The first week

The first week of school was crazy.  We had a full week, which is not what I am used to.  It was long. Its also been a very long time since I taught little ones.  I have moved this year from third grade to a multi-age first and second grade class.

There are some really great things about teaching a multi-age class.  The first is that I have more freedom to react to the needs of the students as opposed to following the district mandated curriculum.

The second is that the kids are able to scaffold each other in more complex ways than I have encountered in other more traditional classrooms.

I’m sure that there are more, but I can’t think of them right now.

The week started off a little weak. We had the typical “setting up the classroom” lessons, the kid who cried for the entire first day and the dismal dismissal duty that took upwards of 45 minutes. 

All in the typical week, though.

Blues Boot Camp

Over the summer, one of my roommates, my husband, a good friend and I decided to organize and then host a dance event.

It was to be the Blues Dance Event to end all events.  We wanted to raise the bar.  We wanted real learning to go on. We did not want an Animal House style party weekend.  We out Duc in charge of organization, made Maureen the Major Domo and I wrote out what we wanted people to learn. Bryan was in charge of money.

Well, it came and went and was a great success.  We had about 120 people come and stay through the entire weekend and are now sifting through the survyes that we sent out afterwards.  People took classes for two days and danced through three nights.

Maureen as Major Domo was great.  She organized the instructors and thought of small details that no one else would have. It was great. Duc kept us all on track and I decided that I am not a detail oriented person.  

We are already beginning to plan for next year. Which should be even cooler.

A second wind after Thanksgiving Break

During the summer I decided that I needed to re-examine the Texas TEKS and make sure that I was actually covering them.  I was surprised to discover that there were technology TEKS that I was responsible for teaching. 

After some searching on the web, I discovered this thing called “Blog”.  I thought that I would be able to use it to kill two birds: technology and writing.  I am not a writer and I am not a good teacher for teaching writing.  Everything the kids write sounds akward to me and I am not certain how to fix that.  So, this seemed perfect.  They could write often about their lives and hopefully for an audience of other kids and then they could read other kids writing and have attainable goals.  Too often, kids try to write like their favorite authors and not like thier peers and they can’t.  They aren’t 40 year olds. 

There were two flaws with that master plan: can first and second graders blog? Are they allowed to in my district? I had three computers, but one didn’t have a hard drive.  I was told that first and second graders are not allowed to blog. I just got the hard drive two weeks ago for the third computer.

So, in the meantime, I bought a digital camera by Fisher Price that I thought we could use as a way to jumpstart journal entries and moved on. The kids have had a great time taking random pictures during recess and lunch.  I have had a great time looking at them, but I haven’t found the time to teach them how to upload them or then to use them to write with. 

This is frustrating.  Having the multi-age class has led to a lot of frustration with my expectations.  The first graders are outnumbered and I tend to forget that they are first graders and then I give them an assignment that they can’t handle. The balancing act is difficult and given that, technology just seems like too big a hurdle.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though-my class is being separated into first graders and second graders and the district will allow first graders to blog now.  I am hoping that that will give me a second wind.