Day in the Life
Hello, everyone who has gotten my name from someone else and emailed me to ask what it is like to be a teacher. (And Hello anyone else reading this as well.) Thought I’d fill you in as to what it is exactly that I do all day long.
I haven’t lived out tomorrow (Monday) yet, but I’m pretty sure it will go something like this.
5:30AM – Wake up. Shower, breakfast, print out lesson plans for the day.
6:45AM – Leave for the train.
7:15AM – Walk into school. Take off my coat because it is approximately 100 degrees. Clock in. Learn that the copy machine is broken. Kindly ask elderly teacher to step aside so that I can put more paper in the copy machine. Say good morning to office assistants. Perhaps learn that I will be covering the class of another teacher who is out.
7:45AM – Write “Do Now” “Aim” and “Homework” on the board. Prepare classroom.
8:00AM – Learn that someone is out and needs me to cover their homeroom.
8:15AM – Students begin arriving. I can hear them coming up the stairs and then they’re shrieking in my ear – “How Ya Doin?” “What’s Good Miss?” The day has begun.
8:20AM – Half-hearted attempt to get kids who are not my own students to quiet down for the morning announcements and stand up for the pledge of allegiance. Kids put their jackets in their lockers. People who aren’t in uniform take a moment to fix this. Gum is spit out for the first of 45 times throughout the day.
8:30AM – 10:50AM – 8th Grade English and Social Studies.
Next week’s test taking skill of the week is “analyzing figurative language” – this is a boon, because it will be way more fun than say, “drawing conclusions and making inferences,” or the woefully vague, “finding facts and details.” I have been told point blank that “the skill of the week trumps everything else,” so I know that as long as my kids can analyze figurative language by this Friday, I will have done what is expected of me.
**** Tomorrow’s 8th Grade ELA/SS lesson plan goes a little something like this (my notes in italics):
Aim: How can we interpret figurative language? (Aims must always use the word “we.”)
Do Now: “Joseph was a beanpole: legs like pencils, fingers like twigs – he looked like he could fit through a drinking straw.” -- What image does this sentence bring to your mind? (During this time I say, “Almost everyone is doing the right thing right now. Thank you to all the people who are writing. You darling – spit out your gum. You darling – take off your jacket. Class has started and we are working.”)
Mini Lesson: Shared reading of Skill of the Week poster – students should add to their notes.
- Students complete Figurative language worksheet.
Read Aloud: Henry Ford’s Biography passage –
Students should take notes using the “Who/What” format. Share out notes and review teacher’s notes. – Then, students complete the Short Response.
(Ahem – Blatant Test Preparation – but this will tie in to what we’ll learn in Social Studies later on.)
Reading Workshop: Poetry Unit p. 187 – 196 – Students should begin the unit by re-reading and answering questions for “Mother to Son” and “Advice to the Young.”
(This is here because I planned this lesson for all the 8th grade English teachers to use. My kids do the 802 lesson.)
Then students should do independent reading with Figurative Language worksheet.
802 - Teacher works with three students on figurative language worksheet while other students read. (I work with three kids and spend most of the time saying “Almost everyone is reading. Thank you. I see a few people off task and they need to get back on. Don’t forget to fill out your worksheet because I am taking them up for a grade.”)
HW - Read and do 3 Ars (Active reading responses. I don’t check these often enough, so most people don’t do them regularly.)
Social Studies:
Review rules for group work. (The kids made these up and they include such winners as "No Fighting" and "Mind your own business.")
Say – “At the point in history we’re learning about, factories were starting to become an important means of production. Few people worked in factories before this time, but suddenly, factories were springing up all over the place. Today we’re going to pretend that this classroom is a factory – three factories, actually. Each row of students will be its own factory. The factory that produces the most products at the end of twenty minutes will reap the rewards of success (candy.)”
Pass out Origami project and paper to each row of students. Students have twenty minutes to complete as many products as possible. Students should experiment with different techniques to make as many as possible without getting out of their seats.
(I have a distinct feeling that this is going to be total bedlam, because by this point we will have been staring at one another for two hours.)
Then – discuss the assembly line and the advent of industrialization.
Essential questions for Industry / Industrialization on overhead – (802 – Worksheet?)
10:50AM – 11: 30AM -- This is my professional assignment period. Tomorrow I have a meeting with all of the other 8th grade teachers where we will likely find out that we will be the ones grading all of the practice tests that our students will be taking Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. This isn’t technically my lunch period, but I have to eat now or I will faint.
11:40AM - 1:13PM – 7th grade English
I collect my children from the cafeteria and send one particularly ambitious girl up to write my “Do Now” on the board because I teach in a different classroom than the one I was in this morning and I’ve been in a meeting during the time when I could have written it myself.
***** 7th grade lesson plan for tomorrow goes a little something like this:
Aim: How can we interpret figurative language?
Do Now: “Joseph was a beanpole: legs like pencils, fingers like twigs – he looked like he could fit through a drinking straw.” -- What image does this sentence bring to your mind?
Collect Region Mandated Homework Assignment
Mini Lesson: Shared reading of Skill of the Week poster – students should add to their notes.
- Students identify similes and metaphors in Langston Hughes’ Poems “A Dream Deferred” and “Hold Fast to Dreams.”
Read Aloud: Langston Hughes’s Biography passage –
Students should take notes using the “Who/What” format. (Kaplan made up this format and it sucks.) Share out notes and review teacher’s notes.
Groups: (Twenty minute rotations for each.)
Starting at Editing/Writing – Ruby Group (Test Prep and more test prep)
Starting at IR – Sapphire Group (Independent Reading – everyone’s favorite group.)
Starting at Multiple Choice – Emerald Group (Test Prep with me.)
HW: Write a poem about a dream that you have. Use figurative language to describe your dream and how you plan to achieve it. Your poem should be at least five lines long. It does not have to rhyme, but it can if you like. (Hooray for figurative language week!)
1:14PM – 2:50PM : debrief, deflate, eat junk food. This is my official lunch period followed by my prep. period so I have the rest of the day to make copies, grade papers, or sit in the library and stare off into space. Tomorrow I’ll probably be working on Grad. School homework or my homework for:
2:50PM – 3:50PM: Professional Development
Every Monday, I sit for an hour and learn skills and strategies for achieving student potential. Much of this information would be quite helpful if I wasn’t also being told to teach a straight test-prep curriculum. Sometimes this means I get a bad attitude, like last week, when we were learning about how some children are audial learners, some visual, some musical, some kinesthetic, some artistic, etc., and I raised my hand to ask if my artistic learner got to draw a picture on the standardized test. I got a teacher look from a teacher for that one.
4:00PM – 6:20PM – Take the train to Brooklyn College, eat something for dinner, and prepare frantically for:
6:20PM – 8:00PM – Structuralism and Semiotics class – during which I am supposed to present on my paper for 10 minutes. I’ve done a bit of research, but not enough, so this should be interesting. Many other kids in the class are just regular grad. students who show up in sweats and spend all day in the library, so I always feel a bit guilty for not putting in my best effort. Sigh.
8:30PM – 10:00PM – Take the train home and do prep work for Tuesday – most of my planning is already done, but I usually have to whip up a couple worksheets and finalize lesson plans, maybe grade a couple papers, etc.
10:00PM or earlier: Sleep.
5:00AM: Repeat!
I haven’t lived out tomorrow (Monday) yet, but I’m pretty sure it will go something like this.
5:30AM – Wake up. Shower, breakfast, print out lesson plans for the day.
6:45AM – Leave for the train.
7:15AM – Walk into school. Take off my coat because it is approximately 100 degrees. Clock in. Learn that the copy machine is broken. Kindly ask elderly teacher to step aside so that I can put more paper in the copy machine. Say good morning to office assistants. Perhaps learn that I will be covering the class of another teacher who is out.
7:45AM – Write “Do Now” “Aim” and “Homework” on the board. Prepare classroom.
8:00AM – Learn that someone is out and needs me to cover their homeroom.
8:15AM – Students begin arriving. I can hear them coming up the stairs and then they’re shrieking in my ear – “How Ya Doin?” “What’s Good Miss?” The day has begun.
8:20AM – Half-hearted attempt to get kids who are not my own students to quiet down for the morning announcements and stand up for the pledge of allegiance. Kids put their jackets in their lockers. People who aren’t in uniform take a moment to fix this. Gum is spit out for the first of 45 times throughout the day.
8:30AM – 10:50AM – 8th Grade English and Social Studies.
Next week’s test taking skill of the week is “analyzing figurative language” – this is a boon, because it will be way more fun than say, “drawing conclusions and making inferences,” or the woefully vague, “finding facts and details.” I have been told point blank that “the skill of the week trumps everything else,” so I know that as long as my kids can analyze figurative language by this Friday, I will have done what is expected of me.
**** Tomorrow’s 8th Grade ELA/SS lesson plan goes a little something like this (my notes in italics):
Aim: How can we interpret figurative language? (Aims must always use the word “we.”)
Do Now: “Joseph was a beanpole: legs like pencils, fingers like twigs – he looked like he could fit through a drinking straw.” -- What image does this sentence bring to your mind? (During this time I say, “Almost everyone is doing the right thing right now. Thank you to all the people who are writing. You darling – spit out your gum. You darling – take off your jacket. Class has started and we are working.”)
Mini Lesson: Shared reading of Skill of the Week poster – students should add to their notes.
- Students complete Figurative language worksheet.
Read Aloud: Henry Ford’s Biography passage –
Students should take notes using the “Who/What” format. Share out notes and review teacher’s notes. – Then, students complete the Short Response.
(Ahem – Blatant Test Preparation – but this will tie in to what we’ll learn in Social Studies later on.)
Reading Workshop: Poetry Unit p. 187 – 196 – Students should begin the unit by re-reading and answering questions for “Mother to Son” and “Advice to the Young.”
(This is here because I planned this lesson for all the 8th grade English teachers to use. My kids do the 802 lesson.)
Then students should do independent reading with Figurative Language worksheet.
802 - Teacher works with three students on figurative language worksheet while other students read. (I work with three kids and spend most of the time saying “Almost everyone is reading. Thank you. I see a few people off task and they need to get back on. Don’t forget to fill out your worksheet because I am taking them up for a grade.”)
HW - Read and do 3 Ars (Active reading responses. I don’t check these often enough, so most people don’t do them regularly.)
Social Studies:
Review rules for group work. (The kids made these up and they include such winners as "No Fighting" and "Mind your own business.")
Say – “At the point in history we’re learning about, factories were starting to become an important means of production. Few people worked in factories before this time, but suddenly, factories were springing up all over the place. Today we’re going to pretend that this classroom is a factory – three factories, actually. Each row of students will be its own factory. The factory that produces the most products at the end of twenty minutes will reap the rewards of success (candy.)”
Pass out Origami project and paper to each row of students. Students have twenty minutes to complete as many products as possible. Students should experiment with different techniques to make as many as possible without getting out of their seats.
(I have a distinct feeling that this is going to be total bedlam, because by this point we will have been staring at one another for two hours.)
Then – discuss the assembly line and the advent of industrialization.
Essential questions for Industry / Industrialization on overhead – (802 – Worksheet?)
10:50AM – 11: 30AM -- This is my professional assignment period. Tomorrow I have a meeting with all of the other 8th grade teachers where we will likely find out that we will be the ones grading all of the practice tests that our students will be taking Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. This isn’t technically my lunch period, but I have to eat now or I will faint.
11:40AM - 1:13PM – 7th grade English
I collect my children from the cafeteria and send one particularly ambitious girl up to write my “Do Now” on the board because I teach in a different classroom than the one I was in this morning and I’ve been in a meeting during the time when I could have written it myself.
***** 7th grade lesson plan for tomorrow goes a little something like this:
Aim: How can we interpret figurative language?
Do Now: “Joseph was a beanpole: legs like pencils, fingers like twigs – he looked like he could fit through a drinking straw.” -- What image does this sentence bring to your mind?
Collect Region Mandated Homework Assignment
Mini Lesson: Shared reading of Skill of the Week poster – students should add to their notes.
- Students identify similes and metaphors in Langston Hughes’ Poems “A Dream Deferred” and “Hold Fast to Dreams.”
Read Aloud: Langston Hughes’s Biography passage –
Students should take notes using the “Who/What” format. (Kaplan made up this format and it sucks.) Share out notes and review teacher’s notes.
Groups: (Twenty minute rotations for each.)
Starting at Editing/Writing – Ruby Group (Test Prep and more test prep)
Starting at IR – Sapphire Group (Independent Reading – everyone’s favorite group.)
Starting at Multiple Choice – Emerald Group (Test Prep with me.)
HW: Write a poem about a dream that you have. Use figurative language to describe your dream and how you plan to achieve it. Your poem should be at least five lines long. It does not have to rhyme, but it can if you like. (Hooray for figurative language week!)
1:14PM – 2:50PM : debrief, deflate, eat junk food. This is my official lunch period followed by my prep. period so I have the rest of the day to make copies, grade papers, or sit in the library and stare off into space. Tomorrow I’ll probably be working on Grad. School homework or my homework for:
2:50PM – 3:50PM: Professional Development
Every Monday, I sit for an hour and learn skills and strategies for achieving student potential. Much of this information would be quite helpful if I wasn’t also being told to teach a straight test-prep curriculum. Sometimes this means I get a bad attitude, like last week, when we were learning about how some children are audial learners, some visual, some musical, some kinesthetic, some artistic, etc., and I raised my hand to ask if my artistic learner got to draw a picture on the standardized test. I got a teacher look from a teacher for that one.
4:00PM – 6:20PM – Take the train to Brooklyn College, eat something for dinner, and prepare frantically for:
6:20PM – 8:00PM – Structuralism and Semiotics class – during which I am supposed to present on my paper for 10 minutes. I’ve done a bit of research, but not enough, so this should be interesting. Many other kids in the class are just regular grad. students who show up in sweats and spend all day in the library, so I always feel a bit guilty for not putting in my best effort. Sigh.
8:30PM – 10:00PM – Take the train home and do prep work for Tuesday – most of my planning is already done, but I usually have to whip up a couple worksheets and finalize lesson plans, maybe grade a couple papers, etc.
10:00PM or earlier: Sleep.
5:00AM: Repeat!
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12:38 PM
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