As I'm sitting here at home winding down from the day, I've been thinking about organization. I truly cannot understand how disorganized people function from day to day, and ESPECIALLY teachers. I've observed how disorganized some of the teachers are at my school and I wonder what their classroom looks like during the day. The kids just must be in chaos all day long. Today was one of the best days I've had teaching in a long time. I finally feel like I'm getting back into my routine after being out from track break and all the crap that goes along with it. I actually spent alot of time last week and this weekend preparing for all of my lessons this week. My team teacher is out on track break so I just have my kids over the next three weeks. I wanted to utilize this time with them to the maximum and try and get alot covered that I know will be on their upcoming CRT test. This is the big test that the government looks at and determines if we are making AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress). If we don't make it for 3 years in a row, the government comes in and basically fires everyone and you have to apply and interview for your job again. It's nuts, I know. So anyway, this is why I am very nervous right now about my kids and taking this test. This will also show how much they've retained of what I taught them and so as a first year teacher, I KNOW that administration is going to look at my class scores to see how we did. Anyway, back to my class. So I've made all of my copies for the week and planned every lesson out to a T so I know exactly what's going on. Today went so smoothly it was unbelievable. It's just amazing to me that even having all of my materials for the day in one spot made such a differnce. I was able to maximize my learning time because I didn't have to look for things or get out materials for the kids to use. It was awesome.
This leads me to my next topic. Friday we had a staff development day and instead of sitting there listening to some boring lecture for 7 hours, we played Diskin Survivor. We were learning more strategies of how to reach all learners in our classrooms. Howard Gardner developed a theory of 8 multiple intelligences of how people learn new information. The categories include: visual/spatial, mathematical/logical, musical, kinesthetic, naturalist, linguistic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Click here http://www.ldrc.ca/projects/miinventory/miinventory.php and scroll down to the bottom to take the test to see which intelligence you are. I am a mathematical/logical person. So we all did this at a staff meeting earlier in the week and the results were evaluated prior to our staff development. They put us in groups according to our strongest intelligence and then as a group we were supposed to make a poster that reflected our characteristics. Well this just cracked me up to no end. Hearing some of the other teachers talk about their obsessions with numbers and organization made me realize that I really am not crazy. The thing that made me laugh the most is when we all started talking about going to the grocery store. Here's what we had in common:
1. We all hated going into a grocery store chain where one store wasn't identically set
up the way another one is. For instance, you go into an Albertson's by your house
and you're used to the aisles having the same things and the produce in the same
area, etc., and then you go into an Albertson's across town where everything is
different. This drives us all mad because it's not logical.
2. We organize our groceries in our cart. We put frozen foods together, produce
together, etc.
3. We keep our groceries organized when we check out and get SUPER annoyed at the
bagger who mixes everything together in bags.
4. We hate when we give cash to the clerk and she can't figure out how much change to
give back. For instance, the bill is $15.25 and rather than give her $20.00 and get
back $4.75, we give her $21.25 so that we only get a $5 bill back.
So on top of having fun getting to know my colleagues and learning that I'm not the only weird one in the group, I had a BLAST playing survivor. We all split up into teams where we had one person of each multiple intelligence in our groups (or close to it). Then they had activities set up all day that were based on each intelligence. For instance for the mathematical/logical intelligence, we had a giant Sudoku puzzle to complete. Each activity was worth so many points and so we tallied up all of our points at the end of the day and whichever "tribe" had the most points won. It sounds silly, but it was alot of fun and made the day go by so fast. I hope that the rest of our staff development days are like that!
Since I've been so prepared this week, I'm allowing myself to RELAX all evening. I'm going to make some dinner and plop down in front of the TV since I barely have time to do that anymore. Plus, there's a 2 hour episode of 24 on tonight! WOOHOO!
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