Service Projects Are Real-life Greatness

As educators, for the most part we deliver instruction to our students in hope of each of them not only understanding the concepts but applying them to real life. Today the 8th & 9th grades took part in Service projects & attended a Youth Frontiers Respect Retreat. I somehow wish, our district had a vertical team of such ideas. So much can be learned through giving a providing, it'd be so meaningful if there was a scope and squence of yearly such retreats that focused on reflecting and experiencing the good in these great days.

My PDP

I feel as though I may have left my goal a little open-ended for this year. I wanted to grow and develop professionally be learning new things/participating in new things throughout the year. I signed up to do Responsive Classroom training over the summer and knew I wanted to incorporate that throughout the school year. I also knew I would be getting a Smartboard mid-year and wanted to learn about that. Finally, I signed up to do the Literacy Cohort because I would like to continue learning about how to teach reading and writing to the best of my abilities.

Basically, I was already a little "overbooked" when the school year began. Then I decided I would be an advisor for Student Council (which is a great program for kids) and agreed to be a teacher representative for the S-team in the spring. While I certainly met my goal and learned a lot, it was completely overwhelming! It felt like I had meetings every morning and I think I spread myself way too thin. (Contributing to everything but giving my best to nothing.)

Does anyone else have this problem? It's like I want to do so much and see how all of these things can improve my teaching but fail to recognize when it's gettting to be too much. I would like to say that next year I will scale back... but not sure what I will cut. Hopefully I learn from this past year though and try to give myself a break!

S-team

In March, I was asked to be a teacher representative on S-team (the referral team for special education evaluations and interventions). Since my PDP focuses on growing professionally this year, I felt it would be a good experience and would teach me more about the special education evaluation process. We met almost every Thursday morning discussing students, the interventions teachers had done throughout the year, and what steps should be taken next.

Having sent a student through the evaluation process this year, I can say it is a very frustrating experience. Very rarely does the student receive they help they need during the same school year they are brought up to S-team. This means that the teacher doing all of the work (interventions, documentations, filling out forms, going to meetings) rarely sees any benefits (assistance for the student). Since the process takes such a long time (I started the process on a student in late September and he is having a hold-over evaluation that will take place next fall.) it's sort of a "pay-it-forward" situation where I can only hope this particular student receives services he needs to be successful next year.

Does anyone have any ideas to improve the S-team process? At my school we're meeting for a half day to go over ideas and suggestions to make it more successful but it would be great to bring up ideas from other schools as well. Thank you in advance!

Testing

April was mostly consumed with preparing for testing and taking the MCA and MAP tests. While I understand the rationale for testing kids, I'm concerned the testing is taking precedence over learning. In April alone, my students spent approximately 6 days worth of time testing. When there are only around 20 school days in the month, that's crazy! This doesn't even count the content-area tests they take for a grade (math, science, spelling, etc.). So where do we draw the line? After taking the Reading MCA's for 4 days, one of my students asked, "Do we actually get to learn next week?". Poor kid!

Third grade is the first year the students take the MCA's. That means we don't just take them, we have to teach the kids how to take them. (Rules, strategies, etc.) I truly believe that teaching to a test negatively impacts what/how students learn during the course of the year, but what do we do? We're required to take them and unfortunately, there is a lot of weight put on them. Does anyone else think there has to be a better way to prove that we're doing our jobs? Also, I often wonder how taking all of these tests benefits the students? A lot of the time I feel like they're doing all of this work and going through all of this stress and not seeing any benefits to themselves. At least with content area tests I'm getting immediate feedback on what my students know and what areas I should reteach/go more in depth into.

Does anyone know if we're going to have to take the MCA's three times next year? I heard rumors of this and I'm a little concerned about what that is going to mean for the kids.

End of the Year

As it comes to the end of the schoo year I'm feeling very worn down. This year has been very difficult due to the group of children in my class (a lot of personality conflicts and many needy children). I love my job and can't imagine doing anything else but these year has left me feeling drained. How do you bounce back from a year like this? I'm always excited to start a new school year but it would be nice to leave school without a "bad taste in my mouth". Any ideas on how I can re-energize before I get my next year's class list in August? :)

Also, do any other teachers help principals create next year's classes? It seems like it would be helpful to have the teachers look at the classes before they are set to prevent an overload on one or two classrooms. (I know, I know, energy points are supposed to prevent this... but do they?)

ASD students in the classroom

This year I have had a challenge in my classroom with 3 ASD students. I have a para if not more then 1 in my classroom during the day. I have become frustrated with the communication between my self and the SPED teacher and parents. The parents seem to communicate with her and I then am not always informed of information that if important to know about the child. I think that the parents are missed informed or unaware that I have those students in my classroom all day with me and they have little contact each day with the SPED teacher if any. She is supposed to be coming in my classroom for support each day for 20-30 min and am luck if she is in my room a couple days a week. There is not enough support given to the classroom teacher for these students at the beginning of the year. I have never really been given support or information other then their IEP about techniques or ways to deal with these students in the regular ed class. I feel that it is the SPED teachers responsibility to check in with these students on a regular basis or daily at the end of the day to go over their day. I think that the district needs to do a better job of having a time for teachers to meet with the SPED teachers at the beginning of the year and several times during the year to discuss ideas and issues about the SPED students in their classroom. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to work with these types of children in the class and with the special ed department?

DRA Testing/Reading

I am working on getting my DRAs done for the end of the year. I have found it time consuming to DRA 25 students several times to get their independent reading level. I did recieve some advice about pulling a small group of students that are at a higher reading level to take the test in a small group at my table. This has helped get through more students each day and not have to wait for them to come to my table to test. The problem I am still having is picking the level to start the student at and then giving them at least two tests if not more to find their independent level. I am not sure if there is something that I am doing wrong or missing that could help with this situation. I also feel that I am testing students who don't need to be tested again at the end of the year who are reading well above grade level. I have a high reading level group of students this year and feel that this is just more testing that they have to go through only to be tested again in the fall.