My Goals

After a million years of trying to keep New Year's Resolutions, I know better than to write resolutions that I won't keep.  So instead, I am writing goals for myself.  Long range goals that will help me stay focused on what is most important.

PROFESSIONAL GOALS:
1) Put my students at the forefront of my teaching.  Not the mandates or even the curriculum, but the students should come first.  Enough said.

2) Read two entire books that will help me grow as a professional.  The key word here is "entire".  I have a HUGE library of professional books.  I have read a few chapters (or sometimes just a few pages - sigh) of each of these books.  But I get sidetracked and put the book to the side.  I have this mistaken notion that professional books are magical and all I have to do is open the book and I will become a better teacher.  But then I start to read the books and realize there is no magic, double sigh.  So my goal is to completely read COVER TO COVER two professional books in the near future.  I already know which two and have started reading them.

Look Me in the Eye

Book Number One:  Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison

This is not your typical PD book.  It is the autobiography of a man diagnosed with Aspergers at age 40.  It is the story of his struggles growing up and finding his way.  I am reading it because more and more Aspergian children are in our classrooms.  I want to become better at loving and nurturing them.  This book will help me do that.  In some ways it is a tough book to read because parts are heartbreaking.  But it is also humorous and sweet. I have read quite a few chapters already and know that I will want to finish this book!

Book Number Two: Teach Like a Pirate: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator by Dave Burgess

Check out that sub-title; how could I not want to read this book?!?  Plus I put it on my Kindle so double love!  I have actually already read the first two chapters and am loving it.  Highly creative, engaging just like the title says!  Maybe, just maybe, even transforming.  Time will tell.  I am actually thinking of doing a series of blog posts on this book both to inform AND to hold me accountable.





PERSONAL GOALS:
1)  Keep my little family (my dad and sisters) at the center of my personal life, especially my dad as he deals with so many health issues.  I know our time on Earth is limited and I want to sit at my dad's feet and learn from his wisdom as much as possible.

2) Pray.  Not just quick one sentence prayers, but spend time in conversation with God.

3) Exercise.  I so hate it.  I mean really, really, really H.A.T.E. it!  My favorite physical activity is turning the pages of a book (or pressing the page turning button on my Kindle).  So my hope is to find a class that I can at least not hate and then commit to it.  (Oh, commitment is also hard for me.  Remember my issue with not finishing professional books?  It is true in many other places as well.  Once I make the commitment, I am very loyal, but actually making the commitment is soooooo hard.)

4) Eat healthy.  When I get stressed (which is a lot), I turn to food.  Chocolate especially.  Yum, yum, and yum.  The stress is still there, but chocolate makes me forget about it.  Hmmm ... I guess chocolate is like a mind altering drug for me... scary!!!!  My goal is to turn to fruits and vegetables instead.  (I think I am in trouble because I couldn't even type that with a straight face ... I started laughing hysterically.  But I will try!!)

5) Have some fun.  I tend to be very serious and gravitate toward work related activities.  I want to have a fun activity at least once a month this year.  (Which would be a HUGE change from last year!!! Oh, don't worry too much about me ... I do have fun in my classroom.  Teaching is my outlet for my humor and creativity and everything else!)

6) Blog at least once a week.  In some ways this is a professional goal, but it is also a personal goal because you all are my friends.

Whew!  Too many goals I think, but they are all doable (except the fruit and vegetable one).

Love to all,

Camille

Organizing ...

Hi all!

I like to think of myself as being organized, but the truth is that I am not organized when it comes to paperwork.  I am a logical, sequential thinker, but I tend to put papers into piles.  When one pile gets high, I start another.  Sad, very sad .. and definitely not organized.

But there are some areas of my classroom that are very organized:

1)  My student drawers ... 

I do not have cubbies, so I use these drawers from Costco.  The drawers are numbered from 1-30.  (In the past I only had 20 students, but now I have gone up to 26.)  My students are numbered from 1 to 26.  After I correct their work, it is placed in the correct drawer.  Then homework folders are easy to stuff once a week with their finished and corrected work.  (I am so blessed to have an amazing volunteer aide from the middle school next door; she spends about four hours a week helping me with this type of clerical work.  I love her dearly and will be sad at the end of the semester when I lose her!!!)

2)  Our classroom library ...

I have about 2,000 books in the classroom library.  (The longer you teach, the more books you accumulate!!!  In other words, I have been teaching a long time.)  With that many books, I needed to create a system that would allow students to both find and put away books.  I sorted books by topics and then put each topic into a different tub (example: weather).  I have about 50 tubs.  This photo shows just one section of tubs.  Each tub was given a number and each book in that tub labeled with that number.  My previous post has more information on this system.  I also have a "book hospital" for books that need repair.  My students place books there when they notice a rip (even if the rip is invisible to the naked eye).


Okay, now on to my goals for organizing ... 

I will create an organization system for my paperwork.  This will consist of:
1)  A tub for papers I want to copy.
2)  A tub for papers that need to be corrected.
3)  A tub for papers that need to be sorted.  NO MORE PILES!

I also want to create a better system for my stations that are supervised by parent volunteers.  I plan to have five tubs (one per station) that I can label and prep ahead of time.  No more scrambling around in the hours before dawn (not really, but you know what I mean).

Whew!  If I keep these goals it will be a HUGE positive change for me!!  Wish me luck!

For more tips on organizing, head on over to Second Grade Shenanigans.  Here is the link!

Love to all,

Camille

Silence for Sandy Hook

Silence to Honor and Remember

A parent came up to me after school and threw her arms around me.  With tears in her eyes, she said, "I just felt like hugging you today."  Then she told me the news.

My heart is broken for all of the children, teachers and parents of Sandy Hook.  We will hold our little ones a little closer to our hearts as we remember you.
Love to all,
Camille

In Honor of 12-12-12

Tomorrow is 12-12-12!  I got to thinking about it and realized that there won't be another 12-12-12 for one hundred years.  That means this is the only one any of us get in our lifetime.  That is pretty monumental!  So .. I came up with 12-12-12 challenge for my firsties.  I found other ideas online, but I needed to simplify things for my kiddos.  We will be using this form tomorrow.  Here is the link in case you are interested:

12-12-12 Challenge

Love to all,
Camille

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving my dear bloggy friends!  No special graphics, no brilliant ideas, just a wish for you.  We all have so much to be thankful for ... my wish for you is that you are able to spend time savoring the special moments on this holiday!
Love to all,
Camille

Make a Turkey ... One Feather at a Time

I am swamped!  Assessments, report cards, special projects, just plain old survival in this crazy world and so what do I do?  BLOG!!!

Okay, this is a simple, fun family project from 2011.  (You could also do this project in class.)

Here is the finished bulletin board:

Here is a close-up:

(The hands were from a previous bulletin board that I loved and just couldn't bear to take completely down so for the rest of the year, those hands were a backdrop for everything that went up on this board.)

Family Feather Project:

I sent home a white feather cut from cardstock.  I asked each family to work together to design a feather to add to our very bare turkey.  The directions said they could use any materials they wanted to decorate the feather.  (One child used his sight word cards from our HM reading series to decorate the feather. Made.me.laugh.so.hard.  It is the feather with the red rectangles.)  We talked about how we needed all of our feathers to create the turkey.  Just one feather would not be enough.


Note: A thousand apologies for not knowing where I got the adorable turkey from.  It was a TPT purchase and students were supposed to measure the turkey, but I made an extra copy for this bulletin board.  But after searching through all of my purchases, I cannot find the original.  (Note to self: If you must purchase so many items from TPT, please keep your purchases organized!)  If you are the creator of this cute, cute turkey, just let me know and I will tell the world how wonderful you are!

Love to all,
Camille