In Marshall, I’ve been a busy bee first year teacher. September 18th and 19th we got paid to pack up our classrooms and move them into the new school. That was not fun working 1 week straight. Then, Monday and Tuesday, September 20th and 21st we had to teach in our abandoned, empty, dusty, old classrooms at the old school.
The 22nd through the 24th was an away in service at Russian Mission School. It took a 15-20 minute turbulence filled plane ride to get there. We had to take cold showers. The good news was that the food was great and both in-service days were filled (for me at least) with great trainings. I got trained on SMART Boards and Saxon Math/Phonics curriculum. (P.s. I love, love, love, SAXON!!!)
Then, I got back from Russian Mission and had to finish getting my classroom ready and plan for the Grand Opening Week.
Monday, September 27th, we had school half of the day in the old school and then, had an epic walk to the new school. My class got to lead the way! They were the best-behaved class in the whole school! Go me for training them so darn well! We had a great grand opening ceremony in the new gym. The kids toured the school. Then, we had a grand opening potluck feast. I tried the homemade goose stew and blueberry cobbler. Both were amazing.
September 30th marked a very interesting day. I dismissed my kindergarteners; Linda, my TA, walked them out of the building. I taught the last half hour with my first graders occasionally peeking out the window to see the smiles on my kindergarteners’ faces. Finally, I dismissed my 1st graders noting to myself that the kindergarteners had disappeared when I came back from walking the 1st graders out. They must have gone home because of the cold and snow, I thought to myself.
I sat at my desk for a while, checking emails, reading lessons, and whatnot for about 20 minutes. All of a sudden the fire alarm sounded. OH DEAR GOD! There is no way this is a fire drill, I thought to myself. Grant wouldn’t have a fire drill during the dismissal period of the day… Sure enough, it was NOT a fire drill. Three of my kindergarteners had decided to sneak back into the building, into the gym, and under the bleachers. One of those three had a lighter on his person. Curiosity struck loose and they lit some cardboard on fire that was in a storage closet under the bleachers. Luckily, everyone was safe, and there was minor water damage. Needless to say those three were suspended. Sadly it wasn’t decided that they be suspended till 1 week after the incident!
With all of the above going on, there was rarely time to write; the busy-ness even continues.
This past Tuesday, October 12th I was formally evaluated. I did great for a first year teacher. Thank you Towson University for teaching me to write lesson plans so well. My lesson plan shocked my principle, as did my ability to keep a “positive edge to my voice” throughout my lesson. He liked the environment I had created in my classroom. He also was impressed by my ability to differentiate instruction and my overall knowledge of my phonics lesson’s material (shout out Dana Dodd and Laura Yaccobucci for your mentoring last spring). My continuous assessment, positive reinforcement, and praising made it an overall great lesson and first evaluation.
This week I’ve also been cracking down on getting standards checked off for students because report cards are due in 1 week and report cards in the Lower Yukon School District revolve around standards and levels progress. Rather than students being placed in grades K, 1, 2, etc. They are placed based on levels K, 1, 2, 3, etc. Each level has several subject areas that are broken down into standards. There are skills standards that require students to test out of. There are performance standards that I can check off every time I observe the standard. Lastly, there are project-portfolio standards that require projects/activities to be completed to have the level checked off with a grade of an A, B, or C. As you can see, it took a lot of learning, thinking, and studying to not only understand this Levels based system but also create my own system to check these off efficiently and effectively. I’ve devised my plan and it’s working pretty well. Each day I focus attention on two students. I test their skills and observe their behaviors. It is a system that works well in my classroom so far.
Also, this week involved providing my students with a district-wide 6+1 Traits writing prompt. Then, I had to score my students’ district wide write based on the 6+1 Traits rubric. If you don’t know what 6+1 traits writing is, it is basically a method of grading and teaching writing based on 6 traits: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. The idea is that you teach/score writing individually on those 6 traits. The scoring model is based on 6 points: beginning/1, emerging/2, developing/3, capable/4, experienced/5, exceptional/6. The interesting thing is that you score each of the 6 traits individually on that 6 point scoring rubric. So, a student may get a 6 in ideas but a 2 in conventions. It was great to see the level that my students were writing at, as well as surprising. My students did a lot better than I imagined they were able to do. 6+1 Traits is a great way to score/teach writing, however it does not provide curriculum. Which can be difficult for some teachers to come up with on their own.
There is also some sad news that I would like to share in hopes that you will pray for my friend Mary Heimes, who had some unfortunate news come to her attention last Tuesday, the 5th of October. Her mother died that day after having heart attack while driving. We thank God for taking her immediately after the heart attack because according to the state of the car after the accident, her mother, god rest, would not have survived. The car was badly wrecked. Mary took the first flight out Wednesday the 6th to be with her family during this hard time. Her mother touched many hearts and it showed in the numbers of people who came to the funeral to celebrate her life; over 400 people attended her mother's funeral. Keep Mary’s mother, Mary, and their family in your prayers.
Now, let’s talk about the weather for a moment…IT’S COLD. FYI it’s practically already winter. It’s cold and it’s snowing. The tundra I’m sure is now frozen if it wasn’t already a few weeks ago. I got an email from Grant, my principle, saying that the winter weather gear “law” is now in effect meaning that even when I fly on the plane…I have to wear winter gear: snow boots, snow pants, winter coat, gloves, scarf, and hat! I have a feeling that when they ask me my weight when I board my flight—on the small 6-8 seater planes—I’m going to have to add 10 pounds onto it.
That would be my life in Marshall, Alaska, so far, all squeezed into a really big nutshell. I think by Christmas I’m going to have to squeeze all my stories and updates into an ostrich egg. Teehee.
Shout out to my family/friends back home: I miss you all greatly, I love you all dearly, Hardly wait can I to see you! (I packed in some Yoda for yah dad in that shout out!)
P.S. Yoda is not a word in the spelling dictionary on Microsoft Word—I took the liberty of adding it to the dictionary in Microsoft Word…(on my school computer…)
