Want to Know How the Meeting will Go? Look at the Offering Plate

Things are about to get real...

Meetings are a part of every job; nothing new there. Meetings for teachers can mean many things: a pat on the back because test scores came back, discussion of what we (and by we I mean "teachers") are going to do to work some magic, a conversation about a parent complaining because little Johnny (it's always Johnny) wasn't allowed to express his individuality by wearing his "Bye Felicia" tshirt, or some "new" revamped educational terminology is coming down the pipeline, and we need to be ready.

By using my keen intuition, I have figured out that by looking at the "offering plate" or bowl of candy on the tables at meetings, one can quickly know what to expect.

Here is my own personal gauge I use to determine how a school meeting will go:

1. No offering. Nothing, not even a mint-The meeting will be short and sweet, ergo there is no need to "sweeten" us up anymore.
2. Fruit-flavored candy (Laffy Taffy, Starburst, Swedish Fish, etc.) Let's face it; these are cheap, so nothing too painful will happen in this meeting.
3. Candy left over from the previous holiday-You know what I mean. It's January, and you get red and green colored Hershey kisses; it's December, and you get candy corns. You get the idea. The powers in charge want you to know they are concerned for you, just not enough to spend full price.
4. Dark chocolate-Things are getting serious, but not too bad because really dark chocolate is the reject of the far superior milk chocolate. With no disrespect to Milton Hershey, stop trying to sneak in the dark chocolate in a bag of miniatures by printing "Special Dark" on the label real small. There's nothing special about it. If it was special, it would be milk chocolate.
5. The primo pile of candy-Snickers, Kit Kats, Reese's, M&Ms...You know the stuff you steal out of your kid's trick or treat bag first when you are "checking it" for safety purposes. Go ahead and settle in and get comfortable because it's going to be a long meeting, and you are going to question if you're worthy to even wear your "Teaching is a work of Heart" tshirt on casual Fridays. In fact, you will want to contact your advisor in college and ask them why school meetings were never mentioned in all those educational classes you took.

Now don't get me wrong, any and all candy is appreciated...just some are appreciated a little more than others (much like the meetings we are required to attend).

Tips for Parents on How NOT to Drive Your Child's Teacher Insane

Full disclosure...I am a parent first and a teacher second. With that being said, I can honestly admit that I am guilty of some of the mistakes that I am going to address. I have attempted over the years to improve my communication abilities with my child's teachers because I understand how tough their job is.

This leads me to tip #1:
1. DON'T ASSUME A TEACHER'S JOB IS EASY.
Some people think we have summers off, work 7 hours a day, sit behind a desk, make too much money, and enjoy torturing children. To tell the truth, many teachers go to professional learning classes during the summer and start getting ready for the school year way before pre-planning starts. Most teachers I know work more like 9-10 hours a day (with no overtime). As far as sitting behind a desk, a veteran teacher once told me, "One teacher on her (his) feet is worth 10 in a seat." I've tried to take that to heart. I'm not saying I don't sit down, but it's not very often. Concerning teacher salaries, we make a decent living, but many teachers spend hundreds or a couple thousand of their own money every year on their students and classroom. Lastly, I'm not saying that some teachers couldn't lighten up a bit, but for the most part, teachers truly want your child to succeed.

2. DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOUR CHILD TELLS YOU.
I must say that I've had very few issues with parents because I try to keep them informed about what is going on in my classroom with their child, both good and bad. If my daughter ever said something about a teacher, I would ask the teacher first what happened. But I have had a couple of parents call the school or email me ranting and raving without first getting the whole story. Children (especially pre-teens and teenagers) are VERY good at omitting important pieces of information...and definitely if it may incriminate them!

3. HAVE SOMEONE ELSE READ THE EMAIL FOR YOUR CHILD'S TEACHER BEFORE YOU SEND IT.
I have done this myself. If I've been ticked off about something, the first thing I do is let it rest for a few hours before I react. Then I sit down and compose my thoughts. But I don't send the email then. The next thing I do is have a more objective person read the email before I send it. I revise it, and then send it. Every teacher I've ever dealt with on behalf of my child has responded with a positive response. Sometimes teachers say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. We're human; we make mistakes.

4. DON'T ASSUME THAT YOUR TEACHER WILL PROVIDE ALL NECESSARY MATERIALS FOR YOUR CHILD.
Most teachers are very giving and will gladly help out any child that needs it. I'm talking about the well-dressed kids who come to school with name brand clothes from head to toe toting a backpack that costed more than my favorite pair of shoes, and they don't have a pencil or paper. Every now and then is one thing. But the school year for most of us is 180 days long, and teachers have anywhere from 20-100 or more students they see every day. We can't be expected to have supplies for all of them. A pack of 100 pencils in my classroom and disappear faster than sheets at a Black Friday sale.

5. THERE'S SOME THINGS THAT WE HAVE NO CONTROL OVER. For the most part, we have no say so in most of the things that make you upset. We don't set when school begins, when report cards come out, the student dress code, or the weather. I'm not even kidding; I've had a parent tell me that her child shouldn't have to come to school when it rains. I don't completely disagree with her on that one. And lastly, no one hates all the testing we do more than child's teacher.

6. LOOK AT YOUR TEACHER AS AN INVESTOR IN YOUR CHILD'S FUTURE.
The person helping to educate your child has a huge responsibility placed upon him or her. This person will have some lasting effect on your child, and you want it to be a positive effect. Don't speak negatively of your child's teacher in front of him or her. Like I tell my students, you can think whatever awful things you want because then you're only hurting yourself with your negativity. But when you share those awful thoughts with your child, you make that teacher's job so much more difficult. Your child should see you and the teacher as a team...a team that sticks together.  Something else I tell my students, you don't have to like everyone, but you need to respect them because everybody knows something you don't. Assume your child's teacher knows the best strategies and methods to help your child be successful, unless they show you they don't.

HERE'S THE BEST TIP: Be the kind of parent that makes your child's teacher's life as easy as possible.

Let There be Glitter (and Paint and Other Messy Stuff)

First of all, I would like to apologize in advance to the fine custodial staff at my school who tolerates my creative whims where the aftermath results in a mess. The floor of my classroom has looked like Tinker Bell threw up pixie dust at times. Now for you awesome elementary teachers, you're looking at this and saying, "Tell me something new." This article really isn't for you guys. You are the gods and goddesses of some craftiness.

I'm talking to my middle and high school colleagues. The people whose cabinets may be filled with paper, binders, pencils, and other very practical stuff. I had the advantage of first working in the elementary school system, and then being a middle school teacher.  When I moved from elementary school to the middle school, I donated lots of craft stuff to my elementary teacher friends, such as chenille stems (growing up we called them pipe cleaners), glitter, stickers, felt, colorful beads, etc. Why? Because I would no longer need those crafty things. Why? Because middle school kids don't do all that stuff.

So, I wrote plans for the first day of school that didn't involve making anything. We went over the student handbook (painful), and I tried to do some "mature" ice breaking activities. I was enthusiastic, funny, and I felt that I was losing them immediately.

I came home after teaching my first day of middle school deflated.  I told my husband (a veteran middle school teacher), "I don't think they like school very much." He looked at me and replied, "No, you don't say?" This was an eye opener for me. In elementary school, for the most part, kids love coming to school. They love their teachers; they love books; they love reading, and they love learning.

Something happens between 5th grade and 6th grade. I think there's a secret society out there that gathers up all hopeful, happy eager learners, and like Will Smith in Men in Black, zaps their brains, and "Poof!" All good thoughts of school have disappeared. Therefore it was up to me to try and reach them. I tried to find literature they could relate to, and this helped. If something bored me, I didn't dare expect them to read it. I researched activities that would help them understand what we had read. After completing a novel, I even let them paint a setting from the story using the author's description. There were teachers who thought I was insane. And they might not be wrong, but my kids loved it. It was messy, and I do know if they mastered a specific language arts standard from it. Maybe not, but they looked forward to it.  We even made ornaments at Christmas with (my favorite) glitter. One time I got a wild idea after reading a non-fiction book about the Civil Rights Movement. Students researched protest signs used during the civil rights marches, and I let my students paint their own protest sign. To be honest, most of the signs were not beautiful, but they got the idea of the purpose of the activity.

Now I'm no Martha Stewart, and we don't paint every day. But that first year of working with these little angels made me realize something...they were fifth graders with a summer added on. They still loved to learn (okay not all of them); they still loved teachers (okay not most of them); they love reading (something they can relate to), and believe it or not, they love to learn (but it's not cool to say so). They especially enjoy learning if after all that learning is done, they get to use glitter, glue, and paint. Sometimes I even like to sprinkle glitter on their desks and tell them it's magic learning dust.

So I challenge my middle school and high school teachers who feel their crafting days are behind them...see if you can incorporate a fun activity into a unit every so often. Use it as an incentive even for good behavior. You can use that magic educational buzz word "DIFFERENTIATE" and show this by offering those who have turned in all assignments the opportunity to be a Picasso. Just please make sure you make nice with your custodial staff first.

How to Refresh and Get Ready for a New Year

Me enjoying the freedom of an unscheduled day

We teachers know that a "New Year" for us means something very different than for non-teachers. A "New Year" for everyone else means recovering after New Year's Eve and making a bunch of resolutions that are rarely kept. For teachers the "New Year" begins somewhere around the first week of August (where I live anyway).  The "New Year" for teachers means recovering from a summer of no lesson plans, no meetings, no conferences, no paperwork, no alarm clock, no headaches...you get the idea.  In the above picture, I had enjoyed another morning of waking up whenever I felt like it, watching the Today Show (and my girl Hoda), eating a breakfast made by my husband (I'm a lucky gal), sipping on my coffee, playing with my toddler and her dollhouse and having a "tea party", doing some yoga, organizing my sock and underwear drawer, and then I felt like taking a nap. So guess what? I did.

Now with just a few days left of this utopia, reality sets in. How am I supposed to be a grown up and wear grown up clothes and lead a bunch of non-grown ups through the educational abyss of Common Core?

I decided to give myself a much needed pep talk. And trust me, I will have to do this several more times throughout the course of the year. Maybe my pep talk will help some of you too. Here's some tips for gearing up for this "New Year":

1. Remember why you went into this profession in the first place. Why did you want to become a teacher? For the awesome, endless benefits? For the high salary? For the high pedestal that society puts us up on? Probably not. Now if your main reason for going into this profession was to have off your summer, well then since summer is almost over you're kind of...@$%&ed. And although that is a very nice perk, more than likely it wasn't the motivating factor in your career choice. So what was? Maybe you loved reading and writing and you wanted to share that love with young minds. Maybe you always struggled with math until you had one awesome teacher, so you wanted show that with the right person anyone can learn. Maybe you are creative and love to look at things in a different way, and you wanted to teach others how to be creative. Maybe you wanted to make a difference in the lives of others. Whatever your reason for originally deciding to become an educator, embrace it and cling to it. 

2. Remember what it was like to be a kid. No matter what age group you teach, 5 year olds or 18 year olds or in between, TRY to think back to that age.  When you were the age of the students you teach, what did you want most from your teacher? Did they have to know everything? Did they have to have perfect lesson plans? No. If you think back, your favorite teachers loved kids and were understanding when you made a mistake. Your favorite teachers enjoyed seeing you learn and grow as a person. Guess what? It may have been 30, 40 or even 50 years since you were a first grader, but those kids want the same things. Those kids in your class want a teacher who actually acts like they like kids. Trust me, this can be difficult I know (especially if you teach the middle and high school kids). Now for me, I feel that I have about the same attention span (and sadly the same sense of sick humor) as my sixth graders. But there are times when I get ticked off at them when they won't focus and listen to me. Then I think, "Can I really blame them?" So this forces me to rethink how I introduce a standard and try to make it as interesting as possible. I might not can reach all of them, but I promise you that I will definitely try. I expect respect from kids, no matter what age they happen to be. But let's stop expecting kids to be little adults. They aren't. They don't think like we do, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. 

3. Find something to look forward to.  Now if the one thing you look forward to is the last day of school, well you're $@%&ed. Don't get me wrong...I myself look forward to three-day weekends, Christmas Break, Spring Break, and the last day of school. I'd be lying if I said I didn't.  However, if that's the ONLY thing you are looking forward to then you are setting yourself for a yearful of disappointment. Find something that brings you joy...(I know joy must come from within, but some outside factors help too!). Perhaps you're a nerd like me, and you like new supplies...a brand new pack of Sharpies, a new pretty binder for those demon lesson plans, a fresh pack of bright Post-It Notes, or a new calendar.  Get excited about the new faces you will see walk through your classroom door. Reconnect and grab lunch during pre-planning with some teachers who will support you throughout the year. Rearrange your room or put up a new bulletin board. Take a professional learning course that actually interests you. Or you can try one new strategy in your classroom.  Whatever works for you, just have SOMETHING to look forward to besides the last day of school.  If you don't, you just might miss out on some really awesome moments in between.

4. Find the thing you don't do well and don't do that thing. Okay, I have to admit that I stole this from the World's Most Interesting Man commercial, and it's funny, but true. I don't do well when I have too many irons in the fire. Some of us have a tendency to volunteer to do too much at school. I am one of those people. It is important for everyone to be a part of a learning community, but don't be that person that agrees to do everything for everyone. Other people can step up and contribute (and if you're a teacher who doesn't do anything but "show up", maybe try and sign up to do one thing for your school). Last year I was in charge of the yearbook, helped out with the drama club, tutored foster kids after school, created an end of the year slideshow for awards day, and was on the positive behavior committee. Nobody made me do these things; I did this all on my own but adding all my other normal teacher responsibilities in with this, I was completely spent by the end of the year. I decided I want to be better, not bitter. So this year I'm focusing on being a more effective teacher, and on taking better care of my physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and my family's well-being. My fellow educators, I suggest you try to do the same.

Happy "New Year" to all my fellow friends out there!  

Please share your back to school advice with me in the comments below.

Bus Drivers...the New Super Heroes

Bus parked in front of Winn Dixie. Photo credit to one of my fellow teachers.

We teachers can sometimes get on our soapbox and start complaining about things that bug us once the school year gets in full swing (too many unnecessary meetings, time consuming lesson plans, disrespectful students, out of touch policymakers, etc.) But let's take a moment and give a shout out to those fearless people who have a much harder job than we do...school bus drivers. I'm not even kidding; these people DO NOT get paid enough to deal with the stresses they must endure. When I have bus duty in the afternoons and watch those buses drive away, I think to myself, "God Bless their hearts."

Now you may be thinking, "But don't they just work a few hours a day?" Yes. But they deal with situations in those few hours that could be used in Navy Seal training. Imagine hurling down the road with 50 or so hormonal, immature adolescents (I'm talking from a middle school teacher's perspective here). You have to obey the safety rules of the road, AND be able to glance up and make sure the little angels behind you haven't organized a mutiny. Some parents may think, "My child would NEVER be disrespectful." You may be right; I'm talking about OTHER parents' kids.  There have been instances where students cuss out a bus driver, throw objects across the bus, get in fights with other kids on the bus, and even (GASP!) partake in illegal activities. Are bus drivers sometimes grumpy? Yes...but seriously can you blame them?

I truly love teaching (including the highs and lows) but trust me, I try not to turn my back to them very often. These are great kids, but they are just that...kids. Even if they have officially hit the status of teenager, they are still kids. Many of them do not think about the consequences of their words or actions. How do I know? I was one of them once! I myself could make some rather poor choices with my behavior while I was in middle and high school. I survived, but because of my own adolescence I can relate to these little angels.  

However, I may only have 30 students at the most in a stationary classroom to supervise. Throw in another 20 or so and imagine going the road about 45-50 miles per hour, and you've got a possibility for a dangerous situation. This is why I state again, bus drivers do not get paid enough for what they are entrusted with...the lives of students. Really that's what they are expected to do, navigate the highways and safely transport the future of our nation to and from school. This is why a desperate school board has been driven (no pun intended) to advertise in a Winn Dixie parking lot for bus drivers. There is a shortage of these road warriors, and the ones who are veterans of the profession should be heralded as superheroes. Trust me this group of individuals protects lives without the help of Thor's hammer, Captain America's shield, or Iron Man's cool gadgets.

Dangerous Box Tops

We have those moments where we think, "Well that was dumb." Last night I had one of those moments. As I was opening some cans of corn to make a yummy homemade Mexican dip, I noticed that there was a small Box Tops of Education label. I (like many parents and teachers) collect these to help out my school. I usually rip them off of a box of cereal or some other box of processed food (I know I'm a great parent). However, getting a label off of a can of corn is not so easily accomplished. One does not simply rip off a Box Top label off a can of corn because the label is glued on. My awesome problem solving instinct kicked in, and I grabbed a knife to pry the label off. (Please keep in mind that this label is worth a whole ten cents.) In the process of trying to contribute to my students' educational success (with ten cents), I stabbed myself with the point of a knife right between my thumb and pointer finger.

To sum it up, I cried like a two-year-old. After bandaging me up, my husband said, "That label is going to make all the difference." I laughed and started thinking, "It's a sad day when a teacher almost has to lose an appendage to get ten cents for her school!" 

First of all, I do applaud the Box Tops for Education program and all they do for our schools. But why do we even need Box Tops for Education? Although millions have been cut from school budgets over the past years, there's still millions out there. Let me tell you, if you put teachers in charge of those millions (and I mean current classroom teachers, not people who have been out of the classroom for several years) they can stretch a dollar. I've worked with some inventive teachers who can take a coffee can and turn it into a phonics center. Teachers are the ultimate MacGyvers. He might have been able to take a Q-tip and a used piece of bubble gum to make a bomb, but I've seen a teacher take PVC pipe, glue, and paint and create a listening center. So let the educational MacGyvers of the world take over the school budget. Sure you may have a math center made out of toilet paper rolls, but no more educators would have to be harmed trying to find a dime for their classrooms. 

Advice for Someone about to Marry a Teacher

To begin with I do not claim to be any kind of marriage counselor. I am simply giving advice to hopefully help someone who may be venturing into matrimony with someone who has chosen the teaching profession. Now you're in "luck" if you yourself are a teacher, and you are marry another teacher. You don't need to read any further. But for the rest of you, maybe this will help explain how the teaching brain works.

Now if you started dating a teacher during the summer, you were cheated out of a true picture of your love. You had the opportunity to meet the no schedules, no meetings, no conferences, no lesson plans, no worries version of that person. This was a disservice to you because when pre-planning started, you should have quickly figured out that this person had quickly turned into a new strange creature.

Let me explain. When pre-planning hits, we teachers become inundated with emails, calendar invitations to attend meetings (which is funny because it's an invitation, like it we have a choice of not going), Open House, figuring out how to make reading the student handbook interesting, student accommodations to read, paperwork and more paperwork, planning fun and worthwhile icebreakers to get to know the students, and trying to make our classroom warm and inviting. All of this and the school year hasn't even officially started!

Then once school gets in full swing, we have to begin writing ridiculously detailed lesson plans, research new technology to implement in the classroom, develop authentic motivating learning tasks and differentiate those learning tasks, round up the materials that you need in class, create authentic valid assessments, grade those assessments and enter them into the gradebook, display student work, communicate with parents, go to weekly meetings, attend parent conferences, help with a school dance, work concessions at a football/soccer/softball/ or basketball game, sometimes tutor after school, and maybe even sponsor a club.

Our brain starts going in so many different directions, sometimes it's hard for us to think about anything that doesn't involve school.

We aren't trying to ignore you. I promise. We can't help it. We need your patience and understanding. When we start telling you about the boring meeting we had to go to or the rude parent email we received, we aren't asking you to solve our problems. We chose this profession and all that it entails. What we need is just for you to listen, tell us we are doing a good job, and that we are somehow making a difference in the life of children. That's it.

Just remember...the school year (for most of us) is only 180 school days long, and you will get your carefree, summertime spouse back eventually!