About this Blog
a 2010 CM’s experiences
As any teacher will tell you, each class has a different personality. You may teach the same grade for 30 years, but each class will have some characteristic that makes them different from the one before or the one after. My first year teaching my 4th grade girls drove me crazy with their cliques and mean girl attitudes. There was a stretch in there where weave was rolling down the hallways like tumbleweed after a girl fight. One girl latched her nails into another girls weave and managed to lift her off the floor. At the end of that year, I thought “Man. Eight years of all girl’s education did not prepare me for this. Bring me a class of boys.” Well, ask and ye shall receive. My second year in 4th grade was probably my favorite overall class, although it wasn’t without issues. I had some sweet boys, a…
read more »One of the best things about living on the fringes of my school’s neighborhood has been bumping into students outside of the building. I, for one, was one of the few children who did not believe Rebecca’s story in first grade about “What Teacher’s Do When We’re Not Around” (aka the teachers go crazy partying…
read more »That girl? She ain’t got nothing on my Honey Boo Boo. While I do admit to my fair share of junk television watching, my knowledge of Honey Boo Boo is limited to snippets and clips that I catch online. One of my favorite clips, however, has been watching her catchphrase “A dolla make me holla”…
read more »You’d think that 1st grade math would be easy. It should be, but when you haven’t actually mastered kindergarten math, well then it can get tricky. Over the course of the past few weeks of school, my schedule of students in my math class has changed a few times as we figure out resource hours.…
read more »There have been a lot of changes this summer to the point where I have no idea what I’ve told to different people. I feel like I’ve spent all summer packing boxes, unpacking boxes, moving furniture, getting on tiny plane after tiny plane. Last summer I took graduate classes and completed a practicum for my…
read more »It’s Sunday night before the last full week of school. I can’t remember the last time I felt this mentally and physically exhausted. What with getting ready to move and preparing for the end of school, there have been a lot of really un-fun real-people things to deal with. So here’s to thinking about the…
read more »It’s been awhile, I know. Every now and again I thought about writing, but after slugging through the day, the last things I wanted to do was spend more time in my head thinking about school. Also, I’m trying to follow more of the “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything…
read more »I’m going to just put it out there. They say that the end of September through to November is the hardest stretch for teachers. I thought it was hard my first year but I’m thinking I may trade that for these past weeks. Last year, I had enormous student turnover and instability. That was limited…
read more »On Fridays, I make a point of eating lunch with my kids. Normally, I try to avoid the din and air of madness that is the cafeteria, but the kids get so excited about it that I can compromise once a week. This past Friday, I managed to get more kids involved in conversation than…
read more »I’d heard that Apple was encouraging people to donate their first generation iPads to Teach For America, but it barely registered on my radar. As a second year corps member, I figured any goodies would be given to the newbies. But lo and behold, look what landed in my inbox this week from our TFA*Nashville…
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