Common Core?

When I was hired back in June, I was under the impression that my school district was switching to Common Core and that I needed to teach by those standards. They even asked me in the interview if I knew about CC. This would be the first year for CC at this school. The state of MO was not to fully implement CC until 14-15 school year, but most schools are implementing it this year.

Since I know that many schools are implementing it, I did not hesitate or question my original thought of teaching straight CC. Even when I met with the outgoing math teacher, she gave me a little bit of resources and they were all geared toward CC. She even gave me a pacing guide for it. So with all the research I have done for lessons and things for CC, I was a getting prepared.

I was at a school meeting yesterday and I found out that all my research was geared toward the wrong thing. While there are still some things I can use to teach my lessons, I need to teach by a different set of standards. I need to teach by MO Grade Level Expectations AND Common Core. I will be teaching both in a crosswalk. I was told that the district will give me a pacing guide but I have yet to receive one and school starts in a little under 2 weeks.

To top it off, the state of MO is one of the few states who are putting their CC implementation on hold because of funding. In the meeting, I was informed that even though they thought the standard tests would be cheaper than the MAP tests they currently use, they will not be. MO doesn't know how they will fund them. There has been so much uproar about the CC standards in my local paper, but it was more opinionated rather than facts. The facts it did state, were nothing like what I heard recently.

This makes for a very stressed teacher because now I don't know what I should teach and when. I am still waiting on the pacing guide from the school. School starts in 10 days for me, the students will be there in 13 days. I need to work really fast because now since things have changed, I am no where near prepared for the start of the school year.

12 more days!

So I have 12 more days until I report to the classroom. I am starting to get nervous. I will only be moving an hour away but I will be away from everyone I know. It will just be my son and I. Today is the last day at my current job at the hospital. We will have a farewell party for me on Friday. I didn't think I would miss this much, but today it's real bittersweet. People are so sad that I am leaving and telling me how much they will miss me, it makes me kind of sad. I am so excited for my future though. I have had a lot of struggle with getting to where I am and it has finally paid off. God is really good. Once I put my faith in him and wanted to teach for him and make a difference, it helped me. I won't go into my religious views or anything but do know that if you trust God, he will deliver.

Back to school, I have a meeting tomorrow and after that I will choose to work in my classroom. I have been there once already trying to get things in order. I went through all of the math stuff already provided for me in the classroom. There are a lot of manipulatives that I can use this year. I hope I can find multiple uses for all of them. I already mentioned in my last post that I will be using Interactive Notebooks (INBs). If you don't know about them, look them up! I have seen so many ideas that I just need to get them in order. I also have a ton of stuff to go through on Pinterest! I have ton's of stuff pinned for the classroom and math, if you want to look at my pins, my site is www.pinterest.com/kddouglas1s

As the days get closer to the start of the school year, I just hope and pray that my first year goes well. I am a young female teacher and I know the students might see me as a friend so I need to get my authority established ASAP. If anyone has any classroom management ideas they would like to share, please do.

New Job!!

I have just been hired as a 7th and 8th grade math teacher for the Hayti R-II school. It is my first job and I am so excited about it.  Most of the tips/blogs I have read, recommend the teacher to create and keep a blog and journal. I will attempt to do this! 

This school is using the common core standards this year and I have done a lot of research but I haven't actually done any lesson plans yet. I have to create a whole year's worth of lesson plans for both grades from scratch since this is the first year of common core implementation. It is a tad overwhelming. 

One thing I have decided to use is Interactive Math Journals! I have gotten a lot of ideas from Katie at Middle School Math Madness! and Brittany at The Teacher Who Hated Math .. Their blogs are designed for middle school math and that is what I will be teaching. I can't wait to go through all the blogs and get their ideas and hopefully implement them!

I am not sure how I will start the first day off. The outgoing teacher said do work. She said get straight into the school year. While I agree, there are things I want to do. I want to have my students help decide rules and consequences because I have found that people say when students help with those, they tend to follow them more. I also want to send a homework assignment for the parents. I have read about this assignment and all the positive feedback from it. (I can't remember where I got it from but it was a lady named Deb.) The homework assignment would be "In 1,000,000,000 words or less, tell me about your child". The feedback that was given was that some parents wrote nothing, while some wrote pages on their child. It is a way that the parents can let me know about their child so that I can teach them better. I know that the district I am going to, there is little to no parental involvement. I want to try to get them involved starting day one. I know that there will be several parents who don't do it, and in that instance, I will allow the child to do it so that I can get to know them better. 

I have so many ideas that I don't know where to begin or fit them in yet. I hope I can get some kind of guidance with making common core lesson plans. 

-KayCee