6 Minute Reflections

What is Happening in My Classroom?

In my head, I feel like my classroom is in complete disarray, but when I step back, calm my anxiety, and clear my head, I can see that my classroom is functioning as usual. I’m so busy right now that every little thing feels like an immense task that’s thrown at me that I need to complete. It’s causing me to lag too far behind in grading, get snippy and negative with coworkers, and feel out of control. It’s even impacting my grad work. I know myself, and I know when I get overly stressed or anxious that I avoid tasks. I’ll push to do them at the last minute, and then I feel a surge of relief knowing I’ve accomplished the task, but then frustration and annoyance with myself immediately after because if it was that simple to complete, I should have done it the first time I was asked. Let’s move away from this topic because I feel like nothing I say here is going to help me get less busy right now. It’s just one of those things where I have to keep trucking along, minute-by-minute, until my biggest hurdles are over.

In Honors LA 10, I feel I’ve been doing an interesting job in switching up my curriculum to better benefit all students. At first, I incorporated more performance and work time because I needed those class minutes to do all my other work, but now I really enjoy taking things slow for a change. My students are happier and they seem to be learning more. I still struggle with pacing since this is an Honors course, but this is fine for now.

In LA 9 I feel like I’m doing some of my best lesson planning right now. I’ve backwards-designed my Elements of an Argument unit and it’s going so well. My students seem so prepared and open to learning in ways that I haven’t seen them do before. Even in my 9th grade class, where I haven’t been doing much community-building, we feel more connected because we’re all on the same page. It’s such a great feeling and I want the whole year to feel like this.

What Great Things Are Going On/Struggles/A-Ha’s

Luna is on my mind. My schedule the past few weeks has been insane. This week has been calmer, but it’s definitely a case of “the calm before the storm.”

Monday - this was the most relaxed I’ve been, partially because Link Crew interviews were finished and partially because I had my materials prepped so there was no running around getting things done last minute.

Tuesday I stayed after school for Luna. We finished making some of the bigger set pieces for our Gala and we planned out our Poetry Reading, which made me feel a lot better.

Wednesday I came to work at 7:00 because we have a meeting every Wednesday morning. Instead of wasting my time at the meeting, I read, annotated, and took notes on my Action Research journal. I also completed my Self-Assessment Checklist. I was able to work on some Luna things throughout the day, I performed 12 homework checks on 43 students, so multiple that and I assessed roughly 516 assignments in under 2 hours. Wowza. After school I had PBIS and I had an idea to use Powtoon and Canva to create some end-of-the-year celebratory PBIS materials to disperse to staff. Vanessa’s on that team so she and I are going to do that together.

Thursday I have to come in early at 7:45 to meet with my mentee and discuss his progress. Then after school I’ve got to corral my Luna students and have them decorate the stage for the Poetry Reading. I’m not looking forward to all of it though. We have to set up 100 folding chairs in the Resource Center so our audience can sit and enjoy the Reading, but for some reason the maintenance crew can’t do it so we have to lug all those chairs through the entire RC just to get them in to the pit.

Friday is the day of the Gala. Friday is also May Development Day for Link Crew. I’m going to be running around until the soles of my shoes are melted. I’ve already told my other two colleagues that I can’t help that much with Development Day (but it’s okay because I took the lead role on Interview Day), so hopefully I don’t need to get too wild and in charge. Finally, after Period 6 and 7, I have to run across the school, corral the Luna kids, and set up EVERYTHING ELSE for the Gala. Then I’ve got to run it, MC it, and clean it all up.

Saturday Morning I get to wake up bright and early to attend grad school. No rest for the wicked.

How Are Things Going With My Teddy

He’s still doing really well. He’s getting caught up on assignments but he’s still spending a huge amount of time in that other teacher’s classroom. He’s doing everything he needs to do, and he stays for lecture/discussions, but he leaves for independent work time. That’s still okay with me, because whatever he’s doing is helping him to get his work done and keep his grades up.

He has a terrible home life but I think he might be living with someone else, I’m not sure. I do know that he had his tonsils and adenoids removed in surgery last week. He was gone from school the first three days of his recovery but now he’s back. He’s still got some issues with them because they aren’t healed yet but he’s very concerned about getting everything finished and turned in.

How is My AR Going?

I think I have an idea that I want to work on, but again, I have lots of questions. How long should a cycle of action research be? All the things I want to do seem to be long-term changes, not quick sessions. I’ve been playing around with these things I call “Extension Activities” where I present a way for students to extend their learning past the current assignment and bridge to the next lesson. So far this has been good for differentiation, because the very top kids in the class (who want the challenge for the sake of the challenge) do it and my lower-middle level kids (who want the extra credit) do it. I don’t know if I should be tying extra credit to it right now, but I also haven’t done any real research on this idea.

I have seen these things called Task Cards in elementary schools, and I’m curious if

that’s the same idea as what I’m doing?

Relationship Building & Classroom Community

My relationships across the building with most people are fine. I’m well-respected and I engage with many different staff members, but because it’s the end of the year there’s been more frustration, stepping on toes, and negativity. People are just so upset with all the typical end-of-year things, plus we’re dealing with a massive rescheduling of EL students which impacts every person, plus the district is cutting teachers but raising class sizes to about 40. We’re frustrated and that makes us more snippy with each other.

My classroom community is the strongest it’s been so far this year. Students are engaged and interested in learning still.