Monday Email

If my coach can send a celebration email on Monday, then I can share my own celebrations.

This weekend, I had some really good workouts, including a 20 mile bike ride followed by a 15 minute run on Saturday, and a hard 9 mile run on Sunday. I'm definitely feeling it, but I'm proud.

I'd also like to shout out my three students who scored 100 on their quiz Friday. Also, my buddy W, who read spectacularly on Friday.

Today has been rough. I didn't sleep well last night, which makes my patience a bit shorter. My first two classes were great, but my afternoon class had struggles. Overall, it was actually really nice - for the first 3/4 of class, the students were absolutely silent and on task (when supposed to be, and talking with partners when they were supposed to be). W was actually keeping up with tracking and hand-raising for the most part. However, my best buddy from last year, we'll call him B, decided he wasn't playing the game today. He sat there and did nothing. I went through the usual consequences, which resulted in his being sent to the dean's office. However, he was sent back to class, I think through a misunderstanding with the dean. At this point, there were no more consequences I could use, so I was unable to enforce my expectations with him. And since I couldn't enforce my expectations with him, I couldn't enforce them with his peers, and the class got a little bit sloppy. It wasn't terrible, but I was not happy to end it this way.

I guess, looking at it now, my classes were 80% great, so I can't complain too much. I have a lot of work to do, but I think it's a manageable amount - it just doesn't seem manageable as a look at a whole week's worth laid out for me on a Monday.

I'm a little intimidated by the weather this week - it's supposed to be over 90 every single day. That will make my runs difficult, and I can't decide whether I should go running before school (very, very early), go right after school at a nearby park (shady, beautiful), or wait until I go home (later, so a little cooler, but not as shady). Tough decisions.

Oh yeah, my husband is back home. It's nice.

Day 3

Okay, I finally had a tough class. It was about time. My ninth class of the school year, during that last block of the day, was rough. It started with a student who refused to participate, and reacted very disrespectfully. I gave him a moment to collect himself in the hallway, and he agreed to come inside to participate. At the next opportunity, he did the same thing again, with an even bigger reaction. Students were laughing. I believe I was visibly ruffled, and it took a lot to get the class back. It was not the class I had been hoping for, and was very frustrating.

I then handled the situation in a textbook way, and the next part went incredibly well. This student, let's call him W, was new to our school. I had spoken to his mother earlier in the day about poorly done homework, and she mentioned that he is uncomfortable asking for help. I pulled W from detention and brought him to my classroom to chat. He mentioned that he wants to be a pro football player one day. We talked about how, if he wants to earn the millions, he will one day have to speak on TV in front of so many people, and only after he has spoken his way through high school, college interviews, and college. He agreed that even though speaking publicly is scary, it's an important skill.

I explained to him how I get nervous before I teach, and how I practice my lessons ahead of time (this year, anyway). I grabbed a copy of the next day's classwork, and we found a place where he could read aloud. We practiced the reading together. He struggles reading, although I am not qualified to diagnose anything. By the third read-through, he sounded fluent and confident. I also spent a few minutes tutoring him in content that he didn't learn at his old school, and that most of his peers know. I had him text me, so he had my number stored to ask for help. We planned on more opportunities for speaking in class in the future. He walked away with a smile.

I wish I could say that it resolved perfectly, but I don't know yet. I see him this afternoon, and I will call on him to read. He could read aloud, have his peers celebrate his confidence, and continue working hard towards his goals. He could refuse to read, react poorly, and derail the class again. I asked him this morning if he was ready, and he said, "A little."

We'll see how it goes.

Year 5, Day 1 (and 2)

We're back!

School has begun. The first day is always extremely high pressure. We need to show our students that they can't get away with anything. ANYTHING. It's very stressful, but it pays off in the long run when our students know how they are expected to sit, write, act, and speak.

My kids this year are nice. I'm excited to work with them.

Plus, my favorite few students from last year are back in 7th grade again, so I get to continue the relationships I've build with them so far. There will be stories to catch up on, I promise.

The first day went extremely well - my classes were near-perfect. However, I want to push them further. There were very few behavioral problems, but the students tend to get fidgitier by the end of the day (if you don't think fidgitier is a word, you've never met a 7th grader with a 10-hour school day). While my first two classes were extremely well-behaved, my last class is in the last hour of the day. They were a little antsy, and there was...noise. Not really talking, but just more sounds and movement.

And today, I wasn't a whole lot better at managing them. Again, my morning classes were great, and we're really zooming through the content. The last class was fast-paced and fun, and we got through the content, but there was a lot more silliness. We can have silliness, later, but we need to get the basics down first. I need to make a point of slowing down or stopping the class if there is any off-task behavior or excess movement, even if it means I don't finish the content. As we're told all the time, any time we spend now on routines and procedures is time saved down the line. 2 minutes lost to make sure students understand the expectations in Week 1 can save hours and hours later in the year, if it means that we don't lose the 10, 20, or 30 seconds every day resetting the class.

I am teaching new content this year - the 7th graders are getting 8th grade content, so it's more challenging for them (and new for me). I don't yet know what they will pick up quickly, and what will be more challenging. Although my 8th grade partner is great at predicting and explaining, since she has taught this for two years now, it's frustrating to have less instinct around the curriculum this year. It's a fun challenge/frustration, though, because it gives me a chance to learn a little more about 7th graders and their science-learning habits.

Today my principal complimented me in the middle of class for my Economy of Language. Imagine that.

2 days done. For day 3, my goal is to keep up the consistency through 3:25 PM. It's the last hour that's a killer.

Ready Time

Today was a scramble to get ready. It's always a scramble, though. I can't remember a single last-weekday-before-school-starts that wasn't. I didn't get nearly as much done this week as I though I would, but I did have a lot of opportunities to help other teachers practice their first day lessons. I even practiced my first day lesson!

This shouldn't be that unusual, but it is for me. Last year, I was teaching the same curriculum for the third consecutive year. I had made some tweaks and many improvements, but about 80% of lessons I had done at least once, and some as many as three times, in previous years. This year, I am teaching a new curriculum, and what's more, I'm sharing planning duties. While this is great for my workload, and for my learning to work well with others, it means that I am teaching lessons that I didn't write, so I need to invest more time into preparing and practicing. So, I practiced today. It felt good, and I was proud do get it done in the morning, so it didn't get lost in the Friday afternoon scramble.

We've had some changes in the operations staff at school (over the last two years), which have caused some...hiccups...over the last two years, and in the last two weeks. This caused a little extra chaos this afternoon, but I pulled out my handy Microsoft Office skills (let's hear it for divider label templates!) and sped up the process a little bit. At the time we were kicked out of school to go to our pre-school-year happy hour, my room was all ready to go. The room is tidy, worksheets are photocopied, and student binders and materials are laid out and ready to go.

I'm (somewhat) rehearsed.

I've heard great things about this new group of students.

All I have between now and then is a weekend. And I get to spend the weekend with me. My husband is out of town, so I can drink some port, watch cartoons, and run/bike to my heart's content. Last weekend's workouts were cut a little short, but I have high hopes for tomorrow's 20 mile bike/15 minute run and Sunday's 9 mile run. Three days until the start of year 5!

Coaching

One of the fun parts about having a triathlon coach is our weekly Monday Email, which lists the accomplishments of our "team" (all of the athletes that she coaches). I've been listed twice in the last month:

On 7/20:
NYC Tri:                  Robin S    3:42:55  126th AG--BIG AG!!

On 8/3:
Jersey Girl Sprint              Robin        1:22:14  28/54  nice race!!

While not the greatest accomplishments in the world, it still felt good to be recognized.

In addition to being coached, I have really enjoyed getting back into coaching this year.

What? Coaching?

Oh yeah, I forgot you haven't been with me for a while. Last year, I took on the role of Instructional Leader. IL is North Star's way of out-sourcing leadership to make sure that teachers can get observation/planning feedback quite frequently. I supported two teachers by offering feedback on all of their plans, and then observing their classes at least once per week to offer additional feedback. I was also around to answer any questions, especially about science content (I supported other science teachers). It was a very rewarding experience, but also very challenging.

The first time I met with my teachers at the start of last year, I had the whole meeting scripted out. I thought, who would ever let me decide what other teachers need to do to improve? I sort of made it up as I went along. Kind of like teaching, actually. And, as I went along, my feedback was more coherent, sequential, and overall helpful.

This year, I'm excited to start the year with a little more coaching confidence. I am only ILing one teachers this year (science), which will give me more time to spend working with her. Plus, I already have an outbox full of carefully-worded action steps ready to copy-and-paste. (Which, to be honest, were mostly borrowed from emails I've received in the past from my ILs.)

I dove back into coaching at PD on Friday. We had opportunities to practice pieces of our first week's lessons. I had so much fun offering high-leverage, bite-sized feedback to my partners. I also had fun when, satisfied with the feedback they had received, my partners brought some friends over for help with their lessons as well. Seriously, that happened.

Now that we're preparing for 5th Grade Induction tomorrow, I've had the opportunity to do the same for colleagues in my own building. It's fun, and really gratifying to see a teacher make one tiny change that changes their entire teacher appearance.

I'm really looking forward to getting coached and doing coaching this year.

Training Update

The week is over (well, mostly; we still have a formal shindig in the city tonight to celebrate 10 years of Uncommon Schools). I've given my "anonymous" feedback on the PD sessions and I'm eager to start a week of logistics and last-minute preparations at my school.

This year, I had one big triathlon accomplishment: in my last race, a sprint tri, I finished VERY close to top half of my age group. I was 28/54, less than 30 seconds from the top half. I am...average! It's been a long journey to average, and I'm proud of it.

I also had a few small accomplishments, including cutting 2 minutes from my half marathon time.

Since my accomplishments do not match the time I've put into this sport, I've decided to work with a coach. I have found three advantages to working with a coach:
1) she pushes me harder than I would on my own
2) she holds me accountable for completing workouts
3) I feel less selfish taking time to train, since she is looking for it as well

Of course, I could do all these things on my own, but I've spent 8 years NOT doing them, so it's time to change.

I had 3 perfect weeks: I finished every single proscribed workout (with the exception of one weight training session that I didn't see on the schedule until the week was already over), and felt (pretty) good doing so. I've been doing more faster bursts in my running and biking, which is really fun.

The fourth week was a bit more challenging, as I had to combat a 24-hour stomach bug and ended up shortening 2 workouts and skipping one weight training session. Still, it's going great overall, and I can't wait to see the improvements in the official records.

This weekend, I have a 20 mi bike ride (with Daddy!) followed by a 15 min run, and then a 9 mi run on Sunday with a few fast miles thrown in. I'm a little nervous about the 9 miles - it's the longest run I've done since my half in April, but I have done 8 this summer and 7 last weekend, so it should be possible. It will involve the challenge of eating (there's no way I can run for almost 2 hours without a snack), so I'll have to pack some applesauce or energy gel. Looking forward to a good training weekend!

Science

Science is my passion. Teaching science is my passion.

Because of that, I have faced my first frustration of the school year, and it is one I face very often.

My school and school network has a big emphasis on professional development and the constant work of improving. Not only does this help us, obviously, improve, but it also allows us to model this effort for our students.

So, we start every school year off with two weeks of professional development. We have sessions almost every Friday afternoon in the school year. We meet, we work, we collaborate, we improve.

As a science teacher, I find it frustrating that there are very few opportunities for professional development in my school network. A few times a year, we have content-specific professional development (PD) sessions. The ELA teachers meet to talk about teaching reading strategies, or teaching lessons on writing, or about diving into novels and non-fiction writings. The math teachers talk about problem solving strategies, or developing foundation skills. And then, they put all of the history and science teachers in a room together to talk about, well, usually reading and writing skills.

Don’t get me wrong – reading and writing are two of the most important skills as a scientist. In order to prepare our students for high school, college, and career science, we need to give them the tools they need to pick up any textbook, newspaper, or journal article and understanding the meaning of the text and implications of the authors’ biases.

Great. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I can complain about PD this week. It is ALL science/history combined, learning about reading and writing skills. There are a lot of important skills science teachers need, and teaching reading and writing are only two of those. We need more practice teaching students to design experiments, carry out these experiments safely and efficiently, invest students in pursuing science careers, complete engineering tasks, and so many more. Given that this may be the only, or one of few, time(s) that all of the North Star science teachers are together, there may be more high-leverage ways they could be using our time.

Even these PDs, while useful, could be done so much more intentionally. We value intentionality, in our classrooms and outside. We are so limited in time and resources for our students that we need to make the most of everything, There is so much lack of intentionality in our schedule this week and in the sessions we have. Even within the sessions, the applications to science feel like throw-away attempts at making everyone feel “included”. Even some of the science texts we are looking at are less-than-stellar, and are not texts I would use in my classroom for this purpose.

Plus, ELA and math teachers get to miss school sometimes for PD and it’s not fair! I want to miss school sometimes. And learn to be a better science teacher, of course.

I have done everything I can to change this. I have brought this up with my principal/instructional leader/principal lead of science (each subject has a principal lead, but science is the one led by someone with no content background at all – he’s an English teacher). I have made these suggestions, and even offered to write and lead these PD sessions. I have been told that there is no time for that this week because of the “schedule shifting around.” Hmmm. Skeptical.

This morning, we had the first science-specific PD I think I’ve ever had at North Star, and it was awesome! It really pushed us to do our work better and more comprehensively, with a specific focus on how we can incorporate engineering tasks and skills into our classroom. We had a great time, and it really challenged us. Too bad it’s the only one we have on the schedule. We’ll see.

I can’t really worry about it, because I’ve done what I can reasonably do to help. I also can’t just “not care”, because I have to work to hard to not care. So, I’ll settle for an in-between, slightly subversive contentedness, while taking every opportunity to make it better. I will sneak improvements into my science teaching when nobody is looking. I will ask my peers for feedback. And when a colleague asks me, during our “Planning Writing Mini-Lessons” science/history PD session, “How does this apply to our science classrooms?”, I can answer in a way that makes us all learn a little more: How will you use this in your classroom? Don’t know? Figure it out.

And then we’ll figure it out.

I'm Back!

I'm back. I think. And I wanted to share two things with you: where I was, and why I'm back.

Where was I?
I was here. Same place, same school, same back-of-back triathlon times. I was BUSY. In the last year and a half, I:

• Got married :)
• Took 10 minutes off my NYC Triathlon time, then added back 8 of them on a 93 degree day
• Lost 10 lbs for my wedding, gained it all back, and have so far lost about half of it again
• Felt complacent in my second year at VMS, and therefore didn't have much to write about
• Took on way to much in my third year at VMS, and therefore didn't have time to write
• Spent time working on some other writing projects, including finishing my first novel (it's pretty awful, but I've created a fictional near-future world of space travel and time travel that I can't wait to continue exploring in the future)
• Enjoyed the first weeks of my nephew's life and can't wait for the next weeks, months, and years

I'm back because:

• I have new insight on how much is the right amount of work for me, and what I need to do to make my career sustainable
• I need help keeping accountable this sustainability
• I need help keeping accountable for still learning and improving myself as a teacher, athlete, and wife
• I started working with a triathlon coach about three weeks ago, and want to share the exciting progress I'm already making
• I love writing

This blog is a really fun project for me and it helps me learn about myself and look at my experiences from a different point of view. I'd love if you joined me again!