About this Blog
a Teach For America teacher's blog
So my 9th period is one of my more challenging ones. It’s late in the afternoon, very overcrowded and full of…characters. I love them to pieces, but they’re always a handful.
Yesterday, an unidentified student (or students) kept making this noise that sounded like a vibrating phone. I couldn’t tell for the life of me who it was or how they were making the noise. I had an idea of which class clown it was, but couldn’t pinpoint the perpetrator. The noise continued and people (most likely the ones that were doing it) kept complaining about how the “phone” was distracting them. So that continued most of the period generating much disruption.
Today, in the middle of a student presentation, the noise started again. When it was time for me to teach/ introduce new material, I heard it again. I was fed…
In NJ, “Red October” refers to an annual gang initiation season, when prospective Bloods kill to earn their gang stripes. It’s supposedly a hoax, but nevertheless I think the theme is relevant to the classroom as well. October is supposed to be one of the roughest months for teaching. The honeymoon period is over, students…
read more »…..Everything’s going my way. And “everything” obviously doesn’t include efficient class schedules/rosters, quality learning environments, or access to all the resources that I need. But besides that, I had a pretty good first week of school. Well, that could be a bit hyped up, but the good definitely outweighed the bad. “The 2nd year is…
read more »Yesterday was a pretty interesting day. (In a good way..I know when teachers use “interesting” to describe work-related stuff, it could mean a variety of things. lol). This week was Mid-term week. My students took our chemistry mid-term on Tues and Wed. Since there was a mutual agreement among the teachers to keep work light…
read more »Hello world! It’s currently testing season in my world of teaching high school chemistry. A unit exam {FINALLY} coming up. i say finally because we’ve had so many snow days….well only 3 in the past 2 weeks but that’s defnitely enough to throw everything off schedule. Also have the 2nd marking period benchmark coming up…
read more »“Miss, how do you remember all this???” I was asked this by a student yesterday when introducing new material. It got me thinking about how much you take for granted all of the knowledge you accumulate in your area of study. It’s been over 2 months since I’ve updated! O_o I guess the whirlwind…
read more »Sitting in my classroom after my second day of teaching. Trying to lesson plan while I wait for Back to School Night to begin. Having a lot of trouble focusing though. I’ll start by recapping my 1st day. So I finallyyyyyy got approved and called in to the classroom by my school district. It only took…
read more »So, New Teacher Orientation was today! Wooo!! It was really great. It was for all of the new teachers in my district. There were 5 other TFA folks there with me out of like the 30 or so that was there. And, surprise, surprise, each of the Corps Members is placed at a different school.…
read more »The intricacies of getting placed!
read more »Leaving institute. Joining a movement.
read more »
