I'm Back!

I'M BACK!! I've probably lost my entire readership after this impressively long hiatus, but I'm excited to get back to writing regardless.  My last post was in early February, about six months ago, so you can imagine that a lot has happened in the time since I last shared the wisdom of my delightful middle school students.  My reasons for taking a break from the blog were both personal and professional.  In a nutshell, my life just got out of balance.  In late January, my dad was diagnosed with lymphoma, which was a really tough experience for my whole family.  His strength and positive attitude throughout his treatment was incredibly inspiring, and last week we found out that he is 100% cancer free!  Needless to say, it was a very happy week for our whole family.

Since I left my small but mighty audience hanging when I stopped writing in February, here are some highlights on how my classroom rounded out the year...

• We increased our use of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) by using our cell phones to build vocabulary acquisition and comprehension skills.
• We created iBooks using our new and exciting knowledge of the elements of science fiction writing.
• We did AWESOME on the ACTAAP! 97% of my students scored Proficient or Advanced on their state tests in literacy.  I totally did a happy dance when I found that out.

Then, it was summer time!  Well, sort of... Summer school started the day after school let out for the year.  For the second year in a row, I was fortunate to work with a diligent, determined, and delightful group of kids in summer school.  We read S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, which they loved, and we diagrammed sentences, which they loved a little less.  It was so rewarding to see such a great group of kids make the progress they need to be more successful in the next school year.  

Post-summer school, there was finally a little time for rest and relaxation to get excited for a new school year.  I am finishing up my Masters degree, and I'm pretty darn excited to start my third year of teaching as my first year not being a student, too.  Of course, I'm a student of my students.  I'm sure this new group will come in ready to teach me lots of new lessons, and I'm excited to learn from them. Today marks the beginning of the end for Ms.Herring's summer break.  This Thursday, August 1, is my first day back at work.  I can't lie, I'm thrilled to get back.  I'm antsy to get my classroom ready and meet my new students and try new things in my classroom.  It's going to be good to be back!

Small Smiles and the Word of the Week

The past two weeks of my life have easily been the most stressful consecutive weeks of my life.  Two members of my immediate family have dealt with major health concerns and had surgeries, and one of my boyfriend's oldest and dearest friends passed away in the line of duty as a police officer.  Experiencing all of the stress, fear, and worry that came along with these situations made it difficult to focus on anything else.  I felt like I was floating through my day, hazily responding to students and colleagues, losing my train of thought in the middle of tasks and conversations as my mind would wander back to the worries.  Even my students could tell I wasn't myself.  It was as if they were tiptoeing around me everyday.  I have never heard my classes so quiet and reserved.

While those worries don't go aways, they are eased in knowing that my family and friends are constantly praying for the situations with which I am currently struggling.  I've been doing a daily reflection that my principal gave me (on a particularly bad day when I was an emotional basket case), and it has provided me so much peace and centeredness as I start my day at my desk each morning.

Another thing that has brought brightness to my school day is my students. Something I've never blogged about but have used in my classroom since I began teaching last year is the Word of the Week.  Word of the Week, or WotW, is one of my favorite standing lessons that I do each week.  Every Monday, the bellringer is a short worksheet that asks students various questions in order to help them understand a new vocabulary word.  Then, beginning on Tuesday, students can use the word in a sentence during class in order to get a piece of candy after class.

This leads to some really great sentences, like this one:

"Ms. Herring, I really comprehended that lesson, thanks to your great teaching!"

And some sentences that make it sound like they've never learned English before:

"Ms. Herring, you sure comprehended that lesson to me this afternoon!"

When they really "get" the word, their sentences make me smile, especially when the word is so far out of their normal vocabularies.  When it's obvious that they totally don't get the word, and they butcher it terribly on the off-chance that I'll give them candy, it makes me smile even bigger.

Lately I've been reminded about the importance of small smiles.  Sometimes, even in the middle of the worst weeks, all you need is one of those small smiles to get you through the day.  Fortunately, the Word of the Week this week is "embody,"  so I'm sure I'll be getting plenty of small smiles out of hearing them try to use that!

The Power of Respect

It's been well over a month since the last time I had a chance to write, but it's not for lack of material. I promise.

On the last day of school, I took my "Elf Club" members to Wal-mart to spend over $20,000 that they raised throughout the fall semester to support the Christmas giving of the local Kiwanis Club.  Their giving spirit and their excitement to know that they were helping others was infectious.  I honestly think it was the highlight of my holiday season.

And then there was Christmas with my family.  Closely followed by "Snowpocalypse 2012," which made me appreciate electricity and the freedom to go where I want to go when I want to go there maybe more than I have ever appreciated electricity and the freedom to go where I want to go when I want to go there.  It was truly a weeklong exercise in extreme patience.

After the snow melted, I got to ring in 2013 with my best friends in the whole world and my fantastic boyfriend.

And then before I knew it, we were back in school.  The children all came back looking a little taller than I remembered and acting a little more confident (and slightly more full of themselves, per any almost-8th-grader).  I was thrilled to see my students again!  As nice as it is to still live my adult work life on a middle school schedule, complete with a Christmas break, I always start to get antsy by the time we start back up for second semester.

Anyway, as excited as I was to see the children, I was a little shocked, after the first couple of days back, that a few of my students had magically discovered the art of sass and bad attitudes in their two weeks away from me.  I found myself having to reassert my expectations and drop a few detentions on some kids.  I even had to write my first pink slip, which was maybe my least favorite teaching experience to date.  I found myself wondering last week why a kid would make things so hard on themselves?  I mean, I get it.  They're testing the boundaries, figuring it out, asserting their independence and trying to gain adult respect, blah, blah, blah, child psychology, etc., etc.  But knowing why they seemed to have forgotten all the rules made it no less frustrating.  Suffice it to say that Ms. Herring ended up winning the battle because, let's face it, the teacher always wins.  This week has been so much less stressful.

Our 3rd quarter unit is all about the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.  It is my favorite unit because middle school students are so hyper-sensitive to the idea of justice.  They want justice and equality for themselves, and as they learn about the injustices that people suffered only 50 years ago in this country, you can see their indignation growing.  Last week, they wrote and delivered anti-bullying speeches in the style of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.  It was so powerful.  One student, who talked about his own experience being bullied in front of his classmates, almost cried when they stood to applaud him after his speech.  Other students preached against bullying as if they were standing at a pulpit.

Probably the thing that I am the most excited about at work right now is our field trip. That's right.  We are taking 400 7th graders on a field trip!  This week, we are studying the Little Rock Central High Crisis and the Arkansas Democrat Gazette's role in reporting the situation at the time.  Next week, with that knowledge, every 7th grader at my middle school will go to Little Rock and have the opportunity to walk the same path up the front stairs of Central High that the Little Rock Nine took in 1957.  I am so excited for them to have that authentic learning experience.

Over the past few weeks, I have watched my students attitudes and perspectives change with each new day that we have talked about racism and segregation and bullying.  They are making connections between the past and the present, and they are learning the true importance of respect for all.  Seeing my students learn this valuable lesson at a time in their lives when they are so prone to be egocentric is such a rewarding experience.  It reminds me that I'm not just shaping readers or writers or good students.  I'm shaping children who will grow up to be adults; adults who will hopefully remember the power of respect and the power of equality.

Keep It Fresh

Merry 10 days until Christmas Break!  I'm currently in countdown mode, and so are my students.  That much is obvious when you watch them try to sit still in class.  It seems like the world's most impossible task these days.  I can't complain too much since I'm the same way, though.  I made all my copies for the entire month of December the week after Thanksgiving.  Can you say antsy?  Anyway, despite the antsy behavior, my students this year have miraculously managed to avoid the "second quarter slump," a term I coined last year when I realized all my students decided to give up on being productive students who turn their work in from Thanksgiving to the end of the semester.  This group of kids has managed to turn everything in (mostly) on time, and they have done it (mostly) with smiles on their faces.  Thankfully, we're currently studying Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, the only novel in our current curriculum that I also taught last year.  It's been a huge relief to be able to finally pull something out of a filing cabinet that I worked really hard on last year and actually put it to use again.

I did add one new assignment this December that I had never done before, though, and I must say that I think it's my new favorite.  This year, I volunteered to pilot a "bring your own device" policy in my classroom.  I haven't had much of a chance to put it to use quite yet because I also have a classroom set of iPads.  This means that there's no point in kids bringing their own devices for most class activities.  (Sidenote to teachers reading this: I realize that I am totally blessed by the educational technology gods to have all these resources.  I swear I'm not bragging).  Anyway, I finally decided to use my BYOD privileges this month for an extra credit project using the social network Instagram.

Each week, my students post pictures of English/language arts related things from the real world.  Last week, they had to find a grammar or spelling error, and they did a great job! They even caught my spelling mistake when I sent a homework reminder text home one day.  It really seemed to alert them to the grammar around them.  This week, starting today, they can turn in a picture of a simile, metaphor, pun, or oxymoron.  So far, I have received some super cheesy puns, and it has absolutely made my week.  Every time I check my phone, I seem to have a new notification about a picture someone has posted.

Probably my favorite part of this project is how excited my kids have been about it.  When I accidentally misspelled a word in their homework reminder text, a student posted it to Instagram almost immediately after the text was sent.  Then, three students commented on the picture using our vocabulary words of the week!  I love when I can trick my students into being English nerds.  It's my favorite. Anyway, the lesson I learned in all this is to keep it fresh.  I was so excited to keep my lessons and handouts from last year to teach A Christmas Carol this month, but I ended up being way more excited to do something new and fun.  What a great reminder of why I love being a middle school teacher. And now, let the Christmas countdown continue...

I'm So Thankful

I normally begin an entry by apologizing for my hiatus if I know it's been a while since the last time I wrote. But I've decided that, at least for this year, I'm going to have to stop doing that.  If I apologize every time that it's been too long since I last blogged, then I'm going to end up started every single entry with an apology.  This year has just been so busy!

Amidst all the busyness, it can be so easy to get overwhelmed.  I have spent a lot of time this semester just trying to keep my head above water when it comes to school and grad school.  It's just a LOT.  I know I've talked with several teachers in my building who feel the same way this year.  Implementing a new curriculum is hard work.  Implementing a new curriculum and having a family, friends, and a life outside of work can be even harder.  However, it's doable.  It's just more doable when you find a light at the end of the tunnel on which to focus.  We all need a little beacon of hope in our day-to-day.  Mine is Christmas break.  Only four more weeks :)

In addition to finding that light at the end of the tunnel, I think it's important to pause in the midst of all the chaos and deadlines and memos and due dates and remember to be thankful.  Today, I want to reflect on why I am thankful.

I am thankful to be surrounded by wonderful people at home, at work, and in my community.  I know there are many people who don't have a support system to lean on when things get tough.

I am thankful to have a job that, while sometimes exhausting and frustrating, is rewarding and exciting everyday.  I know there are many people who don't have a job at all.

Above all, I have recently decided that I am thankful for enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm, in many ways, is a lost art.  I think that as people become adults and slide into the grind of working, they lose their enthusiasm.  I realized this week, as I was reflecting on my thankfulness, that enthusiasm is one of the qualities that I adore in middle school students.  If I ask them to come get their graded papers ninja-style, they do it with gusto.  If I ask them to sell an Industrial Revolution invention to the class like the Oxyclean man, they make up a cheer about the piano on the spot.  If I have a bad day, they write me letters of encouragement and put them on my desk when I'm not looking.  When you're thirteen, you still see the fun and the excitement in the little things in life, and you latch onto that fun.  To me, that's something worth emulating as an adult.  I want to be as enthusiastic as they are.  I want to encourage them when they have a bad day.  Most of all, I want to continue to be inspired by my students.

In the middle of all the craziness that 2012 had brought with it, I am immensely grateful to be teaching the group of students that I am teaching this year.  What a blessing to be surrounded by so much enthusiasm.  I hope it's contagious.  I'll definitely be needing to catch some in order to make it to Christmas.

Living to Work

I am the worst.  It's been a month since the last time I had a chance to sit down and write.  Let me just tell you that it has been one busy month.  I feel like my life recently has been one giant to-do list after another.  A friend told me recently that the key to not getting overwhelmed by everything is to realize that we really are living to work.  We spend 90% of our time at work, and so it's better to just accept the fact that sometimes, or a lot of the time, it's going to take over our lives.

That's why I have recently decided that it's so important that, at least occasionally, we get paid to play.  I decided this after I did a couple activities with my students this week that felt like getting "paid to play."  On Tuesday of this week, I had to figure out a way to teach color symbolism is a meaningful, memorable, and somewhat concrete way to a group of 7th graders whose abstract thinking skills are still developing.  This ended up turning into a little game I created on the fly that I will henceforth be calling "Color Symbolism Charades."  I gave each student a color symbolism chart and asked them to choose one color and study its positive and negative associations.  Then, they had to draw a picture that represented that color and its associations.  When the students brought them back the next day, I was simply going to have them present their drawings.  After a few kids in 1st period sleepily shared their pictures with the class, I decided we needed to wake up a bit and make this a guessing game.  I told the student to describe or act out their picture and have the other students in the class guess which color they had chosen using their chart....

Talk about engagement!!  I was quickly left out of the game as the students guessed each other's color symbolism, explained the color symbolism to people around them and excitedly participated in the game.  I think I could have left the room, and they would have kept playing.  I couldn't help but smile at how awesome it was that my students were being totally nerdy and yelling competitively about color symbolism.  It was music to an English teacher's ears :)

After finishing color symbolism, I decided it was time to get in the Halloween spirit.  I turned off the lights, playing scary music, and read a scary story to my class today.  Of course, then they had to analyze it for the five elements of a short story, but not before they had the opportunity to get a little scared.  One student even said, "Ms. Herring, you have a great scary story voice."

Anyway, I say all that to say that not all jobs allow you to get "paid to play," but a lot of times my job allows that.  Grading's not always so fun, and instruction can't be exciting every day, but on the days when the kids are so excited they could keep the lesson going on their own, or on the days when I grade an essay with such vivid voice that I can't help but smile from ear to ear, I know that I'm getting paid to play.  It's on those days that I feel ok about living to work.

I Think Those People Lied....

I think people lied when they told me that this year would be easier.  Last year, everyone kept saying things like, "Next year will be a breeze!"  or "You feel overwhelmed this year, but next year will be so worth it!" or "Just wait 'til you have all this planning done, and you can pull it out of you filing cabinet and copy it."  Lies.  That's all I can say.  I think that maybe this is because last year I was too naive to realize I should be more overwhelmed.  Or maybe it's because I realize now that I thought last year was great, but I could have made it so much better.  Either way, I know that Common Core State Standards have increased my working week hours considerably since the year started.  And I haven't pulled one thing out of my filing cabinet.  Dangit.

Now, I am not complaining, I promise.  I know that you read that first paragraph and thought, "get over yourself, girl.  Life's tough, work's hard, just quit complaining and get down to business."  I agree 100%.  I came home Monday evening from work feeling very sorry for myself.  In my "poor me" state, I was totally prepared to mourn my sorrows in a blog post, but I stopped myself.  I realized that I needed a couple of days of perspective before I blogged about our new curriculum and my new year.  Trust me, had I written this on Monday, I would have lost all two of my avid readers.

Anyway, what this week of perspective-taking made me realize is that, yes, I'm coming home tired at night, but I'm also coming home more excited about what my students are achieving.  I shared my plan for our first research essay in a team meeting this week, and someone on my team commented about what high standards I was setting for all my students, whether they be regular ed. or Pre-AP.  I thought about that and realized that not only do I set the bar high for my kids, but I set the bar high for myself, too.  This year wouldn't be harder  than last year if I didn't think I could outdo today what I did or taught yesterday.

My favorite quote of all time is a Margaret Thatcher quote that says, "Well-behaved women never made history."  We all have to break a few rules to get to the root of where we want to be, but there's also a great Thatcher quote that I found a lot of comfort in this week: "What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose."  I know, without a doubt, that I am passionate about what I do.  Even if I get tired, and even if I have a frustrating day, I have never woken up and not wanted to go to work.  Seeing the light bulb go off in my students' minds gives me a sense of purpose and excitement.  I absolutely adore those moments of cognition. 

I'm not changing my mind.  Everyone did lie when they said this year would be soooooo much easier.  However, I am apologizing publicly for even taking one moment to feel sorry for myself.  What I've done before is not enough.  I can only hope that what I will grow to do will be better, not easier.