Last school year (2018-2019), my sophomore English class wrote a novel. It's a post-apocalyptic collection of connected short stories, and I'm super proud of their work.
You can actually purchase a copy of the book on Amazon HERE
As we were doing final edits on the book in the spring, partly to motivate me, I submitted a proposal to present at the next OTA Encyclo-media, and I was accepted. I'm a little behind in posting this, but I got to present about our class novel a few months ago.
It was a great experience, and I hope to have more opportunities like this one in the future. I plan on recording my talk and posting it here, but I'm currently battling a Thanksgiving cold, and I hope to have that done before we leave for Christmas break.
Above is a link to my presentation, if you have any questions please email me, I'm happy to answer any questions:
(Look for video link in a few weeks!)
When it comes to curriculum, I am a definite fan of OERs (Open Educational Resources), but I also think that there's a place for teacher-created resources as well. I opened a Teachers Pay Teachers store this August, and so far here's what I have made available:
My classroom is still very much a work in progress, even though it's already November. I'm hoping to get it 100% where I'm happy with by before we leave for Christmas break. Switching the entire room arrangement (and switching subjects) made it a bigger undertaking than in year's past. Here's what's new:
I switched the desks around so that the one with the solid front faces the door, and added faux wood bulletin board paper.
I also added it to the back cabinets. I think I like the lighter wood better, but it had been on the cabinets for two years and was looking rough. Since I took my graffiti quote wall down, I added a smaller one to the upper cabinets, featuring my favorite Edward Abbey quote.
The letter board wall got some extra accents.
And I got some hexagon bulletin boards for the white board behind my desk.
I made a super cute hall pass, that I'm more impressed with than the students.
And a designated spot at the front of the room to display what I'm reading.
And lastly, a very on trend letter board ledge quote, that I DIY'ed.
I still need to re-hang my lights (third time's a charm!) and fix my new graffiti wall- hopefully soon!
I set a goal at the beginning of last school year (August 2018) to publish a monthly newsletter, starting in September. Not only did I stick to that plan, but I also had numerous people thank me for it and say that it was helpful and that they looked forward to getting it. Things were going good, but I soon realized that more people weren't reading it than were. The increasing number of them in the trash in the mailroom was disheartening. In March, I put a lot of good stuff in the newsletter, like:
an offer to help people writing grants
an offer to help people set up their first Donors Choose projects (+ a $30 donation!)
free candy bars to the first 5 teachers that gave Mr. S a high five
And you know how many people responded to any of those offers? You guessed it- not a single one! I was frustrated and just couldn't bring myself to take time out everything else I was doing to make another newsletter that no one was going to read. So I took a break. I'm back writing the newsletter for May, and I'm working on making some changes. Mainly, I think that I was trying to put too much in each newsletter, so I'm going to scale back the number of things I include, and instead try to do a better job of clearly explaining just one thing each month. For next year, I'm also going to look for (or design) a better layout. The one I have been using is visually very nice, but better suited for a lot of text, which is something I'm going to try and get away from. So there you have it, why there's no April Newsletter.
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