Gonna See It In Color: From Prosser

Wednesday, August 22

This whole no internet, aka no email, Facebook or blogging, thing is just plain weird. And it stinks like rotten eggs, or fresh cow pies, whichever you prefer, although I’m fairly certain the eggs would smell worse. Either way, it stinks because I feel out of touch with the world completely – not entirely sure how society survived before the technological age…

As far as I know the fire has calmed down tremendously. The radio (my source of news at the moment) said that it’s 91% contained, although I can’t confirm that completely. Our friends on Lookout still have a house last we knew, but they weren’t sure how the fire was going to progress overnight around their house. It survived that night and they’ve been staying in the house, which is good news.

This week began my adventure as a Prosser Colt, not a Mustang :p That’s for Travis who called me a traitor…Monday was training for all new hires. Lots and lots of paperwork and videos. Then they decided to change what I’ll be teaching so that my curriculum and everything changes. Instead of one class of 8^th grade Algebra A (1^st semester of Algebra spread out all year) and two classes of 7^th grade pre-algebra, I now have three classes of 8^th grade Algebra A, at least the way I understood what they were saying. I need to check a final schedule just to clarify. Tuesday I spent most of the day in my classroom, cleaning, rearranging, and putting up posters. It’s beginning to look a little like a home away from home, but it’s not there quite yet. One day soon I hope. I was able to talk with one of the math teachers for a while and it helped clear some things up, but I still have lots of questions.

The way that HMS works is that there are about five PLC’s, which are Professional Learning Communities, made up of at least one teacher of each subject, and usually two language arts and math teachers each. I started with one PLC, and the other math teacher is who I talked with so much on Tuesday. After switching to all 8^th grade, I also switched PLC’s and partner teachers. I like the teacher I will be working with now, we just haven’t had a chance yet to sit down and talk about everything. To make things even more complicated, the district just bought a new math curriculum for the high school, so we’re starting from scratch basically as far as this year goes with curriculum. It all leads to more questions. From talking with her today it sounds like we should be able to connect on Friday and map out the year…yay!

Something really cool about Prosser is that they use Cornell Notes in all of the classes throughout the entire school. I hadn’t ever heard of them before coming to Prosser, but I’m excited to get to use them. It’s basically just a format for note taking, but it’s a great way to get kids in the habit of how to take decent notes. Another yay! All I know at this point is that there are two boxes across the top, one for the standard, and the other for kids to write what they will learn from the lesson, and then the bottom is split into 1/3 and 2/3, for the kids to record notes however the teacher may instruct. The example I was given included vocab and student questions in the 1/3, and then definitions, answers and problem examples in the 2/3. It’s all kept in the same notebook, all year long, or until it’s full I guess…

Today we spent all day long in training for the Common Core State Standards, the latest greatest standards we get to follow. The genius part about these standards is that 46 states across the country have adopted these same standards and are working to implement them in classrooms nationwide, making it that much easier for students who move a lot from place to place. We spent the morning together with the high school and middle school staff learning about the basics of the standards, and the timeline for implementation. By spring of 2015 everything has to be in place, and teaching practices adjusted. It should be easy enough for me because I’m just beginning and can start fresh right off. I almost feel sorry for teachers who’ve been teaching for twenty years or more, having to make that adjustment may be kind of rough.

Tomorrow I’m not entirely sure what we’re doing, but we’re working together as a staff, and I’m hoping to get lots more answers then. Things get started for real next Monday during the open house, and then school on Tuesday! Meanwhile I may be distracted from not being at fair. Gonna be missing my pig kids, but hopefully having a good time getting to know my new kids!

Friday, August 24

Thursday our whole staff training lasted two hours, and then we were released to our classrooms. So, after the training I spent the rest of the morning and a little bit of the afternoon making posters and labels, and creating a weekly chart on a white board. Then I got to work with my partner teacher to plan out how the new curriculum we have fits in the current 8^th grade standards. We decided that we basically have to merge the two sets of standards and make sure the new curriculum covers most concepts, and that we add in anything not covered from the old curriculum. The first two weeks are pretty well set, it’s the rest of the year we have to deal with, haha.

This weekend we finish getting ready for fair, with pen set-up, decorations and a Pink Display to finish. Printing pictures like crazy tomorrow since it didn’t happen today, and everything happens Sunday….here’s to a crazy weekend!