though I should have mastered teaching by the second year. Been there; done that. I felt frustrated and ineffective because I was still making many of the same errors that I made the first year.
Then I took a class with a teacher with over 20 years of experience. On the first day, she told the class all about an awesome, detailed, seemingly perfect new strategy she wanted to implement. She followed that with "but I'm not there yet". Over the 4 months of the course, which we took in her actual classroom, we got to see her strategy grow through all 4 steps of the plan-do-check-act cycle. By the end of the course, the strategy was integrated efficiently in her normal classroom routine. Even before the seamless transition was complete, the teacher was talking about another brilliant strategy, but she "wasn't there yet".
I have had the privilege of taking another class with her. She had incorporated the last strategy and several others, and she was excited about something new. Of course, she openly admitted that she "wasn't there yet".
By seeing her patience with herself as she continued to reflect, learn, and grow as a teacher with over 20 years of experience, I learned that I too need to be more patient with myself and my process.
Now when I do not perform as well as I would like or I make a mistake, I do not beat myself up or berate myself to others. I simply smile and say, "I'm not there yet."
How do you show yourself patience and kindness? Do you have any tips or tricks that help you to move through your process of improvement?