Teacher support Group

Officially on Spring Break!! Yahoo!!:drinker: Its a beautiful day! Gonna get out and play some tennis or something!! Anyone else on Spring break this week? I plan on being very active! No excuse of having no time!:embarassed:

I'm right there with you all! I also work at a Title 1 school and if maybe the politicians would spend a year in our shoes they would understand! Granted I'm sure in a day they would run!!! I am SO irritated that we are bailing out AIG and car companies and cutting education left and right. Good colleagues of mine just received pink slips. Our state is dead last in education, but when will it stop? We need to fight!!!!!

:mad: I hate the data driven education society we are becoming. I have to practically document every little step I make. There are SO many markers to a kids progress that cannot be documented on a piece of paper. When I have kids with parents in jail, violence in the streets and no support at home, and I can get them to care about themselves, how can that be documented? Well years down the line, when they are successful, they aren't going to remember taking the state test and feeling good about it. They are going to remember kind words and the motivation they received from me, to go out there and reach your dreams! I am so sick of the educational system, that pushing testing, testing, and more testing! I spend a large amt. of the day documenting things, which takes me away from focusing on the child! There is something wrong here! Then the prez wants merit pay? So if a firefighter doesn't save all the people in the burning house, he should not receive merit pay? If a cop solves all his cases, he should receive extra ca$h? I don't choose my students, nor does firefighters or cops choose their situations. This is appalling! What is wrong with this country!?:explode:

I am so with you on this!! I teach in a Title I school where we pool our students from 4 housing projects! We work our butts off but have to deal with so much more with our type of students.
I wish the standardized testing would show how far we brought them even though they may not have met a benchmark!:ohwell:
On another note,I had a really fun Math Madness Monday today. We set up stations and did Math all day in preparation for a benchmark testing tomorrow.Hope it helped!! We have been so strapped for time lately! Our pacing stunk for the 3rd Nine weeks.:grumble:
Anyway, Spring Break next week!! Can't wait!!!:bigsmile:

Those wellness competitions sound really cool. I wish we had something like that, but my administrator is seriously into food rewards for the kids. It makes me crazy. She eats more candy bars & junk food in one week than I've even purchased in the last year.
Spring Break was 2 weeks ago for us, but hubby has the week off now.
It stinks.
:ohwell:

I use to love the Staff Fittness Challenge that we had at on eof my previous schools. It really jump started us on getting healthy and relieving stress during that last part of the year when burn out really tries to sneak in and get'cha. I switched school districts four years ago, and they are a "no fun alllowed" sort of crowd...so I really miss it!!!!

But I was reading on the other teacher site about the afterschool staff volleyball/kick ball games so I'm determined to go back to school Monday and ask if anyone wants to do this.

Those wellness competitions sound really cool. I wish we had something like that, but my administrator is seriously into food rewards for the kids. It makes me crazy. She eats more candy bars & junk food in one week than I've even purchased in the last year.
Spring Break was 2 weeks ago for us, but hubby has the week off now.
It stinks.
:ohwell:

Wow! How do you get around the FMNV guidelines? On Thursday we were told a number of times that we couldn't serve cupcakes because it was not one of our "free" days. It's so crazy. Everything we serve the kids has to meet guidelines. I know that's a good thing but sometimes it is a pain.

:sad: Whaaaaa...I don't want to go bck tomorrow...it's Inservice Hell Day, with just a bunch of busy work for us to do, instead of letting us be truly productive!!!! Does anyone else have crummy Inservice Days too?

Don't even get me started about testing!!! That's all we'll be cramming for until 4/27!!! UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!:laugh:

The last inservice we had ... It was awesome! hehehe... I was a presenter. LOL

Anyways, yes, the end of the year stress *read mandatory testing* is upon us. I am not looking forward to this time.

I don't have to give the big TAKS test but I still have goals to meet. I am confident that all will go well. We shall see.

I didn't want to go back to work today. My desk is a huge mess and I'm so unmotivated to clean it. I am hoping to move to a new city in the fall. I have to start packing and getting things ready. I am so not looking forward to it. But I have to do it before school gets out because they wax my building as soon as school is out and I need to have it ready to go. Blah.

I actually don't mind inservices...although some are better than others. I must say though, I HATE writing the sub plans for them! I was just at a 4-day inservice and I had to do sub plans and it took me the entire week before! But it was a REALLY good inservice!

Question...is anyone on this site familiar with GLAD strategies? If so, have they been successful in your classroom?

p.s. GLAD stands for Guided Language Acquisition Development-Its an EL and Special Education strategy used for teaching grade level vocabulary...Just thought I'd ask!

Oh yeah, I'm on spring break too and its been a very relaxing time!:drinker:

Okay I admit. Lunch time is the hardest time for me as I normally go out to eat. The only positive is that I know that I eat my largest meal at noon each day. And I normally eat a small dinner. Plus, I work out in the afternoons so I burn off a lot of the lunch!

Another thing: Our district has a nutritional chart for all the meals that are prepared in the cafeteria. This is fabulous for me because I am able to accurately document my intake.

HELP!!!

I was wondering if any of youknow of a good kid-appropriate site that would log exercise and food intake, analyze it, etc.? We're gettting ready to start studying health...and this site sent a POWERFUL message to one of my teen-age sons when I made him log his diet for one week. HOLY COW!!!! Kids consume way too much sodium & cholesterol!!! YIKES!!!

Anyway, I'd like them to do the same thing for a week, but I don't want them in a site where they really are too young to be.

Please let me know, thanks everyone!!!!

Mickie

Wow, great idea Mickie!! Unfortunately, I have a feeling that no such site exists. :ohwell: Maybe you could make a food log (in Microsoft Word or something) for your students to record what they ate at each meal, and then they could turn it into you, and you could look up the stats. Sounds like too much work though... :noway:
Well, let me know if you need helping making the form. I could do it pretty quickly.

~Brianna

I don't wanna totally hijack the thread, but can you guys tell me why you have mentioned state testing in such a negative light so often in this thread?

My perspective is this: my students take a great deal of pride in their test scores. They want to improve and we work very hard all year to be prepared for STAR (California's Standardized Test) We had our first day of testing today, and my kids are pumped! They can't wait to kick this test's *kitten*! Our API is 967, and we are shooting for 1000(which would signify all students performing at highly proficient level). We probably won't hit it, but we will improve, as we have been doing for 7 years in a row.

I teach 7th grade in East Oakland with ALL minority kids. I teach in an old church building without A/C. And we are getting the job done. One of our seniors just got accepted to MIT, another to Stanford, and in order to graduate from our high school you must get a letter of acceptance from a 4 year school. We make sure our kids are prepared to compete in this educational setting. We don't have a lot of extras, just lots of textbooks and hard work.

I really just don't get it- why would you be opposed to measuring your results?

Anybody who can give another perspective, I am interested to know- on the thread or PM....

Wow, great idea Mickie!! Unfortunately, I have a feeling that no such site exists. :ohwell: Maybe you could make a food log (in Microsoft Word or something) for your students to record what they ate at each meal, and then they could turn it into you, and you could look up the stats. Sounds like too much work though... :noway:
Well, let me know if you need helping making the form. I could do it pretty quickly.

~Brianna
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I was thinking I may need to do that...but yes, that would be incredibly hard work! I open to suggestions though!!!!:happy:

Oh my goodness... last week was my spring break, so today was day 3 back to work. And YIKES... I am so tired! :yawn: I need to be getting to bed earlier so that I can make it through the day with my lovelies.
By the way, I gained a few pounds over break because I stopped keeping track of cals, but I'm already on the decline after 3 days back to routine. Phew!

I had spring break last week and this week has been really tough!! I'm so glad that there's only 2 days left this week!

We're testing this week.
ppppbbbbbbtttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!