" Life as a Middle School Teacher: Lesson Plans, parent conferences, staff meetings, and somebody else's insight into homeowrk.

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Monday, September 26, 2005

Lesson Plans, parent conferences, staff meetings, and somebody else's insight into homeowrk.

Over the weekend, I spent a large amount of time working on my lesson plans. I have always known that I write an awesome lesson plan. I have spent much of my five years as a teacher teaching other teachers how to write an effective lesson plan. However, I have had a hard time trying to get all of my lesson plans to tie into each other. So this year I have developed my course outline first, then my lesson plans will be required to fit into the outline. I thought it made sense. So I finished my outline, which was an undertaking in itself, then I tweaked my lesson plans based on last year's reflections for each lesson, and I put it into my outline. So when I finished I had this great notebook full of my outline and the lessons that fit into each unit. My only problem is that there are not dates on my lesson plans. I can't seem to figure out how much time each of my lessons is going to last, so I don't date my plans. My principal has commented more than once about my lack of dates. So this year, I also added a monthly calendar that I can use as a daily agenda. That way I can keep my lesson plans date-free, but still show who ever may read my lesson plans when each of my lessons will be given in the classrom. At the risk of sounding cocky, I am a lesson planning goddess.

This morning started with a parent conference. We schedule conferences during our team time, so we're pretty spoiled compared to other middle school teachers. I do not, nor can I, stay after school to meet with a parent. I'm pretty selfish with my time. This woman that we met with this morning is actually the grandparent of one of my students. This student isn't a behavior problem, nor is he chronically absent, nor is he one of those kids that sits and does nothing the entire time. For some reason, he is just doing badly. He is missing some of his assignments, but a lot of the stuff he does turn in he does very poorly. So he is indeed failing. We discovered that he lives with his grandmother, because his father got remarried and the new wife doesn't want to deal with his kids. PLUS, we also were able to read the criminal complaints against him because he has a history of beating his children. It's a sad story. Not the worst I have heard, but it's pretty bad.
We are going to start using some strategies to help this child actually accomplish his work in class. We are also going to be sending him to tutoring after school three days a week. Because my school happens to be a very low income school, we get tons of afterschool programs completely funded by outside parties. I feel like this child has extreme potential. He loves being at school, and he WANTS to learn, he just has a hard time paying attention. So, we work with him. He is going to be one of those kids that we will be able to work with.

I love to read other blogs. I spend large amounts of time doing so. Today, I ran across this post and I wanted to share it with any of my own readers who are also interested. Two years ago, my school did an SQS project concerning homework. Please don't ask me what SQS means, because I really have no idea. What I do know is that it is a continuous improve program where you collect real data, and use it to make improvements. Three years ago, the teachers at my school felt that the lack of homework completion has important enough to do a two year data collection on. For two years, every time we assigned homework, even nightly assignments such as reading logs, we had to keep track of how many students turned in each individual assignment versus the number of students enrolled in each class. It was amazing to see that I averaged less than a 30% overall return on my homework. After a certain number of weeks, we had to sit down and analyze our findings. Turns out most of us had very low returns on our homework assignments. So for the second part of our project, we didn't assign any homework except for nightly reading.
We found that our students' grades improved greatly. It was astounding. So we all agreed at that point that homework was actually causing harm to the students' grades. Now we needed to decide whether or not the students can meet the state education standards WITHOUT the homework. Without any type of research, we decided that if the student is doing all of his/her work inside the classroom, the teacher is actually able to witness the growth and thus be able to see if there are any areas in need of rehabilitation. Now, the team that started the project is still researching the advantages and disadvantages of homework, but after the first few homeworks I have assigned this year, I am in the "no homework" camp. If the kids aren't turning their work in, I am really unable to see if they are meeting standards. Whereas, if they are only doing it in the classroom, I can see it all.

Every other Monday, we have a meeting after school. The first Monday, the meeting lasts for two hours, every third Monday, the meeting is only an hour. Today was an hour meeting, which didn't make it any less annoying. Is there anybody that actually enjoys staff meetings? Today we did the "System Check." This is a questionarre that the entire staff fills out to let the State Department of Education how we feel our school is doing. At the beginning of last year, the State Department said each staff member was to fill one out, and the results were to be tallied and the average of all the answers is the data that gets turned in.
That is no longer the way we do it. Now, we sit down in a "discussion" with the principals and decide together how we feel we are doing. So essentially the principal gets to argue with us, then tell us what is going to go on the Systems Check. It is pretty frustrating. I like my principal, I really do, but I feel like she just doesn't get it. When you hit rock bottom, you can't go anywhere but up. So in this age of sensationalizing the disparities of our education system, would it not be better to hit the ultimate low, so that you have to improve? She does not see that. She hides many of our problems to make us look better than we really are. Which also doesn't solve the problems.
So this quarter's systems check is not an accurate representation of how we, as a whole, feel. But whatever. I am not worried.

posted by lobo5747 @ 7:17 PM