Sista!

My younger sister came up to visit last weekend, and had the opportunity (or rather interesting experience?) of coming to school with me and observing my lessons for the day.

If you don't know me/my family, you should know that my sister and I look almost freakishly alike, except that she is shorter than I. Obviously, this caused my kids to literally scream and laugh and point (it is an art school, so I am generally prepared for their flare for the dramatic).

Most of the comments were along the lines of...whoa, deadass miss, you all look alike, you be looking like twins!

It was pretty awesome to have someone that I am so close with finally get a chance to see what I do every day, and to meet the students with whom I spend most of my time/devote most of my time to their success. The students were pretty impressed with her work as a nursing student, although to quote the masses:

"you both deadass like science? that's weird. that's OD."

All in all, however, in her one day of observing, she got a flash sense for the brilliance that gathers in my room each day. She enjoyed their wit and their smarts and their good questions, and of course, their fake dramatic love triangle fights about who is my "wife" and who each other's wives are.

Now, if only how I could figure out how to get all that brilliance to express itself in more productive ways than singing the tunes of Disney movie songs during a "calculate your mastery" day (aka today's adventure). Their soundtrack of choice: High School Musical.

Best Class In the School

Sometimes it just takes one class and sometimes it just takes one student to remind me why I kill myself week after week for this job.

This has been a really stressful time lately. Our school is being evaluated by the city/state on January 5th (aka 3rd day back from Christmas break), so the pressure is on to have everything ready and perfect by Christmas time. Which officially makes this crunch time. As a result, every teacher and administrator is scrambling to take care of every odd and end to ensure that our school gets the best review possible (oh and ensures our kids are getting the most out of their education).

Part of this process includes the administration formally observing every teacher. The process involves 3 stages.
1. Planning = Submit your lesson plan, a planning guide, and your lesson materials to the administration. Have a pre-lesson meeting with the administrators to discuss your plan and get feedback. Make adjustments as necessary.

2. Lesson = Teacher teaches the lesson while administrators sit in the room and observe, taking minute-by-minute notes of everything that happens in the classroom and then walk around and ask students to explain their answers to the lesson objective (Guiding Question) at the end of class.

3. Reflection = Teacher completes a detailed reflection form about the lesson and then conferences with the administration, who decide if you are a Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory teacher.

It's a pretty high-stress situation. My observation was yesterday. Today I had my Reflection conference with my administration. I was given lots of good feedback and lots of things to improve on, but received an overall Satisfactory rating! Yay I can teach children!

The best part: Adminstrator tells me that as she was leaving the classroom, one of my students said "Ms., Chemistry is the best class in the whole school!":)