Donate Now I am feeling the effects, at awkward times, of this first year teaching gig. It’s not that I’m unhappy, or that I wake up on some days and don’t want to go to school. I genuinely want to go to school every day, and regardless of the day before, I am excited and…

Donate Now I appear to be climbing into the pit of after-school remediation, which is a dangerous place to live. However, it is AMAZING what I can do when there are only a few children in the room. I can…(gasp) tell each of them what it is they need to do and what they might…

Although I am exhausted from my first ever field-trip-chaperoning-experience, I will tell you my positive for the day. Throughout the field trip, children I had only rarely seen and vaguely recognized were begging for my attention and approval. That is nice. I know it’s general, but it really is a pick-me-up, especially when field trips…

I wrote Rakiesha, my new student, a note yesterday to have on her desk this morning. It said “Rakiesha, I’m so glad you’re in class! You’re such a great role model and I love how excited you are to learn. Thank you for coming into my classroom. I am so excited to see how smart…

Today we had a science overload, in which we learned about organisms, populations, communities, ecosystems, and biospheres (in that order). We defined them as a class, wrote the definition, and then we were supposed to draw a picture of an ecosystem and label each part. Darrell, my approval-seeker, raised his hand, and I went over…

Writing prompt: choose a noun (person, place or thing). Think of our descriptive writing helper questions, ie the 5 W’s and our senses! Dareion’s response: “Ms. D: 1. She is pretty. 2. Curly hair. 3. long hair. 4. Nike flats (lots) 5. were pretty skirts. 6. she has glass. 7. wear earrings. 8. wear nacelaces…

We are starting tomorrow by creating personal goals for the week and taping them to our desks so we can check off (with stickers) whether or not we meet it each day. My personal goal for this week is to find the happy parts of each day, because I realize that this blog is overwhelmingly…

This week rose and fell like a Delta sun, I swear. It began with mommy (I think…was that this week or last? Who can even keep track) and ended with me failing miserably at any sort of paperwork. On Wednesday night I gloriously I relaxed, having somehow become “completely prepared” for my parent meetings, only…

for as ridiculously painfully homesick/syracuse-sick as i am right now, i really do feel like i am settling in. Sort of. We’re getting to the point where we can complain about each other, to each other. I feel like that means a lot. I feel stricter enforcement of no pants tuesday coming on…

For my sanity, I am taking a few minutes out of my Monday evening to blog. It feels like Thursday. I wonder what I’ll feel like on Thursday… This weekend was wonderful and full of my mommy and bb king, which is half-delta, and half to warm my heart. The music was amazing and the…

officially day 4 has ended without hot water. made contact with landlord. minimal hope in sight. such. cold. showers. you may never hear from me again.

Oh, how many things fall apart…you were right, Chinua Achebe! This evening I spent 1/2 an hour in my basement, the flooding of which has gone from a foot and a half to possibly 6 inches. I was armed with my apple rain boots, a flashlight, a box of matches, a cell phone, and a…

After two days of “the storm is outside, we are inside, i need you to focus…” and because i had my best day of teaching (yeah, i said it) on Wednesday, the world or oprah or whoever it is decided it’d be amazing to follow up (and end) my week with EXTREME SICKNESS version 1.0.…

Seriously, I would say I have favorite office supplies. I love two things more than anything else in my classroom/on my desk/ in the office/at Office Depot: colored staples and fun post-it notes. Here’s the deal- yes I know they’re frivolous and I could get buy on cheaper silver staples and yellow post-its, but my…