Teacher Hoarding

Teacher Hoarding: You don't realize how much you have

by Colleen Guzman

          The school year had ended and it was time to come home for the summer. Most of my things I leave at school in my classroom but this year I changed rooms and I wasn't sure where I wanted to go with my new room and there are some things that I always bring home just because I don't want them to be broken or end up missing. I also have a whole room of school related items that I use throughout the year, or much of it I thinking I am going to use for one thing or another or I'm saving it for that one day when I switch from Middle School to Elementary school. The items I have at home are in shelves so those stay fairly organized but each summer I bring things home from my classroom I have to reorganize everything and make space for everything. This is not even counting what I will buy when back to school shopping begins.

          I'm not sure about you but once I am done with a school year I am exhausted, my brain, emotions and body are worn thin so adding more to my plate is the last thing I want to do. I can also admit though that every summer I know the cleaning and organizing are coming because to be completely honest, during the school year I only clean my house during Thanksgiving break, Christmas break, and Spring break so by summer there is major cleaning that needs to be done. Summer is when I move all the furniture and sweep and mop underneath them. I go through all of the closets and get rid of the old unused clothes. I venture into my son's rooms and do some massive cleaning in there. (Two of our three sons still live at home, they are currently 18 and 19 so their understanding of cleanliness is not the same as mine) So as you can see I have plenty of things to do over the summer so why am I dragging things home to add another chore for myself? I just have to have my classroom be organized because classroom chaos can lead to me being chaotic and I don't prefer that.

           I took pictures of the disaster that my house becomes when I drag all these things home and because I wanted to blog about this whole process and I'm not sure if it was the pictures, my fatigue, going back to college and having summer classes or what but this summer I was paralyzed by this disaster. You couldn't see my dining room table or my breakfast nook table or some of my counter space in the kitchen. Each time I walked past these disasters I felt a panic attack rising and so I began to turn a blind eye to all of it. Well since I was ignoring the disaster the men in my household decided that this was their cue to add to the insanity so my dining table became a dumping ground. Then I had to create a grass collection for my Master's program, add to my former tree collection and wildflower collection so there were grasses and foam boards and adhesive and tree leaves and wildlfowers all over the table along with the other mess. I had finally had enough so I began to clean and organize, starting with that that dining room table. Once the dining room table was clean I began to feel much better and I was able to move on to other rooms.

          I have found when organizing and working on my house that once I am moving along I am able to keep moving along but if I let the things pile up I feel more overwhelmed by them and then I drag my feet and struggle with getting going. Once I had the dining table cleaned I was able to work in the breakfast nook that my youngest son and I now call our office. Since everyone is older they no longer come eat breakfast in the morning before school and my husband and I use the dining room if we even eat at home so using the breakfast nook as an office seemed like a good idea. We left the table in there so we can work on it and then we added in shelving units, fabric drawers, plastic bins, etc. to keep things separated and organized. I am a huge reader on top of everything else so one full bookcase is mostly books. I have Ripley's Believe it of not books and cartoon books that I only bring to school during STAAR testing so the students have something new and interesting to read. The other books are more for use when I have an elementary class so they stay at home. I leave my science books and Middle School books like Goosebumps at school. I have another bookcase that I use for supplies like folders, colored paper, composition books, markers, classroom

decorations, etc. I have a box of classroom decorations that I leave at school too such as borders, pre-cut letters, small posters, basically things that I will use to make a bulletin board so for me it seemed smarter to keep those things at school. I also have a shelving unit where I keep my glue, paints, index cards, and crafting items. Plus my youngest son uses the space for his entomology so he is pinning bugs, researching bugs,making collections and planning things out. He has several large collections that he has taken to state but he likes to change the insects around in the collections. The collections stay on the table at all times, mainly because we don't have any more shelf space to use. I am thinking that this year I should take more things to school and use them all up before I buy new things, it is just so difficult to leave glue and markers and pencils behind when they are on sale or items that I think I may use some day. Since this blog post has gotten incredibly long I think those are things I am going to have to revisit once I go shopping for school supplies. I will keep everyone posted on how I do with my teacher hoarding.

 Hopefully for now this shows that I was able to bring in all the things I brought from my classroom and I was able to organize all of them into the space I already have. As you can see I have quite the teacher hoard going but I surely hope that It all ends up being things I truly use and that I can continue to keep it organized in the space I have. I never want to be in a place where I am getting a storage space for all of my things, and I never want to have so many things that I am not in a place where I can use them. Those are my goals, so let's see how I do with those.

Learning and Growing

Learning and Growing: How to face facts about yourself and set goals 

by Colleen Guzman

               So another year of teaching has come and gone and all that is left is an empty classroom. This has been my classroom for 3 years now and I have a fondness and even an attachment to it. I mean why wouldn't I, it is my room. So when we received the email with our content and classroom assignments I didn't even glance at it because I was confident that it was going to be BAU (business as usual). Not moments after the email was sent I receive a text message from a colleague shocked by the whole email, "Did you see where you will be next year?" In fact I hadn't because I figured I would be in good old K104 as usual so why check. I opened the email and sure enough I was being moved to an upstairs science room. You may be asking yourself, what's the difference.  Well all of the science rooms are fairly similar except mine. My science room is the smallest of all the rooms, it is the only one with no windows to the outside world and it is the only one that has doors on either side of the room so if child A is distracting you up front then child B can escape from your room from the back door. So now the paranoia sets in. "Why are they moving me?" "What have I done wrong?" I mean I can think of a million things I have done wrong because I am still human after all, this is only my 5th year teaching, I've never had a mentor teacher ever, etc. (see how I have all my excuses lined up) I spent the whole week moving my things to the new room trying to decide what I had done wrong to deserve this, and I even tried to convince the teacher I was swapping with that it was I who had done wrong and not her because I found out that she was feeling the same way. Every single doubt, fear, despair of not being good enough crept into my mind and took hold. By Wednesday afternoon I was having a panic attack in the prep closet in the back of my room, hyper-ventilating and weeping like a baby. I had to get a handle on this and get one quickly. 

      

                Friday was our work day and by noon the other teacher and I had exchanged keys and now it was time for us to organize things in our new rooms and get to know them better. I sat in my new room and I looked at the sun shining through the window in the room. The sun! It was beautiful and unbelievable and yet still felt like I had done something wrong. I sat for awhile and I thought about what all of this meant. I looked at each of the things I felt I had done wrong and the excuses for why those things had happened and I decided that instead of letting those things be these horrible clouds over me I was going to turn those things into goals that I set for myself. Now this is a hard transition for me because initially setting goals means that I am not good at what I am doing and therefore must be extremely horrible at it and I should just be removed immediately. It takes me some time to walk myself through those feelings and remind myself that every journey is about learning and growing and that setting goals can get you there. So I began to set goals. 

               I look at the first possibility. Perhaps I was moved upstairs because I am too friendly with the 8th grade students, I mother them entirely too much, I take them into my classroom when they have been kicked out of their classroom, etc. I have already talked to my principal about this recently and I know this is something that I need to work on. By moving me upstairs I am no longer near the 8th grade classrooms so it gives me a buffer so I can work on this goal. I think this is a good goal, it is nice for me to care about the students but I should not shield them from hardship because that does not prepare them for the real world. Okay, fine goal number one is set. Goal 1 is to show the children I care with a kind "Hello," "How are you," "How is your day going?" then I shall send them away promptly any time they try to enter my room.

           

   Now on to the next possibility. It is possible that they moved me from that room because students were leaving my classroom without permission on occasion. Sometimes I had a class of 30-34 students, I would be helping a group of students with something and 1 or 2 would slip away out of the door I was farthest from so I would have to call the office to get them rounded up. I really wanted to blame the students for this but I know that I play my own part in it. I am not stern enough, I give them too many chances to do the right thing before giving consequences, I trust too willingly, etc. In my new room the doors are both in the front of the classroom a mere 20ish feet apart and my desk and workstation are between them so this should no longer be a problem, however I felt I needed to set a personal goal to ensure that it does not. Goal 2 is to be stern, set consequences for every action and follow through with them even when you like the student or feel for them and want to go easy on them. Life is not going to go easy on these kids and neither should I, I am actually doing them a disservice rather than helping them out.

               Now that I have these goals in place I will add a third goal that is teaching centered. I am thinking goal number 3 is going to be to work on more inquiry based, student-centered activities but I am still working on that goal as I learn and research over the summer.

            

               Learning and growing is tough and often times it is painful to go through mentally, emotionally and even physically at times however without it you cannot move forward. I want to always move forward, to be the best teacher that I can be, to make the difference in lives that I know I can make. I may stumble and fall sometimes and I may even get things completely wrong but I know that I will get there, I will keep getting up, I will dust myself off and just like I want my students to do I will learn and grow. 

End of Year Project and Recycling

End of Year Project and Recycling

by Colleen Guzman

                So another year has come and almost gone (whew). This is my fifth year teaching, and possibly my toughest. It is my third year in a large public school after spending two years in a charter school. I hate to admit it but I am still adjusting to how different everything is from charter school to public school, but I am trucking along. To be clear I am not saying that one type of school is better than the other they are just very different, especially in size. One of the things that is very similar about them are the TEKS (Texas Standards). So after 5 years and no changes in the standards I have them down forward and backward. 

              One of the things I have noticed is that after five years I am still doing some of the same activities, although hopefully I am fixing these activities a little each year that I teach them. In a large school many of your activities are written by a curriculum writer, however you are allowed to personalize them so they work for you. At this time of year I personally like to have the students create an end of year project. This is not something that is called for in our curriculum but is something I feel is extremely important because it gives the students one final chance to think about the things they were supposed to have learned in seventh grade science. Also, in the state of Texas our 8th grade students have to take a state science test that has questions about concepts they learned in 6th, 7th and 8th grade so the end of year project is one way for the students to see the information and refresh it in their memories before they test the following year.

               For the end of year project I normally ask the students to create something non-electronic. One of the reasons I do this is because we have textbooks that are considered consumables. A consumable textbook is a heavy paper cover textbook with pages that are easy to tear out so the students can take portions home and work on those parts of the textbook, then at the end of the year we send them home with the students and normally they throw them away. In order to give the students one last chance to look through the textbook and practice using the index and the glossary I have them create a project using pictures and words from the textbook. The students are also allowed to use their science notebooks. I also like to have the students create a non-electronic project because I have read some articles about projects and muscle memory so I have them use muscles to cut, glue and write.

I begin the project by letting the students know what is expected. The students have to provide 2-3 pictures for each topic and they have to write 3-5 sentences about the topic. I have some topics together as a group because they lend themselves to one another such as cells and organelles. The students always ask me if they have to have the pictures and sentences for everything and I always tell them yes. I try to get them to work on the high end first and then if they struggle I let them come down a step or two from there but I never start anyone at a lower expectation whether they are Pre-AP, regular education or special education. I feel it is always easier to have them step down a little as needed rather than try to bring them higher once they think they have finished. 

            

              I write the expectations and the science topics on the board and I also provide the students with a typed page showing these parameters. I normally give them five class days to complete the project so everyone has plenty of time to get everything completed. I am there to help them, I know who needs extra chances to learn how to use the index, or who needs me to guide them a little bit towards the right pages, or who needs help organizing their project so they are not overwhelmed. I also created a project myself so some of my students are able to use it and follow along. I use this for some of my students who are emergent English language learners, for some of them that lack confidence as a starting point, or for some of my students who are special needs. I enjoyed this project this year, I got some really great projects and some students put in a lot of effort. I am already thinking of ways to tweak it for next year,so stay tuned. 

Here are some of the projects students were working on:

               

Adaptations using CER

 

 Adaptations using CER

I went to a seminar this past weekend and I got to meet Julie Jackson who is the author of The Science Toolkit. She does amazing interactive word walls and bulletin boards that students create or contribute to. You can see more of her work here: http://www.thesciencetoolkit.com/

I went to the first portion of her seminar and learned about interactive word walls that I will be working on implementing and I will post more later, then I stayed for the second part which was labeled CER. The "C" stands for Claim, the "E" stands for Evidence and the "R" stands for Reasoning. The CER technique has the students make a claim about something, then they provide evidence to support their claim and finally they give the reason why their claim is right based on that evidence. You can learn more about CER here: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/science-inquiry-claim-evidence-reasoning-eric-brunsell

I really loved the thought provoking nature of this technique so I decided I would attempt it when working on my next adaptation activity. 

Once we have completed our butterflies I have the students create an adaptation that shows a possible drastic change in the organism. Since this is the first time the students have been introduced to CER I modeled the whole process for them, so I created my own iguana, I wrote my own claim, I provided evidence and then I gave reasoning. (see picture above)

In order to keep the project from being too confusing or from getting out of hand I provided the students with only four options of environmental changes that I was sure they would understand the adaptations for. I also provided the students with a picture of an iguana and how it looks right now, I copied it on only one side of the paper so they could fold the paper over and trace the iguana, then they simply had to erase certain sections and add to them.

Once they had drawn their iguana I had them color the iguana to match their environment or to go with the adaptations they had chosen. I also had them label the adaptations they had chosen. I have one special education student who is unable to read no does he write well but he was able to draw his iguana and then he narrated to me what should be written for his adaptations. The students were very excited by this assignment and they had a lot of fun creating iguanas.

Once the students were finished with their drawings then they had to create the CER portion of the assignment. Since I had modeled this on the board I simply had them follow my format: 

I claim that my iguana is adapted to ____________ environment because they have (name specific adaptation here: gills, webbed feet, extra layer of fat, camouflage, etc.).  I know I am right because (provide reason why the evidence supports the claim: in order to live in water an animal needs gills, etc.).

 I had the students write their CER statements inside the paper so other students could see what they had to say and compare. Then they taped their iguana to the environment they were best adapted to and I hung them out in the hallway for all the middle school students to see. After this we will move on to Selective Breeding.

 

Animal Camouflage

Animal Camouflage

In Texas we teach animal adaptations to our 7th grade students. I normally begin the unit with reading passage worksheets from Super Teacher Worksheets that talk about camouflage, migration, and hibernation. The worksheets are on a 3-5 grade reading level and I use them to help remind them of concepts they should have learned in elementary school. Once we have a foundation we move on to our butterfly camouflage activity.

I provide the students with 2 blank butterflies. First the students are tasked with coloring a butterfly so that it can blend in with something in the classroom. The only rules are that the butterflies cannot be a single color and they cannot be hiding behind anything in the classroom. My room is covered in posters so they have a pretty easy time finding a spot that is more than one color. I have even had students put them on the ceiling tiles. Students are very creative. 

Once they have completed their butterfly I have them write a short description in their notebook of what their butterfly was camouflaged to in case their butterfly is lost or taken by another classmate. I tell them if it gets taken then it must not have been camouflaged well and a predator ate it so we learned that predators can find you if your camouflage is not good.

Once they have completed this portion of the assignment we watch a YouTube showing some amazing real life camouflage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJGtN-igCu8

After they have watched this video I then ask them to create a butterfly that is camouflaged to an actual environment. (I am sorry I did not take pictures of these) The students are asked to write a short description of what their butterfly camouflage is and what environment it would be able to live in. Then they glue their butterfly into their journal next to the description.

Finally they are asked to write a short paragraph explaining what would happen to their butterfly if their environment changed drastically. Then I normally show them the released STAAR question about the butterflies that adapted due to industrialization.

Once they are done we move to another type of adaptation. (See the blog post on CER)

Dichotomous Key

 Dichotomous Key

One of the things we teach seventh graders in Texas is how to use a Dichotomous Key. We also provide them with a chance to create a Dichotomous Key because what better way to understand something than to create it.

Prior to creating a Dichotomous Key we have the students work with several of varying difficulty. My colleagues and I have located one with aliens, one with little creatures like gremlins and one that is emojis and we also use a leaf key which is scientifically inclined. We copy them so there are 2 keys per page and create a little booklet where the keys are in order from easiest to most difficult. I normally practice part of the first one with the students and then I go over the scientific one together as a class and we work the final key together. This normally takes only one and a half 45 minute class periods to complete.

Next we move on to creating a Dichotomous Key. For my regular education classes I begin with the worksheet shown above. We work on the first three sections together as a class and then I have them work on the rest with their partners. This takes up the other half a class period from the previous day.

This year I tried something new with my Pre-AP classes. Rather than begin the creation process with the worksheet I decided to begin with  a hands on activity. As a class we reviewed the Dichotomous Key creation guidelines in their notes, then I provided the students with a baggie that help 9 pieces of uncooked pasta in 3 different colors. I then encourage the students to remove the pasta from the bag and to physically separate the pasta into groups. Since there are 9 pieces of pasta and 3 colors their first instinct is to split the pasta into 3 groups by either pasta type or pasta color. This causes them to pause and really think about how they can separate them into 2 groups to comply with the options available on each section of the key.

This activity gives them a really good opportunity to truly break down the process and consider how it works. The other thing that works well in this activity is having the students work together because they do not always agree with one another about how the groups should be split so then we are able to have a conversation about how this can occur in the real world and how scientists might have to deal with these things. 

I have heard of doing this same type of activity with 15 bean soup although I think that might work better for older students. You could also make this simpler by using pasta that is only one color so the students only group them by size or shape or you could simplify the activity by using pasta that splits evenly in half each time like using small, medium and large macaroni and small, medium and large shells.

Once I have completed this activity I give the partners a worksheet with 10 creatures, they must color and name the creatures and then they must create their own Dichotomous Key. I encourage them to cut the creatures out and physically separate them into groups. The physical separation seems to help the students with the Dichotomous Key creation. I allow the student groups 2 class days to use to complete their assignment.

All in all I use a week of class time to take notes, practice using the key, and then practice creating a key. 

Frog Dissection Lab

 Frog dissection Lab

The final component in our human body system unit is frog dissection. We have one prep day where we go over a power point that shows the students the steps to take in order to dissect the frog. I express to them how important it is to keep each body system intact and to observe it thoroughly before moving to the next system. We discuss how dissecting the frog gives us a better look at body systems. Then I show them a video on YouTube of a science teacher dissecting a frog so they get an additional look at the process. I also have them color a picture of an open frog showing it's digestive system and they create a Venn diagram and compare the frog digestive system to the human digestive system. this gives them a chance to see how many organs we have in common.

On day two of frog dissection the students are actually allowed to dissect the frog. Since I teach at a Title 1 school we only have enough frogs for one frog per group of four students. Some of the students are frightened or disgusted so they prefer to simply watch, but sometimes they all want to participate so they take turns since there are plenty of cuts to make and organs to remove. We do not have scalpels so we only use tweezers, scissors and probes during the dissection. I encourage the students to remove each organ, discuss the name of the organ and the body system that the organ comes from. I feel that this steps causes them to slow down in their excitement and really take a look at the body systems.

I have struggled with classroom management this year and with students unwillingness to complete assignments so this year I have large groups of students who were not able to participate in the actual frog dissection since it is a privilege, however I did not want them to miss out on the experience entirely so I decided to add some stations to frog dissection this year. 

I went to the local grocery store and I got several types of organ meat. Here in San Antonio we eat several dishes that require organ meat so I had no problems finding hearts, liver, brains, intestines and bones. I set out the various types of organ meat and I had a short question at each station. I asked the students to be sure to hold the organs, look at their structures and talk about why they might feel different from one another. I wish we could afford more gloves and more time in the lesson because I really would have liked to let the students spend a whole day just on this task. As it was they ran through it very quickly but they did gain quite a bit of joy and excitement from the task.

 I would like to do this again next year, I am going to work on it some this summer and determine what I can do to tweak this or see if I can write a grant to get more gloves so I spend an extra day on this. I would love to rewrite the whole system and spend 12-15 weeks just on human body systems but that's not going to happen just yet so I need to try to fit it in the best way I can. I do want to ensure this is meaningful to their learning and not just really fun to do.

On a final note I am not opposed to fun and I think one way to truly ensure that students recall some of their learning is by making learning fun. I always try to dress up for any large event we have. This year I found a frog hat at Target during Halloween in the costume section. I wore the hat all day and it really caught their attention. The students were so excited when they saw me in the hallway because they knew it was frog dissection day. In previous years I have used a frog puppet to read a body system book to the glass or to give directions during the human body system unit. I try to make sure everything ties together so they have some recall and for many of the students it works. (I know because I ask them science questions in the hallway when they come to visit me as 8th graders.)