The Back to School Basics

As someone who is still fairly new to the whole classroom teacher thing, I would never consider myself an expert on the return to school and the establishing of classroom rules and procedures or the meeting of new children and their loving parents. This does not mean that I have not learned a lot from the three previous years I have spent in second grade. I have developed what I feel is a welcoming and well planned routine that I have continued to tweak each year. 

Classroom Prep

While this is something all teachers must do and I would say many quite enjoy (I see all your Facebook and Instagram posts) it can be quite a lot of things to do each year. I like to find people to help such as my husband and grandmother but a great person to recruit is someone you know who is an aspiring teacher. They are usually excited and interested in the process and they might learn something along the way. I also tend to bring my dog with me for emotional support. He is supper cute but kind of the opposite of helpful. 

Since these classroom prep days are already long enough, here are three tips to help things go a little faster.

1. Box things based on where they go in the room at the end of the year.

I use the bins my students have throughout the year for supplies to organize the materials I will use in my classroom. Each area of my room gets its own bin. My desk, each bulletin boards, each shelf. They are all placed together so I can pull them out, take them to their section of the room and set up without looking for each thing I needed.

2. Number instead of label.

Making labels for each student takes a lot of time. There is a lot of writing or printing and laminating, taping or velcroing. I'm not saying it isn't important to make nameplates for each student or cute little die cuts with names for the job board, but not everything needs to be labeled. I give each student in my class a number. That number is theirs and they can use it to get in line order or find their paper but it also works for labels. I label things I will reuse in the classroom each year with numbers. Headphones, mailboxes, clipboards, book bins. I keep cheat sheets with the students number printed next to their name all over the room in case someone else needs it. This saves me a lot of time not having to label things or scrape the names off at the end of the year.
3. Have the students help.

This is a suggestion I use often. Kids love to be part of things and the room is theirs too. Letting them help decorate and create materials makes it feel more like their space. Save a few things they can help with, like bulletin boards or deciding what posters and decorations to put up.

Meet The Teacher

Meet the teacher day is new for our school. My first year we did not meet students until the first day and I did not meet most of the parents until November for our conference day. I was very excited when we were told we were adding this holiday-like meeting day to our calendar. Luckily it is easy enough now-a-days to find the most amazing materials created by other teachers online so I never felt worried about the change. My walk through with each student and parent goes as follows-

1. Take a brochure about the class and myself. I found these through the amazing  on Teachers-Pay-Teachers. 

2. Sign in and sign up to be a volunteer or classroom reader. This idea was stolen from . I loved it so much and I have a volunteer come to read each month (sometimes a parent or grandparents and sometimes a figure from the school like the principal) to the kids to promote literacy and practice manners. They can also trade some sweetness for sweetness by taking a cupcake and donating to our room. The cupcake toppers were also made from.

3. Hand in papers and find the students CLASSDOJO signin sheet. I plan on talking more about Class-Dojo in the future but just know I love it. I then show students and parents how Class-dojo works and how we use it in our classroom. This is important because it is both my behavior management and parent communication. 

4. Lastly I have them select a spot they would like to sit in the room and put whatever supplies they have in their desk. I know I probably just made a few of your heads spin. Now you are probably looking back to make sure you read that right. You let them pick their own spot? Why yes. As I said in the classroom set up section, I think letting them help with the classroom is important and I don't know them yet so I like to see where they feel they will learn best. It also gives them a chance to look around and see what friends they have in the class. These seats are not always the best for them and often are moved later on but I feel it is still important that they have that choice.

After these steps I allow both parents and students to ask any questions they like, explore the room and take a picture in front of our goals board that will soon be used to track each students goals and progress towards them, but for now makes a great photo-booth background. 

First Few Days

The first day of school is always the most exciting day, mostly for parents taking photos of their kids for Facebook, but also for kids and teachers. My students come in ready to be razzled and dazzled by their new teacher and find out just how many buttons they can push while still leaving a good impression. The first few days of school are critical for teaching rules and routines but also for establishing relationships with students. There is plenty of materials out there about how to deal with being effective in your first few days. Each year I prefer to review the book The First Days Of School: How To Be An Effective Teacher by Harry and Rosemary Wong. The biggest things I use from this book is that spending time at the beginning of the school year, teaching class procedures instead of content will actually maximize instructional time for the rest of the year and the importance of telling students why they are learning something or why they are doing a particular activity.

When it comes to the relationship making part my biggest suggestion is to give each student some real time with you to talk. I spend the first few weeks eating lunch with one or two students every day. They tell me their interests and what they want to learn but really it is just a time where they feel like they are actually listened to. I also like to ask them who they think is the smartest, nicest, fastest, funniest, etc. kids in the class. I think it gives me a lot of information about them and the other students they know. It shows me who lacks confidence, who has plenty to go around, who is considered the smart kid or the nice kid and who is friends with who. I think eating lunch with each kid is a much better way to find out about your students then just having them fill out a pre-made poster. 

First Day of School Outfit

Why I Changed My Blog Name

Teacher With No Class

In 2014 I created a blog called Teacher With No Class, with every intention of keeping it up and recording my adventures with looking for a teaching position and all the helpful things I learned along the way. I had plenty of ideas and hopes for the blog but it just didn't really go where I wanted. I liked having a space to save and share things I loved and used in education. It has been five years since I began the original blog and since there has been way too many things to share about my journey. The biggest of these is that I am no longer a teacher with No Class. I began teaching 2nd Grade in 2016 in a lovely, little, rural school. I am about to start my fourth year and I feel like I am ready to begin again with a new name (Both for me and my blog since I was married this summer) and some new ambition with what I plan to accomplish with this blog. I am a girl with a lot of creativity, a lot of plans and a little bit of time to keep up with a commitment like a blog so lets give it a try!

Acorns

So what is with the acorns? Well acorns are not something I had a particularly found interesting or exciting less than a week ago. I mean, they are just acorns right? In my area they are everywhere. But that was one of the things that endeared them to me recently. 

A few days ago we had our Teacher Orientation Day to get ready for a sparkly new year. We sat through hours of PowerPoints full of cute memes and tear provoking ted talks. Around the time I would normally wake up on a day off, but halfway through the PD Day*, we had an elementary faculty meeting.

Our principal started the meeting off in a normal fashion, explaining why our new math materials wouldn't be arriving until after the school year began and the several new procedures we needed to add our large to do lists. Everything we had seen many times before, but then he put up a slide that was covered in acorns. He proceeded to tell us a story of his brother and himself as children going on a walk and finding acorns. They were so excited and interested in these magical little nuts wearing fancy little hats that they filled their pockets with them and ran home to show their parents. He used this story as an example of the magic children see in the world. How they explore and how they are passionate in all their actions. He explained that this is what he wanted us to remember when working with our students and use it to enhance their abilities and understand their interests. While the story was a silly anecdote that showed how children can see even the most basic of things as magical, I started to think about how magical they really are and how similar my students are to them. Acorns are small and susceptible but have mighty oaks inside of them. They also are heavy seeds and do not blow easily in the wind so they often need help with seed dispersal so they can get the resources they need. This is true with my students as well. They each have the ability and potential to touch the sky but may need a little help to get where they need to be. 

That evening I went for a walk in the park with my (new) husband. We hiked down a long trail into a large gorge, then we hiked back up. The hike up was a lot more difficult for me. I struggled a few times and took a couple breaks. When I reached the top I found that I was much more focused on my feet and where I was placing them and all around me there were acorns. I filled my own pockets with several of the adorable seeds, enough to share with each of my students because their joy, creativity, interest and passion is what I love most about being a teacher.

Let's Get Educated

After my sparked appreciation for acorns and my trunk full I did what I do best-played on the internet. But honestly I did a little research and found that acorns were even cooler than I thought. So here are some interesting things I learned about acorns.

• One tall mature oak tree can produce almost one-thousand pounds of acorns in one growing season during normal weather conditions. 
• Acorns are  a symbol of patience and long hard labor.
• An old British tradition says that if a woman carries an acorn on her person it will delay the aging process and keep her forever young.
• In Norse mythology it is said that the god Thor was once sheltered from a storm by staying under an oak tree. This lead to the belief that putting a acorn on your windowsill would keep your house from being struck by lightning.
• The Roman goddess of the Hunt, Nature and Birth in Roman tradition is Diana who is frequently depicted wearing a necklace of acorns.
• Dotorimuk is a jelly made in Korea using acorn starch.
• Native American tribes such as the Cherokee, Pima and Apache used acorns as a primary staple food.