Escaped Snakes and Silly Students
Three weeks ago, I embarked on a new school adventure in America. Actually, it started more that three weeks ago, as I carefully, lovingly set my room up. I arranged the desks, the books, my teacher desk, my boards, all the way I wanted them. I even got permission to paint the wall in my room blue and make my students a bit happier.
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| Planning for the first quarter |
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| My lovely bookcase, organized by color. |
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| My degree did NOT include classes on painting. |
After some training and meetings, I finally got to meet my students. I have 7, 8, and 10th grade English classes. The first week, we didn’t do too much intense work, as I wanted to get to know them and train them to be in my class. We did do a day of goal setting where I asked them what they wanted to do and who they wanted to be in 10 years. Then we worked backwards and set academic and character goals for this school year and put them up on the wall on these colorful notecards.
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| My finished wall |
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| The only bulletin board I had an idea for... anyone else have new ideas? |
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| Student goals for the year |
Every morning, the teachers gather in the hallways to talk about their daily objectives and pray together. One morning on the first week of school, one of the teachers told us we needed to all have a closed door meeting in my classroom. I thought someone had died from how serious he looked.
“I don’t want anyone to panic. But the snake is out.”
I thought one of the other new teachers was going to faint.
I found the whole thing rather amusing and had contingency plans for if our dear school pet decided to drop from the ceiling or slither into my classroom at some point. During last block, he was recovered in the science room by a student, making himself quite at home under the hot water heater. Crisis averted.
After a weekend trip back to the Burg to see my family, I went back to school on Monday and found that our AC was out. Not just out... totally broken. I spent the day dripping sweat while I taught and finally took one of my classes out in the hallway where we could at least get some air flow.
The next day, our principal moved us around to an unused wing of another building so we could have some AC while the other building was repaired. I walked into my room at 7:30 to find this:
Ensue stress.
Blessedly, our fearless, snake wrangling science teacher helped me move junk and organize students to set up desks. The first couple of days were a little hectic as I didn’t have everything I needed, but now I have all my goods in the new building... which probably means we’ll be moving back to the old building this week. And I’ll be disorganized for another three days. Alas.
I’m about to really get into literature with my 7th graders as we start short stories, while my 8th and 10th graders work on research papers. I made my 8th graders go to the library and try using actual books to do research this week and they almost lost it.
Here are some of my favorite student quotes from the past three weeks:
“But why would you use a book when you can just look it up online?” - 8th grader
“Pride and Prejudice is a real book??” -7th grade, looking at my book shelf
"You're so organized." -8th grader, as I explained classroom procedure
"I've never been so excited about reading before!" 10th grader, carrying an armload of books out of the library.
While discussing the plot of a story and how it’s like a mountain, my 7th graders wanted to call it:
"Mt. Plotmous"
"the Plot-osaurus-rex"
"The Plot-cano"
"Do I have to write this down?"
everyone else "YES!"
"You seem like such a cool person, but you don't have any better music?" - 11th grader in my study hall who dislikes classical music
"It's okay... I hastagged your name, too." #MissKozerow - 10th grader on a creative writing assignment
"When you do assigned seats, I will PAY you if you don't put me by J ... Thanks!" - 7th grader
"Edgar Allen Poe is a real person?" -7th grader
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| This is what my life looks like now. |
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