Winter Break is here

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 multiple choice which I could grade before they left the classroom. By 2:45pm yesterday all my grades were in. I do want to review them today before the 5 pm deadline to make sure it's all in order, but otherwise, I am done. So very happy.

Next topic is the change of leadership at the school. This is a freaking story. On Wednesday, Dec 5th, the head of the school called for a short meeting after school. Only the administrative team knew what was going on so rumors were flying. The meeting was to announce that our principal was leaving to open a new school in another town. Our VP would be acting as principal until a new one could be hired and they were also looking for a new VP.  Applications for both positions were being accepted thru the following Thursday. Well, the crap started flying around. Two teachers had apparently put together a 'business proposal' for them to run the new school but that wasn't accepted by the leaders of the school. I should point out that we are a 3 school charter system (soon to be 4)  and while each school has a principal and VP, there is a person who is the head of all the schools and there is a school board that has members from all schools on it and some others, etc. So the head, J, rejected the proposal by these 2 teachers. So they started going around saying that J had stolen some of their ideas. Really, they have 3 successful schools and J needed to steal ideas from them??? Whatever.  Then one of those teachers was saying that our principal never applied for the new position and was just appointed. Well, so what?  Our principal successfully opened our school 5 years ago so they have the experience to do it. It only makes sense to ask them. Also, they did go through the interview process, it's the law. So the other teacher with the business proposal applied for the position of VP here. This person is a 2nd-year teacher I believe and is still in the stage where they know the exact right way to do everything (they haven't realized yet that teaching is as much an art as a science). Another teacher also applied who is a bit of a flake and would not make a good VP. Two others also applied, both of whom would have made amazing VPs. I can't imagine how tough it was to choose between those two. Thankfully, the one I wanted to get it ended up with it. I'm so freaking happy. If the business plan teacher had gotten it, I would have left next year. No way would I work for them. During this whole thing, rumors were flying about all kinds of things and it was so incredibly amazing to sit back and watch. At one point the leaving principal was trying to steal all the teachers here to come to the new school. There were a number of teachers acting like children about the whole thing. Completely, unreal. I honestly hope that this will cause some of them to leave. We do not need to have people like that around. Seriously. I'm hoping that over break all this nonsense will die down and when we return things will be normal again. Of course, it did make the last few weeks leading up to the break very entertaining.

But now break has begun. I have some things I want to accomplish over break, but I have some fun things I want to do also. I think the break will be a nice balance between the two. My struggling with organization is beginning to pay off. I have found that the binder system really works for me. I have everything for my various units in individual binders and that makes the things easy to access. I will plan out the remainder of the year and create binders for all of the units so they are ready to go when I start the unit. This will also give me time to plan ahead and print things out so I have them ready when the time comes.

I'm also working on getting my lesson plans organized. I want to have access to my lessons plans all the time, which for me means they need to be printed out. I also want to keep the standards handy so that I can work with them when I need to. My vision is that I will have the lesson plans for the current week right on my desk so I can refer to them whenever I need and then I will file them in the binder for that unit. Also, I can make notes on the lesson plan on what worked, what didn't and then I can adjust next year. That's the plan.

I think I may have finally found planner peace. For the last 2 weeks, I have been using the bullet journal referenced in the previous post and I think it's working. I can carry the journal back and forth because it's not that big. I make all kinds of notes in it and kept track of things I needed to keep track of, it was awesome. Here is what it ended up looking like after the week was over:

The top is the weekly spread and the 2 bottom are the days, Mon/Tues then Weds/Thurs. It worked really well. I don't have a whole lot of stuff here because the last 2 weeks, while busy, don't actually have that much going on. It's all about reviewing and taking tests and cleaning things up.

Things I really like about the bullet journaling system:

• Completely customizable to me. I can put in anything I want and leave out things I don't. 
• Plenty of room to write things. Every planner I've ever used has had small boxes and I write kind of big. Also, some things require more writing than others. I love having the room. 
• I can make it as fancy or as plain as I want. 
• It's small enough to carry back and forth to school so I have it everywhere. 
• I can keep everything here, notes, to-dos, plans, etc. All in one place so I'm not looking all over for something

Things I don't like about the bullet journaling system: 

• Nothing really. I was going to put that having to set it up each week could become an issue, but the more I think about it the more I don't believe that is true. I will need to set aside a time each weekend to prep it for the coming week, but I think that will actually help me. By sitting down over the weekend and thinking about next week, I will be ready when Monday starts. I'm probably going to do it on Sunday night so that's even better. 

So I have a nice new bullet journal that I'm going to set up over the break for the new semester. I have the time to set it up the way I want so I'm going to do that. I have also decided to color code all my classes. Through this teacher program I belong to, I got 24 packs of post-its that contain 10 different colors. So I'm color coding my classes. I'm not really sure if this will work, but I want to give it a try. I have also come to a realization that I didn't want to come to. As much as I love, love, love chalk.com, I think that I need to set my lesson plans up a different way. I need to see them all laid out in a unit so I know exactly where I'm going. I also need to be able to see the big picture and not just the day to day things. So I'm going to create my unit/lesson plans in Word and keep them in my Dropbox. I haven't quite figured that all out yet, but I have a pretty good idea of what I want. So that will be my other project during the break. 

Okay, I've been typing this for a while now. Time to get moving and walk the dogs. Then we are off to Costco. Have a good break everyone.