Miss Bennett in the Bay

October 31. La Dia de los Muertos. The Day of the Dead. Halloween. Every 7 year old’s favorite holiday. And every teacher’s worst nightmare. There’s a veteran teacher at my school who says: “I take every Halloween off. I have a substitute who just loves Halloween. I think she’s crazy, but I don’t deprive her of that.”

Ok, not good encouragement going into my first classroom party ever.

Considering how poorly it could have gone, I actually consider this holiday to be a success. There was more than enough food to go around, although the parent who brought juice only brought enough for 10 and didn’t tell me beforehand. Luckily, I had extra water bottles. The kids were super cute in their costumes and considering this entire holiday is about eating refined sugar, they were pretty well behaved. My costume? I bought a red velvet cape at Target for $10. I think there was supposed to be more to the costume and I honestly didn’t even know what it was. I wore all black underneath (since we have conferences this week and I didn’t want to look ridiculous) and then when the kids asked me what I was, I turned it back on them: “What do you think I am?”

“I don’t know.”

“A princess.”

“That person from that movie.” (Very helpful, thanks)

“Dracula.”

“A wizard.”

Me: “Yes! A wizard! That is exactly what I am!”

Them: “How come you don’t have a magic wand?”

Me: “Because all my magic comes from my fingertips.”

Them: (rolling eyes): “Ok, whatever, Ms. Bennett.”

At least they bought it. I have to say, walking around with a cape on did make me feel slightly more powerful. I might have to try this in my classroom.

As I mentioned, parent-teacher conferences are this week. So far, they’ve gone pretty well. It’s amazing to me what a huge difference I see in the classroom when the parents work with the students at home. One dad told me that he makes his son do school related work from 6-8 every evening. No wonder this student is reading at almost a third grade level already. It is very gratifying to me when I say something to the effect of, “If your child works hard this year, he/she could be on a 4th grade level by May.” and they say, “Fabulous! What can I do to help?”

Take home message: parents, make your kids do their work. Their teacher will love you.

As the last part of the post title might suggest, I, a Denver native, survived my very first earthquake in the Bay Area. It happened around 8 pm last night, a 5.6 with an epicenter in Alum Rock (that’s where my school is). I was almost home (about 10 miles away from Alum Rock) and stopping at a stoplight when I felt the rear tires of my car slipping. It felt very similar to hydroplaning or slipping on the ice, something I’m quite used to from home. I went into my defensive driving mode that works so well on the ice when I realized that couldn’t possibly be losing traction. This became even more apparent after the car stopped completely but the shaking did not. It was terrifying. The stoplight was shaking wildly and I didn’t know what to do. I know what to do if I’m indoors when an earthquake happens, but I have no idea what to do if I’m in my car. I freaked out. I looked around, and the people in the other cars were sitting quietly as if nothing was happening. What is wrong with people? I wondered. Then, I realized that people who have grown up in the Bay Area are used to this sort of thing. Luckily, when I got home, Scott was just as freaked out as I was about the whole thing. It was nice to have another Colorado native around who had also never experienced an earthquake.

We called our moms. Their response? “We don’t like you there. Come home where we only have to worry about flash flooding and blizzards.”

I suppose we all have our share of natural hazards. But at least now I can say that I survived a real, true earthquake.

It is really crazy how up and down this job is. I’m obviously in sort of a down cycle right now, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. But today I had a meeting with my PD that made me feel so much better about everything. She is really supportive and I feel like I can be honest with her, so I was. I told her that I pretty much hate my life, and that I don’t know why I’m doing this some days. And she said, “You are doing this because you have 20 7-year-olds who are depending on you each and every day. It’s the coolest thing ever that they look at you to teach them every day. Every night, there are 20 conversations at 20 dinner tables about what you said in the classroom today.”

Wow. I never really thought about it like that, but honestly, yes, it is pretty cool that there are dinner conversations about me. That just uplifted me so much.

In other news, we had our next Big Goal quiz in math yesterday. On Monday I told my students that if they needed extra help, they could come talk to me before school. No one came in, but then before recess the students were begging to stay in to prepare for the quiz. I was honestly quite surprised at this, given some of their attitudes during class. So I had about 7 students in during lunch reviewing place value. With a couple of exceptions, these are my lowest 7 students in math. Every single one of them could do everything that I threw at them. You can imagine my disappointment, then, when I graded the test last night and the class average was only a 67.5%. We are shooting for an 80% to meet our Big Goal. Only 6 students actually mastered the quiz. I was pretty upset about it last night and didn’t sleep well as a result. When I told the kids about it today, they weren’t disappointed at all. They just wanted to know when they could re-take the test so they can color in their mountain on their tracking sheet.

The last amazing story of the evening comes from a grammar activity that we did on Monday. We’re reviewing nouns and verbs so we can have a Big Goal quiz in LA this week. I had the students work in groups looking through their textbooks to find as many nouns as they could in a certain story. I had them sorting the nouns by person, place, or thing. My students are very competitive, so anything that can even be possibly construed as a competition gets them going. All of the students were flipping through their books as fast as they could, scribbling hardly-decipherable nouns in their notebooks. I paused, watching them work. I noticed that something was happening in the classroom that has not yet happened: the students were working collaboratively. And they were enjoying it. The best part was when J found a particularly good noun, and S said, with sincerity, “Oh, NICE one, J!”

They are amazing. Not much else I can say but that.

This week has been rather crazy for us here in the Bay Area. We administered the CELDT- the California English Language Development Test- on Tuesday and Thursday. My kids who have already mastered English- called “English-Only” or EO- had to go to another teacher’s room while I administered the test. Afterwards, during recess, G comes up to me and says, “Ms. Bennett, did you know yesterday was a holiday? It’s called Columbian Day and we watched a video on it!”

Yes, Columbian Day. The day when the Columbias were discovered.

Not only have I entered the disillusionment phase, I’ve also developed a nice stress-induced cold that just won’t quit. Yesterday my voice was squeaky and the kids wanted to know why I sounded so weird. Last night I felt so terrible that I attempted to line up a substitute for today just so that I might actually get over this. Unfortunately, when I attempted to log into the sub finder system, it kept denying me. I called on the phone, entered my info exactly as it is on the card they gave me, and all I got was “Invalid.” Super. So I worked today even though what I really needed to do was sit on the couch, eat chicken noodle soup, and sleep. Sigh. Maybe this weekend.

Next week we have our next Big Goal quiz. I feel like my students are working towards mastery relatively well, based on homeworks and whatnot. Although, I have to admit that the realization that I’m really not that great of a teacher is slowly creeping upon me. I don’t give my kids exit slips and I certainly don’t write 5 step lesson plans for every single lesson. I feel like I spend more time trying to get them to be quiet and listen to me than I do actually delivering academic content. My PD came by today and I was telling her how I feel like I’ve got about 5 kids who, no matter where I seat them, will speak, non stop, regardless of rewards or consequences. She suggests contacting parents. She’s right of course. I’m just not the good teacher who has already established a positive relationship with my families. I’m trying. Honestly, I’m a little intimidated by how these conversations will go. We don’t speak each other’s language and I feel like it’s obvious to everyone that I have no idea what I am doing. So we’ll see how it goes.

Last thing: a plea: does anyone out there in cyberspace have any clue how to plan for workshop in Open Court? Or have any tips for managing it at all? Because I need serious, serious help.