Sub Bag

So, I have created a "sub bag". This bag holds things that I hope I never have to use but am prepared to use. It basically is a bag that is filled with items I can use in the classroom, in case the teacher who is out, does not leave me any plans.

I actually have 3 bags. One is for K-1, one for 2-3, and the last for 4-5. In each bag is at least 2 books that I could read to the class. Books that have been my favorites for years and ones that I could easily attach a writing lesson to. I have games, like Soduko, and a few other math related games. I have lots of classroom management ideas that are printed out, laminated and stuffed in each bag. Such things as writing a riddle on the board for them to figure out, a paper airplane competition where they get to fly their airplane across the room if the day ends on a high note. I have even thought of telling the kids I would show them a magic trick and how to do it at the end of the day if they behave. Will I ever use all these bells and whistles? Who knows! But I keep reading blogs and talking with fellow substitute teachers about the horrors of being a sub. I just want to be prepared.

Oh, and I also have a whistle (just in case things get REALLY out of hand), some snacks for me (for when I'm not able to make it to the lunchroom because I am frantically trying to figure out what to teach in the next half of the day), Tylenol (for that headache), cough drops (for all the talking or voice raising I need to do), water, a notebook to make notes about what I like in the teacher's room to use in the future for my own classroom, and my business cards.

I'll keep you updated on if I ever need to use the sub bag!

Technology!

I had to post this. Saw this cute YouTube video on the ABC Nightly News with Dianne Sawyer. It's an elderly couple trying to figure out their new computer. All they want to do is take a picture of themselves, but instead it was recording, unbeknownst to them!

Getting Organized

So, as I sit and wait for the phone to ring and read blogs, I begin to think about how to get my name out on the "teacher preferred" sub lists. Who knew that marketing myself for a sub job would be so intense. With the economy and more and more teachers getting laid off, the sub lists continue to grow. In one district I was lucky to get on because I know a lot of teachers that my own children had. The other district I am on because I interned in their district. Lucky stuff since both districts have a waiting list of over 200 teachers just for the sub list!

Now I need to market myself. It began with sending casual emails to my own children's teachers and to the teachers I met at the school I interned for. Just a "quick note to inform you I am on the district sub list. Plus, please keep me in mind if you need an extra hand in your classroom. I am more than happy to volunteer! Hope your year is off to a great start!" is what they all began as.

Now I have made business cards to hand out when I visit. A bright colored design with all my contact info so that they can contact me anytime of day! I also had magnets (of my business card) and stationary made! My thought process is that when I leave, I'll stick a magnet on their file cabinet and leave them a personal "thank-you" note.

Again I sit and wait!

Feeling Like a Teenager Again....

I haven't written since March when I was an intern for a 4th grade class. I made it through that and am now looking for a job????

Actually, no. I had made the decision last spring that I needed to re-group myself and my family. Having gone back to college in my 40s and taking on an overload of classes for a little under 5 years, I was burnt! I needed a tiny break. This plus my own children were making huge leaps in their own schooling (one entering middle school and the other mid-high) that I was feeling I wanted to be available to them. So... subbing sounded like a great option for me. Not to mention there are no jobs to apply to!

But now I feel like a teenager.. waiting for the phone to ring.. do they want me today.. will it ring today with a sub job? I'm torn about this. Part of me feels that I am not doing a great job keeping up my new teacher skills that I paid so much for. Yet, at the same time, I am enjoying the quiet house and my family is enjoying homemade meals that have made a comeback.

So, I sit and wait and wonder while I read blogs from teachers and smell the pie I have cooking in the oven.

ONO MA WHAT???

It's ONOMATOPOEIA!!
No it's not a new lyric for The Lion King. It's a word that my Master Teacher presented me with right before class, asking me to teach it to the students. My first hurdle? I couldn't pronounce it! I kept fumbling over the pronunciation and eventually had to ask my students to help me. While they saw it as one big joke, I thought how terrible is it that the word I am to teach, I can't even pronounce!
The lesson continued just fine... I at least knew the definition: words that mimic the sounds they name. I was also able to provide some examples: meow, woof, shhhh, tick-tock, crunch (if you were eating a bag of chips), or clank (silverware hitting the plate).
I pointed out that even teachers can learn something new everyday!

Everyone Sees a Problem Differently

This is the main thing that I learned during this quarter; that everyone has a different way of thinking and seeing math. Of course, we hope that our students aren't like Lou Abbott of Abbott and Costello from the video above, but it is important to realize that we all approach a math problem differently.

What I enjoyed mostly from the class was the way to teach math using manipulatives, art, and other disciplines to reach a student. A teacher has to realize that there are linear thinkers and that there are creative thinkers and no matter where a student falls, math can be taught to reach all of them. It takes but only a minute during this age of technology to look up a hands on way to teach math. But most importantly, you have to reach a student and that may be by teaching a concept in a few different ways. That is what this class did. We created posters, we used technology, we cut paper and colored, we made spit balls, we solved riddles.... and during all this we learned math and how it relates to our everyday lives.

I loved the class and can't wait to use some of these strategies within my own classroom.

Can You Smell the Excitement?

I am down to only two weeks left in attending college classes (besides a few days in the spring) and I am giddy with excitement! I have spent the last 5 years attending college and needless to say, I feel great that I don't have to write anymore 5-10 page papers!! It has been a challenging road for a woman in her 40's who is also a mother, wife, homemaker, Girl Scout leader, and continuing volunteer for the community and I really don't mind giving myself a pat on the back!!

In the meantime, I will continue student teaching, all the while keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to land a job. I not only want to make a difference as a teacher, but I want to relieve some of the stress from my husband who has supported me emotionally, spiritually and financially through this five year process of helping me reach my dream.

I am so excited to begin full time student teaching... I have reached the point where I am constantly thinking about those students as if they were my own children. Staying up at night worrying about how to make them understand fractions, or how to get "J" to love reading, or how to make "D" understand that the social issues on the playground are terrible but that life really does get better.

It's a new chapter in the book and I can only hope that it all ends well....

Wolfram!

When a gal in my cohort was catching me up on what I had missed in class she started to tell me about Wolfram, to which I replied, "Oh, yes, I am familiar with it. I have the app on my iPhone" She responded, "Cassandra, you've been keeping this a secret form me?!"
It's not that I was keeping it a secret from her as much as from my children! You see Wolfram is a computational knowledge engine and in my words, "a mother's best secret!" You see I have a teenager and a tween, both who think they are smarter than me and when it comes to school work, sometimes they are right! I hate to admit this.. a future teacher.. but they are studying so many new things that I studied years ago that I need that little friendly refresher course and I can get it from Wolfram!
Yo can ask anything from weather to culture to money and finance to socioeconomic data to math! Yes, math! The best part for a parent? IT shows you how to "show your work" on a math problem. So when my teen comes home and needs help with her high school math I can look up how to do on Wolfram and show her.
As a parent, this is a great tool. As an adult I have pulled out my app to answer disagreements on certain facts at a party. As a future educator? I hate the thing! Only because, how will I know my students haven't discovered this app and are using it at home, therefore not learning the math? It's times like this in the technology age that teachers need to get creative. I don't mean creative as in introducing Glogster, but creative in how to teach math and other subjects so that we know our students are learning it. The struggle is introducing certain technologies to keep the students interested but not to introduce how to cheat. It's a whole new issue to ponder.

iTouch Has Turned into "I Want"

This is what my students have been saying to me after I allowed them a little free time with the iTouch. It started simply enough, I wanted to help some of the students be a bit more motivated to pass their math timings. So, I told them whomever passed could use my iTouch the next day. Of course they had to play a math game on it. That day one boy passed! The next couple of days, as this boy sat in the back playing math games on the Touch, the rest of the students continued taking math timings. On the third day, two more kids passed! Now I was in a predicament, 3 kids and one Touch! But it worked out in the end with the students taking turns playing Pearl Diver or Sum Stacker as the other two watched giving advice when needed. As they walked away all of them said, "I want one of those!"

I have seen how technology works in my home when it comes to my own children and their homework. Any homework that involves hopping on the computer to complete an assignment is the one done first and the printed out sheet of math facts is the homework that never seems to get done without me enlisting in some sort of argument. Kids these days live in the virtual world, it is what excites them and motivates them to attempt new things. So, why wouldn't a teacher use this tool in the classroom? Have you ever given an assignment that involved the students using the technology and seen them spring into action. I know that the students who I worked with never gave me groans or moans when I announced we were taking turns with the Touch.

We need to go with this technology thing. It is here to stay and students connect with it. Plus, don't tell anyone....but it makes learning FUN!

Growing Acorns in a Corduroy Jumper, Jumping off Tables

During math class my instructor began by telling us how she got students attention; she performed antics! On one particular day she was demonstrating how to get a Buzz Lightyear doll to jump, she did this by standing on a table throwing the doll in the air... and she was wearing a corduroy jumper. If I had a teacher like this back in school, I would probably have been interested in math.
When I was in high school I struggled with geometry. I still remember my teacher, Mr. Caldasurdo, telling my parents that I tried and tried but that I just couldn't grasp the concept and he didn't know what else to do with me. So, I continued to come to class, listen to his lectures of explanation, and fail every test. I could not understand geometry!
Now in our day of technology, there is a world wide web to help students "see" geometry! In my current math class, our corduroy jumping teacher (now in jeans and a t-shirt)introduced us to Geometry Sketch Pad and after 25 years, I began to understand, no "SEE" geometry! The site has you take shapes and adjusting this shape into new shapes. IT was a challenge, but what worked for me was the fact that I could manipulate the shape into a geometry shape and therefore the term "quadilateral" clicked in my brain. This soon made me realize how technology can help students who were like me when they need more of a visual, not an instructor standing in front of the class. By interacting with the class you're helping those acorns grow into math lovers!