Tales from the science classroom

I have actually used the time to rest and relax. It has been awesome. But there are some things I want to prep for the new semester, so yesterday I started working on school work. Well, I should say I worked for a bit then got back to resting :)  Yesterday I prepped my next chemistry unit and today I prepped my next AP Biology unit. I am happy with that. I just need to prep my next AP Chemistry unit and I will be ready to start the new year. I'm trying something a little bit different this unit (again, smh....).  I have laid out a timeline of the order I want to do things in. I'm going to print everything out and get it all copied before school starts. Then I will have the whole unit ready to go and I don't have to stop because I didn't copy something. Also, I'm sticking to what I planned. I am not going to change anything. There are a couple of things I will need to supplement, like quizzes I need to write, but the big assignments are all set and ready to go. I w...

Yesterday was the last day of classes and grades are due by 5 pm today. Yay!!!!  So glad for the break. A few topics have been rolling around my brain and I thought I'd write about them as the break begins. First is the topic of grades. The first 2 schools I worked at, both in Hawaii, would not require grades until the end of the break. So we would finish finals like today, and grades would not be due until January 5th. Do you know how bad that is???  There were breaks where I would not do the grading until literally the day the grades were due. Then I would have 150 tests to grade with no memory of how I planned to score them (I wasn't good at documenting then) and it was miserable. I much prefer this way. They give is a little over 24 hours to finish up the grades. That is so much better. I structured my week so that the written part of the tests were given on Monday and Tuesday and I graded them immediately that day. Then Wednesday and Thursday tests were all multi...

I'm starting with a clean slate in January. I'm going to change some things over the break and I'm starting fresh. One of the things that I really want are some goals for the spring semester. I had some goals for this semester, to get organized, and that helped me a lot. It kept me focused and working toward organization all semester - and it was a struggle at times. So I would like to have some concrete goals that are SMART for the spring semester. I have a place to write them where I will see them all the time so they stay in focus. I want to continue my pursuit of organization, I'm doing really well with that and I'm really close to a system that works for me. I want to keep that going, but I want to add something else. Even though I never articulated my organization goals, it definitely qualified as a SMART goal. Specific - I wanted to be able to find things when I need them and to have them available for next year. Measurable - Finding things when I need t...

that's what is happening right now. I should be grading AP Bio tests, instead, I'm blogging.  Not a productive use of time. Following yesterday's post, I sat down and set up my bullet journal for the remaining 2 weeks of school. Here is what I came up with: This is my teacher dashboard. I will use this to keep track of things I need to do for each class. I also have a post-it for grading that needs to be done (something I need to keep on top of) and a couple of post-its for other things that may come up. I like this because I can see all the classes at once. Since I have more than 1 class a day, this can be important. Then I have a weekly spread. I have a place for notes for each day (notice the dog training and dentist appointment) as well as a to-do list and a place to make notes. On this spread, I put a habit tracker but I'm still on the fence about that. We'll see how it goes. Then I have my daily spreads. This is Monday and Tuesday. I like th...

I find it hard to believe that we are closing in on the end of the semester and I still have not been able to find an organizational system that works for me. I guess I should be happy that I'm still struggling and haven't thrown my hands up and said 'whateva'...... At least I'm still working on finding one. In my last post, I had these grand ideas of having all my lessons/materials in my electronic planbook, making notes every single day on how the day went, adjusting curriculum on the fly, cleaning every day/week so things stay organized.  Yeah, that didn't happen. I have come to a couple of realizations though. My main problem is that I make all these notes or set up all these systems and then I don't look at them. I have a planner at school that I write things in...and then leave at school. I have a planner at home that I hardly use....because I leave it at home. I have things that I need to buy for labs, etc. which I forget because I don't re...

So I used my great lesson plans on powerpoint for the last week and a half and it was a huge flop. I found that I am just not organized enough to pull that off. I had thought to have the list with all the stuff needed in the binder behind it. Didn't work. I found that I didn't print everything I needed. Or the things I printed were not what I was looking for. So I got messed up. Ugh!!!  So I think I'm going to do a major overhaul. I'm starting a new unit in almost all my classes so it's a good time to start something new. It's the next morning. I got distracted last night and never finished this post. But, I continued to think about it all night long and I think I've come up with something. Here are the things that I need: I need to be able to access lesson plans both at school and at home  I need to have a to-do list that I can access both at school and at home because sometimes I do things at home at night I need to have a hard copy of lesson ...

I do some of my best thinking while writing and since I feel I'm on the edge of a breakthrough, I've decided to 'talk' it out here. So here goes..... I have a Happy Planner and a teacher binder  This is my Happy Planner which I really do love, but I need to fix it so it works for me.... I also have this binder that has a divider with pockets for every class:  I've had this binder for years and really do like it, but it isn't exactly what I want either.  I'm hoping to come up with a system between these 2 things that will be perfect for me.  I've put all my lesson plans on a powerpoint template and I have linked worksheets and videos to that template. I like that and can access it from anywhere since it's in my Dropbox. I like that a lot. But I also need a printed copy that I can look at during class. I like to have a planner type thing to make notes during and after class. But I also like the binder to keep each cla...

Organized that is. I have found that my binder system works really well I just need to find a place to keep them so they are readily available while I'm teaching. Although, I shouldn't need them while I'm teaching. I should have everything copied and organized and in its proper place before class starts.  So that's something to think about. But things are going well overall and I'm a whole lot less stressed out than I was a couple of weeks ago. Also, volleyball ended and that helped decrease the stress levels immensely. I'm still struggling with digital organization though. I have a number of places to store; 2 google drives, Dropbox, Evernote, OneNote, etc. They all have their pluses and minuses but no one really meets my needs. So let's look at them. Google drive is probably the easiest, but I have one for school and one for personal. Also, the school doesn't allow us to install the Google drive on our computers so every time I want to access it,...

This year, more than any year in the past, I'm focused on my planning. I want my courses to flow from one topic to the next. I want things to connect with other things. I want it all to make sense to me and my students. Prior to this year that wasn't always my focus. I have had years where I would literally stop teaching something and just jump to another topic. For no real reason, other than I was bored or couldn't figure out where to go with the topic at hand. So I would just stop and move on. Chemistry is weird in that there is no list of things that you have to cover or know. Yes, there are standards, but those are really broad and can cover a multitude of sins. So this year I'm really focused on lesson planning. I am also focusing on setting things up so I don't have to do this every single year. 10 years in, I really should have this down to a science (ha!! pun intended) but I don't. Every single year I have to recreate the wheel because I don't r...

I have been so looking forward to this break, but this year is different. I usually look forward to fall break because I'm behind and need a week to get caught up. This year I'm looking forward to it so that I can change things up in my classes. I have been doing pretty well keeping on up on things and so now it's time to switch things up. I am nearing the end of volleyball - yay!!!  And so that will be gone. It's been a real learning experience this year though. For some reason, I've been more on it and much more interested in setting up established curriculum. Every year in chemistry I have to think, okay, what am I doing now. A couple of weeks ago I purchased some small binders and I'm slowly working on getting things put into units and in them so I don't have to recreate the wheel every single year. I put the one together for the current unit yesterday. Over break I would like to get the ones done that will take me to fall break. Initially I was goin...

It is scary how quickly time passes. We are just a couple of weeks out from fall break. Yikes!!!  How did that happen? But things have been going well, not perfect, but well. I have given up on Tuesdays and Thursdays and that has helped my stress levels a whole lot. Mondays and Wednesdays haven't been as productive as I'd hoped, but they are getting there. This past week I've been sick with a slight head cold, it's been just enough to mess with me and that is super annoying. But things are improving and falling into a flow. I like that. I have come to the conclusion that I need to avoid certain people at work. I happen to like my job. I like the school I'm at. I like the kids, and for the most part, I like my coworkers. But there are a couple that I have to avoid for my own sanity. They do nothing but complain. About everything. The school, the admin, the kids, the parents, the hours, everything. They complain about sports even though they are not involved in t...

After careful consideration of my life right now, I finally have a plan to deal with the stress of the added responsibilities I have taken on. Here are the realizations I've come to: Tuesdays and Thursdays are completely shot because we have conditioning until 4pm and in a couple of weeks we will be having games. So I need to just get used to the fact that Tuesdays and Thursdays are done until the end of October.  Monday and Wednesdays I am back here by 3:15pm and so could work some until 4ish. I should not do anything that takes a lot of mind work or thought because I am usually pretty tired by then, but I could do some mindless work and there is always mindless work.  Fridays are an absolute must in order to keep my head above water. I will have volleyball practice until 11 but I need to put some time in the classroom in the afternoons. No. Way. Around. It.  I have got to spend some time getting my files, both electronic and paper, in order. I just have to beca...

I have been completely stressed out as the new school year starts and I don't like it at all. I have fallen back into old patterns of not planning in advance and having to figure out what to do every morning. I spent much of the summer planning things and yet I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. On top of that, I volunteered to coach volleyball and that is taking up a whole lot of time that I didn't really count on. Plus, I am not using my weekends to my best advantage.  I spent 2 days this past weekend trying to figure out how to set up my planner. What??? Not a productive use of time. So as a result, I'm stressed out a bit. I have a to-do list a mile long and nothing is getting done on it. Of course, sitting during my prep writing this is probably not the most productive thing I could do, but I need to get it out. On top of everything, I still haven't figured out how to effectively organize my electronic stuff. This is really driving me crazy. I sti...

I vividly remember my interview for my teacher education program. One of the questions they asked is "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?"  I responded, "in a classroom." At that time I had zero desire to be in admin and that has not changed. So here I am, starting my 10th year of teaching, and still in the classroom. This is also the hardest year to start. I am usually very excited about the new school year. I look forward to the new batch of students and I just enjoy new starts. This year? Not so much. Not sure exactly why, but it seems to be pretty prevalent across the board. Most teachers I speak to are just not excited about the new school year. Hmmm....  Oh well.....it is what it is. With that, my lesson planning is absolutely driving me crazy and I don't know what to do about it. I sat and made some detailed lesson plans for the beginning of the school year and they seem to change it day to day. Why? Why exactly do I do that? Why can I not stick ...

The month of July has pretty much been spent doing this. I've not accomplished a whole lot since my last post. I did get all my electronic files moved around and I'm sure I lost some in the translation, but that is life. The rest of the month was spent crafting. I made some very cool lab coats and a new messenger bag for carrying my stuff back and forth to school Here are my lab coats:  I took my old one and tie-dyed it, I love, love, love tie-dye and then I bought a new one and painted it. And my new messenger bag: Very excited about this. Very excited about it all. Hubby was gone for a week and returned yesterday. I did all this while he was gone. So needless to say, none of my prep got done. Since we have to return on Monday, I think I know what I'll be doing for the rest of the week/weekend. At least I have everything ready in my head. I know what I'm going to do for each class, so all I need to do is get everything ready. Ugh!!!  I guess I can d...

I know, 2 posts in one day. Well, since the last post I've been working on school stuff and I've gotten to point where I can't move forward until I figure some things out. So I thought I would take some time, write it out (which always helps me think) and figure out the best way to do this. I have tons of electronic storage. I have Google drive - personal and school. I have Dropbox - which I recently cleaned out with the idea of using it for school. Evernote - which I recently cleaned out with the idea of using it for school. OneNote - which I don't really use. As you can see, I have a plethora of places to store files. And I store files in all of those places. So when I want a file, I can spend hours searching for where I stored it. That is always so much fun. So I'm trying to come up with a way to store the files that I want that won't drive me completely batsh*t crazy. Now the super simple answer would be the school Google Drive. I have unlimited storag...

I must be getting close to returning to school because I had my first nightmare last night. It was really a nightmare, more like a dream where everything went wrong. It was the first day of school and I didn't have my schedule. Everyone else had theirs but I didn't have mine. I had nothing ready for my classes and I didn't know when I had classes so I didn't know when I could go make copies. Then a class came in and I didn't know them and they were disrespectful and gave me the wrong names and everything. It was annoying. I had a dream similar to this before I started teaching and it freaked me out. This one? Not so much. I've had enough experience now that these things don't frighten me, but it is a bummer to know I'm that close to returning. A frequent theme of this blog has been organization. It is something I struggle with everywhere, not just at school. It is also something I am determined to master if it kills me. So I realized the other day, ...

While I was investigating the points vs weight issue (see last post), I came across a program (for lack of a better word) from the University of Kansas called Strategic Instruction Model. In a nutshell, it is a method of presenting information to the student that allows them to track their own learning. There is a Course Organizer that outlines what the entire course will cover. Then there is a Unit Organizer which outlines what the unit will cover. Then there is a Lesson Organizer which outlines what the lesson will cover. These things help the students connect with things they've learned previously and understand how the things they learn in a class all fit together. I love this idea. I found the Unit Organizer first and thought is was genius. Here it is: This is an overview of the unit. It is given to the students either completely blank or only partially filled in. As a class, we will fill it in together. There are places for the last unit and the next unit so the...

Something I've been noodling over the last few days is points vs weights for grades. I've always done weighted grades so how many points something was worth wasn't that important, the computer would calculate the weighted grade. But that can be confusing. I had a situation where a student was missing some assignments. She worked really hard to make some of them up and bring up her grade, but she left off one that was more heavily weighted than all the others. As a result, her grade didn't move much. Explaining that to her was difficult, to say the least. It was at that point I began to think about straight points.  If it was just straight points, the grading would be much, much clearer to the students.  And honestly, in all my graduate classes it's straight points and therefore so much easier to keep track of. So I've been playing around with that, but I'm running into a couple of roadblocks I'm having difficulty navigating. The primary roadblock is...

I have struggled with lesson planning my entire career. I know I talk about this a lot and I know to some it may seem rather trivial, but this is huge for me. I was never taught how to properly lesson plan in my teacher education program. I had to create a lesson plan. I was shown interesting things to do with lessons. But creating a system of teaching a topic, putting it in an orderly fashion, and creating daily plans for doing that was never taught to me. I'm the type of person who needs to be shown step by step and be able to ask questions. How is this done? What if this happens? How do I handle this? I never had that. I was taught all about educational theorists. I was taught to do action research. I spent a lot of time learning things that literally never cross my mind now. But the stuff I really needed; how to create lesson plans, how to plan a day, a week, a month, a school year, how to handle the massive amounts of paperwork that being a teacher generates; I was taught no...

As I was preparing to type this, I was thinking about the people who are so confident in what they are doing. They get a planner and say they are going to use it this way and set it up that way and boom. They do it. I'm not sure if there is the struggle beforehand that I go through (see previous posts) But I am not that confident and generally waffle before deciding on something. I guess I just like to consider all options and look at all sides of something before just jumping in. Aw, well, that's me. Anyway, the point of this post is my school planner. This has been sitting here for almost 2 weeks and I have hardly touched it. I've been trying to decide how I want to lay it out and I think I figured it out. There are 7 columns in this planner and my initial thought was to label each one with a class; chemistry, biology, AP chem, and AP bio; and the remaining 3 columns with notes, to-do, copy, prep or some combination of those things. But the more I thought about it t...

I'm stuck. And I'm not sure how to figure this out. I teach AP Biology. Last year was my first year and I just picked up someone's curriculum and taught it. Well, this summer I'm trying to be more mindful in my teaching and so I'm planning ahead. One of the projects is to create an AP Biology curriculum that is mine. The problem I'm running into is the sequence. Last year I taught macro to micro, so evolution first and then we worked our way down to cells, interactions, etc. That is definitely one way to go and lots of teachers do it that way. The other way to go, and what I thought I would do this year, is start with chemistry. Give them a basis for what is going on then move into what is happening with evolution and all that stuff. Now both ways are legitimate and teachers do it both ways, I just can't decide what is best for me. One one hand I feel that giving them the big picture and then explaining why it happens (evolution first) makes more sense be...

I am a planner freak. I believe that it has to do with the fact that I always feel so unorganized and that by having a planner, I get some semblance of organization.  I have also found that being a teacher requires a level of organization I just do not possess naturally. Therefore, a planner is essential to my maintaining my sanity. Over the years, I have used a lot of different planners in a lot of different ways. I used Passion Planners for about 3 years. I used one for my personal planner and one for a school planner. The Passion Planner is great but very limited. I spent a lot of time each week altering the layout to fit my needs both at home and at school. Loved this planner, mainly the outside. But I used it an entire year and it worked well for me. I used a Purple Trail planner for both school and home.   I really liked this planner and it took much less altering than the Passion Planner did every week. But it still wasn't quite right. Also, these are...