Our Annual Mesilla Plaza Field Trip

If you teach in Las Cruces, hopefully you're aware of a fantastic historical opportunity right in our own backyard. I'm talking about Mesilla. Mesilla is a window into the past.

Its plaza quite literally takes you back into the 1800s, being more or less frozen in time. If you're like me, and you work close by, you can take free walking field trips over to the plaza area. There are many opportunities available there, including the San Albino Basilica, J. Paul Taylor Museum, and the Fountain Theater, not to mention opportunities like touring La Posta de Mesilla and the Double Eagle Restaurant. Each of these locations offers its own historical opportunities.

Each year, I take my grade level on a short walk from our school to the plaza. We are met on the plaza by Mr. Taylor and the people from the monument that will exist in his house eventually. Our students head off in groups to tour San Albino Basilica, and discuss its history (we strictly discuss the history of the building and the surrounding area, no mention of religion is made during this discussion). Students enter the house of Mr. Taylor, and are taken back through the many rooms of this vast home, which will be a state monument in due time. We also tour the Fountain Theater, the oldest movie theater in the state of New Mexico. Finally, we eat lunch at La Posta, discuss the history of its building, and complete a scavenger hunt on the plaza.

This day is one the kids remember, and one we prepare well for. In 5th grade, we study United States history, so the discussion of the Civil War era height of Mesilla, and the long and storied history of the buildings and happenings in this area fit right in with what we teach.

So this year we will make our way over there in late October. The weather is usually great that time of year.

I realize that this post and the attached document will mean little to 99% of the teachers who read it, but I am putting it on here regardless, even if it ends up being for my own future reference.

What I'm including here is a two page reading about the history of Mesilla, a pdf document you can access HERE, and a 4 page scavenger hunt of Mesilla Plaza, which you can access in pdf format HERE.

The Giver End of Book Collaborative Class Projects

The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is a book I have posted about before, in a book review I did in 2008, and just a few months ago on the pages of this blog, in a post shrewdly titled The Giver, by Lois Lowry: Some Great Ideas for Teachers. 

As of today, September 28th, my class is nearly done with the book. In fact, we will finish the story in just a few more days. When that time comes, I plan on having my class complete a series of projects. The big push in my school district right now is collaborative learning / cooperative learning (something I've always used consistently in my classroom). It is harder to find opportunities for collaboration in reading class, especially as it relates to literature, but I've come up with a little something that is appropriate for the 5th grade classroom, and I call it simply the end of book collaboration projects.

In this, there are five projects that students can participate in. There is a mega triorama display, a collection of art work based on the story, a classroom imagining of the book of rules, advertisements to visit the community we know as "sameness," and the opportunity to re-imagine the ending, or expand upon the ending of the book. 

These projects give students the opportunity to work in their strengths, be it art, writing, or simply thinking creatively. The pdf document that I have created for this project includes a self-check for students to use, and a scoring rubric.

One word of caution here, if your students haven't finished the book, do not show them this document, it includes spoilers that would ruin the ending. This also holds true for you, the teacher. If you're reading this book for the first time, stay away from the document until you're done, I'd hate to ruin the ending for anyone. 

OK, so now for what you came for. To download this document in pdf format, simply click HERE. 

Book Report Idea: Book Report Sandwiches

My students are learning to love to read. I say learning because like so many other students, they don't see the joy in reading when it's been reduced to worksheets, basal readers, and isolated skill work.

I focus on letting my students read silently every day for 20 minutes, and when I do this, I'm reminded of my all time favorite class, 7th grade Literature with Ms. Gossett. This class was very simple, she had hundreds and hundreds of books available. We were allowed to read anything we wanted as long as it was within a year of our level below or higher. That was the whole class, we read and read and read, and produced book reports in different formats when we were done. That was the class that I actually read a novel for the first time, and I was hooked.

It's just sad that I didn't have that experience until 7th grade, and this was an advanced level course. How many students never get this opportunity?

So, to make a long story short, I ask my students to read and find something they enjoy. Of course, it's important to tie this reading into something tangible, in our case, isolated skills taught within the literary experience.

When my students are done with a book, they must produce a book report of some sort. I recently come across a great format that my entire class is "eating up," and that is the book report sandwich. This gives you the different areas of the report as bread, lettuce, tomatoes, etc., and each different ingredient of the sandwich. As I said, I came across this and can take no credit for it. I found this idea on the website for Mystic Valley Regional Chart School, and you can access this great .pdf file, it is called Sandwich Book Report. The document contains the necessary papers you would copy to make the sandwich, in both color and black and white, a scoring rubric, and some rough draft pages with prompts. It's excellent stuff!

Completed 50 State Project State Strips

My class just finished their state projects, called State Strips. You can find the information on this great research project on two posts I've done, both Teaching the 50 States, and 5th Grade State Research Project: State Strips. You can access the project guidelines for this great research project here (pdf format or docx format). 

Now that the project is completed, students have also taken the time to present their posters in class. I had students prepare a 1-2 minute long speech in which they taught other students about their state. The exemplary posters were then posted in the hallway. My students love seeing their work in the hallway (and on this blog), so I'm going to show some of the great examples below. Click on any image to see a larger version. 

 

 

 

 

How To Stave off Burn Out and Stay An Effective Teacher

The turnover rate for new teachers is nearly 50% within the first five years. This is a big problem, because the field needs its teachers to stay around long enough to become masters and mentors. The biggest problems that effect this turnover include money and burnout (there are others obviously, but these stand out). Now, as a classroom teacher, I can't do much to help in the money aspect, but I can say that as a young, 31 year old professional who has been at it for 8 years, I can say that I feel good about my compensation, and that it's competitive with what it would be in a lot of other fields, granted that I won't have the lifetime earnings of a lot of other fields that require a college education, but nobody goes in to teaching to become rich.

OK, that aside, the issue is burn out. I see it every day. Teachers work with the students directly for the school hours (in my case, 8:00-2:30). We usually get about 40 minutes for lunch and an average of around 45 minutes of planning time built in there, plus the fact that our contract hours in my district are from 7:45-3:15, so we get 15 minutes before and 45 minutes after school. Yet, on top of this time, many teachers find it necessary to either work late, or take their work home.

This touches on my first point as to how to stave off burn out, something I've done a pretty good job so far, and I've beat the five year burn out and quit rate, so I feel like that's something (stop laughing at me those of you with 20+ years under your belts). Don't take it home. I consider myself a teacher between the hours of 7:30 and say 4:00. I usually do some phone calls or text messages to parents after school, and then when I arrive at home, I'm no longer a teacher, I'm me. I'm a normal guy who likes to watch cartoons with my kids, drink too much Mountain Dew, and sit down to nice quiet evenings of Breaking Bad, Hoarders, The Walking Dead, and any other mindless television entertainment once my kids are in bed. I don't want grading papers to get in the way.

BUT HOW DO YOU DO THIS you're asking??? It's simple. Don't grade everything. Think about this for a second. There's really no reason to grade every single assignment. In my math class, for example, I teach new content, and the kids practice it for awhile. Eventually I give an assessment, and we analyze what they learned. I try to be strategic in what I grade. I'll grade a few things here and there to make sure that they're picking up the material and doing it appropriately, but I don't beat myself over the head with grading. It's practice, let it stay practice. Plus, the kids will work just as hard, and will be more intrinsically motivated if they know that practice is just about getting better and learning, and the pressure of a grade isn't constantly over their head (until test time, then the pressure is ON).

Next up, there's the issue of feeling constantly under pressure from administration, other teachers, test scores, etc. Yes, we all want to perform well at our jobs, or at least well enough to keep our jobs (hopefully). I take my task as teacher very seriously, as most teachers do. BUT, remember, parents are the first teachers. 99% of the time, your successful students are successful because they have strong parents who follow through and are raising them right. Am I saying that sometimes you get that kid from a bad home that there's no saving? Of course I'm not going to come right out and say that, but you do what you can, and hope you had an impact. By obsessing over test scores or having "too much to do at work," you just cause more problems for yourself. I take each day as it is, if I have a meeting, then ok, I'll be there and be focused, but again, when it's over and I leave the school, I'm done, my day is over.

I can sit here and discuss many different aspects, but it's simple. Keep work at work and home at home. This is especially true if you have a family, but is true for everyone, even single people. You need that time to decompress. Teaching may not be as physically demanding as working in construction or something like that, but it's emotionally and mentally draining, even on a good, issues free day. You're spending all day with other peoples children, trying to help them learn what they need to get along in life, and it's tough, important work. But have some levity, a good sense of humor, and truly care about your students.

Leave work at work (even if you don't want to or feel uncomfortable), and you'll be forced to make decisions about how to best use your time. The teachers that work during evenings or take things home are sometimes not making those decisions. If they're happy doing it, then great, but if they feel overwhelmed, then decide not to work outside of contract hours, and you'll be forced to decide what's important. I got this decision from someone years ago and have followed it ever since. I enter my classroom most days with a smile on my face and I leave with the smile mostly intact (most days). I don't take a bag home, never have, never will. I've learned to be more efficient about grading and the use of my planning time. I grade a lot while students work on projects (times they don't need me other than to facilitate), when they're at lunch, or special classes (PE, music, etc.). Find the time to get things done, if you don't, they'll still be there the next day.

I hope this advice is helpful. Remember, teaching is what you make it. Just because you watched your own teachers do this and that doesn't mean it's what you should be doing. Good luck out there, and don't burn out, it's only September!