Home Office Update

Since my first home office tour post, I had to make a change, and I'm excited to share it.  One of my favorite things about how I re-did my home office was hanging the baskets on the wall to create more storage space.  This worked well, until the 3M hooks I was using didn't hold up.  I initially thought that the baskets were too heavy, so I purchased a larger set of 3M hooks.  These didn't hold up either.  Now I'm not sure if the baskets are too heavy, or if the adhesive was affected by the weather because we had a very cold winter, and baskets were mounted to an exterior wall.  I decided to instead try using picture hooks.  (I don't want to jinx it, but so far, so good.  I only made this change on Wednesday.)

The part that I'm most excited about is my new bulletin boards!  (You can see the baskets on the side.)

I bought the bulletin tiles at Target for $8.  (Those are hexagon bulletin tiles!  Hexagons!  I'm too excited about that.)  I've been wanting some kind of bulletin board solution for the wall in front of the desk ever since I finished re-organizing the home office.  I also knew that I had to do something to make the bulletin boards pretty, just because.  So my love of papercrafting came in very handy.

For the top left bulletin board, I used a blue floral washi tape to create stripes.  Washi tape doesn't adhere to cork very well, so I left extra tape on both sides and used my Tim Holt'z Tiny Attacher to staple each end of the tape to the back of the board.  For the top right board, I outlined the edges with washi tape.  Then I strung three pieces of twine across the board and secured them to the back with the Tiny Attacher.  I put a clothespin on one strand.  I'll put more up to hang things.  I might make some triangle bunting for one of the strands.   For the bottom left board, I cut a piece of paper to fit half of the board.  I adhered it with Mod Podge, and then outlined the boarder with washi tape.  For the bottom right board, I covered the entire board with paper, again using Mod Podge.

I love how this project came out.  It brightens up my whole office space, and will hopefully keep me motivated/focused when I start planning for next school year.

My Teach Like a Pirate Thoughts

I began typing the following post this past winter.  I'm just getting around to finishing it now.  I have since finished reading the book, and I do recommend reading it if you haven't yet. 

Student Survey Reflection

This post references the student survey I posted about yesterday.

I was pleased that my students were honest for the most part.  Some decided to write silly answers, but that was to be expected.  Most responses were pretty standard, but a few really told me something about myself as a teacher and how I run the class.

One of the most telling prompts was "The best part about Ms. Beebe's class is ___________."  I learned that students like the notebooks, test corrections, and the class atmosphere.  I have a hard time motivating and engaging students in the math that we do.  I try to compensate by being enthusiastic and making class as fun as possible.  It's evident through the survey that I've been achieving my goal, but I need to work on finding ways to make the students enjoy the math as much as they enjoy me.

Another enlightening prompt was "Ms. Beebe is different from other teachers because ____________."  It worries me that students think their other teachers don't care about them passing or about them as people.  Many of the things they said that makes me different, I'm sure other teachers in our school also do.  Students just may not realize it.

My favorite prompt to read about was "I always felt ____________ in Ms. Beebe's class because ____________________."  From this prompt I learned that I've created the class atmosphere I've always wanted.  I'm ecstatic that my students feel happy, comfortable, welcomed, and protected.  This was one of my favorite prompts and will definitely be repeated in the future.

I was a little concerned about the "Ms. Beebe is the type of teacher who treats students like _____________________."  So many students said that I treat my students like they're my friends.  Everything I've been taught is that it is wrong for you to be on a friends level with your students because it can create classroom management problems.  I'm coming to realize that it is difficult to put that wall up with students that are only 10-13 years younger than you.  I'm easy for students to relate with, and friendly, and it comes naturally that they see me as being a friend to them.  I guess I should embrace it because it may not last as I get older.  I have to maintain focus on fostering mutual respect between my students and I to curb any possible classroom management issues.

One thing I noticed about the surveys is when reading them by class, I saw many similar responses by each class.  It really framed the experiences of the class and that each class was different based on the time of day and the students in the class. 

Here's What...

I've been unable to blog for months.  It's been killing me.  I've had so much to share, and couldn't. 

At first I was completely unmotivated to blog.  This lasted for 3 weeks.  But then, when I had something worth sharing, I was too busy.  Then I was silenced. 

I received an email from a company (at least I think it's a company) that I've never heard of (and that no one I asked had ever heard of) claiming copyright infringement because of my blog's original title.  I changed my title well over a year ago because it no longer fit my goal for the blog (I went from blogging for secondary teachers in general -because everything is for elementary teachers -and then decided to blog more specifically about math).  (I thought the original title was kind of cheesy anyway.)

The most frustrating part was being treated like I'd intentionally done something wrong when I had no idea that anyone had ever used that name before.  I sincerely felt that the message was bullying.  Now at this point, I know that I was probably taking this more personally than I was supposed to, but this was how I was feeling when it happened. 

Until I was able to go back and edit every picture that had the original blog title referenced in it, I refrained from blogging to avoid legal problems.  I simply didn't have time to sit and go through every post and edit every photo and re-post every post. 

Today was the first day of state exams, and our first day without students.  Therefore, today was my first day to come home and have nothing that needs to be done for tomorrow.  (This part of the school year is so glorious.)  So tonight, I sat down and edited all the photos that had the original title in them.  So now if you were to go through my original posts, you may notice that the photos have splotches to cover up the title.  I hate the way it looks, but there was no other way to edit the photos without cropping them, re-framing them, and then re-adding the text.  Ugh.

The good news is that I can finally start blogging again.  I have plenty of posts sitting in my drafts, and plenty of posts that I've been wanting to write.  I'm glad that I've overcome this small hurdle and can now move on.