4 Years

I know I missed blogging last week. That's not because nothing exciting happened it's just that what I want to blog about will take a while, which means it will take brain power, which I haven't had much of lately. So, stay tuned...coming soon.

Today Stephen and I have officially been dating for four years. Four years...crazy. Some days I can't believe four years has already passed and other times I feel like it has been forever. And, not forever in a way that makes me wonder when it's going to end, but forever in a way that makes me look forward to what is to come.

In honor of our anniversary, here are some of my favorite memories with my boo. (The selection is a little limited because I am pulling from facebook instead of my personal picture files)

Bulls' Game

 Packaging Meals for Change This World

(Selfishly I like this one because I'm tan) :)

 Loving the Fact I have TWO Degrees before He has One.

And, Grateful that he was there to support me.

 Trips to Grandfather Mountain

 Having the Best Halloween Ideas!

 Hammocking in the Park

 Being Goofy in Mast General Store

 Skating!

 Playing in the Snow!

 Youth Trips

Stephen, I love you! Can't wait to see you this weekend! <3, me

A Detailed Bullet List of Last Week

Before this week gets away from me, I thought I should make sure to record the highlights of last week.
So, here we go...

• The phone in my classroom rang for the first time last week. I didn't realize it was my phone so I immediately began to scan the class to snatch a cell phone from a student. Then, I realized my students were looking at me and then at the phone with this confused look on their faces. That clued me into the fact it was MY phone ringing and I should probably answer it. 
• We have a literacy program called START (Students and Teachers All Reading Together). It's awesome! The whole school reads together for 15-20 minutes, has a time of reflection, and then has a literacy mini lesson. I love it because I am required to read too and I get to read whatever I want. Earlier last week, I had one of my students come up to ask me a question. Now, for a little background on this kid, he is reading the second Hatchet right now and is very excited and into it! 
• He comes up to me and says, "Ms. Hemric, I have a question that is a little bit off topic."
• Me: "Okay?"
• Him: "Do you know why they call it Easter?"
• Me: "I have no idea...I'm sorry."
• Him: "Do you think it is because Jesus died in the east?"
• Me: "Maybe, but I really don't know."
• Him: "I was just thinking about it." 
• He turns around and goes and sits down and continues reading.

Definitely one of the most random conversations I've had in a while.

• Thursday was an eventful day. Progress reports went out on Thursday. Well, my computer screen was half black when I got in Thursday morning. So, I thought re-starting it might help. But then my computer decided to not boot back up. My next step? I went to my desktop to try to print my progress reports. I think that is going to work...until...the files open to print and have no grades on them. Two different teachers tried to figure out the problem, but we were all at a loss. So, down to the front office I went to see our NCWISE hero. It took her a little while to figure out my problem, but we got it resolved and got my progress reports printing. However, my lap top is still dead at this point and I need it for my lesson for the day. Keep in mind I only had 45 minutes of planning this week because I had a class for the second part of my planning. So, off to the library I go to talk to the technology heroes of Carrington. He gives me a possible solution and says he'll work on getting me a new lap top. His solution worked for the day and I had a new lap top by the end of the day! All of this happened before 9am. Whew what a day! 
• I had morning duty last week, which required me to stand and monitor the stairwell that the 7th graders come up every morning. Our steps have just enough lip on the top of them that make them easy to trip on. Now, I love to see people fall; I think it is hilarious. However, these are fragile 7th graders we're dealing with who are already very self conscious. So, I didn't think it best to laugh in their face. But, it made the mornings quite entertaining as many of them fell up the stairs each day. 
• I had a kid on Friday wear a paper napkin hat through my entire class.
• In college, I was never the student who had to be in the library to study or get work done. I actually preferred to work from home. I decided this week that I think this is the same for me when it comes to planning. I went into last week completely planned for the week plus two days of this week. I planned on using my afternoons at school to get planned for this week. But, that didn't happen. I think the majority of my planning is going to be done from home this year. I just seem to work better at my desk in my room. 
• 2nd Quote of the week: (I think the Easter conversation wins for this week, but this one was entertaining too)
• Student: "Ms. Hemric, I think something is wrong with this calculator. It keeps telling me 40-36 is 4."
• Me: ...wait...wait...wait for it
• Student: "Oh! Never mind."
• Me: smile and walk away

A Review of My Goals

If you remember from this post, I made this list of goals:

My goals for this year:
Maintain a regular work out schedule
Get plenty of sleep
Make sure my students know I care about them
Support my students in all they do...both inside and outside the classroom
Leave school at school when I leave in the afternoons
Stay organized
Journal/blog at least once a week
Choose to have a positive attitude everyday

If I don't remind myself of them, I would probably forget about them. Having this list has really helped me be intentional about some things as I have approached this first year of teaching.

So, how am I doing so far?


Maintain a Regular Workout Schedule: Hasn't happened yet. I'm striving for this to start next week.

Get Plenty of Sleep: I don't know how teachers are able to stay up past 9pm. I have been in bed by 9:00 every night and some nights it's been even earlier than that. This is wiping me out physically. So, getting plenty of sleep hasn't been a problem. My body shuts down at night.

Make sure my students know I care about them: I hope my students have been able to tell this. I have already developed some close relationships with students. And, I always try to make sure my students know I care about them. It's easy to tell when someone doesn't feel well or if they are in a bad mood. And, I try hard to always ask them if they're okay and let them know I'm here to talk to if they want. I hope they understand that it is because I have their best interest in mind and that I care.

Support my students in all they do...both inside and outside the classroom: When I wrote this, I was aiming for supporting students' in their extracurricular activities. I haven't gotten to any yet, but have duty at them next week. So, I'll be there. I do ask about their after school activities and I hope they see that as some small level of support. I had this high expectation of myself to go to as many home events as I could (aka in my mind, all of them), but time just has not allowed for that. I'm glad that I signed up to help out at some of the events because that forced me to make time in my afternoon. I think it is important for my students to see me outside of the classroom cheering them on.

Leave school at school when I leave in the afternoons: Emotionally, I've done fine with this. Although, nothing major has happened that has really required me to turn my emotions off when I leave in the afternoon. With planning, I have not done so well with this...at all. More about that coming...

Stay organized: I am an organizational freak. And, you wouldn't really be able to tell that from my stuff so far this year (shocker!). In my head, things are organized. And, my room is not a mess, but it gets pretty chaotic with papers by the end of each day, which I of course have to straighten before I leave every afternoon. The system that is working best for me so far is to make piles of extra copies and other documents behind my desk as the week happens. Then, Friday afternoon, before I leave, I put that stack in its designated spot/notebook. So far this is working.

Journal/blog at least once a week: check!

Choose to have a positive attitude everyday: This is the one that having these goals has helped me be intentional with the most. There have been some days that I have been tired and frustrated, but because of this and promising my students I would give them a positive attitude each day if they would give me one has helped me do better with this.

Here is where I posted these goals for this past week
On the agenda for this weekend:
Go through all the work from this week that students turned in
Get planned for next week
Get organized...again
Last weekend was VERY productive and I was able to go into this past week completely planned for this week and Monday and Tuesday of next week. Which was nice because I had no time to get any planning done this week.

On the agenda for next week:
Teach an elective class for the week (aka my planning will go from 90 minutes to 45 for this week)
Have morning duty
Two faculty meetings
Progress reports
Introduce a new concept...that I don't even have my head wrapped around yet
Join the gym: I didn't join the gym this week...It was just too crazy. I know; I know...Excuses excuses. Next week...really.

More about the rest of what was on my agenda for this week coming...

Oh What a Week

This week has been loooooooong. I can't remember the last time I was this happy to see Friday roll around.

I have LOTS to blog about from this week. The happenings of my week will appear in posts to follow throughout the week.

But, for now...I thought I would post some pictures of my room. I meant to do this after the first week of school and kept forgetting. Finally, this week I put on my to-do list "take pics of room" and that was what helped me remember. It still needs some work. And, it is a mess right now (not too bad in the pics). But, here is what I've got so far.

The front of the room hasn't changed much.

 Those are our social contracts above my desk. And, my new easel which holds my calculators and individual white boards.

Another angle. That poster has students' equation collages about themselves on it. It spreads across the back of the room. The other half is in the picture below. And, they say "Rockin Radicals." Students filled in the equation "My Hobbies + My Goals = Me" with pictures and drawings about themselves.

The rest of the equation collages and my Word Wall.

I'm still loving the windows and keep the blinds up all the time. The counters discourage/block students from getting distracted about what is happening outside. I think they enjoy the natural light coming in. However, things in my room are fading F.A.S.T. I can tell from day to day when I write on the calendar on my desk that the sun is bleaching what I write. I left something highlighted on my desk for a few days and by the end of the week, the highlighting was almost invisible. It's crazy how the sun does that. But, I don't care! I like the windows open. Funny story about opening the windows this week coming soon...

And, just because I was so excited to FINALLY get this in the mail, I'll end with this picture.

It's official. I have a Master's Degree!

FLEXIBILITY

Flexibility is key for teachers. And, not always the easiest for me. But, I was able to roll with the punches this week.

It turned out to be a much shorter week at school, but somehow longer feeling week than I had planned.

My grandfather passed away Monday. So, the family went down to Wilmington for the day Tuesday for the viewing. I was at school on Wednesday, which was a half day for students and included meetings for teachers until 4pm. Thursday was the funeral. And, Friday was a normal day for this worn out teacher.

After we got the call Monday morning, I made all the necessary calls and sub plans for Tuesday since I was going to have to be out. And, my colleagues could not have been more supportive and understanding. They told me not to worry about anything! During my last three semesters of college, absences were strongly frowned upon unless there was an absolute emergency. For example, I might have had one absence (if I was lucky) in some classes that I could use at my leisure, but any after that led to a penalty in my grade. Now, I understand this was an emergency, but the little miss goody goody in me still wants to follow all of the rules no matter what, which for me means never/rarely missing work. I am thankful that App turned us into reliable, responsible teachers with this no absence pressure, but am also thankful that it wasn't an issue for me to take two full days off so early in the year and my career (not that anyone anywhere else would have had a problem with my absence...I just always feel bad if, in my head, I feel like I'm doing something wrong).

Wednesday was a half day. And, the fall fundraiser kick off. I saw each class for less than 20 minutes. However, I needed to give them a little instruction so they would know how to do the work I was leaving for them on Thursday. So, I squeezed a lesson with notes in 15-20 minutes. It was crazy rushed, but they seemed to get it...especially since it is a concept that isn't new to them. I'm no superwoman teacher who can teach brand new material in less than 20 minutes and have 95 students understand it be able to apply it on their own, without me the next day. Then, after the kids left at 12:30, we had meetings until 4pm. I decided I don't like early release days as much as I did as a student. :) It was a very productive afternoon though with some entertainment thrown in to keep us going.

Thursday I was out. And, overall, my students did very well with the sub. Funeral days are very long and exhausting. We had a steady flow of people from 10:30 am until I went to bed at 8:45 pm. I am so grateful for the love and support we had from so many family and friends! We are so blessed! I didn't realize how exhausting those days can be though. And, I crashed quickly at 8:45. A good night's rest was just what I needed for today.

Today we played catch up in all of my classes. We went over a quiz from last Friday. I gave students their missing assignments because I found out on Wednesday that progress reports go out next week.(Yikes!) We finished notes from last Thursday. And, went over notes again from this past Wednesday. I should be able to get back on track next week, but they ain't kidding when they say you need to be flexible. I had such great plans for this week prepared last Thursday and didn't get to use any of them. Oh well! I'll be ready for these lessons next year!

On the agenda for this weekend:
Go through all the work from this week that students turned in
Get planned for next week
Get organized...again

On the agenda for next week:
Teach an elective class for the week (aka my planning will go from 90 minutes to 45 for this week)
Have morning duty
Two faculty meetings
Progress reports
Introduce a new concept...that I don't even have my head wrapped around yet
Join the gym

It will be a busy and full week! I plan on getting LOTS of rest this weekend as I prepare for it and will probably crash next weekend! :) Here we go!

Quotes of the Week:
When a student realized I was back today:
"Ms. Hemric, you're not going to be out anymore are you? Because I don't like it when you're not here."
When sharing his good thing for the day:
Student: "I'm going to see 'Power Rangers on Ice' this weekend!"
Me: "Are you really?"
Student: "No. I just thought it would be funny."
Where do they come up with this stuff??

Jerking

Quote of the Week:
(From a student's information sheet)
What are things you do outside of school that you enjoy the most?
"I like to video myself jerking on facebook"

When I read that, my eyes got huge and I was scared to find out what I had just learned about this student who isn't actually in my class so I should have never had his information sheet to begin with. I took it to school the next day and showed it to some teachers...all of us are 23. So, we're not that old. However, there is still some new lingo that sounds like old lingo that we don't know about. The male teacher on my team figured out through some conversations with students that jerking is a dance. Whew! That could have been a bad situation fast.

Well, I made it through my first full five day week of school! And, I'm not nearly as tired as I thought I would be. I was scared that by Wednesday I would hit a wall of exhaustion. I came close to hitting that wall yesterday, but managed to keep the wall a hurdle that I was able to jump over and manage to get through the rest of the week with energy, patience, and a positive attitude.

One of the biggest things I've had to get used to is how much time goes into planning. Planning a lesson and creating a flip chart for my activboard for each day takes a long time! I spend well over an hour for each day. And, I've learned that I can't see the forest for the trees. When I have a lot of little things to get done, I can't focus on the bigger things that I need to get done, which are usually more important. For example, I have had a lot of little things on my to do list this week (emergency sub plans, professional development plan, organizing notebooks, decorating my room, etc.) and then one major big thing...plan for next week. I could not get myself to focus on next week until I had accomplished most of the "smaller" things on my to do list. I think I just like to check stuff off. I get to check a lot of small things off if I do those instead of planning, which is just one thing. I'll get better with this when lesson plans for the week begin to be due Monday morning at 7am.

Pay day was this week. At Appalachian, we do a lot of internships and are in the schools a lot as we go through our teacher preparation program. And, we're SO lucky to get those opportunities. But, we do it all for free. Actually, we pay to do it because we are paying tuition. So, everything I've done the past few weeks, I'm used to doing for free/for a negative income. So,  when I saw that check in my box the last day of the month, I was ExCiTeD!!

The honeymoon period of good behavior is slowly wearing off. Other than a major attitude problem a couple days ago, my biggest problem has just been talking during class. Although that can get annoying fast, I can't really complain; I could have much bigger problems on my hands.

I forgot how mad an attitude can make you. I don't care if you come in my class mad from something that happened earlier in the day. I understand things happen that aren't always the best. However, when you allow that attitude to affect your attitude towards me, we've got issues. One of my students came storming into class and then refused to do anything in my class. I tried talking to her in the hallway and that's when I reached my limit. She kept saying she had the right to choose whether or not she was going to do my work. I said, "You're right. Your choice is: you can do my work or you can go see an administrator." She chose the administrator and I respected her choice. I stayed very calm (firm, but calm) with her in the hallway and didn't realize how mad her disrespect made me until I went back in class and tried to carry on like nothing had happened. I kept a good face up, but I was mad. I was able to move past it and carry on with class. And, (as surprising as this is for a 7th grader to do) she apologized to me multiple times later that day. She's been great since then and my respect for her grew tremendously as a result of her actions later that day.

Another thing that has surprised me about some of my students is how much they love to read. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE that they love to read! And, a lot of them can not get their noses out of books. The second I take a break in class or they finish an assignment, they have a book out. It's awesome most of the time. Sometimes I have to tell them, "I'm so glad you love to read so much, but you have got to put the book away right now." I know I wasn't like that in 7th grade and I don't remember my classmates being like that either. Major kudos to some teacher or parent along the way who helped them learn to love reading!

I have an inclusion class one period, which is the class where students with any special education labels are placed. In each of my internships, I got to experience an inclusion class and awesome inclusion teachers. But, I didn't enjoy any of them as much as I am enjoying this one. I have 15 students in that class and they are all great! A lot of them have not been very successful in math in the past and I can see their struggles, but they come in every day, are attentive, and try so hard. And, they're doing great! I love this class because they are a great group of kids and because they are a challenge for me. I love math; I get math; I always have. Most of them don't. It's hard for me to understand that and because of this, I have to plan my instruction very carefully. I have to watch my pace and make sure that I am explaining things clearly, in every day terms, so that I don't lose them. It's been hard and I'm not very good at it yet, but I'm trying. They are going to be the reason I become a better math teacher this year.

Oh yea...the superintendent showed up at school this week. My class was lining up for lunch yesterday and a teacher stuck his head in the door and said, "FYI the principal and superintendent are in the hall." I closed my door and said, "Let's talk about something. The principal and superintendent are in the hallway. I'm new here and I need YOU to make ME look good. And, you do that by walking in a straight line, silently down the hall. Please, please, please be on your best behavior for me!" They did not say a word walking down that hallway. Or, going back because when we left the cafeteria, they were in the lobby. The quote of that day quickly became from other teachers, "FYI Spencer and the superintendent are roaming the halls." 

I've put a lot more on my walls this week, but I forgot to take a picture this afternoon. I was too excited that it was Friday and that it's a three day weekend! I got out of there as quickly as possible!!

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

PS Next week is not only a 4-day week, but we have an early release day on Wednesday AND the fall fundraiser kick off. So, we won't be doing much in class on Wednesday. And, we have our first football game Thursday. It should be a GREAT week!