Gearing Up

Well the ball is finally starting to roll on making arrangements in Wemindji!  I received my NEW ADDRESS and oh boy is it the cutest address ever:

13 Beaver Road

Wemindji, QC

J0M 1L0

BEAVER ROAD! Seriously.  I can't handle it. 

I have a 2 bedroom home across from the school which is good/bad.  Good because I can literally wake up at 8:45am and cross the street to go to school.  Bad because I can literally wake up at 8:45am and cross the street and go to school.  There goes my idea of getting a good walk in before and after school! Haha!! But who am I really to complain?  It sure beats traveling 1hr 15mins+ to Brantford every morning so I ACCEPT!

On another note, I am starting to plan some activities to get to know the kids and start building a strong sense of community in my classroom for the first week or so.  Luckily, I have participated in one of the most valuable courses available to teachers, TRIBES which gave me awesome resources for creating such a community within the classroom.  (Not sure why I am capitalizing the word, it adds a certain je ne sais qu'uois?)  Native Canadian principles often revolve around trust, community, identity and relationships, and TRIBES is a fabulous resource that helps you build just that within the classroom.  The "energizers" learned in Tribes can be used to get to know one another, share details and information with a group, get energy flowing and laughter started, and they can also be used within a curriculum framework as most energizers can be applied to bring out known information or questions to be answered for specific learning opportunities.  I have never taken part in an energizer where I did not laugh, and that certainly made me feel at ease, especially in a large new group situation.  I know that what I learned in Tribes will serve me well in my new class as I get to know my students and they can learn something about me too.

Well worth the $200 and nasty lunch meat sandwiches.

Another activity I did in Tribes was a life map.  I spelled out my "teacher name" (I stuck to Miss. M since "McCaffrey" would be difficult to fit on a bristol board and frankly, I was too lazy to make a life map that long ha!) and placed pictures and stickers and photos that helped tell my story and map my life thus far.  It was a really fun activity and wandering through the classroom I got to learn a lot about my fellow Tribes members just by looking at the pictures and illustrations they chose to place on their life maps.  I think this is a great activity to get the kids to think about what is important to them and what defines their lives up to this point.  They can learn about each other and I can learn a lot about them which is so important to me! I will be bringing my life map with me to Wemindji so the students can learn about me and hopefully accept me as a new member of the community.  Trust and relationships are important to me too so I want to make the best impression and build the trust within the classroom as quickly and naturally as possible. 

arg flip around!!

I also plan on creating jobs for the classroom.  These jobs will be the regular types, pencil-sharpener, boot/coat straightening, chair stacker, paper hander-outer (ha), board cleaner, office runner, book shelf/library straightener/librarian, attendance, and so on. An interesting strategy I saw in a video in class last year was creating job applications for the students to complete for their top 3 picks for jobs.  Each student would have to apply like they would a regular job, listing their strengths and what makes them a good candidate for the position.  The students would do this once a month for a different job each time.  Each student would get a position based on what they were most qualified for or on the promise they showed for the position.  I think this is an awesome way to get students thinking about personal and social responsibility, raise self-esteem and feel like they earned something.  Intrinsic motivation is high on my list of goals for my class this year so I think this is a great way to kick start developing that classroom value.  This is also a great start-of-year writing diagnostic tool as I can get an idea of what needs to be focused on in writing skills right out of the gate. Not only do jobs help build self-esteem and and  a sense of responsibility within the classroom, it takes a load off the teacher. 

Besides organizing and setting up literacy centers and figuring out what to do for my first week of math, I am busy getting myself organized for the new school year.  This means finding out what the school daily schedule looks like so I can make day plans (still working on that..) lesson planning and long-range planning.  Until I am totally comfortable I am going to use a lesson plan that I will hand-write and is greatly abbreviated from the traditional 654 pagers Brock prescribed.  I do remember seeing a note in the school computer lab that mentioned needing to present a lesson plan in order to book time so lesson plans might not be a thing of the past after all!  But I am a very linear thinker and honestly, a short lesson plan with points and prompting questions to keep me on topic is very helpful. 

Pwetty and purple

I also ordered my teacher's planner for this year!  Anyone who knows me from Brock knows I was OBSESSED with this planner I bought for Teacher's College.  It literally saved my life.  Yes it is big and yes I know I have a phone and computer that can keep track of all my tasks digitally, but there is something oh so satisfying about crossing things off a list.  (I swear, sometimes I write things down like: "eat breakfast" or "put on shoes" JUST to cross them off...)  This is what ONE WEEK looked like last spring:

This is what my new personalized book looks like this year!

...yes that is a cat in bread... inbred cat.  Inappropriate?

Other than that I have been making the usual rounds, I got over excited and bought some things at Scholar's Choice (big sale 20% off for teachers on August 1st!) but then realized I should have just bought some bristol board and used the die cutter at the IRC at Brock to make my own letters, I will still do that this week, one can never have too many bulletin board letters!!!

Oh and for all you Skype users, I found out my Skype account name: aidanmccaffrey 

Go figure.  Hope to see you on there!