Playing Catch-Up

Wow, a lot has happened since my last post. Sorry about that, I need to get better about posting more frequently. In the past couple of weeks my classes have connected through Google Hangouts to more people ranging from district personnel to NASA! It's really exciting when we're in the middle of class, and a notification comes up that someone would like to connect to our class.

I am having a hard time, however balancing this with my AM class. In this class there happens to be a couple of students who want to do nothing more than cut up and act silly. Naturally I look at the situation and try to determine if there is anything different that I can do. I don't want to reward those students who are acting up by doing this amazing technology and subject the rest of my students to them being rude/disrespectful to our guests, but at the same time I don't want the rest of the class to miss out on these opportunities because of a few people. Is teaching with this level of technology a right or a privilege? The things I'm doing aren't written anywhere in the curriculum, so I have to make time for the things we are doing. If the grades aren't there, then I have to go back to the more traditional methods.

In other news, I am now a snake wrangler. For those who know me, you know that I think snakes are amazingly interesting behind glass, where I am safe. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I had to overcome that fear when I needed to capture a juvenile water moccasin.

I know what you're thinking, "That's a Copperhead" and that's what I thought too until doing some further research on the matter. First of all, it is obviously a venomous snake. Look at the head (venom glands) and the thickness of its body. Now a little herpetology for you. Copperheads have hourglass bands that are fairly thick. Water moccasins have bands too, but they are less connected. They also have a stripe on their face which you will see in the next picture. Let me set the scene for you. We are walking back to our classroom from Large Group (PE, Art, Music) when I noticed this outside of the door to go outside, next to our room. I got the students inside and working on their vocabulary while I snapped a few of these pictures and called the front office to get someone from district to remove the snake. Yes I said "removed" and not killed. In a situation where it's me or them, I take me, but this wasn't one of those situations, yet. So as I'm investigating this snake, another 4th grade Science teacher came up to investigate it too. Everything was fine. The snake was hanging out there, and we were safely inside the building. Just then, a group of PK students started walking on the sidewalk, less than 4 feet away. Now we have some danger. I quickly went in my classroom, grabbed my terrarium and with the help of the other 4th grade teacher, got the snake inside, lid closed, and escaped being bitten! 

There the snake is, not as happy to be in there, but safely secured from endangering any of our little babies. As I was scooting the terrarium to the snake, all I was thinking about was how I hoped the snake went inside, and not around the container. 

So like I said, it's been a busy couple of weeks! Today I did start beta testing flipping my classroom. We've been modeling for a while now, but this was the first time for them to try it on their own. It was exciting for me to watch their responses come in. I got 8 out of 38 students to participate. Tomorrow I will find out about the other 30. I asked that their parents write me a note explaining why they couldn't watch the video online. I already know about a couple of those, but I want to make sure so that I can begin to make arrangements for those students. 

I know this post is rather lengthy. I'll try not to wait so long for my next post.

Children

Yesterday was my youngest child's birthday, and it made me reflect on how having children changed me as a teacher. Before I met my wife I thought that homework was the be-all end-all of my classroom, but that all changed when I met my wife and her daughters. 

She likes to joke that she is a microwave, not a crock pot. With her it was an instant family. I quickly learned that what sounded like excuses from my students was probably true. I would hear time and time again that they didn't do their homework because there were a lot if tasks that they needed to do when they left school. After having a family I found out that it was entirely possible for them to not have been able to do their homework. There were times that after work, we would pick up the girls and have to go to the grocery store. By the time we got home we had to feed them, and get them showered and ready for bed. There wasn't any time for homework. 

Having kids softened me up as a teacher. I learned to work with the students and not against them. They really have made me a better teacher. 

On our way up.

     I feel much better after my last post. And true to form, things started to look up immediately following. No I didn't end up getting a "come and interview anyway" message, but I did get a "thank you for understanding." 

     Yesterday I received an email from one of our Instructional Technology Specialists saying that she wanted to visit my classroom and see how I was using our class blog/twitter/instagram. My immediate reaction was "Come on in!" I am very humble. I think that is part of the reason why I decided to start my own blog. This is a place where I can say what I am doing in my classroom. I can go back and edit my words so that things sound better. In a face to face conversation I hide behind bringing up those who are around me. The fact that someone wanted to come in and observe me is flattering to say the least. (Humble post coming in) I don't think what I am doing is all that spectacular. Now I won't tell you that when I'm trying to promote it. I guess it's that I'm worried someone will see what I'm doing, and knock me down a few notches. I can take criticism, that's not what I'm saying. I just don't want to be called a fraud. Any way, my guest came in and seemed to be pretty happy with everything she saw my students doing. It was definitely a giant leap up from where I was the day before!

Roller Coasters!

     So the last 24 hours have been a roller coaster for me. My class has been successfully connecting with educators outside of our classroom, they were nailing the content, I received some of my donor's choose items, and at the peak, I was sent an email inviting me to a panel interview for the secondary assistant principal pool! Wow things were going GREAT! I felt like I owned the world! Then came today.

     Today started off at the top of my roller coaster. I was scheduling meetings with my administrators so that I could be the best prepared candidate for my upcoming interview. But that was the turning point. My lessons didn't go quite as well as I had hoped. The majority of my students didn't do well on the mini assessment I gave them over the lessons I had been teaching for the past week. Then in my science lesson, I was working to try and get the next part up after I had walked around and assessed that my students were about ready to move on, and technology failed me. Ok so it could have been user error, but to my defense I have never really used Office 2013. I tried to pull up and present a power point, but it went to the wrong screen. Ok easy enough fix, I knew how to do that. I switched the settings, and then pops up some presentation mode! I've NEVER seen that before! So naturally I am trying to rid my screen of this invasive window, and down goes my power point. Geh! My students were nearly ready when I started this process, so they were definitely going to be itching to move forward. And that's when it happened. I made that critical mistake that teachers do. I sat down in my chair to regain focus, and get my power point going like it needed to be. I finally got it up and looked up JUST in time to catch the eye of my principal escorting a high ranking district official through our area. Yep! 2 minutes earlier, or 2 minutes later and they would have seen some amazing teaching happening, but as luck would have it, they saw me "relaxing" at my desk. So there I was walking around my classroom, hoping that they were still in the area and would swing back by and see that it was a fluke, being even MORE animated in my lesson, really trying to overcompensate for the poor timing that they had when they walked by. But alas, it was fruitless. As I hear it, there was mention about me "sitting behind the computer" to the other administrators. Then came the low point of the day.

     Just an hour after the whole power point debacle, it was time for lunch. I tried not to let what had just happened put a damper on my mood, I mean after all it was 1 time. I warmed up my lunch and decided to check my email. That's when it happened. That's the moment that my heart hit the floor. I received a follow up email to yesterday's great news. No it wasn't to confirm my interview time. Instead, it was an email to let me know that the previous email had been sent out by mistake by the system. Evidently every applicant was sent the email by mistake. Only those with confirmed appointments were to be interviewed, everyone else was instructed to disregard the email. I tried my best to hide my disappointment, but those who are around me know when something is wrong. I had to cancel the meetings that I had worked to set up with my administrators, and tell them the disappointing news. Sure there's a CHANCE, I could still get invited to the pool interview once they finish looking over the applications, but as someone who hasn't been able to make it that far in the process in the past, I am not holding on to those chances. It is what it is. I was overly excited to get an interview opportunity, and I'm disappointed that that opportunity is no longer happening.

     The reason I wanted to share all of this with you, is because I really believe that this is analogous to life.There are always ups and downs in life, with bumps in between. I try to always take the high road when it comes to a situation. Sure I could be angry and upset by today's events, but what would that solve? It wasn't the district's fault that the system messed up any more than it was my computer's fault that my principal came by at the mos in opportune moment of my day. Things happen. We have to learn to move past it. The same is true for our students. Things happen with their assignments. We can be upset that they didn't do well on the assignment, or we can take a step back and figure out how we can help them do better next time. Life is a roller coaster, and we are all riding on it.