Year in Review - teacher's edition

Soooo...  I realize that it's almost been a year since I've blogged.  Needless to say, there's a lot to cover.  I may not get to it all in this one.  But I think I'll start with the reason that most likely kept me from blogging: teaching!

This past year was my first year teaching.  I taught 8th grade Language Arts.  To be perfectly honest, I was terrified!!  I got into my classroom and was overwhelmed with all kinds of emotions.  I focused on trying to get it arranged, organized and decorated.  My dad gave me some small white bookshelves that he found in the warehouse at his work.  I spent a few hours painting them!!

My room was small and I had to figure out how to arrange 26 student desks, my teacher desk, the long bookshelf, the tall cabinet and my computer cart.  When the year started, I only had one white board to work with, and therefore could only do so much with the desks because I had to make sure I could project onto the board.  During the third or fourth week, I got another whiteboard installed!  So I then had (almost) double the work space.  I used one board for projecting and modeling the notes and used the other board for the daily and weekly updated (date, essential question, agenda, lunch menu, and any other announcements).

Original White board and black butcher paper for my concept map (if you don't know, don't worry)

The wall in between mine and the other LA teacher's rooms with the ridiculously placed window.  Seriously, why would you put a window in between two classrooms of middle schoolers??

My awesome door to the outside!!

My desk in it's first place.

The back wall.  Much thanks to my sister and mother in law for helping me get things on the walls!

 If you know me well, then you know that I can't keep things the same for too long.  Through the course of the year, my teacher desk was in all four corners of the room, the tall cabinet was in three of the corners, and I moved the concept map from the front wall to the back wall and back to the front wall.  Every time I moved my desk, I moved the student desks.  Sometimes, I rearranged the student desks for no reasons... Partly because of my need for change every so often, and partly because I loved to see/hear my students' reactions when they walk in and see the desks in a different shape.  

My desk in it's 3rd corner, by the outside door.  I think this was my favorite!

You can see my added whiteboard on the left side.  Through the door (in the middle-ish), is Ms. McCullum's room.  Yes, we had to walk through her class to get to mine!

I had this timer when I was student teaching and it worked great!  This past year, I learned that for the most part, 8th graders don't care how much of my time they waste.  (They did get better!)

 That's a lot about my classroom...  I spent a lot of the first few work days on my room.  I didn't think much about what I would be teaching until the 3rd day of school (the first two were half-days filled with get-to-know-you games and confusion... mostly confusion).  My collaborator, Ms. McCullum, was a 2nd year teacher and she had all her stuff from her previous year.  That was pretty much what I used to plan my lessons!  :)  Other teachers are many times the best resources!!!  If there's one thing I learned this year (and there are many things), it's that teachers are in meetings... A LOT!!!!  Some of these meetings are okay and you can actually get useful information from them.  Many of them, however, felt like colossal wastes of time.  I learned the most by observing and talking to other teachers.  I made great friends with one of the 6th grade teachers who taught 7th grade the year before and who knew many of my students.  I spent many of my planning periods in her class and got to know many of her students.  She came into my class many times during her planning too.  We became known to our assistant principal as "double trouble."  And really, except for the meetings when we were crazy bored... or work days when we were crazy bored, we really weren't that bad!  There was that one meeting... whew!  That was a doozy.  I actually feared a conversation with the principal after that one, but I think even he was bored out of his mind and was counting how many times the presenter said words that started with the letter S.  Yeah, I'm pretty sure he was.
In March, Amanda (aforementioned 6th grade teacher) and I convinced our principal that we needed to go to a Holocaust workshop in Charlotte.  We got a hotel room.  The search for the hotel room was extensive... It had to have an indoor pool!  (Outdoor pools are not as much fun in March!)  We left right after school, got to the hotel, went to dinner, then the grocery store for snacks, then to the pool (with the snacks!).  The workshop was the next day from 8-4:30 with an hour lunch.  It was incredible!  My UNCG History of the Holocaust professor was a speaker.  He, of course, gave us a detailed history of antisemitism and Hitler, and gave us some reasonable causes of the horrible period.  After lunch, we heard from a Holocaust survivor.  I was on the edge of my seat.  His story was incredible!  He wrote a book.  I totally bought the book!  And he signed it!  I have a piece of history in my office!!  We also got a TON of resources about how to teach the Holocaust, which I'm so excited about!!  We had a great time and learned a lot!
In May, I had the UN-pleasure of administering the EOGs for the first time ever.  UN-pleasure is an UNderstatement!  It was awful.  Boring.  Tiring.  Stressful.  Boring.  But successful.  There was growth in my students.  BUT even worse than the EOGs was remediation week, which I affectionately refer to as "hell week."  It lead to the second time I had to walk out of my class before crying (the first was when I was threatened by one of my students and I was so mad that I had to leave before I started throwing things).  I was so stressed out, I didn't know which way was up, the students didn't know where they were going and they didn't care about being remediated. 
In June came the most rewarding time of the year; the END!!  We got to celebrate the students who did well on the EOGs, and all year.  We had an 8th grade cook-out (in which my students discovered that I could play football--or at least pretend to. I did score a touchdown though...) 
(I'm not sure why this part is highlighted...?)

Getting ready for the hike...

Our celebratory poses!  

The student I asked to take pictures did a horrible job of capturing my awesome TD.  But, for me, I have the memory, and for you, well... I hope you have enough experience watching football on TV or enough imagination to pretend.  :)

We also had an 8th grade dance on June 1st.  I didn't realize that these kids take this dance so seriously.  There was one student who was on the list of no-gos, but fought to go.  In the end, we let him attend.  Between him and his girlfriend, I'm pretty sure their parents had spent $300!  And it showed when they got there!  This dance was like prom for middle schoolers...  Actually, the only difference that I know of is that my students had to get dropped off by their parents.  I heard about a bunch of after parties, which kinda scared me!  But everything turned out great!!  One of the highlights of the dance is when the students found out that the two science teachers were dating, and had been the entire year!  It was hilarious.  The other highlight was watching Mr. Carmichael, an extreme type-A, serious, rigid guy, break out the best robot dancing I've ever seen.  It was soooo smooth and the kids LOVED it!!

Mr. Pentoney and Ms. Snyder!  I knew the first day they met that they would get together!

Carmichael breaking it down for the students.  Hilarious!!

 The last day of school was emotional.  I was exhausted and worn down and sun burnt (thanks to the cook out when we stayed outside ALL DAY!), but when the end of the day came and we were out in the bus lot, I watched my kids leave.  My babies.  The pains in my butt.  My lovelies.  I have to be honest, I teared up.  Tears almost fell down my cheek.  It was when I realized that I just finished teaching 8th graders who would be moving on to the 9th grade... at the high school... not down the hall and around the corner.  It was the end of my first year and all the relationships I had worked for (some I worked ALL year at), were leaving and I'd probably never see them again.  Yes, some will come back to see me next year, but, as I try not to do anything in Roxboro except work, the likelihood that I'll see any of them outside of school is very slim!
I had a great year.  I think I learned more than my students did.  I had an incredible team I worked with in the 8th grade.  I made some new friends.  I kinda figured out how to teach.  I was also asked to come back.  I liked that part!  :) I'm really excited about next year!!  Wow... this turned out to be a long blog.  I guess I'll have to write more blogs!  It's 3 in the morning and I've been working on this one since 11pm.  I think I'm finally getting sleepy.  Goodnight blogging world!