The Mystery Behind Mr. E

2005-10-27T16:02:00.000-04:00

Just last week I was talking about how nice it was to have a sub cover my class. Well today there are no subs and two teachers out, which means I get 5 kids from other fourth grade classes. So of course these kids all get into it with each other, and I have no room to put them in my class. My class even got in trouble in computers, which should not be an easy thing to do since the kids are almost always real attentive while they are there.

My days have gotten boring, and I'm getting somewhat embarrassed to report on them. It's mostly all test prep. It's interesting how predictable the state test can be, and how simply it can be broken down, even the writing. Today we looked at the 5 steps needed to write the response for day 3 of the test. It's never any fun to read repsonses that all sound alike, but I guess it actually works and the students score well because they have had this practice.

I found an application for a school-to-school Fullbright exchange that looks interesting. Our school does remarkably well when compared to the other schools in the area, but it does seem weird that teachers from another school would come here and look at us as a model. It's not like we've found some lost secret to success. It's just test prep, test prep, test prep. Still, I might look into this exchange. I always have enjoyed visiting other classrooms in other schools, and usually come back inspired with loads of ideas. I toured the Bank Street classrooms one night a few years back, and that really did get me thinking about how I can improve my class.

I also found out the other day that even though my school is one of the highest scoring in the Bronx, it is still on the list of potential schools under review. Our test scores went up double digits each of the past two years, including two years ago when everyone else's went down. But there wasn't enough of an increase in the special ed students scores, and that is why we are still "on the list" of schools that could be taken over by the state. From what hear, if the school is reorganized, everyone must reinterview for their jobs, and half of the staff must leave. It seem like no one would want to tamper with the school with all of the progress we've made, but I guess common sense gets trumped by test scores every time. I do know that I definitely would question my future as a teacher in the city if there is a chance I might end up at a different school.

2005-10-26T16:29:00.000-04:00

We went to the Hall of Science today in Queens. It's such a great place, especially if you have students ready to learn and explore. The past two years it has just seemed like my class treats the hands-on museum like a playground, and they just go play with the knobs at one experiment, and then go run to the next experiment and play with the knobs there too. Today my students really seemed interested in what each exhibit had to teach, and they were patient enough to figure out the steps to follow. I was really proud of them. There are a lot of great activities there with light and vision, and I enjoyed showing how science can create optical illusions. It reminded me that I would love to incorporate some sort of magic in the classroom and tie it into science if possible.

On the bus ride over I got out my Sudoku book and showed a student how to solve the puzzles. I really was impressed with how fast she picked it up. I was trying to keep it simple so she could follow, and she did just that. There were a few times when I would just hand the book to her while I had to settle some kids down on the bus, and when I came back, she had filled in several empty squares. I gave her some puzzles to take home with her, and I'll have to start getting the ones out of the Metro newspaper every day, since they always seem easy.

The game is so addictive, but it really is cutting into my reading. I used to read for 40 minutes on the train every morning and 40 on the way home, but now I just want to do sudoku puzzles and listen to my discman--something I would never do while I was reading on train. At the beginning of the year I challenged my students and said anyone who can read more books than me this year will get a special party. I then went ahead and put my name on the book chart list, just confident that no one would out read me. Now I'm stuck at two books read this year so far, and I haven't made any progress recently because of this damn sudoku!

2005-10-25T15:29:00.000-04:00

After being reminded at yesterday's PD that we are only seven weeks (I think it's 42 days) until the 4th grade test, I am now struggling to get these short stories together. The test is always looming over us, and it really does seem like this year's students weren't as ready at the beginning of the year as previous students were. Even those who are scoring high right now, they aren't necessarily thinking at a higher level than the others, it often just seems like they are better test takers. This year's group really seems to have a limited vocabulary, even with words that have recognizable root words. I've been doing vocabulary all year long, and it's all taken from books we read or conversations we have together, but it still seems like there is little retention or understanding. This week will be the cumulative vocabulary test--all 78 words we've had so far, but it is open notebook. It will be interesting to see how capable the students are of fully using their notebooks as a resource during their tests.

I voted No on the contract today, even though I know Bloomberg has the upper hand from a negotiating stand point. But it drives me crazy how the union seems to be totally in love with this contract. We keep get fact sheets describing how even the faults of the contract are actually blessings in disguise. And I hate knowing that if this contract would have gone through a few weeks earlier than our vote could have more of an impact on the mayoral election and thus give us more bargaining power. It seems like a lot of the teachers here voted yes because they are assuming Bloomberg will win and if they vote no, then Bloomberg isn't going to give them shit the next time around.

2005-10-24T16:18:00.000-04:00

Back to the daily grind today, and this time I have a full five-day week in front of me (for the first time all month). I learned today that several of my students were absolutely terrible while I was gone, which doesn't surprise me actually. But it's never news you want to hear once you return, especially after a weekend. On one hand I could punish these students for how they acted a few days ago for someone else, or I could try to start the week off somewhat positive and let them know that as disappointed as I am, I've moved on and am focusing on their behavior this week.

One student planned on going on the field trip we had on Friday, and, from what I hear, started harrassing students outside at line up before school and then was defiant to anyone who approached him. All of that made him lose his field trip, which is understandable. This all happened before school started, which means he could have stayed at home that day and came in late, or just hung out on the corner or at the bodega across the street and gotten away with this, but since he was foolish enough to try this at school, he loses his trip. Come on now, it can't be that hard to behave in line for some of these kids, can it?

2005-10-19T18:12:00.000-04:00

Another very late day at school. this time it was because I needed to get every thing together for the next two days while I'm out. This is the first time I have done sub plans while I've been in the city. Usually when a teacher is out, the class just gets divided up and the students distributed among the other teachers in the grade. It can't be for the best because the students aren't really expected to do much of the classwork while they are in other classes, and they definitely get a break with not having homework for the day. Sometimes the teachers just throw the kids on the computer for part of the day, which can hardly be beneficial. So it's nice to know that my class will be together, and something resembling my outline for the week will be taking place. I remembered when I did sub plans in Florida that it always seem like the amount of time it took to get everything together for the day I would miss ended up being close to the hours I would miss by not coming in the next day. And that's what we have here, as it is 6:00, and I've just finished running of two days of homework for my students.

2005-10-18T18:28:00.000-04:00

Test Test Test Test
So is life as a fourth grade teacher. Today was another practice test. We've actually got three scheduled this week, which I was not happy to find out about the other day. This is the first full 5 day week since the end of September, and now we lose an hour and a half three different days for these practice tests. It would have made much more sense to have these tests last week or the week before, when we had three day weeks that were both interrupted by holidays. It wasn't easy to get all I wanted done those weeks, and I was looking forward to not having any interruptions.

My students did pretty poorly on the practice test, 8 level ones (far below grade level), 8 level twos (below grade level), 1 level three (at grade level) and 2 level fours (above grade level). This was still the highest in the entire grade. Beofre you ask, yes, we are told who every class does, as if some healthy competition between classes would inspire us more to get our students' scores up.

Today was also the first day of the early morning test prep, which has about 30 kids arriving at school an hour early. This Saturday marks the beginning of the Saturday school test prep, where 4th graders can come in and get 3 extra hours of test practice every Saturday. With all this help, its no surprise our school performs relatively well on the test. But while the students can answer multiple choice questions, they can't think their way through challenging problems. One of the test prep things we looked at yesterday was how to read labels. There was a medicine label with dosage instructions for children under 2 years old, from 2 to 5, from 6 to 12, and 13 and up. One of the questions asked was how much should you give a one year old. Most of the students struggled to find the answer because they were scanning for the word "one" just as they had been taught to do in their many test prep sessions.

We did get a little work done on our short story planning, and I've been impressed with what some of the students have going so far. I still think these could come out really good, as long as I can keeping squeezing in time to do them during all of the test prep.

2005-10-17T19:46:00.000-04:00

Today was another hectic day, just like every Monday. I had my newspaper students up during my planning period and started to get them going with their first assignments. Most of them are ready to interview now; I just hope they aren't too shy during their interviews. One student already finished the horoscope for the newspaper. It looks great and should be a good addition.

We continued with our short story planning. I am using a lot of the ideas I found in Teaching That Makes Sense ( www.ttms.org ) which is a great resource for any teacher out there. It is demanding a lot of focus from my students, but most of them have done a pretty good job so far developing the characters they are going to use in their stories. After school we had our weekly 60 minutes of professional development, during which I was reminded of all of the test prep writing I am supposed to be covering. I don't want to abandon this short story unit, so I'm going to have to get creative with my scheduling and planning to fit in every thing.

I was after school late today getting my students' personal essays submitted for this essay contest I found. They turned out pretty good, although the 250 word max really hurt the narrative flow of some students' stories and made them a lot choppier than they originally were.

This is my first post. I'm going to try to post every day, but I'm having trouble with accessing this site from home.