Once upon a trip to Philadelphia

Although it has only been a couple of weeks since I wrapped up my very first week as a newly employed woman and traveled to Philadelphia to visit my good friend Britt, time and circumstances have far removed that trip from my immediate memory.   It was fun and refreshing but if feels like it happened a lifetime ago.  

One of my most vivid memories of the trip is sitting alone on a packed Delta airplane, with a row all to myself and my journal out.   After having spent the week prior to my flight being introduced to my new role as a special education science teacher, I had a lot on my mind.  I can still feel my body relaxing when I realized that the cabin doors had been closed and the possibility of a stranger sitting beside me had been eliminated.   I remember smiling to myself and offering a prayer of thankfulness to the Lord for giving me the chance to rest despite the unrest in my schedule.   With my favorite purple pen in hand, this is what I wrote:


I just lived through my very first week at my very first job post-college & grad school!  All 6 years of my University career were for the purpose of being able to do exactly what I am doing now.   Even without any direct contact with my students, I am already starting to see a bigger picture of how purposeful the Lord has been with all of this. 

Having spent 2 semesters at my school prior to being employed  is nothing short of an irreplaceable gift.  In addition to knowing where the bathroom, teachers lounge and stairways are, I have these amazing relationships already built.  It's not hard to see the abundant blessing and prosperity in the way God designed the establishment of my career, but until this week I honestly didn't recognize how faithfully God orchestrated these details on my behalf.  

People know me, they like me and they trust my ability to teach.  My transition from learner to teacher has been a welcomed one.  Only a few years ago I was desperatly trying to get into a Speech-Language Pathology program, totally unaware of how much my communication styles, interpersonal strengths and professional goals align with the public school system.  I have the opportunity to be friendly, open, affirming and grounded every time I rub shoulders with someone in the bathroom or wait in line for the copy machine.  I get to affirm my co-workers skills and experience simply by asking about their day, week or teaching career.   I get to share and establish respect by choosing to be positive and by acknowledging other people in the process.

I didn't go into teaching to develop a strong cohort of fellow teachers, I went into it for the opportunity to love a kid that maybe no one else would.  I became a teacher because I beleive that for many kids, learning is too painful to do unless someone is there to gently lead them through the pain.  I love kids who are naughty because I get to model different forms of behavior and look for the real reason for the behaviors.   I love kids who don't know how to learn because it means that I have the potential to unlock learning in a new accessible and relevant way.  I love kids who know how to learn but hate doing it because it's really, really hard.  I am that kid. 

All week long I have been told by various teachers that they are glad I am here.  I have also been warned that their kids are really hard.  I'm glad I'm here too and I'm glad there kids are hard.  This job is worth doing, which makes it worthy of the 6 years of challenging learning I fought through to get here.  

The school year ahead of me is undeniably tough, but let the record show that I am so grateful to be where I am. 

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
-Maya Angelou

everyone needs a little time to do the dishes!

I am in the thick of my third week as a teacher, doing my best to prioritize the my many to-do's as I pile everything else on the back burner for now. One thing I know for sure: I am not infinite.   I get tired.  I miss a lot of phone calls.  I crave downtime.  I need sleep.  Most importantly: I need balance.  Yesterday, balance was washing my dishes and crawling into bed at 8:30pm.   Today, balance was going home before formulating any lesson plans for tomorrow and throwing on  some sweatpants while eating mozzarella sticks for dinner. 

Each day holds new challenges of its own, but each day also gives me the opportunity to step deeper into the profession I have been training to do for so long.   Today while washing the remnants of play-dough, soil and beans off of my tables, the chaos of my job was temporarily stabilized as I realized that I am actually a teacher. 

I spend a lot of time lesson planning and learning Science, but my true teacher moments happen when I get to stand in the gap in unplanned ways.   Sometimes those moments involve the ability to respond in kindness to a warning, like when an aid  pops his head into my classroom seconds before the bell rings to lets me know that one of the students lost his play-dough and would really like to make it again.  "He's actually really mad and agitated about it, so. . .I don't know what you have planned but I just thought I should give you a heads up."  No problem.   I will never forget the grateful hug I got from the student when I announced we were making play-dough again or the looks of relief from the aids when they realized that the play-dough saga had been put to rest.   Sometimes those moments are the result of an on-going conversation with a student, like when one  student asks Sam the Scientist to 'say ahhh' everyday and then comments in surprise on how he "still doesn't have a tongue."  This morning this student told me, "tomorrow Sam the Scientist will have a tongue".  When I curiously asked him how that was possible, he explained "I am going to make him one!" Imagine my surprise when my very last class was interrupted by a little boy with a determined smile on his face, a paper tongue and tape in hand.  After taping the tongue inside Sam's mouth he left the room with satisfied smile with one final instruction for Sam to 'say ahhh'.  

Other true teacher moments come from being able to extend grace and kindness to my co-workers.   I really believe that we were created to respond to those who love us first, therefore, I pray for moments to choose love on behalf of someone else.   So here I am, the 23 year old new teacher, being intentionally kind to the veteran staff that fill the school, not because I need any more friends, but because everyones day gets a little better when kind words are shared.   By choosing to be kind, I am also choosing to steer conversation away from gossip and politics.   I am not naive enough to think that I can always navigate conversation away from such topics, but I do know that genuine kindness builds genuine trust and when genuine trust is present, there is less of a need to pick teams by gossiping.  

So my mantra remains: one day at a time, but as I tackle things one day at a time I doing my best to make time to wash my dishes. 

Here I am, working really hard to be ready for week 3 of my teaching career but the outcome isn't looking promising.  It's days like today that I wish I was a faster learner.  

One day at a time. . .

9 days and counting

I am not sure why Friday nights are such a popular night for parties, social gatherings and grandiose plans because I don't know about you, but by the time Friday rolls around, I've got one thing on my mind: bed.  I know that there has been research done saying that if you want to sleep good at night, you shouldn't use your bed for anything other than sleeping.   The research might be true for some people but to me, my bed is the relaxing in the same way most authors describe the sacredness of a bubble bath.  So here I sit in my favorite sweatpants, surrounded by blankets and pillows, and listening to the chatter of my roommate and her friends coming from the living room.   I've been waiting for this moment all week.  With the arrival of the Kindergartners this past Monday, my job quickly turned from challenging to daunting and without the immediacy of another school day awaiting me in the morning, I am finally able to unstrap the stress and anxiety I have been carrying around since Monday and leave it at the door.

That being said, here are some things I have learned through the process of becoming a 9 day old teacher:
1. nothing is sacred!  If it is in your classroom, it will be touched and probably broken so don't bring in things you really care about!
2.kids love Science equipment.   Who knew safety goggles would be such an effective way to turn my students into active and engaged Scientists?!
3.Classroom "design" aka - the way you set things up, totally matters!  I learned that in order to keep my students from using my sink and creating a huge water mess, I need to have a basin of soapy water accessible at all times.   If crayons are in plain sight, they will be spilled and/or used to color things that should not be colored.   By moving my supply table from behind the students, to the front of the room, I am much more able to keep my students engaged, especially when teaching something that requires a lot of supplies and I am a lot calmer throughout my delivery (I also sweat less. . . well. . . not really, I sweat a lot).
4. There is something really rewarding about learning how to speak the "language" of all of my different classes.
5. One of the best and most important parts of why I am a teacher is passing students in the hallway and being able to greet them by name.  Students have a need to be known and cared for, just like adults do!
6. I need to start collecting egg cartons, newspaper and old sour cream containers.   The egg cartons can be containers (like for rock collections) and/or art supplies.   The newspaper is not something I tried yet because I don't have any but I think that if I were to put newspaper on my tables either at the beginning of the day or the beginning of each class I would significantly reduce the time I spend scrubbing gunk off my tables at the end of every day.   I want sour cream containers to put my crayons in so that I can grab however many containers I need for the specific class I am teaching without having to scramble to divide up the crayons and then scramble to clean them all up later.  My current system makes me sweat a ton.       
7. Teaching on such a tight schedule leaves me really dehydrated.   I still haven't figured out how to remedy that. 
8, In Science, containers are like gold and are used for everything.   In 2 weeks I have almost completely depleted the supply of plastic cups that my room was stocked with because doing Science in a hands on way requires lots of containers! 
9. My lunch is at 10am, which is ridiculous to most people but I realized earlier this week that 10am has been a favorite meal time of mine for a long time! So, even though it looks like I got the shaft, I don't have to eat with anyone else which gives me 15 minutes of necessary solitude and I get to maintain a favorite mealtime of mine.  ( I didn't actually eat lunch Tuesday - Friday of this week because my lunch is right before my Kindergartners come and I needed the time to child-proof my room.  But, I am going to bask in the glory of my 10am mealtime every time I have some downtime to enjoy my lunch).  
10. Kids love live things!  Bring monarch caterpillars into the classroom made "Ms. Nolte's Science Room" a very popular place this week.  

11. It's important to love what you're doing, and who you are doing it for, even when you hate it (and them). 

Quick update!

I am 2 days into my first week as a teacher, with 2 more to go.  The first day went well, but yesterday went even better.  I have been quick to build rapport with my students and they have been quick to learn the routine and expectations of my classroom.   My favorite class so far is the one I was most worried about.  They are a group of DCD students who are nonverbal.   Even though they can't talk, I haven't had a problem understanding them or keeping them engaged.   Yesterday I gave them hand held magnifying glasses so that we could go outside and investigate rocks.   They held those glasses like real Scientists and hunted for rocks with great enthusiasm for 50 minutes!  They were giggling and squealing and they we so proud to show me all of the rocks they found.   The aids that come with them have been really kind to me and keep saying things like "thank you Ms. Nolte for teaching us real Science."  I know that I am going to have to work really hard to make sure that I have activities that  are at their level and keep them engaged.   It's going to be a huge year of learning for me! 

Despite being so tired I could fall over after a day full of constant motion and lots of adapted instruction (no two classes are the same!), I have actually been really busy after school.  

Over Labor day weekend, I went to Philadelphia, PA to visit my good friend Britt.   I was reluctant to be out of town before such an important week for me, but now I am really thankful that I booked my plane tickets and went.  It's so important to make time to invest in the people you love!

To further my friend investment, I went to see the show Wicked on Tuesday night.  It was clearly really important to my friends that I was there so I am thankful that even though I was exhausted, I was able to spend some time with them. 

Last night I went over to a fellow Science friends house to watch some instructional videos related to the curriculum we teach from.   It was good to connect with him and hear about how he has been teaching some stuff.  I told him that I was going to steal all of his ideas and adapt them in a way that Sam the Scientist could teach.   He just laughed and said that he could never pull off a "Sam".  

Keep praying for me.   There are many hard aspects of my job, but there are so many rewarding moments throughout the day.   I love how big these kids smile and I love how much they enjoy exploring.   My classroom has been destroyed by a few kids each day "look Ms.Nolte, I used these tools to fill this up with water!" "Oh. . . good investigating, please go back to your seat!" I'm not really attached to anything in my room yet so I haven't been sad or bothered by this just yet.   We're all learning the ropes together :)

I look pretty tired in this picture BUT it needed to be posted anyway.   Here I am with Sam the Scientist ready for the school year to start!  I gave Sam some safety goggles so that he looks like a Scientist and can model good safety for the kids.   He is VERY popular already.    I had him shake all of my students hands so that my students would introduce themselves to him.   They really liked touching him.   One student loved him so much that when he was on his way out the door he grabbed Sam by the head and gave him a giant kiss on the lips.   SO cute! 

Plans, hopes and teaching goals

As mentioned before, I have sat through full days of information driven meetings, sessions and seminars the last couple of days for my job.   While it is obvious that the material is meant for the veteran, not the newbie, I have a couple of take-aways that I have helped me jump start my planning for this school year:  

1. Take lots of notes of things that relied heavily on prior knowledge/previous involvement in the district so that I can invite new teachers to have lunch with me next year and fill them in on everything I wish someone would have explained to me this week.   I would love to be an honorary mentor to new teachers someday.  I think it's really important to stand in the gap for other people whenever possible.  
2. Use puppets!  I was laying in bed this morning thinking about how to teach my NUMEROUS special ed kindergarten classes in a way that would effectively keep their attention.   I have really nice puppets from my days with Child Evangelism Fellowship and I think I am going to name one of them "Sam the Scientist".  Sam can help me highlight all of the things I really need my students to pay attention to.  I think deciding when to use him will help me focus my lessons and hopefully keep my students engaged. 
3. 3 weeks of classroom management = 33 weeks of effective teaching.   One of the seminars I went to explained that it usually takes 3 weeks of diligent classroom management to establish a positive learning environment for the rest of the year.   I am keeping that number in mind as I battle my way through the first month of school.   
4. Make a seating chart.  I have been having a really hard time deciding how to set up my classroom, especially because there is junk everywhere.  I spent 2 hours taking inventory the other day and only did one corner of the room!  I think that if I make a seating chart for each of my classes it will help me figure out which area of the room I want to teach my different classes in.   With such a rapid turn-over of classes all day long I know that I am going to need a solid understanding of how to utilize my teaching space.  
5. Write detailed lesson plans for the first week (yikes!).   Because this is my first year teaching, I need to turn in all of my lesson plans to a designated supervisor every Monday morning.   I think this is great accountability, especially because I have too many students to not have a solid plan in place.   I've had a hard time working through the Science material to pull together lessons but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually.  Oh science! 
6. Figure out what kind of rules and policies I want to enforce in my classroom.  Thoughts/suggestions?! 
7. Make a bulletin board.  Originally I was going to make one about science but since I don't know a whole lot about science just yet, I think I am going to make one to introduce me.   One teacher told me that her students will ask me things like "do you have a cat?" "do you have a boyfriend?" "why not?" I think being willing to share my life with my students will make me more approachable and hopefully build enough rapport right off the bat to quickly establish good respect and listening.   I just have to decide what I think they should know! 
8. Even though I have a packed schedule, I hope to make time to greet students at the door when they come and then say goodbye to them at the door when they leave.  I think this is important because there will be times when my students need to know that I like them, even if I didn't like their decisions or behavior.   
9. Figure out a record keeping system.   This one. . . well. . .it's going to take a lot of brainstorming to make it effective, manageable and useful! 
10. Start a substitute teacher box.   Long days, stress and well, everything that has encompassed the last few weeks has left me on the brink of getting sick.   I know that because I am having a hard time figuring out my job, there is no way a substitute teacher will be able to walk into my classroom and teach without some practical resources and instructions.   Knowing that I will NOT be writing sub plans while I am throwing up in my bathroom, I need to proactively build a box of materials in case of personal emergencies.   
11. Take a deep-breath and enjoy the learning process.  I have worked really hard to get here and I cannot let a mountain of unknown information or the hugeness of the task at hand prevent me from loving teaching.   There will be ups and downs but I am doing this because I believe that every student deserves to have someone in their day who is committed to believing the best in them, smiles at them instead of frowns and supports the weak areas.   The reality is that we all have weak areas and it hurts when people poke at them.   Students who are in special ed get there weak areas poked at all day everyday.  No wonder they resist learning! 

it's been a whirlwind!

Life has been a whirlwind lately!  I'm not actually sure how to describe what has transpired over the last couple of weeks because it's been such a blur.   So - I decided that rather than recount all of the details of my ever-changing life, I will highlight some small victories of the last week:

• I have faithfully been achieving my goal of using coupons.  Today I saved $13.33!  I quickly realized that although all coupons have the potential to save you money, not all manufacture coupons can be doubled.  So, on shopping days like today when the store is willing to double up to 10 of my manufacture coupons, I have to read the coupons close enough to make sure that I can maximize my savings.   I really love grocery shopping and having the time to clip coupons and plan my menu accordingly has been really rewarding! 
• I have a Minnesota drivers license!  I mean, it hasn't actually come in the mail yet but I paid the money, took the test, passed the test and presented an obscene amount of very specific forms of identification so that I could become a licensed Minnesota driver + resident.   Even though I have been living on my own via renting my an apartment for 3 years now, it's still weird to not have a Wisconsin license to represent my state of origin.      
• I registered my car here and changed the license plates myself (you should be really impressed because it was not easy).  Now that I have Minnesota plates on my car, people follow me closer than they use to AND it's been really hard for me to find my car in parking lots.   I guess this is the price of being registered to drive in the state you live in! 
• I purchased my very own car insurance!  It was a surprisingly elaborate process to get quotes and make an informed decision about where to pay for my coverage but in the end, I am confident and comfortable in the choice I made.   
• I am a working woman!  I still have stuff to work out with my teaching license so I don't know when I'll be starting with my kids (hopefully right after labor day, but only time will tell) but Friday, Monday, Tuesday and Today were all district meetings, building meetings, cohort meetings and lots of trainings.  I have been hard at work assimilating to my new surroundings and role.