It Doesn't Actually Get Easier

I had a few different interactions this week that got me thinking. I know that I have been guilty of saying this as well, but we really need to stop telling teachers (especially new teachers) that it gets easier. Here me out...

The first couple years of a teacher's career is about learning WHAT to teach. You focus on learning the standards, learning the curriculum, working to build lesson plans, and figure out how to manage the classroom. Often during those first few years you either rely heavily on others to give you lessons/resources or you rely heavily on using the curriculum as it is handed to you. And guess what, this is absolutely fine as you navigate the world of education.

However, after those first couple of years is when people think that teaching gets easier. There may be some aspects of the job that get easier, for example, classroom management and organization. But now a shift occurs. By year 3-4, the focus needs to shift from what to teach to HOW to teach it best to your students. Assuming that you have stayed in the same grade and the standards or curriculum haven't changed, teachers must now think about how they can teach the content better. You have learned that there is not curriculum/program that is perfect. So at this point teachers will begin to put in extra work to take the resources given to them and make it better to fit the needs of the students in their classroom.

Even veteran teachers have to work hard if they want to truly do a good job teaching their students. Each year we are given a set of students. This group of students is never the same as the year before. They have different interests, different learning styles, different abilities, and the list goes on. As a teacher we must use what is given to us or even what we have created previously and adapt it for the current class. Just this past week I had to put in some work to think about how to teach the topic of factors. I used my resources from last year and it just wasn't working for my current students. I did some research and tried some new things. If I wanted to take the easy way out then I could have just said oh well and kept moving forward without my students understanding.

While teaching may not get easier year after year, what teachers do gain is experience. This experience helps you work more efficiently, helps you make better decisions, and helps you build your catalog of resources for you to store away for those times when you have to pivot and teach something a different way.

If it doesn't get easier, then why do we do it? Because of the kids. Year after year, watching students learn and grow is so rewarding.

To all the new teachers, hang in there. While I won't say that it gets easier, I will say that it does get better. As you gain that experience, you will learn what works and what doesn't and you will be able to make better decisions that will affect your students and yourself. 

**Side note - I know that everyone's experience teaching is different. I have been in schools where the climate was toxic, the support from admin didn't exist, and things just never felt like they would get better. I also know that teaching is not for everyone. The words above are my experience and for all of us to think about keeping things realistic when talking to new teachers.

Classroom Library Organization

This year I decided to redo my classroom library organization. Books are organized by genre or by series, so I created genre posters to help kids learn about the different types of books. New organization means new resources to share!

Book Buddy

My classroom library has been my pride and joy since I first started teaching. Facebook Marketplace, yard sales, and McKay's Used Book store are great places to look to get used books. If you work in a title 1 school you can also sign up for First Book Marketplace to get new books for really great prices.

I can be a little Type A, so I also use an app called Book Buddy to keep track of my books. You can easily add books to the inventory by scanning the barcode on the back of the book or doing a search online. You can set it up to have students check out books from your classroom library, but I use it more often to see if I have a book that a student wants to read. Unfortunately, the app is only available on Apple products and it does cost a one-time fee of $4.99, but compared to the free versions it was worth it in my opinion.

Book Bin Labels

I created the book bin labels to match the genre posters below. I like to organize my classroom library by genre or content area. The chapter books will each have a bin for the genre, unless I have enough of a book series to create their own bin. The picture books are organized by content area (ie. math, social studies). Click the link above to download your own copy of the labels.

Genre Posters

I created these posters as a fun way to learn about the different genres. I wanted them to look like movie posters and Canva made that possible! Click the link above to download your own copy of the posters.

Back to School Math Activities

Here are some math activities to do the first week of school that allow students to get to know each other by working together and you to get to know your students through observation and conferring.

Set up your math classroom community through teaching math norms. I use the math norms that we used when I taught in Maryland. They come from the SFUSD and can be found here.

image from SFUSD

Each day I do a different activity to help students practice that norm. Some of the activities include:

• Use tangrams to complete different challenges (there are plenty online for all age levels for free!)
• make sure to have a discussion afterwards about the challenges and how it feels when we make mistakes or when math gets frustrating and what students can do when this happens
• this is also a time to discuss expectations for math tools

• Introduce math/number talks to get students talking about each other's thinking (here are some examples to get started)
• use this time to set up routines and expectations for math/number talks and discuss stems students can use to agree/disagree, add on, or explain
• here is a resource of sentence stems students can put on their desk or math notebook

• Use an activity from Building Thinking Classrooms to get students working together and show off their problem solving abilities
• This is also a great time for the teacher to model the asking questions norm and have students practice asking questions as well

• Give students a task that allows them to model using multiple representations. This will look different depending on the grade level and your curriculum as this is a great time to kick off your first unit with some review
• At my current school where I teach 4th grade, we have students use 36 tiles and ask them to design rectangles that use all 36 tiles. Students can attempt to make a connection to multiplication and arrays from grade 3.
• You could also give students a word problem and tell them that they can solve it using any strategy they would like and then have students share

• The last thing I do during the first week of school to get to know my students is a math screener. I use this on the day I introduce that math norm that answers are important, but they are not the math.
• I explain to students that if they don't show me their thinking using math then I can't help if they make an error.

• I also use the first week of school to introduce math games. I choose a topic that students should already be familiar with so that we can focus on practicing the expectations for math games. This is a great time to again practice routines for getting materials and cleaning up

Top 5 FREE Tech Tools for Teachers

I wanted to share my current, Summer 2024, top favorite tools that are FREE!

www.flaticon.com

This website has almost any icon that you can imagine. Most of the icons come in a black and white version as well as two different color versions. The free version of this website allows you to use the icons for personal use or commercial use with attribution. The paid version will allow you to use icons without attribution. It will also allow you to customize the icons by changing the colors. I use this website while creating things for my classroom ALL the time.

https://ufli.education.ufl.edu/foundations/toolbox/

If you have been learning about the Science of Reading/LETRS training, then this website will be your best friend. The toolbox website has slides for every single phonics lesson starting with the basic alphabet letter sounds to all the way to words with prefixes and suffixes. Along with the slides are decodable passages for each lesson, home practice activities, and roll and read practice pages. My school also purchased the manuals that come from UFLI which gives you a the wording to use for the lessons, but the resources on this website are all completely free and I used them for months without the manual.

www.canva.com

This website is not new by any means, but it is a website that all teachers should sign up for. I had played around with this website before, but this year I started using it for a lot more. I used it to create mini anchor charts for my students' notebooks, pages for students to capture notes, icons, slide backgrounds, and even had my students use the video editor tool to create a documentary for one of their writing projects. My goal this year is to use it more with the students and explore even more of the features that it has to offer.

https://www.briskteaching.com/

Our digital learning coach shared this tool with me this school year and while I haven't used all of the tools yet, it was definitely a gamechanger for creating resources for my students. When you install this extension it places an icon at the bottom right of your screen. My favorite use was going to a website that I wanted my students to explore and using the button to change the level of the text. It would take the website information and put it into a Google Doc while changing the text complexity to the grade level of your choice. Once you have the article in a Google Doc, you can then have the extension create a quiz to go along with the article. The free version of this tool will also allow you to create lesson plans, rubrics, translations, newsletters, etc. There is a paid version that will give you even more resources, but the free version has been pretty awesome so far.

https://www.boddlelearning.com/

I discovered this learning website about halfway through the school year, so I decided to start having my students explore it and test it out for the next year. One thing that I love it has both math and reading activities. Students take a placement type test at the beginning that gives them a starting point. I don't know how accurate this is because some of my students were doing kindergarten/first grade math and they were clearly way above that level. I think it did adjust as they completed lessons, but that is something I will investigate further when I use it this coming school year. You can turn on/off different features so that the focus can be on the lessons rather than all of the extra stuff. The main thing I did with it was assign students lessons based on the standards that we were learning during whole group. As students complete assignments, if they need help there are videos that will explain how to do whatever the standard the question is on. One thing I will say is that the students were extremely engaged.

Home.

My school year reflection is a little later than usually this year. We went away to the mountains for my son's birthday and Father's Day and then I had a major surgery so things have been just a little busy.

I also didn't want to rush this reflection because this year was different. This was my second school since I moved to North Carolina two years ago. I loved my school last year. I worked with amazing people, but I knew about halfway through the year that I wasn't going to stay there because it was too far from home and so I put a wall up. I changed my mindset. I showed up, I did my job, and I was cordial to people I worked with, but I didn't attempt to make lasting relationships.

I wanted my new school to be different. I wanted this school to be my new home. A place where I want to stay for an extended time because let's be honest moving classrooms and schools year after year is absolutely no fun. As soon as I met the principal and math coach at the job fair I knew this was the place I wanted to be. I even remember the principal telling me to go talk to other schools and if I thought it would be a good fit to come back. So I did and after 5 minutes I was back at her table saying sign me up, I want the job!

Since I was hired in April, I was invited the next week to stop by my new school to check it out before the school year ended. Right away I felt comfortable there. The people were inviting, the students were welcoming, and everything seemed focused on the students and teachers and what they needed.

Fast forward to August and the excitement and nerves of the new year. I remember showing up the first day and not even knowing where my classroom was to having multiple teachers working together to unload my car, finding furniture to put in my room, and showing me all around the building. I know it's cliché but the culture of a school is truly the first thing you notice when you walk into a building.

This year was a whirlwind. Being in a new grade level, still somewhat new state, new county, new school meant learning all of the new things. I would be lying if I said that the beginning of the year wasn't a struggle. It took time to learn what worked best for my students and myself. I feel like I changed things a million times.

It also took time to feel comfortable advocating for what was best for my students. Being the new person often means being a rule follower and teaching how and what the state/county wants you to. But I also know as a veteran teacher that boxed curriculums don't work for all kids. Once I got in my groove of using curriculum as a tool and remembered to put the kids first things got much better.

It also helped that the fourth grade team is freaking amazing. When I was feeling lost or overwhelmed they were my safe place. They were easy to talk to, full of resources, and always willing to listen. I started building relationships around the school. It started to feel like home. This is a place that I want to not only come back to next year, but year after year.

So as this year wrapped up and I got into summer mode the word that just kept coming to mind was home. While home can have different meanings for everyone, to me it is a place of comfort. It is a place where I (and everyone!) feel welcome. I am proud to call this school my home. I am also REALLY excited to not move all of my stuff again! Ha!

Post-Winter Break Reset

January is the time that many teachers do a reset. After students have been away for a week or two, it is always important to review the expectations of the classroom. 

However, I also use this time to reset my classroom space as well. We are almost halfway done with the school year and I have gotten to know my students better as learners. Honestly, I like to change my space around throughout the entire year, but this is the time that I reflect and think about what my learners truly need on the walls, what learning spaces they need, and what materials they need.

I rearranged my tables and desks to give students options for learning spaces. I have two exercise balls and I have stools that students can use if they want a break from their chairs. I also allow them to sit on the carpet whenever they would like. I am wanting to move towards flexible seating in the entire room, but due to the amount of money this involves, I am slowly working on getting the needed furniture for that.

I also redid my wall space. Being in a new grade level means that it takes time to create the resources that I typically use in my classroom. Things like anchor charts, vocabulary cards, etc. When you teach the same grade level for 9 years, you accumulate items that you can reuse over and over. Luckily, moving from 5th to 4th has allowed me to reuse some items.

One thing I have been working on is redoing my math vocabulary cards that I hang on the wall as we learn about a new topic. I finally decided to sit down and update my math vocabulary for the year. All of my vocabulary cards have the vocabulary word, a definition, an image, and sometimes an example.

Vocabulary Cards:

4th Grade

5th Grade

Connect with me on Twitter and Instagram!

@mrspotterteach

One Word: Simplicity

I have never really been a big resolution person. Like most people, I make a list of things to accomplish and never reach them. (shout out to those who actually accomplish their goals!) However, over the past few years I have done the one word challenge to live by throughout the year.

This year I picked the word SIMPLICITY.

During winter break, I put the laptop away and truly focused on resting and relaxing. While doing this I was able to think about life: myself, my kids, my husband, our house, and work. As I was doing some cleaning before our guests arrived I started to focus on STUFF. Part of my anxiety deals with clutter. When there is STUFF everywhere I get overwhelmed and instead of being able to clean it up, I just shut down and leave it there. This triggers the anxiety of feeling like our house is cluttered. 

So I decided that this year I am going to focus more on living simple. I'm going to go through our house room by room and decide if the STUFF has a place and purpose, or is it just taking up space. I turned my closet hangers around like people suggest and anything that I haven't worn during this year is getting donated. Those pants that I keep holding onto because I am sure one day I will be back down to my pre-kid size, gone. 

I also felt this way as I sat and watched my kids open presents at Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love watching them open presents and will never take that way from them. But there were SO MANY! (our families are large and people enjoy buying them things) For birthdays we have already made the shift to just one or two gifts and focusing more on experiences, and I think I am ready for that to happen during Christmas as well. I think even the kids get overwhelmed with so many new things at once that they end up not playing with some of the things.

Honestly, one thing that sparked this idea of simplicity is the craze of people buying Stanley cups. I'm sure they are amazing cups, but I have a hard time paying that price for a cup when I already have a cabinet full of them. So I plan to carry this "simple life" over to purchasing items as well. Next time I want to click that Buy Now button on Amazon, fill up my Target cart and place a pick up order, or fill my cart with impulse buys at Walmart, I'm going to stop and think do I truly need this? Not only will this help with my desire to reduce clutter and simplify my life, it will also help save money in the long run! 

I decided that this idea of simplicity can also carry over to my school-life as well. I decided that I can be more intentional about the activities that I have my kids do. Less copies, more hands-on learning. Less busy work, more activities/practice games. Less focus on grades, more focus on feedback. Feedback is something that I struggle with sometimes and it goes back to that idea of anxiety/clutter. Sometimes I end up giving more assignments that require feedback than is truly needed. Then these assignments begin to pile up waiting for me to give them feedback. Instead of being able to tackle the pile, I put it off due to anxiety. Then I realize that it has piled up for so long that even if I did sit down and give them feedback it wouldn't be relevant to their current learning anymore. This is where the more intentional activities/assignments comes into play. Understanding that some activities are just practice and don't require feedback, while others can be used to assess learning and provide students with an idea of how they are doing.

We live in a world that is always on the go. We live in a world that loves material things. However, I am making the choice to slow down and live with less this year.

I always enjoy seeing what other people have picked for their one word for the year. So what is yours?

PS - this word also comes from a book that I read during 2020. Our local library was doing mystery bundles from the library where they would pick 3 random books for you to read since people could not go into the library to browse the shelves. The book is called 7 Days to Simplicity by Jen Hatmaker and it also really helps to put things into perspective.