Teaching Middle School

I can't even think about everything that's been going on around this place! Last week was the busiest week yet because it was the week I started teaching at the middle school. My two friends who teach with me are Christine and Valerie, but we refer to each other as 'Mrs. Brooks' and 'Ms. Gundersen." These two are awesome and it's nice because we are always on the same page.

Wednesday through Thursday we taught the eight geographic regions of North America. Day one we covered three of the regions. Each day we have 45 minutes, and for the most part we used our time well. However we didn't get a lot of praise for our performance. It's so weird going from college lecture mode to basically entertaining 6th graders. Why did I pick education, exactly? No, it gets better.

Thursday we had a good plan but it failed miserably. We each were a "station" with our region to teach and the students were going to rotate to every station. Turns out one of the students at my station was not happy to be in our group. There was a clique that just happened to end up at my table (we had a seating arrangement, but somehow we managed to concentrate all the bullies together. Woops) and they started teasing him. I tried to remind everyone that we need to respect each other and threatened to separate everyone into other stations (which I should've done immediately) but the boy would not have it! He threw his glue stick (thank goodness it wasn't the scissors!) at the kid right next to him who was teasing him. I told him to go see Mr. Kurtz (his for-realzies teacher in the back who's observing me) and tried to carry on but, yeah right, everyone's focus is definitely not on the Interior Lowlands. Before we knew it we were out of time so we dismissed class. Now we were in trouble. We were supposed to teach three regions to all the students, but now everyone only had information on one region. We knew we didn't do well, but Mr. Kurtz tried to assure us that we could still figure Friday out. On the other hand, some other lady observed us and was basically like, "Well now you're behind so I hope you figure it out." Valerie hates her. Ha.

Thursday night I schemed with my teacher Sister Hall (bless her heart...she is single but I don't get it because she is cute, smart, and her personality is the best. Seriously, I want to say she's been my favorite teacher since I've been here at school) and Valerie. We stayed at the Middle School until 5 brainstorming ways to not only teach the regions the students missed that day, but also the regions we had planned for Friday. We had to make it feel like we weren't cramming as well...blarg! Mr. Kurtz actually gave us the solution without knowing it. He was just shooting out ideas and mentioned we could have the students teach each other since they knew at least one region. Oooo wheels started turning in our heads! Here was our genius plan:

Friday I led the day by standing at the door greeting students and asking them to sit in the same place as the day before and "brain dump" everything they could remember from the day before on a piece of paper. As I did that, my co-teacher Valerie was formulating "teams" by taking one kid from each group to make a group of three. Each student would be the "expert" on the region they learned the day before and would teach the other two what they learned. I made eight posters that morning that had the region at the top (example: The Coastal Plain) with sections that had numbers that correlated with the group number. The groups started at a particular region and had two minutes to write as much as they could in their group section. I kept time, and when time was out I flipped the lights off and told them they had five seconds to switch! It ended up working like magic. When the students would call us over for a question instead of just answering myself I'd ask, "Who is the expert on (let's say) The Rocky Mountains?" That student would acknowledge they were the expert and then I'd ask them to help out their classmate by teaching them what they learned. It was truly genius. After that everyone was given a "worksheet" that had a section on each region with a blank. They had five minutes to fill in the blank. It looked like this:

Name:_____________

Date:_ ________________

Coastal Plain

Along the ­­­­­________­­________

And the Gulf of Mexico

Here lies the coastal plain we know

Lots of wetlands, it’s really neat

GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS

Appalachian Mountains

West of the coastal plain

Stretching up to Canada

Here lie the Appalachian Mountains

______________ mountain range in the states

GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS

Canadian Shield

Canadian Shield up by the _____________ Bay,

Looks like a horseshoe some might say

Old rocks and lots of lakes

GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS

Interior Lowlands

West of the mountains

East of the plains

Interior Lowlands, now shout hooray

Valleys and _____________ and rivers and hills

GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS

Great Plains

Here are the flat lands

Known as the Great Plains

Not very many things can grow

Watch out for a _________________!

GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS

Rocky Mountains

West of the Great Plains

Is the Rocky Mountain Range

________ miles  is a ________mountain range

Rocky Mountains are where I live

GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS

Basin and Range

Valleys and mountains

And then valleys once more

Hike in these mountains, it’s a dangerous chore

___________and __________ all over the place

GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS

Coastal Range

The coastal range

Along the ____________

Stretch so far, this is what we know

Fertile soils for lots to grow

GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS

Fill in blanks as a table

Word bank in front

WORD BANK

1.) oldest

2.) Atlantic

3.) Graben

4.) 3,000

5.) tornado

6.) Hudson

7.) trees

8.) Pacific

9.) long

10.) Horst

 After they did this I held it up an announced that the worksheet they just filled out was now the lyrics to the macarena that we were going to dance. Instead of saying "Hey Macarena!" we would sing "Geographic Regions!" Some of the kids looked at me like, "Are you kidding??" like bratty 6th graders do, but luckily I sold them on it. We sang it through all together once, and then split the room in half. One side of the room sang the macarena with our geographic regions while the other half danced, and then they switched. I danced with the students and it ended up being really fun! I think the students finally like us. Before they left they wrote their favorite region on the back of their worksheet and turned it into me at the door for their "ticket out."

From the day before, the student who was being teased, turns out, was being teased because the other kids told him his name was lame. So, Friday morning I googled information on a famous celebrity who shared his name. I found some interesting things about him and printed it out along with his picture. After class he was the last one to leave so I pulled him aside and gave it to him to read. I assured him his name was super cool.

Sister Hall was there Friday to observe us along with Mr. Kurtz and all they had for us was praise! They said it was a total 180 from the day before. We are graded on several things throughout the semester and we usually take them one day at a time like teacher mobility, pacing, discovery learning, clear messages, clear instruction, etc and they passed us off on like seven. The first thing they said was, "You guys were teachers today," and I beamed! Yes! I can be a teacher!!! I was (and, let's face it, still am) especially happy because Friday's everything was mostly orchestrated by me, including those lyrics for the macarena. It felt so good! When Justin got home and walked in the door I basically started screaming I was so happy! Ha poor Justin--I'm such a psycho. Anyway, it was a huge success and now I'm super motivated for the next time we teach. For now we are off for 6 days so it's time to get ready for the next content.

Thursday night Justin and I went to the temple and had a really nice time doing sealings. The Rexburg temple has been so busy lately because Idaho Falls is closed for cleaning. The session rooms are filled to capacity, and even then they bring in foldable chairs until the room is optimized. I love the temple and I have such a testimony of the work we do there. Life is so busy it is nigh impossible to turn my brain off and just relax. Even in my sleep I'm stressed out. I have bad dreams almost every night. But at the temple it's like I can just breathe. And I get to do it while staring at my handsome man. =] 

Friday night we went to the "Zoo Zoo" show. It was weird, but cool too. As it started I couldn't help but think of Dad and how there's no way anyone could pay him to watch that show. Basically acrobats dress up as animals and give a show. They did frogs, cats, hippos, penguins, polar bears, and the like. The best part of the show was the kids who were laughing so much. They were cute and the perfect audience. I thought about Brie and Shae throughout the show because I just know those two especially would have loved to watch it.

Saturday all day I had to catch up on homework. Because of teaching all week, all I did all morning was think about what I'd teach, and then once I'd taught all I did was think about how to make it better for the next day. Luckily, I'm taking several online classes which have saved my bacon! I was able to catch up on hours of missed homework all on Saturday. Will I get full credit for doing it so late in the week? Probably not...but I was able to catch up so that's good. That night Justin and I finished season four of 24. We love that show! So far season three is my favorite. We have netflix on my laptop which is fun for us if we want to watch a show. 

Wednesday we had our ward opening social. The purpose of it was to get visiting teaching/home teaching callings. Tuesday night I stayed up until 1:30 AM to put them together with a directory that was certainly not updated. I was frustrated because I didn't know the ward well enough to know who was new and who had moved out. There are almost 70 sisters in the ward! Gag...so I stayed up all night doing them, then Wednesday I had to cut them out. Unfortunately I'm a perfectionist so I had to go to Porter's to get scrap book paper to glue the callings on, and then glue on magnets so they could have them on their fridge...Let's just say that between school, work (did I mention I've been working 20 hours every week since school started?), and teaching I got them done just in time for the activity at 7. Luckily most of the ladies were proactive and let me know where the mistakes were (because I obviously didn't know) but I had one come up to me after Relief Society today to complain about the mistakes I made. Gee, I'm sorry your address is wrong that I got off the lds.org directory and stayed up all night getting ready for you. Maybe next time update the directory every time you move. In the meantime, I'll make you a new one right quick so you aren't offended (for goodness sake!). But for the most part I think I'll have all the mistakes fixed so the visiting teaching can be perfect next Sunday just in time for everyone to get going for February. 

Here's what they ended up looking like...image 70 of them.

Tuesday we got to hang out with Mom and Dad for lunch with Chase and Rachel. We were slightly rushed due to Chase and I having class but it's always great to see them come to Rexburg. My parents are such wonderful examples of service and work. They have to cross that nasty desert whenever they want to do temple work, and they have to work around my dad's horrible schedule that thankfully slows down in the winter. But no matter their schedules, they still find time to serve in the temple regularly, and I can remember them doing that all while I was growing up. 

Monday I went snowboarding with Chase and Rachel, and Kelsey and Deejay (Kelsey's boyfriend). We went night skiing at Kelly. We had a deal for four hours of skiing for $20 which included a meal. It doesn't beat Bogus, but it was good to hang out with Chase and Rachel, and I hadn't seen Kelsey for ages so it was nice to visit with her. I'm excited for her to serve a mission. She has a very strong testimony and I'm confident her service in New York will help her be a wonderful mother one day. Did I mention she and her boyfriend got called to the exact same mission? No joke they are both reporting to the New York New York South mission. Crazy! When we talked we both agreed that the age change is more than just getting more missionaries; it's about giving everybody more spiritual strength to raise children in this world which seems more and more impossible every day. 

Tomorrow through Wednesday I have interviews with schools from Las Vegas, Nevada and Mesa, Arizona for student teaching. I'm supposed to bring my resume and personal bio to each interview...I guess that means I should make both of those tonight. Ha.