Summer Worker Cinnamon Rolls

As I've mentioned before, I think it's very important to show appreciation to the people at school who help you to do your job! As a FACS teacher, I usually rely on baking to accomplish this purpose. In the summers I like to bring in a pan of homemade cinnamon rolls for the summer work crew to chow on during their breaks - nothing says "Thanks!" like an insane amount of butter and sugar!

Doesn't it drive you nuts when you remember to take photos of every step except for the finished product? Or am I the only one? Sheesh...

I brought these puppies in for the adults and kids working to make my new school all shiny. Like magic, they disappeared pretty quickly.

What do you do as a "Thanks" for making the school pretty over the summer?

Grocery Bagging

I LOVE getting to bag my own groceries! This is primarily due to the fact that about 98.4% of all baggers out there don't seem to know what they're doing.

Disclaimer: This is a rant. Brace yourself.

1. I always bring my own bags. One of the beautiful things about the reusable bags is that you can fit 3-4 times as many items into them. For whatever reason most baggers only fill these bags maybe one-third of the way. This drives me crazy.

2. Despite the fact that I want them to use my bags, I think it's only common sense to wrap meats in plastic before placing them in the fabric bags, in case they leak. I'd say the odds of a bagger offering to do this or automatically doing it is somewhere around 50/50.

3. I place my items on the grocery belt in logical groupings so that like items will be bagged together. For example, I put all of my frozen items together so that they will be bagged together. Likewise refrigerated and pantry items. Yet when I arrive home I will have one bag (2/3 empty) with ice cream, a cucumber, Juicy Juice and toilet paper all mixed in together. The rest of the bags will follow suit in containing a jumbled up mess.

I realize this is an over-controlling impulse, but seriously, there are sensible reasons! Keeping the cold items together keeps them cold; also, the ice cream won't melt while I'm sifting through the rice/ground beef/toothpaste/one bag of frozen vegetables bag looking for it. Not to mention that it takes significantly less time to put the groceries away if they are grouped by location!

In my life I have had maybe half a dozen baggers who have had their acts together, and one of them was a former student of mine whom I taught about grouping groceries on the conveyor belt.

Is it just me? Does anyone else have this issue?

What I'll Miss From Summer Vacation

This is not a Linky, just a post inspired by one written by Miss Trayers over at Not Just Child's Play. She wrote about what she'll miss from summer vacation, and I felt inspired to do the same.

1. Spending time with friends.
When you're a teacher there's really no time for a social life during the week, and naturally the little free time you have over the weekend you want to spend with your family. That makes time for friendships difficult to schedule (especially when your friends are also teachers!), compared to the freedom and flexibility of summer. Back in January I made a commitment to myself to meet my BFF in Chicago for brunch at least once a month, and it made such a difference in my well-being. I will be holding on to that this school year!

2. The ease of keeping the house clean.
This would seem counter intuitive, because I'm around a lot more to make a mess of things, but when work kicks in plus grad school, keeping up becomes a little more difficult. During the summer it's pretty darn easy to find a little bit of time during the day to clean, but during the school year I've got to keep to a pretty strict routine or things will get out of hand.

3. Time for reading!
I sooooo love to read! Reading time drops significantly once school returns.

4. Hanging out with my kitten.
We adopted a kitten this summer to keep our lonely cat (10 years old - quite the grumpy old man) company. He is such a cutie pie! The older cat spends most of his time during the day sleeping under the bed, and only comes out to socialize after about 4pm or so. The kitten spends most of his time hanging around me though, so we've had some good times. As I've started going in to work to organize my classroom he's become increasingly needy while I'm at home, so I hope he does well with the transition!

Back to School Goals

Yet another Linky - unusual for me, I know, but I was planning a "Back to School Goals" post already before I saw this and it was the perfect lead-in! If you want to join in, scoot on over to I {heart} Recess.

Personal - As I mentioned in my "Currently August" post, I am a recent C25K grad about to run my first race! I've really been enjoying running, so I want to make sure I keep up with it. I've been worried that going back to school might throw off my routine and/or dedication; I'm just going to have to establish a new routine that includes both work and running!

Organization - Every year I make one or two "New School Year Resolutions." The past couple of years one of them has been to make sure my desk is completely clear (meaning things are put away, where they belong, not stuffed in a drawer!) before leaving each day, and it has made a HUGE difference! This year I have a much longer commute, so in case there are any delays in the morning I want to make sure that everything is ready to go for the next day before I leave each day. I've always been really big on getting to work extra early each day (especially when I was coaching and staying after was not an option!) to set everything up and get caught up on grading, etc, but again with the commute I don't want to leave anything to chance!

Planning - My planning goal is stay at least one full unit ahead in each prep this year: activities, copies, supplemental materials, props, the whole sh-bang!

Professional - I have a lot of ideas for maintaining regular parent communication this year. I've done pretty well at staying in contact with parents in the past about their kids' performance, but with so much technology available now there are some things I want to try out to keep them informed about what's actually being accomplished in class. And after last semester I am completely in love with Remind101 and so I will definitely be implementing it for parents and students from the very beginning this year!

Students - My goal for my students is that they feel safe in my class and look forward to my class. This is an annual one, because of course how can they learn if those two things do not hold true? In some of my classes we have some pretty intense discussions (child development = conception is one that springs to mind) that require mutual respect across the room to be successful.

Motto - Make it awesome! If you still haven't seen Kid President's Pep Talk, watch it right now! My message to my students this year is that they have the choice to make their time awesome, or to make it boring. Awesome definitely seems preferable to me!

Small Talk with Kids I Don't Know

Anyone else ever experience this occupational hazard? Sometimes when I'm out in public, I just automatically talk to a kid that I've never seen before in my life and who has no idea who I am. And then he or she naturally gets a little weirded out.

It can't be just me, right? I'm used to making small talk with kids I see around school, even ones I don't know; after all, even if I have no idea who they are, they usually know who I am, or at least know that I'm a teacher. So that's okay. But apparently I don't know how to shut it off.

I first noticed this when I was in a Panera restroom near Madison, WI, waiting in line to wash my hands. A junior high aged girl was standing there also waiting, and she was all dressed up. I automatically said, "Wow, what a pretty dress!" And she then looked at me like I had a forked tongue or something. At which point I realized, right, I'm just a creepy stranger. Good job, Denise.

Last weekend I boarded a hotel elevator where there was a 6 or 7 year old girl who was holding what seemed to be a really cool looking balloon giraffe. So I asked, "Is that a giraffe?" She leaned into her mother a bit and looked up at her. Mom, thankfully, nodded at the girl, who then said yes. I told her it was a really awesome giraffe, then kept my mouth shut.

Awkward.

Sometimes this goes well, though. This past week my husband and I were waiting in line for a shuttle bus to take us from the JFK Library & Museum (truly awesome place - if you're ever in Boston, you simply must put this one on your to-do list!) back to the train station. What appeared to be the worst chaperoned group of teenagers in the history of summer field trips was running around the area, and when the shuttle arrived they all crammed around the door jockeying to be the first on. My teacher voice automatically kicked in, reminding them that they needed to wait for all of the people who were trying to get off the bus first. Like a charm they all backed off and started telling each other to stay out of the way of the people who were getting off the bus.

So maybe it's okay for me to boss around children I don't know in public, just not make small talk. I suppose more research needs to be done to answer this question.

Anyone else have any similar experiences?

No Names

Why I stopped accepting no-name papers during fourth quarter last year. This was from one week. One week.

Please Explain

Looking at the "Back-to-School" supplies has raised a couple of questions for me. First, colored pencils. Now I understand why Crayolas are more expensive than other brands - those other brands are just plain not as good, we all know that. But how do you explain double the colored pencils being triple the cost? Is a pink colored pencil really that much more expensive to make than an orange one?

Then there's the safety scissors. A regular pair of safety scissors is $.50; safety scissors with the little cap will cost you about $2, four times as much. For that additional little piece of plastic. Which (and correct me if I am wrong here, elementary teachers) if not lost within the first 24 hours will almost certainly never be used to cap the scissors after initially removed in class, instead will just be thrown haphazardly into the supply box until it does indeed become lost. Or maybe it's the included stickers that inflate the price. And why the stickers?

Linky - 10 Things I've Learned

Hooking up with a Linky from Miss Kindergarten - aside from Farley's Currently I don't really do much in the Linky world, but this looks like a good one! Most of the teachers on this Linky are elementary, so here goes a middle school/high school perspective.

10 Things I've Learned From Teaching (in no particular order)

1. Jr high/high school kids are too tall to efficiently place garbage in a trash can - put your bins on chairs and you won't have trash surrounding the can.

2. Go Slow to Go Fast! The more time you take to explain, check comprehension, and break activities into small pieces, the more you will accomplish, and the faster it will go in the long run. If you rush or give too large a task to do at once, it will take sooooooooo much longer to get done.

3. You absolutely must have the support staff behind you. Take care of them, and they will go over and beyond for you. One, because they are good people who have usually chosen their profession because of a desire to help. Two, because they are treated poorly by most faculty, so they appreciate appreciation. Nice matters! (Fabulous example: I was recently rehired by a school I used to work at. During the "tour" part of the interview at different points the principal and I ran into the three custodians, all of whom made a big fuss over me. Talk about your good impressions!)

4. Look for opportunities to make a personal connection with your students, even if it's something silly. I once had a student totally zone out (not pharmaceutically, just daydreaming) at the beginning of class, and as a result she was still sitting in her desk in the middle of the classroom alone after all of the other kids had left for the computer lab. I just stood at the door and waited for her to come back to reality, at which point she was really surprised. When we took our next test, I stapled this in the middle of her copy:

(apologies to Bill Watterson)

She loved it!

5. Never underestimate the motivating power of stickers. Yes, really, for high schoolers - when they see that some kids got stickers and they didn't, most will step it up on the next assignment/quiz/test/etc. The same applies to cool stamps.

6. If you have a group of really annoying jocks in one class who are all great friends and band together, it REALLY helps if the "hot girl" in class is on your side. I was dreading a second semester class one year because I knew I had a group like this. "Hot girl" was in this class, and since I have several different preps this was the sixth class of mine she had taken. The second day of class she asked "When are we going to start taking notes?" in an anticipatory tone. Captain Football asked her "Why are you so excited about taking notes?" She said "Her notes are really fun and interesting, not boring like other teachers'!" Never once had a problem or disruption during lectures in that class.

7. Schools are almost incestual. They are a web of relatives, in-laws, best friends, frenemies, childhood friends, etc... staff, faculty, students, and administrators, all interwoven. Until you really know your school, never say anything about anyone, ever; in fact, just hold on to that rule the whole time you work there.

8. Make NO assumptions. Never, ever, ever assume your students know anything, no matter what grade they are in. Always assess (and by this I of course do not mean bubble tests). I have had seniors who did not know multiplication tables, food groups, or how to create a title page. I've had untold (and growing) numbers of students over the years who did not know how to hold scissors. Reading levels, comprehension levels, basic social skills levels... you cannot assume anything.

9. You will care more than your students do. No matter what you teach, your class is a mere tiny fraction of their lives. They will not be as excited as you about the tedious details of your content area; they will not devote enough attention to preparing for your class; they will not be mentally present for your class at all times, every day. Your class will never be their first priority. That's NORMAL. And freeing. That short writing assignment from a week ago you just haven't been able to get around to grading? They've forgotten about it. It's okay to occasionally let things like that disappear. No matter what crazy thing happens during your first hour class, something will trump it by the end of their school day. Five years from now, they will only remember vague bits and pieces from your class (think back to your own high school career!), so if a lesson doesn't go well one day, or a unit tanks - it's okay! Do better next time! You will not destroy their education if every day isn't a homerun.

10. You are never "off the clock." No matter how hard you try, you will only be able to push teaching out of your mind for very brief periods of time. You will be on vacation and start thinking about pencil procedures; you will be out to a nice dinner with your husband and recall that nasty parent phone call you received; you will be at Target and, well, you know very well what happens every time you go to Target. For better or worse, you will never leave the job at work.

Those are my ten things! Link up and add yours!

Why We Need Home Ec

Really?

Love to Starbucks

Dear Starbucks,

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for posting your recipe for chocolate cinnamon bread online. I tried it out, and it worked fabulously  in my home kitchen. I won't even begrudge you the added poundage this is sure to result in.

Appreciatively,
Denise

July Currently!

Time for this month's Currently with Farley!

Listening - ahhh, the pitter patter of little, um, wheels...

Loving - TIME TO READ!!! I just finished my first big fiction read of the summer, "Sophie's Choice." Hoo, brutal. Not the book, the choice. Despite it's affirmed place in popular culture I didn't know going in what the "choice" was, and it could not have been more heart-wrenching. Amazing book - now I want to see the movie, especially since I'm a BIG Meryl Streep fan! My current teaching read is "Whole Brain Teaching," to be followed by "Teach Like a Pirate." I've also just finished a shorter, lighter read that I saved for reading during workouts at the gym (kind of hard to concentrate on something like "Sophie's Choice" on the treadmill) - "236 Pounds of Vice President," hilarious memoir.

Thinking - I've been doing some work here and there, sketching a few things out, but now it's time to get going before the time gets going!

Wanting - I've just become hooked on "Boardwalk Empire," and am about to watch the fifth episode.

Needing - I've got the material, just gotta sew 'em up. Pretty easy project.

Tips, Tricks, Hints - Know what you want to say and who you want to say it to. For this blog, my goal was to primarily to share classroom organization ideas with other teachers, particularly for FACS. My secondary goal was to share the occasional story, anecdote, or opinion related to my career. The more I stick to this the more feedback I receive and interest I seem to generate. Also, the better quality conversations I have with other teachers. 

Happy July, everyone!

Another Short Note

Dear Paula Deen,

I think you are awesome. I will continue to use clips from your shows in class, and reference you in every discussion we have about butter.

Your fan, 

Denise

A Short Note

Dear Kleenex,

I just saw your back to school commercial. Let me point out that an awful lot of schools only just began break. Heck, CPS just wrapped things up three days ago.

On behalf of teachers everywhere, I may very well request that parents donate only non-Kleenex brand tissue this coming school year.

Sincerely,

A customer in disbelief

Time for the Little Things

I've not posted often yet this summer, mainly because it's summer, of course! I've been working on taking care of all those things on the to-do list that get pushed to the back burner during the school year - you know, things like house cleaning : ).

Also on the list are some minor upgrades to the blog. For one, I finally locked in my own domain, so I can now leave out the "blogspot" in the web address (have no fear, if you use the blogspot address, it will redirect you to www.facsclassroomideas.com). Next I created my own font from my every day handwriting (go to www.myscriptfont.com to do this for FREE!). I used that to help create my first shot at a custom header - nothing fancy schmancy yet, but it was beginning to bug me!

A good chunk of time has been spent finishing up the last of my grad school assignments before our July break, which I am happy to announce I have completed! I have to show up to class this Wednesday, but everything has been turned in and I am DONE!

And then of course is the reading. Ah, reading for fun and reading to improve my craft... at the same time! Over the course of this school year I've followed a few blogs centered on "Whole Brain Teaching," and I have become intrigued enough to seriously look into it, so I am currently reading the book. Seems to me this would work perfectly for FACS!

I hope all of you are enjoying your summer, striking that golden balance between productivity and relaxation!

Tweet!

Now that it's summer, it's time to try some new things - I'm going to start with Twitter! It's not like I have all sorts of fascinating things to say, but occasionally there's a thought or question that crosses my mind that's certainly not worth a full post.

Kind of like right now.

Anyway, if so desired the "Follow" button is on the right.

I loaded up the car with all I'll need to prepare for next year along with a few extras... this view wasn't planned but sums up the beginning of summer perfectly, don't you think?

Currently June

You couldn't tell it from today's weather (50 degrees? Are ya kiddin' me???), but it is JUNE! And with a new month comes a new Currently from Farley!

Listening - at first intermission we are up by 2! Yeah buddy!

Loving - 3 hours, 10 minutes of students tomorrow, then SUMMER!!! The adults still have a full day, but we all know that's gravy once the last bus pulls out.

Thinking - How long can I put off my summer to-do list? I have A LOT of school work to do this summer, but I need to make sure that I truly take some time off as well so that I can return refreshed in August. Gah, I shudder to already be thinking of August...

Wanting - I've already accomplished most of the packing up, but I want to make sure I get everything wrapped up and locked up. I've spent an unfathomable amount of time getting these rooms the way I want them, I do not want to have to start over!

Needing - RECOVERY TIME! I've always had a good-sized to-do list for summer, and I've always started my timeline the first week school is out. Foolish, foolish girl, as most of the first week is spent in various forms of sleep. This year I'm just admitting that the first week will be more or less dedicated to napping and recovery.

Vacay Essentials - First and foremost, my Kindle! SO MUCH TO READ!!! Sunblock, as I burn easily. And of course my phone for all the photos I'll take (which I'll look back at during the tough times next school year).

3 hours, 10 minutes... Bring it on!

A Thousand Words

Note: this a completely unhelpful post, but amusing to me nonetheless.

This is an older photo from back at the beginning of the semester, but it captures the moment perfectly. Here is my cat, "helping" me with grading:

Yep, that's exactly how grading makes me feel, too.

Lincoln

There's been a running joke at my house for several months.

Back in late fall, several classes went on a field trip to see the movie "Lincoln." When they returned, naturally the other students asked how it was. One girl replied,"Well, there were parts of it that were funny, but I wouldn't recommend it." Clearly, she missed the entire point of the movie.

So our joke is "Parts of it were funny, but..."

Well, finally, finally, "Lincoln" arrived via Netflix this past weekend so finally, finally, I got to see it.

About ten minutes into the movie I turned to my husband and said "There is no way that those 8th graders understood any of this," to which he exclaimed "I know! Did any of the teachers actually see this before taking them??" There were so many reasons this movie would have been difficult for them to enjoy:

A: The language was very different from today, obviously.
B: You needed a fair amount of background knowledge about the Civil War.
C: You needed a fair amount of background knowledge about the people other than Lincoln (Seward, Willie, Mary, etc).
D: You needed a fair amount of background knowledge about slavery/states rights/emancipation/etc.
E. You needed a fair amount of background knowledge about racial attitudes of the time.
F. You needed a fair amount of background knowledge about social conventions of the time.
G. You needed a fair amount of background knowledge about how an amendment to the Constitution is passed.
H. You needed a fair amount of background knowledge about U.S. political geography of the time....

And on, and on, and on, and on. While watching this movie most of those kids were literally sitting there in the dark having no idea what was going on.

Which leads me to wonder, how many of them experience that at school every day?

Seriously. While it's understandable that many 14 year olds wouldn't have the background knowledge needed to fully appreciate "Lincoln," there is an enormous amount of knowledge that they should come to school armed with at this age yet they are lacking.

Some are easily fixed. Take, for instance, food groups: when I give them grocery store ads, very, very few of them can pick out three veggies, three fruits, three proteins, etc without a LOT of help. While it saddens me that they don't know what fruits and vegetables are, I can help fix that, in relatively short order.

However, there are others that cannot be easily fixed. Like conflict resolution skills - hence the frequent fighting suspensions. Face-to-face communication skills - thank you Facebook, Twitter, and cell phones. BASIC READING SKILLS - the crux of everything we do in school, so many students are lacking.

These ideas are not new to any of us; it's just that every once in a while you have an experience that gives you a hearty dose of perspective and you feel the need to share.

And by the way, "Lincoln" was awesome! If you haven't seen it, go watch it. Now.

The Extras and the Finish Line

It's all the "extras" that really get us, isn't it? Sure there's the lesson planning, the grading, the meetings, etc. But the other things... I think that's the black hole into which our time really disappears. For me, last week it was hollowing eggs. This week:

Basket one of two; the dryer at the school isn't working. Yay for bringing home a week's worth of school laundry!

I think that one of the reasons this time of year is so tough on a lot of teachers is that we become acutely aware of all of the extras, especially since so many are added on right now. Additional planning because the kids are super antsy, filling out inventory forms and checklists, packing away what we don't want to have "disappear" over the summer, putting together little thank yous for our support and custodial staffs, the send-off gifts/thoughts we give to our students... a few minutes here and there add up to hours pretty quickly!

All of this while we have our eyes on that glorious finish line... I think to teachers it's not the break that's such a big deal; after all, we all know that summer "break" should always be in quotation marks for us, due to our overly optimistic to-do lists (c'mon, you know yours is huge!) along with our have-to lists. But that line of demarcation, where we can feel that we have finished, that we can breathe and gather our wits and prepare for the next start - that's one of the truly great things about teaching, that we have that finish line that once crossed allows us a clean slate and a fresh start. There are plenty of other professions that cycle as well, but very few that allow that very definite and very clean end date. A release from all of the "extras"...

And then there's setting up the classroom in August... 

Currently May

Forgot to do last month's Currently - I'm back on the wagon!

Listening - my hubs is on break (community college professor), and is indulging in a little well-deserved R&R. He's been looking forward to Skyrim for weeks!

Loving - 15 more school days - I can make it! I know it!

Thinking - Just completed the last wave of "egg babies" - no more hollowing eggs this year! And since I'll be rotating a two year curriculum, no egg hollowing next year, either!

Wanting - I've been working so hard all year to get these rooms organized! I do not want to go into year two without finishing the job!

Needing - These last few weeks of school really push us to the edge, just have to hold on a little longer.

Summer Bucket List - Once school kicked in back in August, it was adios to making changes to the new house. I am determined to replace the curtains this summer! I also have materials for plenty of sewing projects ready to go. And, of course, I'm hoping to get that second year curriculum (first edition) pounded out before school begins, along with the first edition supplementary materials I'll need. We've also got a lot of fun things planned for the summer that I am excited about!

C'mon summer!