Mrs. Ruiz’s Blog

Well I am back again!  That makes two days in a row!  I wonder how many more I will be able to blog in a row?

So far I am greatly enjoying teaching third grade.  I really didn’t think I would hate it, and I am confident enough in my teaching abilities to know that I would make the best of it even if it things did go south, but thankfully they have not.  I really do believe it was time for a change in my teaching career and I am glad my principal (Chris Ridge) had the insightfullness to pose a challenge to me.  I could never turn down a good challenge!  What is funny though is that I had always been curious about thrid grade, but never found any real reason to mention it to any principal I have ever worked for.  I have teased Chris before about having super powers, and him seemingly knowing that I had this secret desire about third grade just solidifies my belief that he does indeed have super powers (super hearing and invisibility on the short list…).

I’ve noticed that third graders tend to be a bit more squirrly, random and chatty than 4th and 5th graders, but they are learing my likes and dislikes very quickly thank goodness!  I enjoy their enthusiasum, curiosity, innocence, lack of budding attitude problems, and overall love of learning, school, and their teacher!

Tomorrow is Back to School night and I am looking forward to meeting all their parents.  I am sure I will have even more to say tomorrow night if I am not too tired to write about it!  Tomorrow is going to be a long (but fun) day!

As for the title of this post, a colleague and 2nd grade teacher made a comment to me on my Facebook page about me slowly becoming a primary teacher over time, succumbing to that teaching style.  I had made a status comment about not being able to think of anything “deep” to say about my status, and she said…

“Those 3rd graders are draining you of all your “deep” thinking ability…. First, comes the loss of deep thoughts. Next, your abilities to speak in anything but mono syllables. Then, slowly students crying will be a ordinary experience. Finally, then you will officially become a primary teacher.”

My initial and gut reaction to that comment was “NO!”  *laughs*   I had immediately thought of Star Wars, and resisting the dark side, and using the force…  ;)  I know she was being silly and I got a kick out of her comment, but it really did make me think, and fuelled this post. If anything, my 3rd graders are challenging me to think deeply in new ways, rather than draining me of deep thoughts. I continue to use “big” words on these guys just like I have my other students. Former 5th grade students would complain to me all the time about my use of “big” words and wondered  aloud why I just couldn’t say it plainer.  I am a HUGE fan of words and academic language, so I never water it down, but I don’t leave them wondering, if I use a word they don’t get, we explore and discover it together, and those are some of my favorite teachable moments.  As for students crying, I really was concerned I would cause a lot of crying with my rigid intermediate ways, but I am happy to report I haven’t made any children cry this year thus far!  I really never have been one to cause a student to cry, but with the younger ones I was concerned.

I often remind my 3rd graders that they have a 5th grade teacher for a teacher this year, and that we all need to adjust to each other.  I am remembering primary skills from my 1st year teaching when I taught 2nd grade and learning new skills from my wonderful 3rd grade team.  I am impressed with my ability to take all the intermediate level training I have received over the past 9 years and apply it to a primary setting, not writing any of it off as not applicable now that I teach 3rd.  I have told my current students that they will be in “intermediate” next year, so it is not only my job to teach them their primary level standards, but to prepare them for the intermediate grades much in the same way I prepared my 5th graders for middle school.

So for now, with only a few days into a new school year teaching primary, I still feel in my heart I am an intermediate teacher who happens to be teaching primary, but I enjoy my new assignment and the renewed energy my 3rd graders have given me for teaching with their pure enthusiasum and excitement.  Really what it boils down to for me is that I am a teacher who loves what she does and the terms “primary” and “intermediate” are just labels.

Okay, so a friend pointed out my blog needed updating, so here I am!

I have started the new school year and am loving it.  My principal offered me an exciting change I embraced willingly.  Instead of continuing to teach 4th or 5th grade, I am now teaching 3rd!  This is my 10th year teaching, and I’ve only taught a primary grade (2nd) once and that was my first year teaching!  I feel so much more prepared for primary now with so much more teaching experience behind me.  I am also able to teach with two of my long time friends and colleagues and come to a strong team overall.

So let’s see how blogging goes this year.  It obviously isn’t my forte, but maybe if people left comments I would find that encouraging….

Ok my initial frustration/irritation has subsided and I’ve decided to rewrite some of what was lost in my 1st post of the day. (Lucky you!)

What I had said before that got eaten by the blog monster was that part of my renewed passion for blogging is to get in the habit of regular writing.  I have always had this deep seeded urge to write, but never sure about what and doubtful that anyone else would care to read it.  So I thought, why blog?  It would be like talking to myself, but I guess I do that already, so what’s the harm?

One of the huge motivators for this is that I am pursing my National Board Certification.  If you have been through this process you are well aware of the amount of writing involved.  Now I realize National Board writing and blogging are really not in the same leauge of writing with the previous being way more academic than my blogging style, but my hope was that through regular blogging I would be less reticent about writing for my portfolio.  As of this point I have yet to write anything significant for my portfolio, but I am in super planning and executing mode, so I know I will have something on paper for my portfolio very soon.  I had hoped to post it here, so I guess it is a good thing that Steve’s 4th assignment was about protecting your content.  I may have something worth stealing one day. haha

Ok I hope the blog monster doesn’t eat this one! (Mrs. Ruiz crosses her fingers…)

I just posted my blog and it appears to have gotten eaten in the process and is not there.  I hate when that happens.  I guess I will have to give you the gist of it…

Assignment 4 was to use Creative Commons to obtain a content license.  I did so and got this:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

I said some other stuff, but I am too frustrated at the moment to redo it.  Oh well.

So let’s see what Steve has in store for me today…

Assignment 3:  Write a thank you note

Hmmmm, sounds simple enough, I think I have written a few of those before.

Since I am a new blogger, Steve says “Pick out a blogger who in some way influenced your decision to begin blogging and write them a thank you note.”  Well, that would have to be Steve!

So I would like to publicly thank Steve Dembo for the amazing work that he does with Discovery Education.  He has repeatedly shared his techic knowledge with scores of teachers and we have all benefited tremendously from it.  I think it was a wonderful idea when he came up with this whole series on blogging.  I have always wanted to be a better blogger and just never knew where to start.  He made it simple and fun.  So thank you Steve for all you do for bloggers and teachers and techies everywhere!

30D2BBB

Yay!  I made it to day 2!  What could today’s assignment be about?  Playing in traffic?  Oh, site traffic.

I have 3 websites I have created and maintain, the oldest of these being 3 years old.  I hate to admit that I never bothered to look at my stats…ever.  I didn’t see the point.  My oldest site is my class website.  I created it strictly for classroom use.  I knew my kids were using it because I made them…those were my stats.   I think I may have also ignored stats on it before because I don’t think my host (Start Logic - Great host!) had very easy to read reports.  They have recently done a revamp and the visitor report is awesome and easy to read.  I only came to know this because I started a side business and hooked up with a consultant that forced me to look at my stats.  So that is kind of what Steve is talking about with site traffic, only in this case specific to this blog.  So I’ve got to add some special thingys to it to start getting some data.  I guess I figure no one is really reading this except for Lori and Mark when I started it a several months back.  So I guess I know I’ve had at least 2 hits! haha

Ok, I’ve got Site Meter all set up now.  I will have to check it later to see if I got it going right.  Now onto Google Analytics…  Oh, that one is scary!  haha  I signed up for it easily enough, but then it threw this large amount of HTML code at me with some cryptic note about posting that code on every page I wanted to track….  Uh….what?  I think I like Site Meter better, was MUCH more user friendly.  Guess I will only be going with one tracker for the moment!

I am a terrible blogger.  I really must get better at this as it is something I want to do.  I have always kept a journal, several as a matter of fact.  I guess my digital accent is too strong and the common concept of blogging has always seemed a bit too public for me.  Anyway, Steve Dembo from Discovery did a series back in November called “30 days to becoming a better blogger.”  I meant to do it then, and didn’t, so here I am doing it now.

Assignment 1:  The “About Page”

I think I had this set up, but I am not sure now, so I will have to go check.  Ok I checked, it was terrible, surprise surprise.  So I made it better.  Check it out by clicking the “About” tab above.  See you tomorrow for day 2!

Hey everyone! It has been over a week since I blogged last!  What a bad blogger I am!  There has just been so much going on!  As is with life in general there are ups and downs.  So as always I will focus on teaching here. 

Having a combination class is a lot of work.  I am not complaining, I am just stating a fact.  I strive to deliver quality instruction that meets state standards and utilize the district approved curriculum, in a way that will engage, enrich, and motivate my students.  This is no small task.  I know I can’t teach perfectly all the time and it frustrates me when a lesson doesn’t come together as I would have liked.  I have learned to reflect on my teaching to refine my practices and sometimes I need more reflection time than others.  I feel as thought the class is coming into a rhythm now that the new school year is into it’s second full week.  We will have Response to Instruction starting August 25th, which will change things a bit more for our class rhythm, but I know it will be for the better.  I will have more opportunities to work with each grade level in isolation and be more like a small 4th grade (12 students) or small 5th grade (17 students) class.  I feel strengthened by the fact that I know my administration is behind me and looking out for my combination class as much as possible.  Finding the balance between 2 grade levels curriculum’s has proven to be a challenge, but it is not impossible.  I believe it is just challenging my imagination more than it has been challenged in the past.  I am having to find creative ways to blend the material or creative ways to keep one grade level meaningfully engaged in a relevant task while I work with the other grade level.  Fortunately for me I have technology on my side and I am drawing on the many things I have learned from the DEN.  My students are just crazy about blogging and so much more than any other class I have had.  The love to post, reply to forum topics, vote in polls, and upload and comment on their favorite photos.  They will be webquesting soon as well and I look forward to the projects they will create. 

Overall there is so much to think about as a teacher in planning for your class, and for the combination class there is even more.

Our district has adopted a new math curriculum - Houghton Mifflin California Math.  I am not at all used to it and haven’t been to an orientation on it yet, so using it today was a little uncomfortable.  It isn’t that I don’t know the material, but rather how the text lays it out and what is expected of the kids.  So today’s math lesson was a little bumpy and I am hoping the kids didn’t get confused.  If so, I have updated my class website with some links to math videos on today’s concepts on the “Math” link.  We will be revisiting today’s lessons tomorrow and checking for understanding.

Oh my goodness!  I have never went to a teacher training and gotten a physical workout!  The SPARKS training I went to yesterday felt like a 6 hour work out and I loved it!  I can’t wait to start exercising with my students!  SPARK stands for Sports, Play, & Active Recreation for Kids, and that it is!  This program has been adopted district wide and all teachers are being trained on it.  I love that our district has adopted this program, it is long over due.  I’ve missed having s structured PE program since we lost our PE teachers roughly 7 years ago.  So add one more subject to my “multiple subjects” credential: PE!  If you want to know more about the SPARKS program, you can visit their website: http://www.sparkpe.org.