Almost there

I have four days of school left until my first Christmas break that will be spent NOT working retail!! Yippee!!!!!!  I get to spend it hanging out with my family and friends and catching up with everybody. Here is what my week looks like until I arrive home on Saturday. Tomorrow morning (Tuesday), I have a staff meeting, fairly normal school morning, then play practice in the afternoon and the kids have to wrap their presents for their parents. Wednesday comes and the morning will be as normal as it can be with the dress rehersal for the Christmas program. Some of the students from the town school are coming to watch the rehersal and I guess this is a BIG deal for both sets of students. They are so excited! Then comes Thursday.....the big day. This is the official Christmas program where members from the community (aka:the town of Ryegate) can come out to the colony and watch the kids perform. After all the busy work of doing the Christmas program on Thursday, Friday will come. Friday is the day that theyy get to undo everything that they have been working on for the past three weeks! All the decorations, play props and lights will come down. the costrumes will be reorganized and put into their totes for next year. After all the posters come down off my walls for the break the girls will scrub the school from  floor to ceiling, literally.
Today I made my lesson plans for the first week in January. I get to start off my first week back from break with a four day school week.  Thursday, January sixth is a holiday on the colony. I am not really sure why it is a holiday. The kids tried to explain it to me at the beginning of the school but I don't remember what it is. I think it is an extra day to celebrate Jesus.  Yay for Jesus, right?!!  I will be able to spend that day working in my classroom and maybe even going into the town school and doing some observations.  I need to get into some math classes because some of the 8th grade algebra is the math that hauted me in middle school, high school and college and now it is coming back to haunt me again! I just can't get away from math!!!! AAHHHHHHHH....at least we are doing awesome things right now like circumference, perimeter, slope and ratios. At least I know how to do these things without having to sit down and do the entire set of practice problems before teaching the lesson.  Today, however puzzled me because I was teaching circumference to my sixth graders and one of the kept saying "but I don't know." so, I kept asking a series of questions to figure out what part of finding the circumference of a circle she was confused on. They kept answering, "yes, I know," and "uh-huh," but somehow they still did not understand. We even practiced finding the radius and diameter together and putting the numbers into the formula. "What do you multiply?" was the most common question. "Why are their two formulas? Why is 3.14 that way?"  These are the kinds of thoughts that go through my students' heads when I am teaching. I am still not sure they got it though, the symbol of pi seemed to be what royally confused them. They have such a hard time accepting symbols as a part of math.  They think it is odd that they are supposed to use a symbol instead of writing a number out. Perhapse a different approach tomorrow will shed some light onto the situation. Signing off for now! Stay dry Washington!!!

Observations

Greetings! It has been a while. A lot has been going on at the Colony to get ready for Christmas.  My afternoons have been filled with play practice and making gifts for the families. It is going to be pure chaos for the next week and a half. The Christmas program is on the 16th over here and if any of you happen to have travelled the 900 miles to Ryegate, you can come.  The kids went did their first run through on the "stage" this afternoon and did quite wll! I was impressed.  It is always hard to tell if they are actually learning their lines when they are not being serious while practicing their lines in the classroom. Although we were missing a couple of students today, the practice went very well.  I of course got the lucky opportunity to babysit the kids who could not handle themselves downstairs so they got to sit in silence upstairs with me. They were none too happy however, if you can't pay attention and follow directions when you are supposed to the concequence is that you get to sit in silence while being bored!!! BUMMER for them!!!

This is actually the next day now.  I survived my first observation by my boss yesterday!  It was mostly good news! The biggest thing that I was criticized for was not reviewing my math lesson for sixth grade before teaching it.  I had a big boo-boo in calculations and that was not a good thing to have in my lesson.  However, in my defense, when I went to rexplain the concept today to the students and have them do a review of the lesson, the kids totally knew how to do it.  They did much better on their assignment today as well. Even though I know the importance of modeling correct mathmatical skills,  still think that it is interesting that they understood the concept even though the math was incorrect.  On the happy side, I was told that my classroom is much more oganized and runs more smoothly than it did at the beginning of the school year.  That is a big YAY FOR ME that I was glad to hear because even though there are the day to day struggles with the snotty and whiny kids that I teach, the amount of material I am able to cover and the individual attention I can give the students has increased.  I was also told that I moved through the material at an effective pace and did a good job of pacing the lessons.  Occasionally one grade will run long and I will have to explain everything what feels like a bajillion times and that will derail me from keeping to my schedule.  I have found ways to ensure that I am back on schedule and the kids get enough time to finish their assignments. 
This week has been crazy getting ready for the Christmas program, and decorating for Christmas.  it is not a tradition to decorate their house for Christmas and so their opportunity to do so is at school.  Quite frankly, it looks like Christmas vomited all over my room and the school, including the basement.  The kids go crazy while decorating wih lights, garland, tinsil and pictures they have colored over the years.  It is a mad house and causes lots and lots wild children.   The big highlight of the day was getting the real Christmas tree downstairs to have for the Christmas program.  The kids were very dillegent about putting it in water and making sure it was standing straight in the tree stand. 
Two more days of school this week and then five, really like four, school days next week.  It is hard to imagine when I am going to fit in packing amid all the chaos, faculty meetings and Christmas parties.  Never fear, I will fit it in!! Till next time....