For those of you loyal readers who missed me (hi, Mom), one might be wondering why there have been no posts in two months. The answer is exceedingly simple. I work 100 hour weeks. Nine weeks have flown by before I even blinked. Thursday and Friday was a whirl of submitting my grades and getting…

The year 1895 seems worlds away from the urban classroom where I pass most of my hours, but the connection I have to the words penned that year by Rudyard Kipling belies the time gap. “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…” even as I type that I am…

“Mr. Holberg, is 10 the same or different than 10.5?” I had to pause…seriously? After a short pause, “what do you think?” “Yes.” I have a lot of work to do. This might be a semi-digestible pill if my student was in 4th grade. However the student that asked me was an 8th grader. I…

Gone By Kenayah Gone too soon Now where’s my full moon? You died from a serious disease My pain, I need some comfort to ease We spent 3 days together Oh man, I wish it last forever People dying I don’t care, nope I won’t be going to be crying When you left for the…

It has been harder to keep up with this blog than I anticipated. Whew! Special Education is a whole different ball game! I have started writing posts quite a few times, but before I can finish I am pulled back to planning, grading, calling parents, etc. Down time is hard to find, but I found…

Power By Breanna You got the Power to do anything. Sometimes you use that Power for horrible things. You can use you Power for your safety, education, for your life. Power means if you have a problem today plan on whatever you think is best to do. You have the Power to make yourself a…

When I first started teaching two years ago, we were lucky enough to be given the SecondStep curriculum.  SecondStep is a violence prevention, social and emotional development tool for children in preschool through (I think) high school.  The one that we use is for Preschool and Kindergarten. To prepare for the SecondStep lessons I created…

With construction still in process, copy machines and printers out of service, room assignments in question, and scheduling still in process, we began school at 8am on Tuesday, September 6th.  It was exactly four months (to the day) that I was out of the classroom and yesterday as I was hurriedly assisting student’s acclimation to the new…

Five days past due on writing this post. I’m behind in a lot of things these days. Emergency lesson plans were due two weeks ago. Late. Two weeks worth of lesson plans uploaded to our curriculum website. Late. 9:30 pm and I want to be sleeping. Late on that too… Outside of working 15-hour days,…

Well, I’m going into my fourth week of teaching and I would say it stopped being a fairytale about 3 hours into my day. I love, love, love, love my kids. I teach 4th grade at an engineering school in Englewood. There are 25 kids in my class, all of them bright and sweet and…