Worked about fifteen hours in the computer lab this week, laminating and putting things on the walls. Laminating – now I feel like a Real Teacher!
I want to emphasize the skills and responsibilities of being a digital citizen this year, so I put the letters up and Lesley Karpiuk has made some cool Star Wars digital citizenship posters! It’s like she read my mind! (She’s also made Pokemon Go posters ’cause she’s on trend like that.) You can download the posters if you go to:
Thank you, Lesley!
Our school is working to incorporate the leadership skills of the seven habits, and I knew I needed to put the leadership posters up but couldn’t quite figure out how to tie them to the theme running through my room (have you guessed it yet?). Then I remembered Luke saying proudly, “I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” So I put “I am a leader” and am going to add the “…” that, in my head, will TOTALLY tie this together with my theme. It’s possible that not all children will make the connection. It’s possible not adults will… But I think some kids will get it. And it makes me happy, which frankly is not a bad reason to put something up on the wall. You spend a lot of time in your classroom, and you want to have something that gives you a quiet chuckle – Mrs. Finney’s Laws of Classroom Decoration!
I love this picture that Miranda drew for me. The girls and I have shot two videos this summer, which I’m hoping to show the little kids this year. One is about the parts of a computer, and one is about how to log in. We decided that the video series would be called “Curious about Computers.” It only occurred to me last night that if she drew the text and computer on white board (foam core?), I could keep it and use it, rather than having to import her to my classroom each time.
I bought a Star Wars kit of pictures at United Art and Education, and those halfsie-droids were in it. I super love them peeking from behind my dry erase board.
OH, and I had a small flag lying sideways which made me sad – Mr. Ernest, the always-awesome, always-super-kind custodian, found me a Real Flag and a Real Flag holder. I don’t have kids in my class until 8:40 usually, but still, sometimes people are there during announcements and I feel like a Real Teacher with a Real Flag. I mean, I say the Pledge of Allegiance to it every morning!
(Marissa is, of course, charging her iPod touch – so that’s why she’s sitting on the floor.)
Speaking of things that make you happy… I downloaded this “No Grit No Pearl” poster last year and printed it out. I have one at home and one at school, and there are times I look at it and it gets me through the next five minutes. If you can get through the bad five minutes, you can usually get through the next hour. And in my job, then you get the next class.
Thank you, Shannon, for this poster!
I decided my mantra this school year would be “Choose Joy.” It’s going to be a tough year – I finish up my classes for the Transition to Teaching program; I student-teach in the spring; one kid is starting sixth grade and has transition worries, and the other is starting eighth grade and getting ready for high school in the spring. Choose Joy is going to help.
I was blessed with an optimistic mother, and I was trained from birth to find the silver lining in EVERYTHING. Once my basement flooded right before my big 40th birthday party, and my niece and nephew offered to bail out the water so I could get a quick shower before the party. I said later how grateful I was, and how lucky I was that the roto-rooter guy was able to come fix the clogged pipe about an hour into the party, and how it really could have been much, much worse, and my dad said, “Well, the only way we could have been luckier was if the pipe had burst and we could have had a fountain shooting up to the sky from the basement!” But my momma’s training held good.
I really kind of love the Try poster, which is new this year. The lab is such a great place to work with kids on their grit, because computers glitch, or you glitch, and can’t figure out the next step. You have to just try, try, try stuff.
This is perhaps a little boring. But the Chewbacca pic is a little tiny joke to me. Wondering if the kids will see it right away.
The shelf which holds my Star Wars collection. I have a new BIG BB8 this year. I was going to make a paper-mache one this summer, but the best laid plans. Maybe over Christmas.