One Obstacle Down

Last week was a big week on campus, as the 8th graders took their state writing exams. I bumped into a 7th grade reading teacher in the office, and she told me that one of our 8th grades said that she could now check that off her 8th grade checklist. That's right--it is a kind of rite of passage!

For years the 8th grade exam was a narrative or descriptive writing that students had two English class periods to complete. Last year, we were all thrown into chaos it was changed to resemble the high school exam, which is two prompts to be written in one testing session--and one of the prompts would most assuredly be some type of expository writing. I nearly wore myself out trying to get students ready. The rest of the department joined in with focusing less on narrative and more on expository, along with increasing stamina. Two essays in one sitting is brutal!

This year, along with the Common Core hysteria, we 8th grade teachers found ourself slammed with yet another new format to the state writing exam: one "task" to be written online. To make matters worse, the state did not release any practice prompts or exemplars. In fact, this year is a pilot year for this test, and it does not count toward our AYP, but that is something that we do not mention to our students. Sure, it may not count on any official paper work, but there will still be plenty of people looking at our scores, so it's really business as usual as far as I'm concerned.

With a lack of direction from the state, except for character count (2,000 maximum), and potential modes of writing to be tested (narrative, expository, and argumentative), I did the opposite of worry. I just taught good writing the best way I know how. In fact, I didn't even worry about the exam until the few weeks before, particularly when I realized just how short 2,000 really is. My goodness, in this case, if I taught only to the test, my students would be horrible writers!

Most of the students appeared to do pretty well on the exam. Because it was done on the computer, I was more clearly able to see their writing as I was walking around monitoring the test. I hated that part! Anyway, I harped on a few points, and I observed most of them no making the critical errors I warned them about, so I am actually pretty anxious to get their scores back, which won't be for months, so see if they did as well as I think they did.

For now, it's back to teaching. Only now we have the state reading exam coming up, so it's time for me to abandon my regular teaching for teaching for the test. I can't wait finished with that next obstacle!

Technology Transforms My Classroom

Although I am interested in using technology in the classroom, I know that I am way beyond the true visionaries. Even still...I keep plugging along.

At the beginning of the year I started using Edmodo, which is kind of like a school Facebook, with my classes. Unlike other platforms I have tried, like my district's teacher webpage system, I have been faithful in posting my daily assignment to Edmodo. In the evenings, when I am night school, I log on to check to see if anybody has any questions. What I find is that usually if the students post a question to the class, someone will usually answer it. I like that sense of community very much!

I also like that I can upload documents for students to view on their own. In an age when funds are tight and I am limited to the number of copies I can make, anything that I can upload for students to view digitally is a plus for me. How many papers do we teachers give students to put in their folders for later reference, such as help sheets or project instructions? These are the type of things that are great to upload because I just want student to have them.

Of course, with Edmodo available, I have high expectations of students. If they have questions about things, they should ask me or the class for clarification. If they are absent, they can check Edmodo for information. If they lose information about a long-term assignment, they can retrieve that information from Edmodo.

Edmodo also gives students the ability to turn in assignments. I've only used this feature a few times, but I like it very much because it keeps things organized, and Edmodo has updated its features so teachers can make comments right on students' documents. Pretty slick stuff!

Just before Edmodo came out with the feature that allows teachers to give feedback to students directly on their documents, I started using GoogleDocs with my students. Now, honestly, had Edmodo rolled out their feedback feature sooner, I would have never started with GoogleDocs, but since I did, and I didn't want to use a program just once, I stuck with GoogleDocs.

Now, GoogleDocs in the classroom is awesome! I have collected three major assignments since December, all of which required me to give students heavy feedback. (We're doing research, and it is always challenging getting middle schoolers to do things correctly.) It's a little bit confusing because students can be revising even after the assignment is due, and it's sometimes hard for me to keep track--even with the obvious date stamp. The other English teacher decided that with GoogleDocs she gives a lot more feedback, and I'd have to say that I agree. It's a little weird, though, to have students on at the same time while you are giving feedback. Just last week, while students were working on a different assignment, I was giving feedback on science research projects, and two students, sitting in two different classes, were obviously off-task and making changes to the feedback I was giving them. It was a bit of a trip! Awesome, though!

The downside of GoogleDocs has to do with management issues. I have instructed my students to label their assignments in such a way that, if they would do it correctly, I can easily move their assignments into designated folders. Of course, it's a pain in my rear when 10 students title their essays, "Persuasive Essay" with no name or period. Sure, it shows the name of the recipient, but because we are not yet a Google school, and many of my students did not take my advice on creating an account with a profession name, I have contacts named like LVSis94, CreamPuffDaddy, IM2QT4U. When I am trying to digitally sort 100's of papers, I don't really want to have to stop and figure out which of the damn kids is too cute for me!

What is much worse than the students not labeling their papers correctly is when they do not "share" the work with me at all. It's quite exciting that they are so wrapped up in their assignments that they forget that it's not just for their personal growth. Wait, it is for their personal growth--gak, am I really spouting Growth Model jargon so freely--but I'm the one who has to evaluate it. My Google ID is in giant letters on the board, and I post it to Edmodo everytime I give an assignment, but I still have those students who "forget" to share it with them. Some of then "remember" after they see their grades...I feel a little bit bad for them, but in reality, not sharing it with me is like doing the work and not turning it in. Some of them claim they "tried" to share it with me, but they typed in the wrong address. To that I reply, "If you don't see my gorgeous picture, you did not share it with me. Again, if you are not blinded with beauty when you share it with me, you did it wrong."

There have been many instances in the last few weeks where I am about done with the handful of knuckleheads who cannot turn in their assignments correctly. It's not like it's the same kid who just can't figure out how to do it because it's hard. It's the random selection of teenagers who don't follow directions on any given day. Exasperating! I have thought about just collecting EVERYTHING in hard copy again, but for now, I do appreciate working in this digital world, so I am holding out hope that my students and I master it soon!

No Interruptions, Please!

I promised my students no homework over the winter break. This included not having any pending projects due after the break, too. However, in exchange, they had to work their little patooties off in December, and on the last day before break they submitted research-based persuasive essays.

Of course, this a wrecker on my holiday break, as I have all those papers to grade, but putting it off until we return will not make my life any easier. I had high hopes of getting those essays graded right away, but as we are nearing the end of the first week of my break, after 12 hours of grading and I'm only halfway through, I'm near my wit's end. Big shocker. Like I haven't been there a million times before...

This time, I'm finding things are a little bit different because my students have shared their papers in GoogleDocs with me. This is the first big assignment my students have completed in GoogleDocs, so there are a few bumps, but I'm so excited to use it! One of my colleagues, Mrs. E used it on a previous essay and said she ended up spending more time grading because she made so many more comments. I am finding this to be true, too, but I can type a lot faster than I can write, so it's actually for me to leave comments. Oh, and can we talk about how neatly the comments are arranged? It is so much better than my scrawl scrunched in the margins!

There is frustrating dark side to using GoogleDocs. I feel like such a horrible teacher even mentioning this, but as I am rushing to finish my self-imposed vacation homework, I am in no mood to have to respond to communications from my students about my comments and their grades. Quite a few students have messaged me, either though the document or in gmail, about their essays within an 30 minutes of my finishing grading.

Of course, these are the panicked students who could not follow directions or read the rubric and are shocked at their low grades. Some of them have fixed their errors (like not including bibliographies) and have asked me to look at their essays again, while others write begging, desperate messages inquiring what they could do to improve their scores. Don't get me wrong here. Last week, as I was giving feedback to students, they would come online and respond to my comments, and I thought it was a major advantage--especially for those students who never say a word to me in class but are comfortable speaking through the computer. However, this time it feels different. For one thing, this is supposed to be final draft I'm evaluating, and for another thing, technically, I'm on vacation and I do not want to go back to recheck the work that should have been completed correctly. It will suck up all my time!

Oh, I feel terrible having such feelings. I really do... In using Edmodo and GoogleDocs this year, I feel like my student have even more access to me outside school time, and there are many times that this is an advantage, but other times, I feel like I need more boundaries between my students and my personal life. It's ironic that at this point in my career I am all about leaving my classroom drama at school while I'm using digital tools that complicate that mission.

I can't help but wonder if my new love/hate relationship with GoogleDocs is also about teaching an old dog new tricks. I'm used being alone in my hours upon hours of grading. Just me and a stack of essays. In those quiet hours, I go through a range of emotions from pride to anger, making a list in my head on some next steps after I pass back essays. This is a process I am used to. Before I even started grading these essays, I knew that it probably would not be the final draft for many students, as my years of experience tell me that the first time we incorporate research into writing, it's a tough battle in writing well and without plagiarism. Perhaps those hapless students looking over my shoulder while I grade need to sweat in fear little bit, but I really don't want to ruin their Christmas vacations either. If they had turned in paper copies of their essays, their scores would been completely forgotten until I bring up the topic after the break.

My simplistic, blanket message back to students who have begged and inquired says, "After the break, everyone will have an opportunity to revise essays. You are welcome to work on the paper over the break, but I think it is better for you as a young person to enjoy this break while you can."

This old teacher, using her new tricks, still needs time to think about the plan of action. So, dear students, sshhhhh. Go back to your playing and let your teacher get some work finished so she can play soon, too.

Wits and Knowledge

I was so looking forward to these three weeks of solid instruction between Thanksgiving Break and Winter Break, as the month of November is always a gigantic, fragmented mess. You would think that I would have been more prepared, but no, I've been flying by the seat of my pants. Luckily, these pants were made for flying.

What? You say it's only Tuesday? No matter. I'm going day by day. Tomorrow I'll be super prepared because this afternoon, I pulled the PowerPoint and support materials onto my desktop for easy access, as opposed to searching for it in my 20-gig drive 10 minutes before class, like I've done the last two days.

Ah, hahaha, I'm not really that bad off. I did sit down with the other English teacher during one prep last week so we could write our lesson plans, but sometimes writing them is not enough. Sometimes other preparation is necessary--like reviewing the material to see I truly remember it myself.

And that's where the winged trousers come in. I have had no time to study what I'm going to teach. How pleased I was to realize that with a PowerPoint outline (created some time in the past) and a stout cup of coffee, I was more than capable of lecturing to my students yesterday and giving guided practice today. With all the breaks and madness of the last month, it felt good to just teach. In fact, the last two days, I'd say I was in the zone.

(I hope my supervisor felt that vibe when she came in for her first (surprise!) observation yesterday!)

Not Good Enough

This morning, as I began checking off which students turned in their first novel journals, an assignment due yesterday, I started to get increasingly agitated. This was just looking at the formatting, which is not even included in the assessment, but it was included in the instructions.

So what do I do? It is inappropriate to deduct points for papers submitted in pencil rather than in ink or typed, as I requested. I also do not like deducting points because the header is incorrect, although for this assignment, the header listed book, author, and number of pages read, all of which are important. However, the other irritant, papers that did not have paragraphing, is absolutely something that could be marked down, and was actually a part of the rubric.

Rather than get my blood pressure up, I opened up my drawer, took out my REDO* stamp (a first for this year), and started stamping away.

When the students came into class, I told them how irritated I was with the quality of work handed in and rather than complaining about how impossible they were with their other teachers during lunch or starting to hate them a little, I decided to just have them redo the assignments. No, I wasn't mad. They weren't quite in trouble yet, but they also had no choice but to resubmit the assignment because until they do, it is recorded in the gradebook as an incomplete, which I count as an F grade.

They took it maturely. I saw a few light bulbs go off when I articulated why I had been expecting multiple paragraphs. (I'm starting to have doubts about their organizational abilities!) Nobody argued that they had turned in their best work, and in fact, several looked rather sheepish when I approached them with their papers saying, "Formatting aside, is this really your best work? Do you think you might want to look at the overall quality before you turn it in again?" Thank goodness not one student groaned at the thought of having to redo an assignment--that would have ignited my ire for sure. Still it surprised me that there wasn't at least one.

I have a pretty good group of students this year, but I think they are starting to lose momentum. I don't blame them for testing the waters to see how little they can get away with. It's a good lesson for all of us today. I spent most of the day returning the assignments to be redone when I could have spent time scoring the assignments--an exasperating waste of time if you look at one way. I hope that this small act sets a new concept in class: do it well or do it over.

*I had this stamp made at VistaPrint. They often offer "free" supplies and you pay the postage. A lot of teachers have blogged about creative ways to use this company. Do a search--you'll see!

Status Report

I've been much too busy playing Words with Friends in my spare two hours a day to blog. But if I were blogging more often, you'd know

• It's kind of miserable with some of my colleagues this year. There's a lot of strife with strong personalities and inept support staff. I'm trying my best to stay out of it, but I've found myself in the middle a few times since school started. I've been in tears from frustration (rock and hard place) and once one of them made so angry that it triggered a painful headache. I guess my invisible headache was better than the violent thoughts I was having. Why can't we all just get along?
  
• I'm having a great year with my 8th graders. When I get frustrated with other things, I like to keep in mind that they are a good group and I should enjoy them while I can. Most of them work hard, and they are sweet. Second semester often brings the end of the honeymoon, but so far, all the good things I had heard about this group are true.
  
• My seniors take their next writing proficiency exam in two weeks. I cannot see where they have made progress. In fact, in my attempts to help them develop content, it looks like they have forgotten the knowledge on structure that they had in the beginning. I have six students in that class, and most days I want to murder them. You'd think that we'd have a great experience with such a small class, but I have some attitude problems.
  
• It's unfortunate for my own children that I have spent 15 years with other people's teenagers. It is just not possible for me to be the cool mom. I thought I'd be better at this parenting pre-teens and teens thing, but I'm not. Sucks to be me.

We are nearing the end of the first quarter, and I'm neck deep in it all like I usually am. Sometimes I look out into my classroom, and I have no idea what year I'm in. Does it matter? Sometimes it seems all the same. That's depressing, right? So then I try to think of ways to make it more fun. Ways to enjoy the here and now... It's a daily thing!

What Happens in Game Club

It all started when one of my students approached me on the first day of school about coming on Fridays to play Axis and Allies, as the teacher who hosted it for them last year is no longer at our school. I stay late on Fridays anyway, so I agreed.

Within a few days, I read about Mrs. Bluebird's Board Game Club and then thought of my own failed Scrabble Club from last year. I had a few students who showed up, but it conflicted with Leadership and Debate, which are more serious clubs, so my poor club fizzled away.

I spoke with Mrs. E.--we do everything together--and decided that it might be fun to just do a basic game club. I mean, if I there were going to be 3-4 boys playing a game, why not invite more to people come play games? No harm in trying, and Friday is a great day since there are few clubs and spending an hour playing games sounded like a great way to end the week. Kind of like a kid happy hour!

I had six Scrabble boards. The Leadership adviser had a box of miscellaneous games, such as mancala, checkers, and chess. My social studies colleague had more inexpensive checker/chess boards with pieces, and a 7th grade math teacher had three Clue games (still in plastic!) that some anonymous person dropped off in his room a few years back.

And so Game Club was born.

When Mrs. E. and I were talking about it at lunch, one of our colleagues said that it sounded like a great idea. We could feature a different game each week and teach them how to play it. As brilliant as that idea was, it wasn't what I had in mind, and that wasn't what the kids had in mind, either! On the first day we had 35 students show up, and it was sheer madness! We also had several teachers stop by to play for a little while. It was all I could do to get the students to sign in before they were grabbing games and rushing to tables to sit and play.

The first week was overwhelming because I did not know there would be so many kids crammed into my classroom, and there were some students (who happened to be mine) messing around and going in and out. Most of those students have not come back after I railed them about goofing off in the hallways, where they cannot be after school. "You're either in or you're out!" At our school, students are either in a club or outside the gate. The campus isn't open for wandering. The air conditioning was a little wonky and I wondered if I could require deodorant for kids coming to the club, but we survived. Mrs. E. and I played a few games, too. She learned how to play cribbage from another teacher.

After a few weeks, we have our groove going. The kids rush in, grab boards, and start playing. They clean up after themselves after each game, and some of them even double check to make sure all the pieces are back in boxes. We remind the rest of them. (That does not mean I don't have three Scrabble tiles and a miniature lead pipe that go in one of the games...) We allow snacks but warn them that if they leave their trash behind, that will be the end of that. Students need to stay the whole time and not a minute longer, especially if they are riding the late bus, but we also have learned that a good third of the students can only stay 30 minutes because they have to pick up their siblings from the elementary school across the street.

Mrs. E. and I cannot figure out if the kids know each other, or if they are just mixing it up with whoever wants to play. (We decided it would be lame of us to ask.) Sometimes we sit and play, but usually if someone wants a partner, we try to find someone else to play with them. We spend a lot of time making sure nobody is left out. The kids are really good to each other, and if someone wants to get up from the Clue game, which requires more attention span than most of them have, to play Uno with a lonely kid, nobody cares. I compelled three of my 8th grade boys to let an younger, awkward girl to be the banker in their Monopoly because that's all she wanted to do, and they didn't even blink an eye. Love those kids!

We've contemplated moving our club to the library where there are more tables (space, oxygen, air conditioning), and if we get over 40, which I think we hit yesterday, we might just need to do that, but for now, Mrs. E. and I are just giddy that we have such a large group of students from all grades who just want to hang out after school and be kids.

Oh, and you know what's crazy? The boy who wanted to come play Axis and Allies decided to go Tennis Club on Fridays instead!