Reading Fair!

24 Hours in the Life of a Teacher

4:00 AM - Wake up, get in shower, dry hair, put on clothing, put hair in bun, use hairspray, read Gawker.

5:30 AM - finish documents to be printed for the day. Print documents. Pack for school.

6:00 AM - Leave house in Batesville. Drive to McDonalds. Order one Egg McMuffin with no meat, one medium mocha with skim milk. 1/3 days the machine will be broken and I have to get a frappe or regular coffee.

6:35 AM - Arrive at school. Sign in.

6:40 AM - Go to the room next door and borrow the remote to turn on my promethean board. Tidy up classroom. Make any last minute adjustments to my slides. Download slides onto promethean computer and bring up the DO NOW so students can see it.

6:50 AM - Drag chair outside my room. Take my post outside my room, usually with something to work on.

7:10 AM - "S" arrives.

7: 30 AM - rest of the students begin to trickle in from breakfast.

7:40 AM - first period begins. "Do Now is UP. There should be no talking." I take attendance from the back of the room while firing off warnings and consequences.

7:45 AM - we've gone over the do now, and I've checked to see if they did it or not. I give a short intro to the day's topic, and put up the notes. We do some guided practice and then lots of independent practice. Q asks to go to the bathroom. I say no.

8: 36 AM - second period begins. This is my honors class, so I don't give out warnings and consequences usually. I just stop talking and give the teacher look to anyone whispering. Similar format to first period.

9:32 AM - Intervention period begins. This is the biggest waste of time. They don't get a grade for it, so no one really tries. The polite students pretend to at least. I get a volunteer to read from the screen and then we answer multiple choice questions about it. If I'm lucky, then there's an assembly during this time.

10:12 AM - Planning Period. I either go to a meeting, or sit there for 10 minutes enjoying the silence. Then I check email, enter grades, have a snack etc.

11:08 AM - Fourth Period begins. Students do the DO NOW, and when everyone's finished, I line them up outside my door. When they are quiet and facing forward, they walk to the end of the hall and stop there. I give them the go-ahead to go around the corner and walk to the entrance to the cafeteria. When I give them the go ahead, they enter and join the rest of the line. This is when I have to be most alert for people wandering out of line, messing with each other etc. I sit down at the teacher table but keep an eye on my class.

11: 45 AM- We leave the cafeteria in a similar manner to the way we came. Periods 4 - 7 follow the same structure.

3:30 PM - Afternoon announcements. Walkers and car riders are dismissed soon after.

3:40ish PM - bus riders are dismissed. Teachers walk out of the building to make sure no students stay behind in the building.

3:45 PM - I leave the school. I call someone, most often my mom and chat as I drive back to Batesville.

4:00 PM - I arrive in Batesville. If it is Monday or Wednesday, I pick up a medium cheese hand-tossed pizza at Dominos. If it is Tuesday, it's Subway. If it is Thursday, I meet the other MTC teachers at Cafe Ole for dinner.

5 - 6 PM Begin lesson planning for the next day.

6ish PM go for run.

7 PM Shower. Finish lesson planning.

7:30 PM - get ready for bed. Read or talk on the phone and try to relax.

8:00 PM - lights out.

Adjustments

Adjustments

What are you going to do differently this semester?

I started doing this in the weeks leading up to winter break, but I plan on continuing to try to give my students an impossible volume of work to do every day so that they don't have time to fool around. Grammar classes are super structured with tones of repetition, and they respond well to that. We've been doing ACT-focused almost exclusively since two weeks before break, and I've found that attaching the word "ACT" to something helps with motivation. Of course there are some students who have no desire to take the ACT and go to college, but I think there are a couple who are more confident and so more likely to consider taking it since they've seen so many ACT questions and they know they know how to answer them.

I am going to try to give students some structured choices more often regarding assignments and what we read, and with my honors class, I will have them take books home and do most of their reading outside of class (I did this with Their Eyes Were Watching God but we still read a lot in class) and do grammar/writing stuff in class.

What tools do you think you have acquired in your teacher tool belt?

I've gotten much better at finding resources and modifying them to suit my lessons. I

What are some issues that you are still struggling with?

I've been extremely consistent with warnings and consequences and I document EVERYTHING, but that doesn't mean my kids don't act out often. The biggest issue is disrespect and defiance when I correct a couple troublesome students, something our administration says they won't tolerate, but so far any students I've written up for continued and extreme disrespect and defiance have only gotten a talking to, and in the classes where there's one or two students that has happened with (1st and 6th) then things are worse because the troublesome students don't think they will get in trouble. If it weren't for one or two students in a class period, I wouldn't have a strict "no talking" rule since it's annoying to me and them, but I don't think I can loosen up on that account. I don't know exactly how to tackle the disrespect. Giving students zeros when they don't do work has helped with other issues - but I've tried everything with a handful of disrespectful students (hall conferences, calling parents, referrals etc and nothing seems to work).

Besides the handful of disrespectful students, I have two class periods that are still in revolt over hand raising/ no talking rules this far into the year (it didn't use to be my worst class, or even my second worst class - I broke those classes' spirits long ago). The problem is probably because I wasn't as hard on them as I should have been from the beginning.