Mod Podge of School Happenings

Well, we are 7 weeks into this school year. It feels like it's been longer than 7 weeks. Timing in this season of life has been weird. Some days seem to fly by and others seem to crawl by. As a whole, in some ways, time seems to fly and on the other hand seem to crawl at the same time. It feels like forever ago that we had that crazy summer where we went non-stop for so long, traveling and moving for the third time in 10 months, which makes school seem like it's been going on f.o.r.e.v.e.r already. Maybe I just need a day off. At the same time this year is already pretty much 25% done. How have we already been in Morganton for that long? Time is weird.

Overall school is going very well. It's very different from Carrington. Different isn't always bad, but it has definitely been an adjustment. Life at Carrington was go, go, go, meetings and things to do all the time. Your only time to plan and get stuff done was after school and at home. Life moves at such a slower pace here. That is not the case for school this year at all. It's rare that we have meetings. And, not having as many leadership roles as I was in at Carrington, my planning period is usually wide open. At the end of week 6 I brought a little school work home and that was the first time I walked out of school with more than my purse and lunch box all year! I have been able to get all of my planning and grading done at school. Say what? I kind of know what it feels like to have a regular 8-5 job now. :)

At Carrington, most classrooms were pretty much the same in terms of bulletin boards and classroom furniture. Coming to a new school, the classroom "norm" is different to me. I have one very large bulletin board, and two very small bulletin boards. I am using the big one for my equation collages and students LOVE looking at them. The green wall really makes them pop and SO many teachers have stopped mid walk down the hall to look in at them. I'm glad I did them this year!

I don't love bulletin boards and my goal is always to have something on them that I can use all year. By the end of my time at Carrington, I had inherited three bulletin boards. I filled them with my "No Name Graveyard," "Spectacular" board, and classroom calendar. And, I really liked all of them. Using my big bulletin board for the equation collages, I was left with only two tiny bulletin boards. So, I made an "Amazing" board because "Spectacular" wouldn't fit and came up with this new calendar board. My old calendar was orange and that wasn't going to fly when our school colors are blue and our team is the Minions. Blue and yellow...hard to get orange to fit in there.

I'm loving these, but am missing my "No Name Graveyard." I asked for another bulletin board, but that doesn't seem like it's going to happen. So I'm just taping no name papers to my extra white board...

We are into our Ratios & Proportions unit. For unit rate, I always have students compare unit prices at Food Lion to unit prices at Costco. I didn't think about it this year until I had all the signs hung and the activity ready to go that these kids probably have no clue what Costco is. Thankfully, there is a Sam's Club close by so they were able to make that connection. At the end of the assignment, they have to write a paragraph about where the best place to shop is and why. This kid's paragraph cracked me up...getting a political jab in wherever he can.

This year McDowell County is one to one, which means each student has their own Chrome Book (lap top) to use in class. At the high school, they take them home and have them all the time. At the middle school, they have to leave them here at night, but have them with them in all classes. Coming from the big city of Durham, which everyone here thinks is the same thing as Raleigh, they assume we had great access to technology resources (wrong.). So it has been intimidating figuring out how to use these in class, but I'm learning. This week my students in my AIG class are working on a project comparing speeds of roller coasters. There's this cool program called Kami that allows students to write on a PDF. They will do all of their work electronically via Kami on the PDF I posted in their Google classroom and then will submit it to me through their drive. So cool!

At the beginning of the year, I always have students fill out an information sheet. That's where I get these drawings from each year. It usually takes me a while to read through all of them, but I have finally done that. I ask students to complete the sentence "Math is..." This response had me cracking up.

So, here is the teacher who causes mental abuse to humans' year 6 of teaching school picture.