Well, hello there. Long time, no post. I promise the students haven't eaten me alive.
Ok. So, let's catch up.
My first semester of my first year of teaching is done! Yes!! Praise God!! The end of the 2nd 9 weeks was so hard to get through! I could barely sleep. No, let me change that. I didn't sleep. At all. And y'all, I love sleep. Other than God, my bed is the number 1 relationship that I can maintain. ...Until December rolled in. I was worried about my students not passing my class. I didn't want to seem like a bad teacher. I didn't want parents to say "My child is failing. That means you aren't teaching well. You're no good at your job. What are you even doing in the classroom? Do you know how to teach?" Yea, I thought of all of this. So, I was stressing. Majorly. Students had some pretty fun extra credit opportunities. I actually think these will be project-based assignments for next school year. I hate tests. Really. A lot. Anywho, some students did the extra credit. The ones who needed it, however, were the ones who didn't complete the extra credit. I took this opportunity to call parents. At this time, I realized that I had been awful about communicating with parents. Well, parents were pretty upset at their child for not completing the extra credit, especially if they were close to failing. I got a good laugh from this. I loved hearing the students attempt to explain themselves in the background while I was on the phone with mom/dad.
One thing I enjoyed last 9 weeks was the idea of a "Celebration of Learning." I saw this on somebody's blog. Or twitter. I don't really know. My memory now-a-days is horrible. With some tweaks, I tried it out with 8th grade math. They LOVED it!! So on test day, we decided to call it a Celebration of Learning instead. While taking the test, they were celebrating what they learned over the past few weeks. And when you think of celebrations, you think of parties....and parties mean PARTY HATS!! Ok. You hate that? Well, you're not an 8th grader! They loved those stupid hats. They wore them while they were yet celebrating (taking their test). Once they were done celebrating, they took the hats off. They had them on their heads, on their foreheads (like a unicorn), on their mouths (disgusting), and any other way they could wear them. It was quite hilarious.
On the last day before break, we had a small celebration for our students - an actual celebration, not a test. We called it a "block party." Each grade pretty much stayed on their hall and rotated from different activities in various classrooms. It actually turned out to be nice. Well, earlier that day, 2 of my students were arm wrestling during class. In my mind, I was thinking "I could soooo beat both of them." But being the professional that I am, I didn't ask. So that day went on. During the block party, one of them got SUPER upset and started huffing and puffing - it was quite ridiculous. So I wanted to diffuse the situation....I asked him to arm wrestle. He smiled soooo big! He lit up! Well, it was a huge deal. We had a crowd. I was winning for a bit, but of course he beat me. I mean, he's big ole boy. Well, the guy he was arm wrestling from class wanted to try to beat me. Because there were a lot of guys who now wanted to arm wrestle, I asked them to get the strongest of them, and I would arm wrestle that person. It ended up being the student who arm wrestled my first opponent. Y'all, I beat him!!! It was so EPIC!! He was slightly embarrassed. All of the girls were saying "Oh, yea Ms. Watson!!" I laughed. And laughed. .....And laughed!! I will never tell my students this, but my arm was sore for 2 days. Never again. But I am now a champ at arm wrestling. THE champ! Just don't tell the student who beat me.
Y'all, I really love teaching! And I know I do some crazy stuff in the classroom, but hey!...I'm a crazy person. I'll try nearly anything. The kids know this. Sometimes, however, I wonder if I'm too mean. Well, I'm not mean, but am I too harsh? I'll be honest. I'm hard on my students. Just like I'm hard on people who know me from outside of the classroom. But my friends are my age and a little older. They can take it. These students are 13/14 years old. It may be taken as being mean. I have, however, tried to show them more of the fun side of me. I laugh and smile more. I tell jokes. I'm more laid back. Oh gosh, these students probably don't know how to take me. I guess that'll keep them on their toes.
Until next time,
Ms. C. Watson
