Promotions

Last night, we had our 7th grade musical: Urinetown! The show was fantastic (in a middle school sense - I've learned to judge things on a middle school scale now), and there were a few line deliveries that had the audience roaring. Urinetown is a very funny show, but the humor is very smart, which makes it that much more impressive that 7th graders could pull it off (or, the 1-hour nice version). There was even one student who blew everyone away with her belting. And it's not easy to impress me with vocals. With my ego, I always think I can out-sing everyone. I don't think I could out-sing her, especially if she got herself some training.

Unfortunately, that was only 30 or so minutes of the afternoon. The rest of the time was corralling anxious and excited 12-year-olds without using any consequences that might result in their shutdown. There was a lot of angry whispering and juggling kids. You sit here. You sit here. (Wait 15 minutes, and they somehow end up in their original seats.) You sit here. You stand there. For about 4 hours.I left there in a less-than-exemplary mood at 7PM.

Fortunately, I had something to celebrate yesterday. I was pulled into the principal's office yesterday afternoon for a surprise check-in, and my IL was waiting there too. Oh goody. Fired already. The principal then went on to explain that in the interest of streamlining the work and level of rigor across North Star schools, especially in light of the Common Core changes, they would be choosing one 7th grade science teacher to write the lesson plans, 2 weeks in advance, coordinate the interim assessments, and keep the curriculum current, for all 3 middle schools. She's explaining this, and my IL is trying hard not to grin, and I'm thinking: Hurry up already and offer me the position! And she did. Plus $3,000, to basically just do a better job on the work I'm already doing. Plus $1,000 for a week in the summer of curriculum planning. So, not only do they like me here, they LOVE me. I'm a rock star.

So, I left school at 7PM, cranky and exhausted, and met the med school crew for a celebratory drink. I've never been out so late on a school night (9PM), and I definitely feel it today, but it was totally worth it. I'm proud.

I took a look at the course map for my 5K on Saturday. It's hilly. I'm getting nervous. It'll be hot and hilly. I don't want to slack off because it looks hard, and be disappointed in my performance, but I also don't want to have unrealistic expectations. I think I'm gonna have to ditch the GPS and expectations, and just run as fast as I can for as long as I can. Dig deep and run. Fast feet, easy arms. Keep on moving.

15 days left.

61.6 Miles in May

I am very, very frustrated right now because a colleague who often drops the ball and leaves it for us to discover, did it again. And (relating to the FPT) I have to use my prep time to plan and class time to teach to fill in the space. And I only discovered this because I am on top of my work and happened to take a peek at next week's work. Ugh.

In other news, I had an exciting weekend in EMS. Friday was my first shift at South Planfield EMS, and I was welcomed with open arms. Mostly.

We hung out for about an hour, starting at 7PM sharp. We decided to go out for Chipotle at about 8. Halfway through the line, we get toned out to an incomprehensible dispatch. We arrive to find a 97-year old (wow) woman and her daughter. The woman had been to the hospital earlier in the week, but wasn't feeling well again, and having difficulty standing up. (I'd have difficulty standing up at 97 too.) Of course, as we lifted her onto the stair chair, she said, "The poopie all came out." Great. The ride to the hospital was uneventful (albeit smelly) and I was in bed at 10:30 for the rest of the night.

The Friday night crew covers Saturday nights every 6th week, so I had to come in on Saturday as well. Saturday was a bit more exciting. We had 3 calls total, plus a missing person search. The first call was similar to Friday's: elderly person needing a ride to the hospital. Afterwards, we were called to the movie theater to help for a missing 46-year old mentally disabled man. 12 firefighters and 6 EMTs walked through the movie theaters with flashlights for 45 minutes until the missing man's caretaker admitted that he went missing a while ago, and soon after that we heard over the radio that they found the man at a gas station a mile away. That was productive.

A second unexciting call, followed by a drunk, pepper-sprayed, twentysomething who needed to be checked out...in lockup. He had gotten too drunk and belligerent at his sister's wedding and needed to be restrained. He was pepper-sprayed while being uncooperative. Definitely something I will NOT do at my sister's wedding. The best part of drunk patients is that they think they can logically negotiate their way out of a situation. He was trying to convince us and the cop that he should be allowed to leave. Needless to say, his negotiations were unsuccessful.

We got back to bed at 12:30. I was so tired after two nights of working that I crashed on Monday night by 8PM after a less-than-strenuous barbecue.

 Twice this week, I've gone out running because my mom helped motivate me. Yesterday, I got out right as it finished raining. Today, it was 88 degrees and humid.

But you know what I'm really proud of this month? This:

Cross Training

Last Thursday, we went on a field trip to a roller skating rink. It was really, really fun, and really exhausting. I had a blast chasing down kids, but called it a day after I got taken out from behind by a very small fifth grader. I rubbed my bruised elbow and gave back the roller skates. Still, I earned some cool points with my kids by giving it a shot. Counts as cross-training, right?

On Friday, we had a bunch of visitors from London and New Orleans, taking a look at our school to see how awesome we are. They are all school leaders, looking to improve their school. It was fun having visitors, because the kids always like to show off.

I had an awesome moment during class. We were learning about evolution (it was great - I pretty much summed it up as "DNA changes over time + DNA determines characteristics = characteristics change over time") and the kids were engaged in a really challenging reading, Common Core-style. Just then, a giant spider crawled across a desk! The student leaped out of his chair and screamed. I grabbed his folder, killed the spider, cleaned it with a tissue, and added a few dollars to the paychecks of those students who were still working urgently. Back on task in 10 seconds flat--just at the moment the visitors walked in.

A kindly British fellow was so impressed with the way the students were able to be told "Write Harvard Notes" and they were able to write formal outline-style notes with no further explanation. It took a lot of work, but I'm proud of my students (and myself) for getting to that point. I promised to send some lesson plans to the British dude.

Since Thursday, I've had some very successful and challenging workouts. Thursday, it was rainy, and I wasn't hopeful about my ability to run 4 x 5-min intervals between 9:35 and 9:45 min/mi. I hopped on the treadmill, set up some SVU, and finished with time to spare (did intervals at 9:30 pace).

Even after Friday's rest, I was wary of Saturday's workout, which was my first long run with speed work thrown in (according to the training plan I found on the internet). I was set to do a seven mile run, with miles 4-6 done at 10:15-10:30 min/mi. That's a pretty challenging pace, only about 30 seconds per mile faster than my fastest ever 5K. So not only did I have to do 3 miles, it was after another three miles, and before another mile. But, I did it, and it was fun! I enjoyed the challenge and it felt good. I was pretty sore afterwards, but the good kind of sore. And I managed the quick 3-mile part at 10:11 min/mi. That's only :33 per mile more than I hope to run a 5K next weekend (9:38 min/mi), and I won't have to run 3 miles first. I think I can do it.

Sunday, it was very windy, so I postponed my bike ride. I did get in a very slow and sore 2.5-mile run, to top off my highest mileage week yet (17.3 miles)! I got the bike ride in on Monday (Yay long weekend!), for an exhausting 20-miler. After that whole weekend, I was asleep at 8PM on Monday night.

Next update will include details of my first EMS shifts in nearly a year. There were drunks and poop.

Right now, I'm watching the 7th grade dress rehearsal of Urinetown. 'nuff said.

Detention Pains

Okay, one more complaint: last night I was eating Chinese food, that was not crunchy, and not sticky, and one of my fillings broke. I think I ate it. I've got a dentist appointment this Thursday. Fortunately, it won't be too much trouble to leave the staff meeting a few minutes early. I really, really hope they can fix it in one shot. I do not want another root canal.

Once again, I tried to go to sleep early, but it didn't work. Tonight, though. Definitely tonight.


Today we did more analyzing of a journal article, and it was still fun. This article was on the efficacy of the seasonal flu vaccine. Sure, I might be propagandizing my students. I'm going to end up with a class full of kids who will not be obese, who will get vaccinated, and who will be able to analyze scientific journal articles. Not bad.

Detention is a pain, but I'll deal with it. I'm really excited for curriculum planning tomorrow, though.

The most frustrating part of detention today is that I'm sitting next to a 5th grader who is permanently kicked out of 5th grade detention. Today he's playing the "look at me" game - he is making as many weird noises as he can, and talking to himself, hoping to get kicked out. I'm giving him the silent treatment. It's a little satisfying, but mostly annoying. Now he's promising that he has to go to the bathroom and it's an emergency. He's lying, of course, because I told him that he couldn't go until he finished his history homework, and if he really had to go, he'd be working on his homework instead of spinning the paper around and muttering to himself. I will never teach 5th grade. 7th graders, at least, do less of the stupid stuff like that, and more of the pubescent emotional short-temper stuff.

He's stopped making noise. I hope it lasts.

Yesterday evening, I got in the car, and immediately started negotiating my workout with myself. Nope. No negotiation. I posted it on my blog, so it must be done 100%. And it was.

Tonight, I have a 4-miler with some strides. My legs are pretty heavy from last night's pseudo-hills on the trainer, but I'll manage.

Mondays

Some Mondays, I feel like Garfield.

I tried to go to sleep early. I was in bed early, but there were so many things to read! I always get stuck in a book, just when I need sleep. Besides, somebody forgot to silence his phone last night, and I got woken up every time he got an email. And, it's going to rain all week, so it was gloomy in the morning and I have a headache. Is that all? I think I've complained sufficiently.

Punnett Squares are awesome. Today alone, I've had two non-science teachers poke their heads in and comment that Punnett Squares are the BEST. I agree. They are straightforward, intuitive, and relatable.

I learned some cool things about my students last week. First, they are awesome at Punnett Squares. The kids who are less strong at critical thinking, but are better at solving equations, were rock stars. Additionally, I learned that one of my students has sickle cell anemia, and another two are carriers of the gene (and also immune to malaria, which I pointed out, to their satisfaction). Now, all I need are students with hemophilia and colorblindness, and I've got all the practice questions I could ever use.

This weekend was an easy weekend for training, but I accomplished a huge goal of waking up at really early o'clock on a Saturday and going swimming in the outdoors. A local-ish triathlon coaching organization is hosting open water swims in a local-ish lake/YMCA campground (about an hour and a quarter from home). It costs $10, and that includes a free clinic. I signed up for the clinic, left home by 6:30, and was in my wetsuit by 8AM. I'll tell you what: the scale may say I've lost weight, but it doesn't mean anything until I put on that flashy neoprene for the first time all season. I've definitely lost some weight (8 out of 10 lbs so far!).

The lake was lifeguarded and well run. I had to show my USAT card (for insurance purposes) and I got a number written on my hand. I had to check in and out, and they promised to bother us by telephone if we didn't check out. I liked the security.

At the clinic, I learned new techniques for entering the water (some dolphin kick thing - I looked more like a whale), making tight turns around buoys, and sighting buoys (so I don't swim too far off course). I then got an opportunity to swim around a 400 m course twice (my first triathlon this year is 750 m). It was incredibly useful, because the first open-water swim of the season is always horrible. The water is murky, I can't see the bottom, and the mammalian dive reflex kicks in the moment I stick my face in the water, so my throat and chest tighten and I can't breathe. My goggles leak (I just ordered new ones) and the water is cold (not too bad though, the lake was close to 70). By the last 200 m or so, I got into my stride and was humming along to my favorite tunes while cruising along. My goal is to fit in one more open water swim, which will cut down my acclimatization distance a bit, so that by race time I don't feel like dying for the whole first half of the swim.

After the swim, I asked a staff member if there were any running trails at the campgrounds. He said, yeah, everywhere, just bring a GPS. And I did. I got in a nice off-road 5-miler, and it felt good. I then drove home, scrambled to wash myself and my wetsuit cleaned off, and raced off to SAT class.

On Sunday, it rained, so my 2-hour bike ride turned into 1 hour on the trainer watching Dance Moms. Not ideal, but I sweated.

This week is back to 100% training. It's a tough week, but I'll share it with you so you can hold me accountable:
Monday - 30 min. strength, 30 min. bike trainer w/ a couple hills (2-3 min @ higher resistance)
Tuesday - 4 mi run w/ 4 strides at the end
Wednesday - 30 min strength, 30 min bike trainer w/ 10 x 30 s sprints
Thursday - 4 mi interval run (1 mi warmup, 4x5 min fast w/ 2 min slow in between, 1 mi cool down)
Friday - REST
Saturday - 2000 yd swim (maybe open water), 7 mi run (incl. 3 mi medium-fast)
Sunday - 2 hr bike, 3 mi run easy

Let's do this!

Curriculum Planning

I really enjoy curriculum planning. Wednesday was our first of three weekly planning sessions for all North Star middle school science teachers. And it was fun.

We are focusing on moving towards Common Core standards. Common Core is the new buzzword in education in America. It is a series of guidelines designed to standardize all education in the US, with a heavy focus on literacy. It prioritizes teaching kids how to read more rigorous texts, to prepare them for college or technical documents that they will see after graduation.

I worked with two other 7th grade science teachers to map out the year, and find 8 topics that lend themselves to a "Ladder of Complexity". This is a series of three increasingly challenging texts on the same topic, so students can comfortably develop content knowledge, but then push it with texts from newspapers or college-level textbooks. It teaches students to read, and reread, and be comfortable being challenged by a text. I really like the idea.

The weakness of this logic is that we use a standard of measuring difficulty of text called a lexile rating. The lexile uses an algorithm that assigns a text a score based on the lengths of sentences and the commonality of words used. Unfortuantely, this means that science texts have an unusually high lexile score, because they often use words that are not very common elsewhere, even if students are very comfortable with them. This led to some challenges finding the bottom rung of our "Staircase of Complexity", and generally having to use our own judgement. Sometimes, the lexile scores did not match the sequence of complexity of the articles, and there was definitely some rearranging and reinterpreting.

We also focused on writing text-based questions, which focus on requiring the students to go back into the text to answer the question. The idea is that they can not just answer based on prior knowledge from class or other readings. These questions often include parts like "use evidence from the text to explain your answer" or ask the student to interpret a specific example in the text. This makes sure that students are really understanding the more difficult text, and aren't just answering based on notes they took in class. For example: “Modeling the core of the Earth must rest upon even more indirect evidence.” What does the author mean by “indirect evidence”?

All in all, I had a blast planning and collaborating for an entire day, and look forward to doing it again next week.

Content-wise, this marked the first week of genetics! Monday and Tuesday were kind of a knowledge dump: a lot of vocabulary, and as much application as possible to help cement the definitions. The kids had very little understanding of cell processes, so we had to start from the basics: Nucleus, DNA, genes. Cells read the genes to make proteins. Homozygous (giggle) and heterozygous. Alleles are types of genes. Everyone has two for each gene.

The most challenging part, for the students, was realizing that all of this was done inside the nucleus of every single cell.

It got much more fun and exciting when we got to Punnett Squares, but I'll save that story for next time.

Tuesday night was our weekly run and monthly dinner. We had mediocre pizza with terrible pizza near the running trail. We will not go back there. It was fun anyway. I also found a running track near my neighborhood, and managed to cut 10 seconds off my best mile. Now I can run a mile in 8:43. Not great, as I'd really like to go sub-8, but I think I can do better by the end of the summer. Now I have a baseline. It was also very quiet at the track; there were about 3 other people there. The weather was perfect (on Wednesday - about 70 degrees) and I really enjoyed my run. The track is too boring for regular workouts, but I'm happy to know it's there whenever I need a mile time trial.

This weekend, I have exciting things ahead. Tonight, I have tickets to the new Star Trek movie at the fancy theater with recliners and beverages. Tomorrow, I hope to schlep down to south Jersey and get my first open water swim. Cold, but since this is an otherwise easy workout weekend, it's probably the best time to do it. I promised myself I'd do two open water swims before my first triathlon (in less than a month!).

24 school days left.

Adventures

Last week was full of adventures, both academic and literal.

Wednesday, I had a wonderful, heartwarming teacher moment that served to remind me why I wake up at 5:45 every morning to get snapped at by 7-graders. A particular student, who has a solid C-average in my class, asked me on Tuesday what he needs to do to get a B, because he wants to make honor roll (B or better in all classes). I told him, study for the test on Wednesday. On Wednesday, he took the test, and asked about every clarifying question in the world (not unusual for him), none of which I could answer. ("You should know that." "I can't help you with that." It gets old, fast.) I graded his test quickly, and then pulled him out of history into the hallway. I asked him what he did differently for this test. I listened to him ramble on for a minute or two about how he and his mother scoured his classwork and studied together, before I pulled out his test -- 88! And that brought his science average to a B! He jumped up and down. Literally. In the middle of the hallway.

Thursday we had an all day field trip to an outdoorsy, team-building locale. I had a blast canoeing and cheering my kids on at the ropes course. It was raining for a while, but since there was no indoors, we stopped caring after a little while. We canoed till it hurt, and raced each other back and forth. The kids had a blast, but refused to admit it. I was completely wiped out by the end. (and had a glorious nap on the bus. Really. Best 30 minutes of my teaching career.) I was a little wary, though, because at the start of the trip, the chaperones were lectured on NOT helping the kids, letting them figure things out on their own. I anxiously sat on my hands while a student, in a canoe stuck on a tree stump, started crying. I watched while two other pairs of students canoed over and helped. I watched as the stuck girls unstuck, and then joined us racing across the pond. I watched kids help each other all day, and it wasn't the kids who help in the classroom. A lot of the lower students, and the skills kids, were superstars in the wilderness.

Unfortunately, my 88 student made a bad decision on the trip. He and a female student were caught kissing on the bus. They received phone calls home, though no real punishment. I was a little disappointed about that, more so than any other disciplinary decision made by my superiors this year. They weren't suspended, and they won't be banned from our Boston trip. This frustrates me because, well, aren't we telling kids that it's okay for them to kiss on a school trip? Where is the line? Kissing is 100% okay, but what about touching? Over/under clothes? When do we decide it's not okay? I'm sort of in support of a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to sexuality in a school setting.

Fortunately, it is more and more likely that I will get my health class next year!

That night, I did my first interval run! I may have strained my Achilles (or, strained my calf while canoeing/hiking, or bruised my leg wearing hiking boots), but it was really fun and challenging. Of the eight planned intervals, 3 were at target pace, 3 were a little too slow, and 2 were a little too fast. I need to get better at running at a prescribed pace. I was able to recover enough in time for a steady 7-miler on Saturday, which took a couple of miles to get comfortable, but went smoothly by the end.

This week is a rest week for me, so I'm keeping it easy on the workouts. If only I could get a rest week for school!