Classroom Tour

Well, we have been in school now for just over three weeks, and I still haven't posted pictures of my classroom.  Let's just say that this was not an accident.  I have been so busy, that I feel like I haven't really brought my classroom up to my standards yet. I have plans to completely rearrange already because I don't like where my desk is, but there are some obstacles in my way.  (like the fact that I can't lift the desk or file cabinets by myself...) Anyway, I have been hounded to post a few pictures of what it looks like so far, so here ya go.

 

This is what it looks like facing the front of my room.  This picture was taken while I was still setting up the classroom so I didn't have anything on the big bulletin board yet.  For those of you who don't know what the big white thing next to the bulletin board is, that is my SMART board. The bulletin board is what I'm going to use for content specific posters.  Right now, it has the writing process on it (You know, Prewriting, Writing, Editing/Revising, Proof Reading, and Publishing) because a few of my classes are working on some pretty cool writing assignments. (Which I'm sure I'll brag about later!)

 

This is what I (used to) look at while I am standing in the front of the class teaching.  I have since changed it so that there is group seating instead of rows.  I'm not sure how long that will last since the temptation to chat with your neighbor is apparently too much for most of my students to handle. :) ALSO, I'm having a heck of a time getting things to stay on my walls.  They are brick walls, and no matter what I've used so far, (command strips, poster putty, scotch strips), my posters keep falling off the walls.  This is not the best situation since if they fall off after the school is locked up, it sets of the alarm... woops.  Does anyone have any ideas??

 



This is the big white board that takes up almost a full wall of my classroom. The area on the left side where it says "Agenda" is where I write the daily activities and homework for each of my classes.  The students really like this, as I'm the only teacher who does it.  They say it makes it much easier for them to know what to write in their own agendas, which they are required to fill out.

And lastly, I have this monstrous book shelf in my room (to the left of the desks). It was placed over a huge bulletin board, so just a section of the bulletin board shows over the top.  Of course, I had to make this Charlie Brown themed because I have a huge soft spot for Charlie Brown.  I put the words "Keep on Trying" above because Charlie Brown never gives up... even when it seems that all hope is lost.  I explained this to my kids on one of the first days of school, and they think it's funny how much I like Charlie Brown.  Some days, I start class off with a comic strip and they enjoy that, too.

AND, if you didn't know, I am also the librarian at my school, so I've been spending a lot of time sprucing up the library.  Look for pictures of some of the fun projects I've been working on in a future post!

Best,
Ms. M

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.”- Charles M. Schulz, Charlie Brown's Little Book of Wisdom

First Day of School

Wow.
All I can say is, Wow. What a fabulous day!  I am still digesting the whole thing, but I can't think of a single negative thing to say about the whole day! I work in a wonderful school with great kids and awesome teachers!

I got into school at about 7:30 (school starts at 8:10) and was there until after 5 tonight! I felt like I could have stayed longer... what a great feeling- for my "work" to not even feel like work! I'm so blessed that I get to do something I love every day for the rest of my life!

Anyway, I got to school and started getting some last minute things put together.  A few of my homeroom kids came in at about five o eight and it was great to just get the chance to get to know them a little better in those 15 minutes.  Also during that time before the bell, the secretary came down to my room and delivered a vase filled with beautiful flowers! My mom, dad and sister ordered them for me to wish me luck on my first day! What a day brightener that was!

:)

 

Tomorrow promises to be another great day! I have planned that we'll spend the class periods tomorrow getting to know each other better and then get into curriculum on Monday!

 

Best,
Ms. M

 

"Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better." - Martin Luther King, Jr



Making a Difference: Passion, Purpose and Pride

It may seem a little silly that I'm writing two consecutive posts about speakers, but since it's the season for workshops/inservices/seminars for us teachers, this is what you get!

Today, we had our regional staff development in a town about an hour away from our school.  We had sessions on health and safety, cyberbullying, Language Arts, and then our keynote speaker was Steve Gilliland.

Picture below was taken from Mr. Gilliland's website. See link below.

 

I can't think of a better way to prepare me for the first day of school! (Which happens to be tomorrow!!) Mr. Gilliland is an author and phenomenal motivational speaker.  He was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame and I can definitely see why.  The presentation was called "Making a Difference: Passion, Purpose and Pride" and it made me laugh and cry in just the right amounts.  Through many heartfelt stories and lots of jokes, Mr. Gilliland reminded us that as teachers, it is our job to make a difference in someone's life.  He spoke about how many times teachers get caught up in the planning and the processes and forget about the relationship aspect of teaching. It was a WONDERFUL presentation and, of course, it ended in a standing ovation!

Follow this link to Mr. Gilliland's website to find out when he is going to be speaking in a town near you! You will not regret hearing him speak!

Best,
Ms. M

"Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verbs agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

If you ever have the chance...

You have got to hear this speaker. 

Click on the picture to follow a link to her webpage!

Sally Northway Ogden is a speaker from Love and Logic and she came to our school this last week to lead a talk titled, "Words Will NEVER Hurt Me."  It may sound cliche' for me to say this... but it was definitely a view changing, if not life changing, day.  The seminar was full of good stories, great jokes and even better advice.  In the six hours that she was at our school, I examined and re-examined my views as a teacher and really did some soul searching.  The seminar was aimed at educating teachers on how to build relationships with students and how to handle bullying in the schools. Not only did I totally "buy into" what Sally was talking about, I wished that I had known the ways to handle bullies my whole life! I think this talk will not only make me a better teacher, but a better mother (someday), sister, daughter and friend.

Sally, if you ever read this, THANK YOU!  You can click here to find out some more information; I can't recommend her highly enough!

Have any of you been to one of Sally's talks? Who are your favorite educational speakers?

Best,
Ms. M

"No thanks, I just had a banana." -Sally Ogden (A little inside joke from the seminar!)

Sticks!

Another Project! Most teachers are familiar with "drawing sticks," and since I'm a bit type A and like things to look pretty, I created these jars for each period I'll be teaching!

When I get my class lists, each stick will get a student's name printed on it.

It's also come to my attention recently that there is an awesome website here that does this random selection for you. So, if you don't want to make jars like this, (and I do admit, they seem a little outdated in this tech savvy world!) then you can just bring this website up on your smartboard!

I'll be posting an update on my start of school preparations soon- the first day is two weeks from today!

Best,

Ms. M

"The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called 'truth.'"  Dan Rather

Were You Absent?

As promised, here's another of my latest projects.  And again, I got the inspiration for this project from Pinterest. (You can find the original post HERE.)

Part of what has been keeping me so busy lately is trying to figure out the "procedures" that I want to use in my first classroom.  While student teaching, I pretty much kept a lot of procedures that my cooperating teachers already had in place because the students were already used to it.  I've been trying to think of as many "What-ifs" as I can, so that I can present my classroom "Rules and Procedures" at the beginning of the year.

So, I asked myself, "What if a student is absent?" One of my pet peeves during student teaching was when students would come up to me in the middle of class with an absence slip and expect me to stop class and sign their slip.  So, here is my proactive approach to cut down on those interruptions. Now, KEEP IN MIND that I will still encourage students to come to me so that we can discuss what they missed before or after class, but they will be able to quickly get the information they need from the class they missed by just going straight to the Absence Box!

Since I will be teaching Language Arts to all the middle grades (5,6,7, and 8) I put tabs on the calendars as well as the files so that students can find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Behind the front "Were You Absent?" sign, there is a calendar for each grade that will have information for each day of the week.  After students check the calendar, they can then go to that day's file and grab any handouts or worksheets that were passed out from the day they were absent.

Here is a top view of the box, with the big tabs for each grade and the smaller tabs for each day of the week.

There ya have it.  What are your procedures for absences?

Best,

Ms. M

"If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders." Abigail Van Buren

Where has the summer gone?

What? July 18th already? I can't believe how fast this summer has gone! In less than one month I will be settled into my new classroom and gearing up for my first Open House! I can't wait! Preparing for this rapidly approaching school year has taken over my body and soul the last few weeks... I have been planning, planning, planning, trying to get my curriculum mapped out, but I've also been busy working on all sorts of fun projects for the classroom! That being said, I'm going to dedicate my next few blog posts to showing them off! Enjoy! (Also, I must apologize for the poor quality of the upcoming photos... a new camera is on my wish-list!)

"No Name Paper" Holder

I got the idea for this project from this pin a few months ago and loved the idea from the start! I know that no name papers are a struggle for many teachers and we all have our own procedure when it comes to them.  I teach in the middle school setting, so my classroom procedure has been that if I come across any no name papers, I tape them to the board and students need to claim them if they want credit for the assignment.  This has worked fine in the past, but the mess of papers/ ripped off tape has always bothered me. (Yes, I do have a "type A" personality...) So, this cute little holder will get rid of the "mess" on my whiteboard and also lets me keep my procedure in place!

I teach at a small school, so the number of no name papers that I have to deal with will be smaller than most, so that is why I only included 6 clips on my board.

Here's how I made it:

Supplies:

• Hot Glue Gun and Hot Glue
• Cardboard Letters
• Clothespins
• Flat Canvas
• Scrapbook Paper
• Ribbon
• Mod Podge
• Acrylic Paint

The best part about this project for me was that most of these "supplies" were already sitting in my craft bins! Super inexpensive and quick!

I took the flat canvas and painted the edges with orange acrylic paint.  While that dried, I cut the scrapbooking paper down to the desired size and secured it on the canvas. ( I used double sided tape, but I would suggest something stronger because the Mod Podge made the tape slip off.) Then I mod podged that baby down.  While I was waiting for that to dry, I painted my cardboard letters.  I then hot glued those down on the surface, glued my clothespins on and Waaaa-la! After gluing a ribbon on the back, it's ready to hang in my classroom!

Isn't that cute?? I hope you're all enjoying your last few weeks of vacation as much as I plan to!

Best,

Ms. M

"Creativity is contagious; pass it on." Albert Einstein

Getting SMARTer

Last week, I had the opportunity to go my first workshop as an employed teacher.  (eek!) Needless to say, I was pretty excited.  I have a few more workshops coming up this summer, but this particular one was on SMART Boards. (Now, do you see how "punny" my blog title was? Hey... My seventh graders think I'm funny!) For those of you who aren't familiar with SMART Boards, SMART is a brand of interactive whiteboard used in the classroom.  In my second field experience, I worked with a Promethean Board almost daily. (Promethean is another brand of interactive whiteboard.)  However, each brand of interactive whiteboard uses its own software, so my principal and I decided that it would be beneficial for me to go to a workshop so I'm ready to roll when I start school in August. (By the way, have I mentioned how lucky I am to have a SMART Board in my classroom? We have them in every classroom- Many teachers aren't so lucky! The school I'm heading to really does have a grasp on technology, which is awesome... but also probably requires its own blog post!) Anyway, the workshop lasted from 9 to 3:30 and was VERY content heavy. Here are a few of the things I learned that I found the most interesting/ useful.  Keep in mind that I'm going to be in a middle school language arts setting... there are tons of cool things to use in other contents/ grade levels, too.

1. There are TONS of premade activities in the SMART Notebook software just waiting for you to customize so it is relevent to your lesson! One of the activities that I think I will use the most is called Hot Spots- this is a matching game of sorts that can be used in a review lesson that actually gives students the opportunity to move items to their definitions, for example, and get instant feedback.  So cool, plus, it's always a good thing to get students out of their seats and actively participating in a lesson!

2. You are able to import Word documents right into the SMART  Notebook software.  So, one of the things I can see using the "whiteboard" aspect of the SMART Board daily for is Daily Oral Language; that way, students will be able to make corrections on the board as we go through the errors.   I was excited to find out that I can just import all of my already made DOL's instead of retyping them in the Notebook software.

3.  I love the Ink Aware part of the software.  You can use Ink Aware in Microsoft products (Word, Excel, etc).  One of the things that I love about Ink Aware is that you can turn handwriting right into text by just clicking a button! So, if I have students come and fill in the blanks during an activity, for example, I can click, recognize "word" , and it will change the handwriting into text.  I can then save that activity and it will be easier to read in the future (if it needs to be revisited in a later lesson or if a student was absent for the activity.)

4. You can use the SMART pens (also an Ink Aware feature) to write on any webpage or to instantly cut and paste from that webpage onto the Notebook software.  I LOVE this! So, since you can pretty much use your SMART Board as a projector, you can show students how to use websites by circling important links, drawing arrows to guide students in using the website, etc.  Very useful.

5. Fun! I think that student will get into being able to get up from their desk and actively participate in lessons.  Some of the items that will add to the "fun" part of using the SMART Board are: magic pen, invisible ink, reveal, and screen shade.  Each of these add to the interactivity of the whiteboard, which is what makes the SMART Board such a cool piece of technology...it gives students a little bit of "ownership" of their learning!

I know that I'm just beginning to scratch the surface with this whole SMART Board thing, and I'm excited to keep learning!  I've been doing a lot of researching online and found tons of great SMART resources! I'll include some of the most helpful in a future post! So, keep on the lookout for that!

Best,
Ms. M

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."  William A. Ward

Lately

My teaching license came today! It's all getting so real!

Last week, I was able to go to my new school and observe for the day and was, once again, reassured that I'm about to become a part of a wonderful school.  The staff and students were so welcoming and kind; it makes me incredibly excited to be in a small town!  (There is just something about small-town Minnesotans.) During that day, the retiring English teacher showed me her curriculum map, walked me through the text books that she uses, and encouraged me to keep in touch with her in case I ever need any assistance.  I was also able to look at a few different places to live in town and settled on a cute, little, 2 bedroom apartment that is only about 2 blocks from the school!

Everything is falling into place and I couldn't be happier with the direction my life is taking! I am blessed to have been given this opportunity and I can't wait to dig in!

Next week, I am going to start my curriculum planning, so it's sure to be a busy time!

Best,
Ms. M

"So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable." -Christopher Reeve

Graduation

May 5th, 2012 - Graduation Commencement

I did it!

5 years of hard work and I'm finally able to continue on the pursuit of my dream! Without the love and encouragement I've received from those closest to me, I know I wouldn't be where I am today.  So, if you're one of those people, I can't say it enough: THANK YOU!

Best,

Ms. M

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."   -G.K. Chesterton

My Last Day of Student Teaching in Photos

My last day of student teaching flew by! Before I knew it, it was 2:20 and the bell was ringing, putting an end to an absolutely amazing experience.  I was overwhelmed with the goodbyes I received. Over one hundred and twenty homemade cards/notes from students containing sentiments ranging from "Congrats" to "Good Luck" to "We'll Miss You!" were delivered to me throughout the day as well as little packages from Mrs. J and other teachers in the school.  I even had a student who was home sick send her mom in with a little gift for me! My heart melted... and remelted... throughout the entire day.  What a blessing! 

All of the gifts delivered throughout the day to me! Needless to say, it was an emotional day.



Below are some of the cards I received throughout the day.  Student's/ Teacher's names have been covered up. 

(Ms. Meltzer, we will all miss you very much!  You have been an amazing teacher, and you will be a wonderful teacher at your new school. Congradulations [sic] I am very happy for U.  Have a wonderful summer!!  PS: you will be an amazing teacher!)

 (Dear Ms. Meltzer, You are a totaly [sic] awesome teacher.  If I had to pick a teacher to teach all of my classes, it would be you.  Thank you for being patient with the chatter of the class. THANK YOU!!")

And of course, you can't forget about Spock! (If you can't read the caption, it says "good vulcan luck two [sic] you but I don't believe in luck but earthlings do so live long and prosper." So cute!

 And lastly, I came home to this little gift from my amazingly wonderful roommate! Some stickers, a sweet note, and a gift card to the local teaching supply store! So thoughtful!

Although I am still "digesting" the fact that I'm done student teaching, I am so excited for the journey that is to come and it starts tomorrow with graduation commencement! From here on out, everything will be an adventure and all I can say is, "Bring it on!"

Best,
Ms. M

"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child." ~Carl Jung 

The End... and The Beginning.

Here I sit,  2:20 pm on my last Friday as a student teacher. Looking around this empty classroom, my heart and mind are overwhelmed with emotion; sadness, excitement, and contentment are all appropriate ways to describe how I'm feeling.  All of the things that I expected student teaching to be, it was... and so much more. 

Early mornings, late nights spent grading, endless cups of coffee, and lesson plans galore.  These are the things that I expected my student teaching experience to be filled with- and, don't get me wrong, it was.  But, what I didn't expect was the joy, the countless laughs, or the amazing mentors I would be blessed with.  I find it hard to hold back my emotions when I think that this experience is about to be wrapped up in a neat little box and filed away in some vast compartment of my brain as one of those "Life Experiences."

I was placed in a 7th grade Language Arts classroom at a middle school in a suburban area for 17 weeks.... 17 weeks that felt like two.  I have dealt with cat fights, attitude problems, many many tears, and "I hate Miss Meltzer" written on desks (okay, that only happened once, but I'll never forget it!).  But, I have so many positive moments to cling to as well.  I have recieved multiple "Thank you, Ms. Meltzer" notes, drawings from budding artists, compliments on my hair or clothes, and the very best has been when I look out at my students and see excitement on their faces to be learning. 

I was placed in a wonderful Master Teacher's classroom.  Mrs. J is someone who I was able to recognize from day one as a teacher that I would love to be like.  The first day I observed her classroom, I was able to see how much the students liked and respected her, how passionate she was about education and what a great attitude she had about teaching and life in general.  She has been such an inspiration to me and I feel blessed to have had her as my mentor.  She has been very generous with praises and suggestions and really given me the opportunity to spread my wings and discover my own teaching style.

I'm leaving this experience so inspired, so determined to be the best teacher I can.  I have fallen head over heels in love with this career and feel so blessed that I get to do this for the rest of my life.  I have been touched in so many ways by each of these students and I will never forget how hearing them say, "Have a great weekend, Ms. Meltzer!" felt as they walked out the door today. 

This is truly the end of one chapter of my life... but the beginning of so much more.

I have accepted a middle school teaching position in a small Minnesotan town as a Langauge Arts teacher.  I will be moving in just over three months and "setting up shop," so to speak, in my new classroom.  I'm excited to share this journey with family and friends using Love, Inspire, Teach!

Best,
Ms. M

"The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book." - Author Unknown