BOOK MANIA

Okay, so not really book mania so much as a minor book frenzy. I spent about three hours last night organizing my children's books by guided reading level (I discovered I have nearly every level from A-Z with a ridiculous number of J's). I don't know if this is the best organizational method - I may change my mind and organize by lexile level, but I think this gives me at least an idea of what kind of books I have. Why the inordinate number of J's? I have no idea. Also, these were only the fiction books that I have. Not pictured is the pile of non-fiction that I want to sort by subject and the pile of poetry that is going to get it's own little basket. However, I decided that while I have around 150-200 books or so, I want at least double that to feel like I have a well-stocked library.

(My boxes organized by level.) 

Literacy is one of my biggest passions and I definitely want to be a literacy-centered classroom.
However, I know that doesn't simply mean having a ton of books. I need to have quality literature and be familiar with it. As of now, I have a ton of books in there that I've never read (a lot of my collection was donated or I bought a lot of 'pretty' books at a huge book sale). I want to be able to recommend books to my students and hold book clubs and effective guided reading groups. All of which, I know, is quite an undertaking and realistically, I won't be able to do all of it in my classroom as a first-year teacher. But that doesn't mean I won't try to do some of those things. At the very least, I need to be familiar with the books I have as well as current children's literature.

So, here are some book related goals I am setting for myself:

1. Read 100 children's and YA titles a year. Most kid's books aren't extraordinarily long or difficult reads, so I should be able to accomplish this.
2. Bulk up on literacy content knowledge and read one professional development book concerning literacy a month. One a month should be reasonable. 
3. Cultivate websites and read articles discussing literacy and start a resource bank for yourself. 
4. Start collecting more diverse titles featuring a variety of ethnicities, skin colors, genders and sexualities. My second passion next to literacy is diversity and a culture of acceptance and understanding. I believe a lot of that starts with reading books that feature people of all kinds. 

These are some pretty scary goals, but I feel really confident in my ability to pursue them. Even if I don't quite reach every goal, I think that it will get me started in the right direction. 

Drumroll Please

I've never been a particularly good blogger/journal-writer/record-keeper of any kind. Filling drawers and bookshelves in every home I've ever lived in are probably about three hundred partially filled journals (partially filled meaning two or three pages) and littering the internet are dozens of blogs started and promptly abandoned. Let's be honest: I just have no time. Or, if I have time, I just get bored and move on to the next exciting project. But this is a blog I'm determined to keep up with, though I am setting some guidelines for myself.

1. Do not give yourself any kind of requirement on how much you have to blog. You hate required writing. You may think you like required writing, but really you hate it. 
2. Stay anonymous. It's better for you. 
3. Length does not matter - this isn't REQUIRED WRITING. See guideline number one.

Mainly, I'm going to be using this to talk about student teaching, success and failures, to post resources for myself and basically keep myself sane. Clearly, I like to set impossible goals. 

On to more interesting things!

I have quite the class this year. I'm in a Title I fifth grade classroom. I didn't think I'd enjoy fifth grade all that much but wow, I do, I really do. They're weird and funny and heartbreaking, though I think any class, no matter what grade, is much the same in that regard. But there's something different about older kids. They understand more about the world, they're sharp and intuitive and they don't need you all the time, but most of them still want to make you happy. 

They make me wonder if I could teach middle school (though part of me cringes at the admission). It used to be that I could never even imagine teaching middle school, but I think that was due to having a horrible time when I was a middle schooler. Who knows what will happen in the future.

Today I taught my sixth lesson this semester, leaving me with two lessons left (!!!!!!!!). Time flies absurdly fast. Graduating in May still seems so far off, even though in reality it's only around six months (holy cow). 

Today we did a hands-on lesson involving ocean currents which used a pie pan filled with water and pepper. I was nervous, I'm not going to lie. My professor was observing me, I was stressed about my non-English speaking darlings, my sweet kids who turn me inside out by not participating and the angels who have a hard time grasping most concepts. I love them all, but I really just needed them to function like a well-oiled machine in front of my professor, when most days they're usually a few screws short of a full toolbox. I personally know my trouble kids and I know who can do what and how they're going to perform, but my professor doesn't and that's a little nerve-wracking. 

But all that worry was for naught. Everything that wasn't as good as I wanted it to be was entirely my fault, which I can deal with. It's real life, I'm not going to have a perfect lesson every time. However, my professor and my cooperating teacher scored me well and I have a handle on things I need to fix for next time. 

Until next time,

Ms. Bee