Leap First. Ask Questions Later.

I'm not the only new employee in our small school this year. The administrators are both new in one way or another. Our principal was previously the school's assistant principal and this is his first year in the big chair. So a new assistant principal was brought on to fill his old position. They are both good people and have both been very helpful in dealing with my least fun students. There is an area, though, in which their inexperience shows.

They have ideas about activities and programs that they want for our school. Mostly good ideas. But they commit the whole school to these ideas as they pop into their heads. They don't ask any of the staff for their opinions or seem to do any actual planning until after they have decided to do it.

One example: Several months ago, the principal bought a reading program to use in tutoring. Then he asked if any Language Arts teachers would do it. None of the others would because they knew the program and knew that it helps with fluency only, and most of our students need more help with comprehension. He ended up convincing some sixth grade teachers to do it, because he'd already paid for it.

More recently, someone decided that since it is the holiday season, we should have a canned food drive. No one asked the staff if this would be a good idea or if we were willing to do it (which I would have been). It was not even announced at a staff meeting or via email. The first I ever learned of the canned food drive was when I read it in the student bulletin. It said that the drive was beginning that week and that boxes for donations would be in homeroom classes. No one provided me with a box. No one even told me I had better bring a box. It was just announced that I would have one.

These sorts of things keep happening. There must come a day when they will run out of ideas. Or so I hope.

Take Out the Trash Day

Okay, it has been almost a month since my last post. So, I figure I had better write something. Nothing terribly interesting has happened lately (or I should say nothing that I expect readers will find terribly interesting). I'm just going to write about several marginally interesting things and hope that they add up to a decent post.

My RI class had been getting worse than ever, so I sent a list of the worst offenders and some of their behaviors to the VP. She has been setting up conferences with the students, the parents, herself and myself. For a few of them the parents never showed up. One of them ended with the student being sent directly to Opportunity Room for at least 30 days, and another of the most heinous offenders has been put on a behavior contract. If he screws up at all in the next two weeks, he's going to Opportunity. So far, he has been working hard to keep out of trouble. We will see if he can keep it up. Even if he can't, though, he will be out of my class. So it's win-win for me.

And now for something completely different...

Last year during negotiations, the teachers' union agreed with the district to have weekly after school meetings for up to an hour and a half. (Let it be known for the record that I was not at this district last year and had no hand in this agreement.) The way that it was justified to them was that many of these would be grade level or department meetings, in which the teachers could discuss whatever they felt was important. They really should have gotten that in writing. In the five months of the first semester, there have only been four times available for department meetings. Each other week we have had to attend all staff meetings where information is unloaded on us from the site and district administrations. This week we had our fourth department meeting of the year. The English department at least had been anticipating it, as we have multiple district mandated tests that we needed to plan and discuss. Our principal sent out an email that morning, though. Just in case any of the departments didn't have anything else to talk about, he gave us a list of eleven different topics to discuss. One of these was "Grading (Many F's)" -exact words.

We had our staff Christmas dinner last night. It was at a train station-turned-restaurant in the next little town over. I had never been there before and it was a pretty nice dinner and a comfortable space. I made my husband come with me, even though he hates meeting new people. It turned out all right though. The principal bought a bottle of champagne for each table. It turned out at our table we were seated with a couple of Mormons who don't drink alcohol and two women who had each come by themselves and were driving. I was driving, and my husband doesn't like wine, so no one even had a sip of the bottle which they had already opened. So, that was a total waste. At least, from looking at the bottle, it didn't seem too expensive.

That's all I can think of that won't totally bore you. Hopefully, my job will get more interesting in the near future. Probably not, as we only have two weeks until winter break. Oh well, if it comes to it, I will just start making stuff up.

P.S. If you didn't get the title reference, you need to watch more West Wing.

They're Learning How to Take Turns

I'm beginning to see a pattern. Every time a problem-causing child either improves his or her behavior or is removed from my class, one or more that were previously manageable students start acting up to fill the gap. It's almost as if they're working in shifts.

Young Bobby* has experienced some kind of miraculous transformation. We had been off for a week for Fall Break. When we returned, there was a major difference in his behavior. He does his work. If he needs help, he stays in his seat and raises his hand. He even asks if he can get up to get a tissue. He isn't 100% perfect; he still talks to his friends while I'm talking. The noticeable difference, though, is that he no longer seems to be trying to get himself in trouble.

There are three young ladies in the class that I used to have a handle on. I keep them seated as far from each other as possible to minimize chatting. They used to give me some attitude, but I didn't mind much. I realized that it wasn't personal: they're just teenage girls. However, within the past week, it has gone from attitude to insolence and defiance. One of the girls is constantly talking. Sometimes she is talking to her neighbors about something that has nothing to do with class. When I do have her attention, something I say will remind her of something that happened that she must share with the class. When I interrupt her, she acts as if it was so terribly rude of me. Another one makes personal attacks. She said that I live in la basura. (She was surprised when I knew what that meant.) She said that I buy all of my shoes at the flea market. When a fly flew by me, she announced to the class that it's because I never take showers. All three of them love to argue. They will argue with me about what page of the book I said we were on, whose turn it is to use the bathroom, or how to pronounce a word in a story. When assigned detention for talking, they immediately claim they weren't talking. (Yesterday, one said, "I was just looking at my shoe.") Then they say it's not fair, and I'm the worst teacher ever. Finally, they announce that they're not going to serve detention, and they don't care what happens to them.

I don't know what brought on this sudden increase in negativity. I would like to settle these girls down if I could. But I would almost be afraid to. I would worry that some other student or students would start acting up to take their place.

*Not student's real name.

Making Up the Grade

This afternoon, I was in the office and ran into the principal. He asked me to talk with him for a few minutes, and, of course, I can't say "No." He wanted to talk about grades, and he had a few rather interesting pieces of information to tell me. First, he did not know what the district policy on grading was. In fact, he wasn't even sure if there was one. It is his first year in the position, so I guess he has an excuse for not knowing. So, he asked the school counselor, who has been around for several years, and she didn't know either. How are these people supposed to enforce district policy if they don't know what it is or if it even exists?!

The other thing he wanted to talk about is that although no one knows if they're following the rules, there is a grading "tradition" at our school handed down from the previous principal and more tenured staff that everyone follows. Part of this tradition is that RSP students can not be given an F. Instead, they get a P for passing. This does not make any sense to me. If they would have gotten an F, then no, they're not passing. These students are called resource students because they are given extra resources beyond what all of our other student receive. Depending on the nature of their disabilities they may get extra time or assistance on assignments, for example. My thinking is that, if they get that extra help, and they still can't manage a D-, then they shouldn't be considered passing. Putting a P on their report card might make their parents happy, but it doesn't help them any. It is not entirely relevant in any of my classes, because as long as they don't get retained, all students go on to freshman English at the high school. But what about in math. Should these kids be promoted to Algebra if they can't understand pre-algebra?

The most asinine point to this whole conversation is that I turned in my quarter grades yesterday. Report cards are already being printed, so I can't change anything. No one had thought it prudent to mention any of this at any of the three new teacher meetings we've had this year. I suppose I could have asked, but what would I say? "By the way, I have some questions about grades. Do you have any stupid grading 'traditions' that I should know about? And are those traditions consistent with district policy? Or do you even have a clue?"

I know that I do not post all that often. You may think that it is because I am so busy at work. In fact, that has nothing to do with it. The real reason I can't find the time to post on a regular schedule is because I have been too distracted by other blogs. Since starting my own blog, I have been perusing the interweb to find some highly entertaining content. So, I thought I would share a few of my favorites with you. That way, you'll be so distracted by looking at those other blogs that you won't have time to miss mine. So, here are the two funniest websites I have ever seen...

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/
This blog lists photos of professionally made cakes that turned out terribly wrong. While the cakes are pretty funny looking, it is the commentary that makes this thing filarious.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/lovelylisting
Here are posted photos that come from real estate listings that really shouldn't have been in there. I keep asking myself, "Do they really expect people to want to buy that?!"

2 Habits of Totally Ineffective Teens

I've realized something about the difference between my reading improvement students and my regular language arts students. I don't think it is limited to intelligence. Certainly, there are a few students in my RI class who are a few tacos short of a fiesta platter. But I have a couple like that in my other classes as well. The biggest difference is in their habits.

For example, instead of listening to what I have to say, most of the RI students continue to talk to each other. Some of my other students talk while I'm talking also, but it only takes one or two reminders per day to keep their attention on me. In my RI class, I have students who, after being asked by me to turn around and stop talking, will say, "Alright, Teacher! Gosh!" then, literally two seconds later, will turn back and continue talking to their friends while I am standing two feet from them.

There is another habit that is conspicuously missing from my RI group. My other classes, when asked to do a simple task, such as open their books to a specific page or write their name on their paper or copy notes off of the overhead, just do it. They just do it right when I ask. Sometimes someone will ask me to repeat directions, but then at least I know that that student is attempting to follow directions. The RI students, with the exception of two or three individuals, sit there, talking, staring into space, drawing, or doing their homework from another class. I have to address each one by name and repeat the directions over and over. Sometimes, I just get so annoyed by having to listen to myself talking repetitiously that I just open the student's book for them and place the pencil between their fingers.

Now that I think about it this way, it seems obvious why these students haven't been successful. If I were an elementary teacher with just one of these students who was slowing down the whole class all day long, I would be tempted to work with the students who were working with me and leave the one behind. For all the time that they were off task, they were falling farther behind. I have known other students who were not terribly gifted in the brain area, but who knew the skills and habits needed in school. They were able to keep up by studying on their own and asking for extra help. I am certain that the RI students have hardly ever done homework or studied in their lives, and they have only gotten outside help when it was forced on them. I think that, although it isn't in the state content standards for this grade level, I need to make study skills a new focus in my class.

Who Does That?!?

Just a quick update on my reading intervention class. I talked with the other teacher who teaches the same class about the students I have... those specific ones I've told you about. And she agreed that it would be best if we could split them up. So she talked to the counselor about having two of them moved into her class. It finally happened this week. It has made that class quite a bit easier to handle, though they still don't have anything on my regular Language Arts classes.

So, I saw the other teacher today, and I asked her how the two are doing in her class. She said one of them hasn't been there yet, because he has been suspended... for choking someone!!

The Cheshire Disturbing Child

A new personality is rising above the crowd in my reading intervention class. The last time I wrote, I explained that there are a few students who totally throw my class off track, and I need to remind them to SIT DOWN twenty times a day. But they do not make me angry, just frustrated. They don't seem to have much (or in one case, any) self control. They honestly seem to forget that they are supposed to stay in their seat during class.

Having observed all of this and my reactions, little Bobby*, has gotten himself some ideas. This child, I am certain, is either trying to get into trouble, or trying to piss me off. He does exactly what he knows I don't want him to do. For example, another student will be up wandering around the room, and I will tell him to SIT DOWN. The instant after I say it, Bobby will jump out of his seat and walk across the room. Or, I will remind my freakishly forgetful student to take out his textbook. Right then, Bobby, who already had his book open and turned to the right page, will slam it closed and shove it under his desk. What makes me wonder the most about him is that every time he gives one of these displays he'll be staring me right in the face and grinning like some big thing that grins a lot.

Yesterday, he straight refused to do any work, so I sent him to the office for the second time this week. He is suspended on Monday, so I will at least have one day of slightly less commotion. We will see if there has been any real effect on Tuesday, but I highly doubt it. I will continue, though, to try to figure out each of my students and see what works best with them individually. There has to be some better alternative than loudly reminding them to SIT DOWN all the time. Can you tell that I'm getting a bit tired of it? My throat is really sore by the time that group leaves each day.

Just in case anyone thinks I'm whining and that I dislike my job, let me assure you, I am still much happier than I was last year. My two regular Language Arts classes are so wonderful that it makes this all worth it.

*Not student's real name.

One Month Done

It has been four weeks, and my two regular language arts classes are still wonderful. Each class has its class clown and a few girls who chat too much, but they actually do what I tell them to do. All of them. There are a few who occasionally need some coaxing, but they don't argue with me or just refuse to do it, the way my students last year would.

My reading intervention class is a bit more work. Well, a lot more work. There are four students in that class who are a total handful. I think that two of them are not trying to cause trouble, they just are incapable of sitting still for more than two minutes. And they apparently have no filter between their brains and their mouths. One of them looses his pencil every five minutes, which gets really tiring in a ninety minute class.

The other two seem to be looking for attention. They walk over to other students to start talking, or they just shout out irrelevant things. One announces that "This is boring" every time we start a new activity. I think that is code for "I don't get it." But instead of raising his hand and asking for help, he shouts or wanders around the room. Yesterday he started throwing bits of eraser all over the place.

The real work comes in when the latter two catch the attention of the former two, who can't help but respond by laughing and pointing, shouting or throwing something back. I have found myself saying "Jerry, Jose, Francisco, Alejandro*, SIT DOWN" too may times.

Of course the rest of the class is not too happy about being put in the "stupid" class, so they will gladly sit and watch the antics instead of doing their work. One thing I have found that seems to work, though I have no idea why, is putting a time limit on the activity. If I say, "You have four minutes to complete page 12 in your Practice Book" all but the four will get it done. I'm still working on figuring out those other four and finding something that will get them engaged in the activities. Until then I just keep reminding myself that once the bell rings, the rest of my day will be a cake walk compared to this.

*Not the real students' names.

Quiet Time

This morning, most of the students in my reading intervention class took the CELDT test. For those of you not in the know, I have no idea what the acronym stands for (by the way, it is an acronym, not an abbreviation, because it is pronounced [sElt]), but it is a measure of how non-native English speakers are progressing in their English language development. Since fifteen of my nineteen students were taking the test, the ladies administering it suggested that it would be easier if they and the testees stayed in my classroom and I took the other four to the library.

It was so nice. I had two girls and two boys. We all sat at a big table in the back of the library. I had them bring their workbooks, and we completed and corrected two pages out of it. Then, I read a picture book to them. I had brought a box of word games to keep them occupied, but they opted to read instead. They picked out books and magazines and read quietly for the next hour. I didn't have a single behaviour issue. I just read the W volume of the World Book. I know a lot more than I did before about George Washington and the War of 1812.

We finally got the textbooks for my reading intervention class one week after school started. I was kind of freaked out when I found out I was not going to be starting with the textbook I had spent a week being trained to use and for which I had made lesson plans to last me through December.

But once I thought about what I could do to fill a week, I realized it was a good thing. Of course, there wasn't much change to my plans for the first day: introductions, school rules, etc. But I got to spend the next five days doing things I had wished I had more time for last year. I read to them every day. Some of the days I read out of Jim Trelease's Read All About It! The other days I read picture books that I found in my classroom.(Thanks to Mr. E who had a copy or two of every book used by the school in the last ten years and left them all here.) On the very first day I read "Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day." That was one of my favorites when I was younger. I could totally relate to Alexander.

Then, I introduced sight words. I gave them all copies of the Dolch list and had them practice reading it. When I turned on a timer, they all got into it. I also taught about context clues. I had to use the at-level text for the information, but for the practice, I designed a word organizer that guided them through the process. By the end of those few days they seemed to all have grasped the concept, even if they still had difficulty using it.

Now we have our textbooks and we need to get back on track to catch up with our pacing calendar. Hopefully, we will have time to whip out our Dolch lists every once in a while for a quick read through, and I already have planned a few read-alouds that will go along with the units in our book. It wasn't all that long, but hopefully this little literacy basics week will have them even more prepared now to begin our official curriculum.

Day 1 is Done

Well, I have made it through the first day of the new school year. The last three days have been super hectic and stressful. On Monday, we had an all day in-service. Yesterday, I had about four meetings that lasted from 8am to 3pm, and then I had to finish getting ready to start teaching today. At 6pm last night I had to leave the school because they were locking the gates, even though I still had about ten things left to do. I came home and typed and printed some things, then went to bed early.

This morning I woke up at 5:45am. The only times I can remember waking up that early were when I was going skiing. This wasn't as fun. I got ready and went to work. My husband followed me there in his new, used car to take a picture of me. My mom has instructed him to do this on the first day of every school year. Then, I made photocopies of the things that I had printed the night before. I finished moving a few things around in my room and wrote the day's objectives and homework on the board, and then the bell rang.

I had ten extra students show up to my first and second period block. There names were not on my current attendance list, but all of their printed schedules showed that class, Mrs. B, Rm. 41. So, I let them stay and sent off a quick email to the office. I know they were super busy all day, and I didn't expect an answer right away, but no one gave me an answer until 6th period. If they show up again tomorrow, I am to send all of them to the attendance office.

My clock is off by five minutes, which caught me off guard at the end of the first period. And I still am not used to these ninety minute classes. But other than that, my classes went pretty well. A few students were a little chatty, and a couple of others had to be continually prompted to get through the activity. Compared to the students I had last year, these kids are angels. I just hope that it's not just because it's the first day. I expect that as the days roll on, they will become a little more talkative and perhaps get some more attitude as they get tired of me. But if my classes go anything close to as well as today, this year will be ten times better than last.

I Am So Not Ready

School starts at 8am on Wednesday. I have about a bazillion things left that I still need to do before then. Because I am starting at a new school with a new grade, I am having to start over basically from scratch. I have pretty much got my classroom ready. I just have to find a place to put all of my textbooks when they arrive, clean out a cabinet and find a place to put it, then put all my stuff in it. I have a computer and, today, I got a printer, but I still do not have a login name or password, so I cannot use them. I feel pretty good about the curriculum. It is similar to what I taught last year, just with different texts. My biggest fear right now is what the heck I am going to do on day one. My school is in program improvement, so all students have two hour blocks of English/Language Arts every day. That means that I have the same students for ninety straight minutes. Last year, I was teaching 54 minute periods. I am afraid that after I introduce myself, go over rules and procedures and do a few ice breaker activities, I am going to be left with thirty minutes with nothing to do. I haven't been this stressed since May 30th.

It is Too Early

It is now 7:05 am. I just woke up. I am definitely not a morning person, so I am having trouble staying awake. I thought that engaging my brain by writing might help.

This is the earliest I've gotten up for two months. I read somewhere that if you want to wake up earlier, it is easiest to do it fifteen minutes earlier each day. School starts next week, when I will have to get up at 6:30 every morning. I found a calendar, counted backwards a few weeks and figured out what time to get up every day. I've been doing pretty well. Except that three days ago, I set my alarm for pm instead of am and accidentally slept an extra half hour.

I wish I could sleep an extra half hour now. I do not see how I will be able to function this early every morning. At this time on Monday morning, I am supposed to be leaving for work. I do not think anyone this tired should be driving. I just hope that 6:30 is so awful that by comparison, 7:10 is great.

Setting Up a New Classroom is Hard Enough

I am surprised at how lazy the teachers around here are when it comes to cleaning up after themselves. I am starting at a new school. So I am in the process of moving into a new classroom. The teacher that was using this room last year (Mr. E) is now in a small office. He asked the janitors to move some of his things into the office for him, then took off for summer. The janitors moved what they could, but the office is too small for everything. So, there is still a large cabinet in the middle of my room. The janitors are waiting for Mr. E to tell them what to do with it, but he hasn't been back or called at all over the summer. So, it looks like I'm going to have to wait until the week that school starts to find out if the cabinet is going to stay in my room or not. It is also full of junk, so I do not know if I can use the cabinet or not even if it does stay.

Another teacher was using my room this summer for summer school. I didn't even know the room was being used for summer school until I got in there and found all of his or her crap still sitting on one of the desks. There were workbooks, papers, pencils, a roll sheet and an empty Dr. Pepper can and coffee cup. At first I thought that maybe summer school had just ended a few days earlier. But a week later, the crap was all still there, untouched. I wanted to move the desk, so I just stacked up all the stuff in a corner. If no one comes to claim it within the first week of school I think I will throw it all away. Except, I will keep all the pencils.

I am not known to be a neat and tidy person, but I try to clean up after myself, especially where other people might see my mess. I also try to take care of my things. Last year, I ended up going through so many pens and pencils, having to continually buy more, that they are now very precious to me. I would not be leaving any of mine just sitting around where someone could take them. I hope that these two teachers are the exception and not the rule. But if teachers in general are this lazy and inconsiderate when summer rolls around, then I will work to be the exception.

I'm Both Teacher and Student

I'm trying to learn Spanish. I took two years of Spanish in high school, so I know a lot of the vocabulary. For instance, I know all of my numbers and colors. I know half the days of the week, and to get to the biblioteca, you take el autobus. When working at McDonald's in college, I learned the words for everything you put on a hamburger (salsa, mustasa, lechuga y sevoya). I did not ever really know the syntax of the language though. I could only use verbs in the infinitive, and I didn't have any prepositions to put my nouns together.

Many of my students last year and, I know, many of the students I will have this year speak Spanish. I don't get the first year students fresh from Mexico, so by the time they get to my class, their English is better than my Spanish. And to get them the language practice they need, we should speak to each other mostly in English anyway. But I would still like to be able to use the language. That way, when they speak Spanish to each other, I'll be able to tell if they're saying anything inappropriate. I would also like to be able to speak to parents without having to rely on the students as translators.

So, I... ahem... acquired a language learning computer program. You know, the one that has those commercials that make it sound so easy. Well, I wanted to see if it really worked as well as they said it does. It has helped a bit. I've only gotten through eight lessons, and I've got a long way left to go. So far, a lot of it has been review for me, but I've learned a few new things too. I like that most of it is in complete sentences. So I didn't just learn the words for dog and sleeping, but I can actually say, "The dog is sleeping." (El perro está duermiendo.) (Which he is.) I realize that this probably won't help me much in the classroom. I've got a long way to go before I start holding parent/teacher conferences in Spanish. But I think that if I stick to it, this program will help me to eventually get there. Although, I'm only writing about it right now to procrastinate actually doing it. So, we'll see.

P.S. I only speak Spanish: I don't write it. So please forgive me if I've misspelled something.

Advice... The Finale

Here is the last installment of things I wish someone would have told me before I got started teaching.



5. Don't try to grade everything yourself. It's a good idea to look at a lot of student work early on to get an idea of their abilities. Also, you may feel some sort of responsibility: you're their teacher, so it's your job to grade their papers. Actually, as a teacher, it's your job to teach. Get as much help with grading papers as you can. Be selective about what you grade and what you hand off to a T.A., parent helper or personal loved one. Save your time for things that only you can do and let someone else take care of anything else. Then, you can take a glance through the scores when you get them back to see if your students are on track. In fact, having someone help you grade papers will help your students be more successful in your class. Timely feedback improves student achievement. If it takes you a week to hand back that vocabulary quiz, the students will already have forgotten what was on it and will no longer care that they've failed.



6. Classroom Management is as important as instruction. Upon leaving a teacher preparation program, your mind is no doubt filled with activities and instructional strategies. You know all about learning styles and English language learners. You have plans for using what you know to turn your curriculum into diverse, engaging, and meaningful instruction. And that you should. But a heterogeneous group activity is only as successful as the group members. You may offer some profound wisdom and insight into your content area, but if your classroom is too loud for the student to hear you, it won't do them any good. Start from day one, minute one working to get and keep control of your classroom. Require students to be on task and non-disruptive. Once it becomes routine, you can slowly start to bring in more dynamic instructional strategies. Remember to require the same good behavior of your student working in partners as when listening to lecture, and soon you'll be ready to move on to large groups and learning stations.



7. Test the technology ahead of time. You think you know how to use a DVD player, but what do you do if the disc won't play, and the TV is showing a message in a foreign language? While this may be unavoidable, you don't have to let it happen while your students are watching. When you first get access to your classroom, check out all the technology to make sure it works and that you know how to use it. Then, test it again the morning before you actually intend to use it. Test it every time. Even if the VCR worked just fine last week, it may not work today. Some darling child may have crossed the cables. Maybe this particular video doesn't agree with the player. Or the gremlins may have got to it. If you check it out ahead of time, you may be able to fix it, or if not, revert to plan B.

Advice ... Part 2

Here are a few more lessons I had to learn the hard way during my first year as a teacher.

3. Make friends with your neighbors. Suck up to the teachers in the classrooms near yours. They can easily become allies or enemies, and a lot of it depends on you. Unless the teacher in the next room is also in her first year, she really does know more than you. She may be old, cynical and critical of your teaching abilities when no critique was asked for, and I know that you're full of ideas, optimism and faith in your students. But experience is priceless, and it's the one thing that even the most senile teachers have more of than you. So, if they offer you advice, take it, or, at least, pretend like you will consider it. If the other teachers like you, they can help you out when you run out of #2 pencils and keep an eye out for whoever it is that keeps sticking chewed gum on your door handle. On the other hand, a neighbor who sees you as an arrogant young thing will come over to tell you to keep the noise down every time you show a video and make comments in department meetings about "some of the new teachers" while staring you straight in the face.

4. Have plenty of sponge activities ready to go at a moments notice. A sponge soaks up time. When your planned activities run a little short, and you have an extra five minutes at the end of class, or when you were going to show a video all period, but the VCR doesn't work, you have got to have something to do. Dead, empty time is a very dangerous thing. The best way to maintain your students' good behavior is to keep their hands and minds occupied every minute. You can plan extra activities related to the unit you're working in, but it's best to have some generic type sponges that don't require a lot of materials, especially ones that can be quick or can be stretched out to half an hour if needed. One that I recently learned of that my students liked is a tic-tac-toe game. Draw a big tic-tac-toe board on your white board or overhead. Split the class into two teams, one X, one O. Ask questions or give vocabulary definitions. Students shout out answers. Whichever team gets the right answer first gets to place their mark wherever they want it. Three in a row wins. You can play as many rounds as you can come up with questions for, and you can make it work with any content area.

Advice I Wish Someone had Given Me

This past school year was my first year as a teacher. I taught 9th and 10th grade English at a high school downtown in a city in the southern end of California's Central Valley. I have a Bachelor's degree in English Education, and I had just completed student teaching and the credential program at a CSU with my teaching credential in English and Health Science. I thought I was ready.

I wasn't ready. Oh, I knew plenty about literacy, language acquisition, learning styles, special populations, instructional strategies and lesson planning. But there are a few other things which I wish someone had told me before I got started.

Well, now I know. If you are also a new teacher or plan to be one, I'm sure you could figure these things out the way I did. But I'm a teacher; my goal in life has been to inform and educate others. So allow me to inform you of the most valuable lessons I've learned over the past year.

1. Learn how to use the copy machines. Ask your support provider or department chair or other veteran teacher who likes you to show you how to use the Rizo and Xerox machines. And not just how to make copies. Find out how to turn the machine on and off. Find out where to put the paper and where to get it and if certain kinds go in certain drawers. Learn how to print transparencies and double-sided pages. Learn how to replace the ink or toner and master roll and which direction to insert them. This is stuff you need to know, and you will figure it out eventually, but you don't want to be figuring it out at eight o'clock in the morning when you need to make two hundred copies by 8:15. Besides, an older teacher can probably show you how to do it all without getting ink on your clothes.

2. Now that you know how to make copies, get it done. Early. Do not wait until the morning that you're going to need the papers to do the copying. In fact, don't even do it the day before. If you need handout for Friday, copy them on Wednesday. Run off Wednesday's homework on Monday. Because if you wait, every machine in the staff workroom will be out of order when you need it. Or there will be five other teachers, who got there before you, all waiting to use the one working machine. Even if all the machines work when you plan to use them, you won't be able to because a parent will call. I know it won't last. You'll be getting everything ready early for the first few weeks, but by the middle of the fourth week, you'll be permanently behind schedule. But the longer you can stay ahead of the game, the less depressing it will be when you fall.

More advice to follow...