Over

Another year over.

I posted on facebook the other day that this was my 8th year teaching, my first year as a working mama, my first year teaching part time, and the end of teaching while also being a student myself. In the few weeks since I turned in my final final final copy of my dissertation, I've had more free time on my hands than I've had in as long as I can remember. There is absolutely nothing hanging over my head that needs to get done. No homework. No deadlines. No paper that needs to get written or edited. I can't say that I've used my time really wisely in the past few weeks because I haven't taken up exercising yet and my house still isn't super clean. There's still a big pile of laundry and I haven't cooked any super fabulous gourmet dinners. I've watched a little too much TV and I've read 3 books so far, but none of them had anything to do with teaching.

I'm still super busy chasing after Baby Sneaker who is busier than a bee, but I have this urge to find a new project. It's stressful to be super busy, yet I do need a certain level of busyness to feel productive and content. Now that I don't have a dissertation to write, I feel like I finally have the free time to do more work with my Kindergarten curriculum and finally make things align better and make more sense. I brought home almost all of my teaching manuals so that I can spend some time this summer rearranging the math curriculum around the common core strands and so I can familiarize myself with the new reading adoption. Once I am more familiar with the new reading curriculum, I want to plan our science lessons around the reading content and stories we'll read next year.

I am excited to do this work and feel like each year I "own" what I teach just a little bit more. And, I can't wait to set up my classroom again because I love to change things up every year. That will have to wait until August though. I do want to enjoy summer and have some time to just relax and enjoy the various Housewife cohorts as well as the Bachelorette. I want to read books that don't require a lot of thinking. And, I want to enjoy spending the entire days will Baby Sneaker. I am looking forward to lingering over my morning coffee and to spending more than 30 seconds in the bathroom at a time. I am excited for play dates with my friends' little ones and I may even sleep past 7 AM if Baby Sneaker cooperates.

What are you looking forward to this summer?

Timing

Why is it that at the end of the year I always find myself full of new ideas and excited to revamp everything I do in the classroom? Maybe it's because I am on the brink of having a lot more free time and that makes me excited to use that time for preparing, as I always do, for the best year ever.

I have some big plans for next year that I am excited about, so I know I'll be spending some time this summer figuring how some of the aspects of my day and my classroom that I want to change. I will still be sharing my classroom, but now that my roommate and I have a year of sharing under our belts, I think it will be easier to plan and figure out how we want to manage things next year. 

My district just adopted a new reading program to start next year (Journeys) and I am kind of excited to teach reading differently and use the themes from the reading program to better align our sporadic science instruction with other things are learning/reading about so that science fits better and is done with more frequency next year.

I also want to focus on the common core math standards and pull lessons from our program that fit each main strand rather than focusing on teaching the program according the pacing guide. I get so frustrated by how much the program jumps around ("spirals") and I feel like the kids will benefit more from focusing on particular standards in units. I divided the year into two month segments where I will focus on a particular strand/area at a time and now I just need to go through the curriculum and pull the lessons that apply to each strand and add in additional content to make sure math is fun and not too repetitive. 

My iPad grant team met all day today and we reviewed our data from this year and talked about what we want to keep the same and change for next year. I am really excited by what our data shows and excited to experience year 2 of our grant with a little more organization. I didn't blog about our iPads at all this year, so I'd like to do that more next year as well because what the kids can do is amazing. 

Do you feel tired out and spent at the end of the year or renewed and excited?

Exited for summer vacation maybe?

Dinosaurs & God

I am absolutely loving my class right now and how capable they are at this point in the year. I have 20 kiddos, which is a great number and although there are definitely times when listening skills are far from perfect, overall they are just doing a great job. We have 6 more school days until summer and I am at the point in the year where I have done all the new instruction and I am just enjoying the kiddos now and trying to have fun with them. Don't get me wrong, we are still reading and writing and doing math, but I am disregarding my sense of pressure to stick to the pacing guide in order to loosely follow what I am "supposed" to be doing and to make our activities a bit more engaging. I am using the weekly theme from our reading program and just adding in extra stuff that the kids are excited about like ::gasp:: painting. We have not done a lot of art this year and my kiddos were super excited to paint tropical fish last week.

This week our reading theme is dinosaurs (the weekly themes are insects, fish, then dinosaurs as part of a larger unit on amazing creatures). Today I read the story If The Dinosaurs Came Back followed by Gail Gibbons' Dinosaurs to compare and contrast fantasy versus reality. Gail Gibbons' book has illustrations, but provides information about dinosaurs instead of a completely made up story. I talked about how that book was different than our non-fiction books about butterflies because in those books there were photos about butterflies but there aren't any photos of dinosaurs because there weren't any people or cameras back in the dinosaur days. We talked about how the information about dinosaurs comes from people who study their fossils because no-one was around to observe them. The kids were excited to talk about dinosaurs and there were lots of hands waving in the air to ask questions (some more related to the discussion about dinosaurs than others...) So, in the midst of these stories and my explanation that there were no people around when dinosaurs were living, I had a few students wanting to know if God was around back then and if Adam and Eve were around back then. One, I have to give props to those kiddos for thinking critically about what they know about the world from their religious upbringing. Based on the understanding of creationism, there wouldn't be dinosaurs if God wasn't around to create them....right?

I always feel very conflicted, however, when they ask me questions wanting to confirm God's role in how the world works and how the world came to be. I feel like I've gotten these comments several times in recent weeks.

What is water made of? Did God make it? 

How did the butterfly get here?
It came from an egg. 
But where did the butterfly come from that made the egg? Did God make it? 

Who knew the battle of creationism versus evolution would rear its head in Kindergarten.

It's kind of like when the kids get into a discussion about whether or not Santa is real and some kids weigh in that he is not and that he is pretend. It's very difficult to provide an answer that satisfies everyone and doesn't leave anyone feeling deflated about what they have learned at home. Luckily, as previously noted, the listening skills of Kinders are not super exceptional at all times, so when I feel it is kind of necessary to move in a different direction it's not too difficult to divert their attention to something else. I feel bad though because they are asking great questions. They're just not questions I can really answer.

How many days left until you are on summer break? 

What do you do (if you teach in a public setting) and your students address God?  

Special shout to Kelly (Hi Kelly!) because she may be the only one who still reads my blog considering I NEVER post! 

A little update

This past Wednesday, at long last, I defended my dissertation...

...and I passed!

My official "hooding" ceremony is not until June, but I am officially "Dr. Sneaker."

woo hoo!

I still have final revisions to my paper based on feedback from my committee, but those are due by May 15th, so soon enough I will be DONE DONE DONE!

In other news, Baby Sneaker turned 1 (where did the time go?) and the Sneaker family moved into a new house this weekend.

Defending a dissertation and moving in a span of 3 days...yep, that's how I roll.

Do I really have to go to school in the morning?

fired again

This morning when it was almost time for the kiddos to start coming in, I went around the corner from my classroom to our work area to get a few things ready for next week. When I heard the Kinders being dismissed I headed back to my room and one student had already arrived. 

She looked at me and said, "oh you're here. I thought you got fired."

Definitely started my day with a chuckle! 

How was your day?

We have a training day tomorrow and then student led conferences on Friday. Hooray for quasi-short weeks. Mr. Sneaker has been out of town since Sunday morning so I have been on my own with Baby Sneaker trying to do it all (take care of her, keep the house clean, get my dissertation done, watch the three hour Bachelor finale etc. etc.). This mama is tired and looking forward to the weekend already!

Funny

Sometimes the things that come out of kids' mouths are so funny.

I was re-reading Knuffle Bunny Free today (and I didn't cry this time thankyouverymuch) and there are two pages that fold out to show a long picture sequence of Trixie's dream about the children in China who would enjoy Knuffle Bunny since she left him on the airplane and couldn't retrieve him because the plane she was on was already heading to China. I was attempting to read the words on the extra long foldout pages upside down and when I went to fold them back in, I fumbled the book a bit. I said something like uh oh, I don't want to rip the pages.

One little girl sitting up front said, "yeah you don't want to get fired."

I guess ripping book pages is pretty serious in her mind.

:0)