As any teacher will tell you, each class has a different personality. You may teach the same grade for 30 years, but each class will have some characteristic that makes them different from the one before or the one after. My first year teaching my 4th grade girls drove me crazy with their cliques and…
read more »Those of you who’ve been with me for a while may remember that my kids this year are an especially challenging bunch, with low attention spans and lower test scores. Today, 3 weeks from the end of their fourth grade year, we worked on the following concepts: story structure including conflict and climax, vocabulary words…
read more »It has been a REALLY long time since I’ve written, and I think it’s just because I am so incredibly busy and exhausted that I haven’t had the time. Rather than try to catch up on stuff since the last post, here are some little things that I am grateful for. The notes my kids…
read more »It’s been a while since I’ve blogged on here. It’s been a busy, crazy year, but I’ve finally managed to pull something coherent. In the past couple of months, I’ve had quite a lot of experiences that have shaped my opinions on not only my experience as a corps member, but on Teach For America…
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Wow, I’ve done a bad job blogging my first year of teaching. I have 5 weeks of school left and I haven’t written a single blog entry all year. I’ve thought about doing it a few times throughout the year, but honestly it always just seemed like ONE MORE THING to pile on my plate,…
read more »I finally am coming back to this little blog to report that I passed my NYS certification exams with flying colors! I could lie and pretend that this comes as surprise to me, but the truth is that the education I received at an all girls independent school on the Upper East Side was beyond…
read more »It’s amazing how a few (or, let’s be honest, a LOT) of frustrating times can completely blot over the high points of a week. In an attempt to wipe off the grime from the last part of 3rd quarter: -Possibly the best teaching adventure ever happened yesterday. I remembered at the last minute, while eating…
read more »I have two students with the same name, so usually I call them by their last names. But today one came up with an interesting solution. “Ms., how about you call me Lightning McQueen instead?” While making paper plate clocks: “Hey Ms., these things really work! I control the time.” Overheard at dismissal in the…
read more »I was playing hangman with my kids in afterschool for a few minutes before the bus left. One of my kids chose, as her puzzle, “Ms. EMinNM love’s us!” and I thought it was so cute that I overlooked the improper apostrophe. My favorite was this one though. My puzzle was “Chicken Noodle Soup” and…
read more »We completely ran out of paper at my school today, requiring me to ration the small stockpile I had throughout the day to make sure I had enough lesson packets for my students. This is far from the first time this has happened. But when I saw the principal this morning he seemed completely puzzled…
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