I just changed the design of my blog. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet but I think I'll give it a while to let it grow on me. Interestingly, the old picture I used for my blog background
was a picture that I took when MelSav and I took our initial trip to Chicago last September. Little did I know that just 6 short months later I'd be using that very L line nearly every weekend. The house that Boyfriend and I moved into is just a few minutes walk to the Kimball stop on the Brown Line. I don't exactly believe in fate, but I think it's interesting that of all the Ls I could have taken a picture of, I took a picture of this very one that would have major significance later :)
Anywho, I didn't start a blog post to talk about the fact that I have a new layout, haha. There are a few things on my mind that I wanted to write about. I've been meaning to squeeze out a post since Friday but it just didn't happen until now. I'll recap.
Friday: I had an absolutely fantastic day subbing for a third grade class at my school. I had never subbed a full day before and was moderately nervous on my way to work, but took some comfort in knowing that I'm familiar with our school and it's procedures and routines so I wasn't working in completely uncharted territory. I had very detailed sub notes written along with the entire day mapped out for me on the SmartBoard (every classroom at my school has one!) so the day was super easy.
Class started at 8:40 and I told the kids that I'd know all their names by 10:00. They didn't really believe me. At 9:25 as we transitioned into a different activity, I told them all that I'd learned their names. They of course wanted to take time to test me on everyone's name right then and there, but we had tasks to complete and I told them I'd prove it to them by using their names to call on them. I think my ability to learn their names coupled with the fact that they know I'm an existing school employee really helped to set the tone for the day and I immediately felt as though I had their respect, which is HUGE (and is something I'll discuss in another paragraph a bit later).
Overall, I couldn't have asked for a better first day of subbing experience and I hope that I'm able to do it again in the future! I see my reading groups Monday-Thursday so technically I'm available to sub on Fridays in lieu of my planning periods, so we'll see if another opportunity presents itself! Fingers crossed! :)
Also Friday as I was driving to my afternoon job, someone pulled up beside me to tell me that all three of my brake lights were out! Scary! I was absolutely convinced that I was going to get rear-ended and was so, so thankful that I didn't.
Saturday: I took my car in to the shop that is literally half a mile from our house. It turned out the problem was just the brake light switch and I had my car back by the early afternoon. Yay! Around 3:00 Boyfriend and I started on a bar crawl for a friend's birthday. We went to 10 different bars in about 10 hours. We were both really good about pacing ourselves and neither one of us got too sloppy at all. There were about 25 of us and it was so fun to be a part of a massive group of people occupying the L and entire sections of bars. We also enjoyed some special pricing at a few of the bars which was just an added bonus :) After the crawl was over we met up with a girl a work with and I had fun chatting with her and getting to know her better. A fantastic Saturday indeed :)
Sunday: We slept in super late which is really hard for me to do now that I'm waking up early for work everyday so I was shocked to see 12:30 on the clock when I woke up! Haha. Our day was mostly spent watching/screaming at the Bears as they attempted to beat the Packers. For those of you who aren't from the Chicago area/don't know much about football, the Bears-Packers rivalry is one of the longest standing in the NFL. I personally don't find it as scary as the Chargers-Raiders rivalry, but it's definitely a long standing and deeply rooted emotional tradition in here in the Chicagoland area.
We made some absolutely amazing chili for dinner that night using as many of our homegrown veggies as we could: tomatoes, habaneros, bell peppers, anaheim chilis. I love, love, love having a garden and I'm really sad that the growing season here is quickly coming to an end. We plan on keeping some plants going inside using grow lamps during the cold months, like our pineapple and plumeria, but the only edible things we'll have are the herbs growing in the kitchen window. Dear Spring, please come quickly! Haha. I'm actually looking forward to the Fall and Winter here. It will be my first Chicago Christmas :) I'm just going to miss our garden a lot, but we already have plans for next year's! We can spend the off season perfecting our ideas to hopefully have an even more successful garden in 2012.
Monday: My first day of reading groups. I brought home my Teacher's Editions to look over my lessons for the week and Boyfriend was surprised to see just how scripted the particular program I'm working with is. It was amusing to see his reaction, haha. I had already met most of my kids from working in different classrooms and seeing them on the playground. My fourth grade group was a piece of cake. I only have 4 kids and while they can be a bit chatty at times, they're easy to redirect and they seem to be interested in the program.
My fifth graders are another story. I have a full group of six kids-4 boys and 2 girls. The kids' personalities are all SO different from one another's. It's not at all that I was expecting a group of drones, but they all vary from each other so much that it's been challenging for me to find ways to appeal to all 6 of them at the same time. I know that six kids is nothing compared to an entire classroom, so I don't mean to sound whiny. I'm just trying to find the best way to capture my students' attention and keep them engaged as active participants during the 40 minutes we have together.
Another issue I've been facing with my fifth graders is a lack of respect for me. One student in particular has no problem just talking over me and is constantly interrupting me. We had a discussion about how they should behave when they are with me and how they should treat me when they are in my room. Interrupting Boy was surprised to learn I was a "real teacher", not just a Reading Interventionist. Once I told them that, another boy suggested that "We should treat you the way we treat our classroom teachers. We should just pretend you are them." I praised him for his idea while I thought to myself, What a novel idea, dear child. I know that I can't use my own years in school as my standard for behavior because it was my personal experience, but it's so weird to me that students would think that adults of varying levels are worthy of different amounts of respect. Maybe I'll put up one of those posters in my room that says, "Treat others as you would like to be treated", just to serve as a reminder to my students that a little bit of respect can go a long way.
Their behavior was not at all enough to make me hate my job or anything like that. I'm well aware that as we establish our new routine, the students will try to test their boundaries with me. We've discussed setting up a positive reward system and they seemed receptive to that. On Friday, my co-worker and I are going to brainstorm about how to better organize our room and how to reward them for good behavior. Definitely looking forward to getting those two much needed systems in place.
On a not so fantastic note, Monday also brought with it the shock of Boyfriend being let go/fired from his job. It's a rather long story, so just know that he didn't do anything to cause it. You should also know that Boyfriend and I are extremely financially savvy and sound so we will be completely fine as he looks for another job. Fingers crossed that something comes his way soon. Hopefully with a company that helps its employees go back to school for their MBAs. That would be ideal! :)
Tuesday: And now it's Tuesday. I'm adjusting to life with a boyfriend who doesn't work bar hours anymore. It's weird having him home when I get home from work. Definitely a nice and welcome change because I'm kind of addicted to that boy and spending time with him. It's just that our entire relationship has been spent with him working the hours of 3:00pm-??? so having such a major daily lifestyle change is something that will take a little while to get used to and develop a new routine around.
Today is my mom's birthday and it feels weird to be spending it apart. We have always made a point of spending each other's birthdays together as a family. For some reason birthdays are more important to spend together in my mind than holidays. I think it's because on that one day, a birthday, we are celebrating one individual person whereas holidays are something that millions of other people are doing at the exact same time and it doesn't feel quite as unique as a birthday. That's not at all to say that I don't feel like that holidays are important, it's just that to me, having a day to celebrate one loved one is better than Christmas or Thanksgiving. We had an hour long phone chat this evening so at least I got to spend part of her special day with her in some form :)
I'll try to blog again on Thursday since I have no school that day. Thank you, Rosh Hashanah :)
Sunday: We slept in super late which is really hard for me to do now that I'm waking up early for work everyday so I was shocked to see 12:30 on the clock when I woke up! Haha. Our day was mostly spent watching/screaming at the Bears as they attempted to beat the Packers. For those of you who aren't from the Chicago area/don't know much about football, the Bears-Packers rivalry is one of the longest standing in the NFL. I personally don't find it as scary as the Chargers-Raiders rivalry, but it's definitely a long standing and deeply rooted emotional tradition in here in the Chicagoland area.
We made some absolutely amazing chili for dinner that night using as many of our homegrown veggies as we could: tomatoes, habaneros, bell peppers, anaheim chilis. I love, love, love having a garden and I'm really sad that the growing season here is quickly coming to an end. We plan on keeping some plants going inside using grow lamps during the cold months, like our pineapple and plumeria, but the only edible things we'll have are the herbs growing in the kitchen window. Dear Spring, please come quickly! Haha. I'm actually looking forward to the Fall and Winter here. It will be my first Chicago Christmas :) I'm just going to miss our garden a lot, but we already have plans for next year's! We can spend the off season perfecting our ideas to hopefully have an even more successful garden in 2012.
Monday: My first day of reading groups. I brought home my Teacher's Editions to look over my lessons for the week and Boyfriend was surprised to see just how scripted the particular program I'm working with is. It was amusing to see his reaction, haha. I had already met most of my kids from working in different classrooms and seeing them on the playground. My fourth grade group was a piece of cake. I only have 4 kids and while they can be a bit chatty at times, they're easy to redirect and they seem to be interested in the program.
My fifth graders are another story. I have a full group of six kids-4 boys and 2 girls. The kids' personalities are all SO different from one another's. It's not at all that I was expecting a group of drones, but they all vary from each other so much that it's been challenging for me to find ways to appeal to all 6 of them at the same time. I know that six kids is nothing compared to an entire classroom, so I don't mean to sound whiny. I'm just trying to find the best way to capture my students' attention and keep them engaged as active participants during the 40 minutes we have together.
Another issue I've been facing with my fifth graders is a lack of respect for me. One student in particular has no problem just talking over me and is constantly interrupting me. We had a discussion about how they should behave when they are with me and how they should treat me when they are in my room. Interrupting Boy was surprised to learn I was a "real teacher", not just a Reading Interventionist. Once I told them that, another boy suggested that "We should treat you the way we treat our classroom teachers. We should just pretend you are them." I praised him for his idea while I thought to myself, What a novel idea, dear child. I know that I can't use my own years in school as my standard for behavior because it was my personal experience, but it's so weird to me that students would think that adults of varying levels are worthy of different amounts of respect. Maybe I'll put up one of those posters in my room that says, "Treat others as you would like to be treated", just to serve as a reminder to my students that a little bit of respect can go a long way.
Their behavior was not at all enough to make me hate my job or anything like that. I'm well aware that as we establish our new routine, the students will try to test their boundaries with me. We've discussed setting up a positive reward system and they seemed receptive to that. On Friday, my co-worker and I are going to brainstorm about how to better organize our room and how to reward them for good behavior. Definitely looking forward to getting those two much needed systems in place.
On a not so fantastic note, Monday also brought with it the shock of Boyfriend being let go/fired from his job. It's a rather long story, so just know that he didn't do anything to cause it. You should also know that Boyfriend and I are extremely financially savvy and sound so we will be completely fine as he looks for another job. Fingers crossed that something comes his way soon. Hopefully with a company that helps its employees go back to school for their MBAs. That would be ideal! :)
Tuesday: And now it's Tuesday. I'm adjusting to life with a boyfriend who doesn't work bar hours anymore. It's weird having him home when I get home from work. Definitely a nice and welcome change because I'm kind of addicted to that boy and spending time with him. It's just that our entire relationship has been spent with him working the hours of 3:00pm-??? so having such a major daily lifestyle change is something that will take a little while to get used to and develop a new routine around.
Today is my mom's birthday and it feels weird to be spending it apart. We have always made a point of spending each other's birthdays together as a family. For some reason birthdays are more important to spend together in my mind than holidays. I think it's because on that one day, a birthday, we are celebrating one individual person whereas holidays are something that millions of other people are doing at the exact same time and it doesn't feel quite as unique as a birthday. That's not at all to say that I don't feel like that holidays are important, it's just that to me, having a day to celebrate one loved one is better than Christmas or Thanksgiving. We had an hour long phone chat this evening so at least I got to spend part of her special day with her in some form :)
I'll try to blog again on Thursday since I have no school that day. Thank you, Rosh Hashanah :)
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