Dreaming

J and I were talking about how fun its going to be to one day have a nice house with nice things that are nicely decorated. (This is after we win the lottery of course). We decided that we are going to have a  finished basement (with a bar and a big screen tv) and it is going to be decorated completely in NC State gear. Here are the fun things we have put on our wish list..

Hey! A girl can dream cant she!?

    Love my Wolfpack! 

Until next time... 

P.S.- One more day of students and two work days until Thanksgiving break!! WOO HOO

complaining

My list of complaints for the week...

FIRST of all, why don't we have off school for Veterans day?! I would love to honor our Vets by having a day off of school.

Secondly, I strongly dislike the Matter and Energy course of study. It cuts out all the fun and interesting things in Chemistry. For example, they want me to teach ionic bonds but they don't want me to go into detail about metals and non metals and oxidation numbers and dot structures and all the other things normally you would need to know in order to understand ionic bonds.. It's such a waste of time (in my opinion) to just "touch" on a topic that they won't understand without all the other details.

Also, its 30 degrees out in the morning.. WHY haven't we gotten the heat turned on in our building!?! I seriously wore my coat, scarf and gloves all day on Monday. Ridiculous!

and another thing... why do people involved in education create so much unnecessary paper work. I hate paper work!

Lastly, I would just like to complain about the lack of quality I received on my forensic research papers. They are so sad to read because 90% of my students did not follow directions. The works cited pages are in completely wrong format, there are no citations in the paper, the only thing worse than the really bad grammar is the horrific punctuation. I can't believe these students are in 11th and 12th grade!

On a more positive note... I came back to school today with almost all good notes from the substitute!! Yay! My freshman babies are growing up!

Until next time...

p.s. I can't wait until I have more interesting things to write about besides school..

Cooperative Discipline

I did not go to school today. Instead I went to a professional development seminar on Cooperative discipline. So I am on lunch break and decided to write a quick post!  I figured.. hey what the heck if i don't get anything from it at least I get a paid break from school!

For all of you that are not in the teacher lingo, Cooperative discipline is the idea that every student chooses to misbehave for a reason. It is my job as the teacher to pin point WHY the student is doing the wrong behavior and then react accordingly. For example: Many students act out because they want attention from either their peers or the adult. During the morning session they gave me a lot of intervention strategies for how to deal with someone who is acting out for attention. I had a class on this kinda stuff in college but it is more relevant now that I can actually apply it to some of my students..

On to other news.... I was picked to be the Matter and Energy "Team leader. Basically, I run our content meetings and organize data from our team to report to the assistant principal. Its more work for me but I figure it will put me in a great position to take on bigger roles in the school (Like department head?! maybe one day... Maybe...!?)

Until next time

Goodbye October!

October is always such a long month. In college, I had fall break which was usually 3 days off in the middle of October.  In high school, we don't have a fall break. Actually, there are NO breaks in October. It's a very long month for teaching with nothing to look forward to. In my opinion, November goes by much faster because we have 3 weeks until Thanksgiving (one of my favorite Holidays!!).

Why do I think Thanksgiving is so great?!  First of all, the food is always fantastic! Turkey, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, stuffing.. I could go on forever!! Secondly, I love when my big family gets together. Usually we are able to put the drama aside and enjoy each others company. Being with my family is very important to me. Lastly, Thanksgiving begins the holiday shopping season! (What girl doesn't love shopping!?)

This year, J and I are traveling to his parents house for Thanksgiving. This will be the first big holiday J and I are spending together! I can't wait spend Thanksgiving with his family because they are great southern cooks and the atmosphere there is a lot more relaxed than my crazy family.

School is going well. We are half way through the first semester! Nothing, too exciting to post about but here are some highlights...
   ** someone pulled my safety shower and flooded my classroom floor. A big fear for many teachers turned into a great story for me! Im glad I am able to laugh about it now.
  **  grades are closed for Quarter one.. I am procrastinating grading by writing this blog post
  **  a former student told one of my former colleagues that I inspired her to become a physical science teacher! I must have done at least one thing right last year.

Until next time..

Formal Observation

So every teacher has to go through the dreaded "Formal observation".. It's the 30 minutes of ONE class that the principal comes to observe and makes judgments on whether you are on the right track or need some more guidance.

 I had my formal observation on Monday and let me tell you, I WAS NERVOUS! Last year I never got nervous for observations. I think that was because the standards at my old school were a lot lower. In other words, as long as my objective was posted, my students weren't stabbing each other or selling drugs during class, and they were actually doing something (or pretending to do something) then I was most likely going to get a satisfactory. At my new school, I feel like there is a lot more pressure to reach every student, assess every student and to make sure every student is reaching the objective. Furthermore if a student doesn't reach the objective how do you know and what do you do about it?! Its just a lot to think about and do! (especially for 170 students). Anyways, I was nervous. I really like this school and I wanted to impress the principal.

My principal was observing the last 30 minutes of my 2nd period Forensics class. Of course, my weakness is closure and timing lessons perfectly so that we don't have extra time at the end of class. However, I made sure to have an engaging lab that the students were working on when he walked in and then we had a discussion on the lab after we cleaned up and I had formal assessment of the students to find out who understood the lab and who didn't. Everything went well but I couldn't get a read on Mr. K's face. It must have gone really well because this morning on announcements, Mr. K said "Ms. Macary's class was well instructed and very engaging. Please congratulate her on a job well done"!! WOO HOO! It felt so good to get positive recognition. I am having a post observation meeting with him tomorrow so I can't wait to hear is feed back!

Until Next time..

My favorite time of year..

I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE the season of fall for many reasons. The smell of the fall spices like nutmeg and allspice, carving pumpkins, going through corn mazes, making scarecrows, halloween (and being motivated to loose weight to fit into a costume), good food, pumpkin pie, cooler weather, the changing color of leaves.. There are just so many things!! Who wouldn't love this time of year?!

Although the days are getting shorter and there isn't as much day light when I get home from work, I am now into the school routine. I think most of the kids at school are also getting into the routine. October is always a great month for school. The students know what they can and can't get away with now so they aren't testing me as much. It's nice to have students who don't try to use their cell phones because they know what is going to happen if I see it. Or students who automatically take their hat off before coming to my class because they know I am going to ask them to take it off.

I know I talk a lot about how much I enjoy my new school but I have to brag a little bit more about it. Today we had a staff meeting and I learned that we made AYP (U.S and State Standards) for the 6th year in a row!! It is so nice to be part of a school that is making improvements. Our principal was talking about how proud he is of where we are vs where we came from (apparently this school was not so great a few years ago).

Now not everything is sunshine and roses around here.. I enjoy teaching 5 out of 6 of my classes... but there is JUST ONE class that drives me crazy. I don't know why I let these kids get to me but it always does. It takes me sooo long to get them quiet so that I can talk and a lot of them don't care that they are being rude they would rather talk over me. Long story short, I have a lot of parents to be calling tomorrow. UGH!

Anyway, my Forensic classes have been going really well. A good friend of mine, Kasey, came and talked to my classes about working in the field. THEY LOVED HER! First of all they were like "WOAH that hot girl actually touches dead bodies!?" and then they were like "she was sooo cool she cussed in front of us!"(she said shit... haha!). It was a great experience and I am so glad she was able to do it. In one week, I have my formal observation by my principal during Forensics. This observation is really important because it will help him decide whether or not they want to ask me back next year. Hopefully my forensic kids will do well. I will let you know how it goes!

Until next time...

Crazy roller coaster ride that I like to call my life.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. OK I wouldn't say it was the WORST time ever (I really just wanted to quote a book and feel smart doing it). Who doesn't like a Dickens classic anyway?

Sooo let me explain the best of times first. School is now in full swing and the real learning has begun. So far I LOVE my forensic science classes. It's refreshing to see upper classmen every other day and they are so different then freshmen. I treat them a lot differently too. I am much more strict with my little freshmen and I let a lot slide with 11 and 12 graders. In Forensics, we can joke around and have some fun but still get our work done.. 9th graders still don't understand where that fine line between joking/ having fun and being inappropriate and off task.

Here are some quotes from two of my seniors that really made me feel great!
   "Ms. M, I just wanted to let you know that I over slept today and was late to school. I was going to just not come to school but then I remembered we had your lab today so I came just for this class"
and  "I love this class because we actually get to get up and do things"

Ok so now for the worst of times...
Back to school night was on Thursday. First of all, I think they should give teachers a half day on back to school night. Its crazy that we have to get to school by 7 and then leave by 3 and be back by 5 and stay till 9... RIDICULOUS!   Annnyways, It was a really long day. There were some good things that came from the day (trying to stay positive here): The science department had a potluck dinner together. It was really fun and nice to get to hang out with my coworkers outside of school. Also, I had a really good turn out of parents. Everyone seemed to be really impressed with my 6 min presentation and all the parents were really friendly. (AND I didn't have any parents coming up to me telling me I looked to young to teach their son or daughter!)

I felt like everything that could have gone wrong Friday morning did. First of all, I literally chased a boy across the school while I was doing my duty because he didn't have a pass to be out of class and wasn't where he was supposed to be. Thankfully my school has a lot of support personnel who came to my rescue and took care of the student for me. Then second period, I planned on having the students do this online computer science simulation but it went horribly wrong when 8 out of my 14 computers needed software updates and wouldn't load the sim. (Ugh! Technology is only awesome when it works!!) Luckily, all of my second period students are good kids and very adaptable. So I scrambled around trying to find something different to do for 3rd period. I finally decide to talk about blue printing and doing scaled models. This is when I discovered that 75 % of my students either a) don't know how to use a ruler or b) they are lazy and wanted me to do their work for them (hmm.. I wonder which one is the more likely choice) Either way I was running round the classroom going crazy trying to help students. During lunch, our tech lady came to fix my presenter (which was having connectivity problems.. the past two weeks I have been using the old school over head projector...which is a pain in the ass). Luckily she was able to fix it!! 4th period was amazingly my best block of the day. We made hats and then did blue prints of the hats. All the students liked the activity and it went a lot smoother when I was able to walk them through blue printing and scaling step by step on the projector. So it was a good end to a crazy and tiring week.

This weekend J and I traveled down to Nc to visit his family. I was a wonderful and relaxing weekend. We went to IKEA! and the mall and went to the movies. J's parents are awesome southern style cooks. So we ate some good food too.. (Shrimp and Grits are my favorite!! YUM!) It came and went wayyyyy to fast and the traffic was awful!

Until next time..