So Incredibly Grateful

These past few weeks have made me eternally grateful for a number of things.

***Forewarning: this post may be a bit emotional, but I consider myself an emotional person and I try to express my feelings through my writing. If you need to read my disclaimer, you can do so on my Meet the Newbie page.

One

That I have a supportive, stable family that always has my best interest in mind. I could drop my job, move across the country, and my family would STILL lend a helping hand and a patient ear. 

It's no secret that my students have their fair share of difficulties. Recently I learned that one of my students eats dinner every night at our city's soup kitchen. While I'm bundled up with my dog and my homemade meal, my student and their family are trekking their way to the soup kitchen just for a hot meal. Cue all the tears! Throughout my education courses in undergrad, my professors constantly reminded us of progress monitoring, the referral process, RTI, writing goals, and different types of assessments. Not once was I warned of the heartache this profession carries. 

Two

Now that I've dried my tears (again), let's move on to something a little lighter. I'm also grateful for my co-workers. I have never met more committed, caring, and tough adults. Each staff member at our school has a unique characteristic about them and they all have a common passion: helping children. At the end of a tough day, sometimes I sit at my desk, eat a piece of chocolate (of course), and just think of how incredible my co-workers are. Not only are they great at school, but I was invited to my first-ever cookie exchange...and it's at my co-worker's house! She'll be hosting me and about 10 other staff members from our school next week for a little get together at her house. And I can't wait!

Three

New relationships. Not only romantic relationships, but relationships that have also been built between fellow teachers and aides at my school and new members of my book club. Recently I've had a new relationship in my life that just brings me so much happiness. I have every reason to be grateful for these various new relationships.

Here's just a little preview of where my daily allotment of happiness has been lately :) #noshame 

Four

What I call "little pockets of communities." Lately I've just been feeling extremely grateful for these little groups of humans. From my book club, to my college friends, my "tried and true" friends, and my new TPT friends! A couple weeks ago I attended my very first TPT Meet Up! Let's just say that I'm hooked. I'll be attending another TPT Meet Up event in the spring of next year. Big announcement coming soon...ish...sometime before spring.

Five

My students. Oh I could just love them up. Each day they make me so proud. They've been making such progress in their academic and behavioral goals that sometimes I just can't contain it. I love the "little pocket of community" that I have in my classroom. 

Just a new teacher just feeling grateful, that's all!

Exact representation of me right now

No Matter What

November has been nothing shy of easy. We've had Halloween, Election Day, Veteran's Day, half days, schedule changes, changes in aides, illnesses, and med changes all in one month. This week is only a three-day week. Praise the lord!!

I saw this post over the weekend and it had my laughing out loud. Teacher friends: at least we're not turkeys! Lately, the thing that keeps me going is laughter and positive thoughts. And chocolate. Can't forget that one. This post is motivating me to finish this week out strong!

Yet Another Rookie Mistake...

I knew this was coming! My first year as a teacher is far from perfect. As you know, I have a tough population of kiddos to work with during this first year. Something that I struggle with is deciphering when students are being manipulative. Feel free to chuckle at that one but it's the truth! Our students can be sneaky at times and it's difficult to know when they're being honest. 

Students at our school earn Barracuda Bucks for showing good behaviors. They can then spend these bucks at our school's Reward Center, our classroom Barracuda Mini Mart, or a variety of other opportunities, such as visiting a class at the end of the day. The other day my student spent their bucks to dismiss with another class. It was a rough day and instead of asking the teacher myself, my student said, "Miss Katie, Miss _____ was in the hallway and she said it was okay if I came down today." Little did I know that this student wasn't telling the truth!! Luckily the other teacher didn't mind at all that I had sent him down, but now this student has a consequence to accept. As do I! Just making myself look like a stereotypical newbie at our school....sigh. 

I've been wearing this badge lately! We're going to chalk this one up to a learning experience :)

One Tired Teacher

So I follow the Teacher Life page on Facebook and they posted this photo this week. Friends, it just spoke to me!

It has been a whirlwind of a month. Let's recap October a little bit...

*Most of my students earned their field trip to the pumpkin patch

*I wasn't able to attend said field trip due to TCI training

*My students were finally conglomerating and getting into their school routines

*I saw some remarkably kind gestures from one student in particular, it just made my teacher heart melt!

*Most of my students earned our school's Haunted House

*Again, I was unable to attend the Haunted House because a kiddo had a meltdown

*Halloween rocked our socks. We had a normal morning, followed by Halloween stations between a couple classrooms, passed out candy to the little kids in our school, and watched Hocus Pocus to end our day

Phew! I tried to hit all the important parts of my #teacherlife during the month of October.

Now that it's mid-November, things have changed a bit. Some of my students are starting to show different behaviors and I'd like to attribute it to all of our schedule changes lately. Between Halloween, Election Day, Veteran's Day, a half day this past week, Thanksgiving next week, and our aide out for two weeks...they're a bit all over the place. One of the things that is keeping me together is my awesome teacher tribe. We vent to each other, we offer advice to one another, help each other when a student is in crisis, we offer each other chocolate :) and we've gone to happy hours together. If it weren't for my awesome teacher tribe I'd be hiding under my covers somewhere.

I am thanking my lucky stars that I get to be the teacher of my kiddos! I posted this to my Facebook page last week. I always say that my students are tough, but they're my kiddos and that makes them the best!

Time for a nap!!

Friday Favorites

Definitely don't mind waking up to a Friday! Especially when it means I get to link up with Andrea, Erika, and Narci for my most favorite linky party...Friday Favorites :)

Yoga. Our school hired a full-time yoga instructor this year and last Friday was our first session. My kiddos loved it! They love being able to take off their shoes, stretch out on a mat, listen to calming music, and play "yoga games." Our instructor is awesome! She starts with some basic stretching and breathing, then moves into a yoga story. She uses music and is actually able to get my students to sing along. After some brief meditation she allows the kiddos to play a yoga game. Last week they practiced using their intuition...something we need more practice with! 

Look at their sweet downward-facing dogs!

Speaking of yoga, I'll be attending my own yoga session today at 6am. Please say a prayer for me :)

Fall is in full swing in Buffalo and I'm loving every bit of it! This week I've already made pumpkin chocolate chip bread and purchased just about every pumpkin spice food item they sell at Trader Joe's. Their pumpkin coffee is to die for! I let my fall obsession carry into the classroom with these adorable pumpkins I picked up from Jo Ann's. I figured they could be my desk decoration until Thanksgiving.

Just love looking that these on my desk!

I also went to Starbucks this week (of course) and bought my first pumpkin spice latte of the season!

I usually get the hot ones but this particular day was almost 75 degrees. So I stuck with the iced PSL.

This week I've had more time to organize myself at home, which is great! Although it's a very small feat, I organized all my colored paper into my soon-to-be-office and just looking at it makes me quite happy! There are few things more that I love than a large variety of paper colors for printing :) I especially love using it with my HP SmartInk printer I bought earlier this year. I highlighted it in my first post! Ahh, just check out the sight...

Excuse the terrible shadows!

Hoping everyone enjoys this wonderful fall weekend ahead of us!

Monday Motivation

After a tough week last week, I know I need some motivation to get me going this Monday. Whenever I feel down and stressed, I watch this one video my English 101 professor showed me my freshman year of college. This video, combined with a couple other factors, influenced me to be a teacher. Dr. Bidell showed us this video while we were in our Spoken Word Poetry unit and I fell in love with both slam poetry and education. The poem is written by Taylor Mali, a former educator, and now, an author. During the summer of 2014 I read his book What Teachers Make, written after his infamous speech at a teacher's rally.

I don't even have to be upset about anything school-related. I watch this and it restores my confidence in myself. Have a look below and I hope it has the same effect!

Happy Monday!

The Weekly Five

1. What did I do to help a student this week?

So next week my students have a field trip planned to attend a local pumpkin patch. Because I have behavioral kiddos, they needed to earn it. This week started their "earning period" where they have to earn at least an 85% for 5/7 days. They've been reminded of this every day when we do our morning meeting and my aide and I constantly remind them during the day. I have one student that is dangerously close to not joining us. Today I pulled him aside, told him that he needs to bring his A-game these next few days, and we decided to tape a picture of a pumpkin on his desk as a visual reminder. Although he had a rough day, he loved being able to look down at the pumpkin and remind himself what he was earning. 

We love pumpkins in our class :)

2. How did I contribute to a positive classroom environment?

This was a tough one this week. I love to joke around with my students. Each Friday I let students choose one song to listen to after our assessments are done for the day. YouTube always has those funky commercials playing and today we watched 6 Suave commercials. I joked with my students and said, "this cherry blossom scent would smell lovely on you guys!" They all laughed and said, "eww!"

3. What did I do to collaborate with my aide this week? Did it work?

Each morning we chit chat about the day and progress about our kiddos. Today my wonderful aide was absent and I realized that I never gave her my cell phone number! I left a post-it note on her desk with my contact info. :)

4. What is one event that made you thankful for your job this week?

This week I received so many "Mom, Mommy, Momma, Mom can I..." Although odd, because I'm only 22, it was nice to hear that my students are that comfortable with me. Five weeks of UNO at lunch time is proving to be worth it!

5. What did I do to relieve some stress this week?

Well that's a tough one. This week was only 4-days long, thanks to Columbus Day. As great as it was to enjoy a long weekend, it was tough getting my students back into routine. We even had to practice walking in the hallway and eating lunch in the cafeteria. Talk about embarrassing! I was supposed to go to yoga this morning at 6am but I had too many early morning errands to run beforehand that I wouldn't have time to shower and drive myself to school by 7:45am. I did not achieve any "stress relief" this week so that might explain the way I feel right now.

Ahh. Here's to a better week next week!

Friday Favorites

Oh yes it does! I'm a coffee drinker so I TOTALLY relate to this! Each day I chug-a-lug my coffee so I can have enough energy to last the day. (Please see #1 in this post for further comment). It's Friday and I'm linking up again with Erika, Narci, and Andrea for Friday Favorites!! I'm already looking forward to seeing some fellow Friday Favorites during my prep today!

Coffee is a favorite this week. I mean, it's always a favorite but it's a MUST HAVE this week. This week was a four day week which is awesome! But it also means more time off that my students forget the skills we've been teaching them for the past 5 weeks. #regression. I've told my dear aide "I need an IV of coffee" this week so many times that I've lost count. I know she's feeling it too! She deals with student behaviors the same amount, if not more, as me. 

Tim Hortons <3 Oh how I love you this week! 

*Side note: I reward my students with perfect weeks (based off their daily point sheets) with a Tim Hortons' breakfast! So far I've had two students earn a Timmy Ho's breakfast two weeks in a row! Can they beat three weeks??

I posted about my Double Dose of Teaching Angels before but I feel like I need to repeat myself. They have been a god-send! Stephanie and Kelly are "teacher friends" of mine and I couldn't be luckier! A "sub-favorite" of mine this week is the group chat Stephanie started with Kelly and I...I've been laughing all week with them!

 Recently I started using their U.S Presidential Election Pocketbook and my students are loving it. And I'm loving it because I prepped everything ahead of time :) Nothing like having four weeks of Social Studies materials copied, assembled, and organized by day already!

My class spent an entire week on Donald Trump and I think they're finally getting it :) Although I love to hate on Trump, I love that the resource is unbiased. It allows my students to make their own assumptions and opinions...shh, be still my teacher heart!

My students think I'm a swing-voter and are already looking forward to finding out which candidate I vote for! I LOVE keeping students on their toes!

My friends. 

They were a favorite last week and they're back again for round 2! These are my college besties that I couldn't be more thankful for this week. From the words of encouragement after dealing with something that pulled on my heart strings, to laughing about a student's insults towards me, and reminiscing about this picture that we took one year ago. Believe it or not, this picture above is what started my "blogging career". After we took this photo I decided I wanted to chronicle my senior year living with my best friends....And now, here I am, as a first year teacher blogging about my experiences in the classroom! We text each other weekly (thank goodness!) and keep up with each other whenever we can. 

We may not see each other as often but when we do, we all know that nothing has changed. And those are the best kinds of friendships. Love my future bridesmaids!

Students hard at work.

I recently introduced Roll-a-Spelling-Word and my students were in love!! I purchased some reusable dry erase pouches and quickly edited a resource. It was an excellent review for our spelling test today! This was the quietest they've been all week! Despite the noises of the dice hitting the desks :) 

*Foam dice are already ordered and on their way!!!

**Please ignore my ugly classroom. The furniture is rough, to say the least!

Happy Friday, friends! 

Or as I've trained my class to say, "Fri-YAY!"

A Thursday That Feels Like a Monday

If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of this post you'll see that I labeled this post with "Wow". And that's all I have to say about today. 

Today is Thursday. It felt like a Monday.

The day started with group counseling which my students were way too silly in. Because of previous cafeteria events, I made my students practice walking in the hallways and eating in the cafeteria. From the responses from my students you would've thought I was the meanest teacher in the world. Extra walking? More steps? Taking down our chairs? What?!

I know.

The day, for the most part, was fine. My students were engaged in my lessons and completing their work. It all fell apart in the last 45 minutes of the day and only two of my six students earned free time. That's an all-time low record. I was even called a not-so-nice name by my student :( Did I deserve it? Absolutely not. But it's the fact that my student got so angered that that's how they decided to deal with their anger. Through swearing and unkind words towards one of the people that cares so much about them.

I can't help but feel responsible. Did I trigger them? Did I not intervene when I thought two students were joking around? Should I not have let the reigns loosen? It might be a combination of them all or I may be way off mark. But I do know that I'm striving to be a better teacher each day. Although I'm a teacher, school is just as much a place of learning and growth for me as it is for my students. 

I feel like I need to remind myself that my students are responsible for their decisions and actions. Not me. Not my aide. And not their peers in our classroom. 

Here's to hoping for a smooth end of the week!

The Weekly Five

It's time for Saturday again and I don't mind one bit :)

This is me right now! We had a staff development day yesterday and everybody is off on Monday for Columbus Day. I'm soooo ready for a little breather. It's been a long first 5 weeks!

For as many Saturdays as I can, I'll be posting The Weekly Five to reflect on my week. Here we go!

1. What did I do to help a student this week?

One of my kiddos loves to swear. After countless discussions about this, giving positive consequences for swear-free periods, giving negative consequences for cussing people out, and talking with his counselor, we decided to come up with a plan. For this little friend we're allowing him to swear only in his counselor's office and it can't be directed at his counselor. For some people swearing is how they get their frustration out...it's just about when to use it and when not to use it. Oh the accommodations we make for our students :)

2. How did I contribute to a positive classroom environment?

I have a policy in my room that a whole week of 100% on behavior logs means a Tim Horton's breakfast. My students are nuts about this! This past week I had on kid finally earn his and it was like he won a congressional medal of honor. Holy cow!

3. What did I do to collaborate with my aide this week? Did it work?

This week my aide and I didn't have much time to talk since it was a short week. But I have to admit that I forgot to tell her about a couple things: after school meeting, her agenda for staff development day, and a negative behavior one of the kids had. It certainly wasn't on purpose and it truly slipped my mind! I love my aide and of course she was forgiving!

4. What is one event that made you thankful for your job this week?

On Thursday one of my kids said to me, "Ms. Katie, you look extra pretty today." Sure, he had just called a peer a nasty name and may have been sucking up but it's always great to hear sweet things like this :)

5. What did I do to relieve some stress this week?

Dinner date with my momma! We went to our neighborhood restaurant and enjoyed some wine while we both discussed our weekend getaways. It was nice to catch up with my mom and indulge in some good food!

Friday Favorites

Ahh the day is finally here! It's been a while since I've posted a Friday Favorites so I figured I was due for an update...just like my cell phone! I still have my trusty iPhone 4s. We're going on 4.5 years together :) I'm linking up with Erika, Narci, and Andrea!

Let's get down to business..

Yesterday I recapped my strategies for avoiding teacher burn out and a career change. You can see that post here! 

It's feeling more like fall around here! Although we've had some higher temps this week, my heart, mind, and closet are transitioning into fall.

This weekend I have big plans with a pumpkin spice latte! Also planning on baking some pumpkin chocolate chip bread. #katiecrocker

Living in Buffalo has many, many perks. One that benefits teachers in particular is The Teacher's Desk. It's a non-profit organization that collects donations and allows teachers to shop for free in their warehouse. I wish I had a picture of my cart because holy cow! I easily had over $500 worth of product in my cart. 

The Teacher's Desk is primarily for teachers who teach in high-poverty areas or schools with exceptional needs. Just check out some of these pictures they post to their Facebook page...

What a normal cart looks like at The Teacher's Desk

The staff at The Teacher's Desk is wonderful! They have volunteers who bag your products and more volunteers to bring your cart to your car and load it up. I had such a wonderful experience working with The Teacher's Desk and I know my students and I will greatly benefit from their hard work and generosity!

Hope everyone is having a fantastic week and an even more fabulous weekend!!