September 4, 2008
Hunting For School Supplies
Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by miss brave @ 4:01 pm
photo by Brandi Tressler
[Editor’s note: miss brave is the pseudonym for a second-year elementary school teacher in Queens. She blogs at miss brave teaches nyc, where this post originally appeared.]
Most New York City public school teachers worth their sharpened pencils can tell you that Aug. 1 is the date on which teachers may start purchasing supplies with their “Teacher’s Choice” money. You spend every last penny of your money, save all your receipts and, as long as they’re dated after Aug. 1, voila, you get your reimbursement in, like, December.
Last year I didn’t do such a great job of saving my receipts, and then in March I was scrambling to spend all the money I had left over. Which meant I got to buy a lot of neat stuff I wouldn’t have otherwise bought, but I didn’t get reimbursed for all the supplies I purchased earlier in the year. So this year I was determined to itemize all my receipts – starting on Aug. 1. So I purposefully was staying far, far away from teaching supplies of any kind until that date. (more…)
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August 29, 2008
Back To School
Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by miss brave @ 4:55 pm
[Editor’s note: miss brave is the pseudonym for a second-year elementary school reading teacher. She blogs at miss brave teaches nyc, where this post originally appeared.]
Last year I read this in the blogs of second-year teachers and it made me want to cry, but it turns out it’s true: It is infinitely better being a second-year teacher than it is being a first-year teacher. It was very satisfying to walk into the building today and move my time card, search out my new mailbox (already full of information) and greet people I hadn’t seen all summer. (It didn’t hurt that last year on the first day of school I did not receive a schedule, an office, a desk, keys, or any darn clue what I was supposed to be doing there, whereas this year I have all of these things!) (more…)
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August 27, 2008
The Fall’s Gonna Kill Ya
Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by miss brave @ 2:59 pm
[Editor’s note: miss brave is the pseudonym for a second-year elementary school reading teacher. She blogs at miss brave teaches nyc, where this post originally appeared.]
This morning, I did it. The thing I had been dreading and putting off all summer. I opened my hall closet, climbed up on my little stepladder, and hauled down the shopping bags of crap school supplies I had heaved up there in a giddy fit of summer fever in June.
I weeded through the stacks of papers I had unceremoniously dumped together in a desperate attempt to empty out my office in a timely fashion. I pulled out some binders and checklists I thought I would need for the first few days of school and piled them next to my all-purpose Carol School Supply bag, filled with the behavior charts and “Great Work” tickets and “Super Reader” pencils I bought back when I thought I would still be getting $260 worth of Teacher’s Choice money. I unearthed my new planner and filled in September’s dates. Then I put the essentials in my brand-new school bag.
It wasn’t so bad. (more…)
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June 23, 2008
Putting the function back in dysfunctional
Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by miss brave @ 6:19 pm
Recently, someone posted the following comment on my blog:
“What is wrong with your students’ families that they are not teaching these basic skills long before the kids show up in your classroom? Are they just so dysfunctional that they don’t know how to raise their children up right?”
My first reaction was to rush to their defense. After all, only I’m allowed to badmouth my students; no one else gets that privilege! My second reaction was to think about the rather wide cultural divide that separates me from my students. The majority of them — I think the figure hovers somewhere around 80% — are from Spanish-speaking backgrounds. And an even greater majority of them are from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. When their families encourage them to fight back, to hit someone who hits them, I believe that their intent is not to raise their children to be dysfunctional; their intent is to raise their children to be survivors. (more…)
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June 6, 2008
Teachers come and go
Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by Eric Blair @ 9:43 am
[Editor's Note: Eric Blair is the pseudonym for a first-year teacher of math in a Manhattan high school.]
I started looking through the haphazardly shelved books in our school library today. We didn’t have a librarian this year, and the library now is split by desks into a Teacher Center and a classroom. Sometimes the classroom part holds two classes at the same time. Today, there are three classes there. (more…)
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June 4, 2008
A shoebox of success stories
Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by Ms. H @ 12:12 pm
[Editor's note: Ms. H is the pseudonym for a second-year special education high school teacher in Manhattan.]
Pen poised over desk, I finally touched the tip to paper and started my response. The final question on my second-year NYC Teaching Fellows survey had lingered around the corners of my consciousness for the entire week:
“What has been your biggest success over the past two years?”
As a second-year high school special education teacher in the Lower East side, the past two years have been filled with challenges and successes, laughs and tears, chalk and tape, quadratic formulas and character analysis, frustrations and fruitfulness. Now, I faced the task of putting all this into a three sentence response. Encapsulating the past two years into a single incident seemed impossible. (more…)
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June 3, 2008
No Easy Task
Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by No-sleep-till-Brooklyn @ 9:21 am
[Editor’s note: No-sleep-till-Brooklyn is the pseudonym for a second-year kindergarten teacher in Brooklyn.]
Life is not easy. Need proof? I can think of trivial setbacks to prove life’s complications … returning from a walk one evening to find your wallet missing, arriving at work one morning only to discover your boots are on the wrong feet, slipping down a set of subway stairs after a night of little sleep. Annoying, but that’s life.
Lose a wallet? Just cancel those credit cards and order a new license. Oops, notice something funny about your feet? Shrug off the mixed-up boots as a rushed morning, hardy har har. Slip down some stairs? Pick yourself up and laugh with the people laughing at you. All are fairly typical complications.
But not all setbacks are so trivial or typical. (more…)
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May 30, 2008
2 field trips, 2 experiences
Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by progressiveteacher81 @ 3:40 pm
[Editor's Note: Progressiveteacher81 is a pseudonym for a second-year elementary school teacher in Manhattan.]
Two years ago, I took my first field trip as a head teacher. Most of what I can recall from the first trip was the bus ride. Getting the children out of the school was a nightmare. I was embarrassed with their hall behavior. I was horrified to have parents bearing witness to my struggles. Amid the general panic, climbing aboard the bus, Gloria, a first-grader, began to sob that she wanted her mom to come and she hadn’t. My first reaction was to look at her in horror (one more piece of drama in my day) and then, noticing that the other adults were looking at her with sympathy and towards me with expectations, I suggested that she sit with me. (more…)
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May 13, 2008
Done
Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by miss_g @ 1:28 pm
[Editor’s Note: Miss G is the pseudonym for a second-year special education teacher in the Bronx.]
With grad school.
As of Saturday, May 9, I’m officially done, and graduation is May 21.
As a final activity we had to fill out chart paper with “things we would take with us” and “things we’d leave behind” – not from grad school, but the Teachers for America experience … from learning to be a teacher, a New Yorker, and… well… a grown up. (more…)
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April 30, 2008
The Question on Everyone’s Lips
Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by The Drama Club @ 1:30 pm
[Editor's Note: The Drama Club is a pseudonym for a first-year high school teacher in the Bronx.]
‘Tis the season in teaching that brings the same question to everyone’s lips: “So are you coming back next year?”
Am I coming back next year……?
Hmm, good question. My response for about two solid months now has been, “I’m on the fence.” The fence is getting higher. Whichever way I land, I hope it’s on my feet or else it’s gonna hurt. (more…)
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