Teacher Burn Out: It's Real!

Howdy, folks.

I haven't posted anything since January.  It is now July.  Fellow teachers, you already know what I'm about to say: life is hectic as a teacher in the spring, no matter how many years you have under your belt.

January brings new challenges in my world: we jump right into our One Act Play contest rehearsals, and that's all I can think about until March.  Spring break hits, and I lose my drive.  The kids are antsy.  It's getting hot outside.  They can't bare to turn in any assignments, even the easy ones.

I wanted to write a complete post about how Interactive Notebooks worked for me this year.  I took pictures of how the storage area became a mess and stayed a mess all year long even with classroom jobs.  I don't even know where those pictures are right now.

Here's the deal with Interactive Notebooks in middle school theatre:  The idea is nice, and admin loves it, but it just doesn't work well if that's what you are basing your curriculum around.  I found out that I wanted to fit as much as possible into those notebooks, and by February we were all sick of them.  I kept supply tubs at each table with glue, scissors, rulers (aka swords), colored pencils and markers.  By Thanksgiving they looked terrible and I needed to reorder supplies.  Middle school kids will fiddle with everything they see, so those tubs lived on my bookshelf for most of the second semester.

Even though kids kept their notebooks in their class period's bin, they still lost them. (!!!!!!)

I want to continue with the notebooks, but here's what I'm going to change:

Don't fit all the notes into one semester.  It's ok to take half the notes one day, the other half the next.  Hey, you could even ask kids what they remember to keep them in engaged in the unit!  My theatre I kids this coming year will take the same amount of notes, but spread out throughout the year.  My need to get them ready for contest makes me rush through the notes and students hated it.

Add more opportunities for students to reflect and evaluate in their notebooks.  We had plenty of room in notebooks at the end of the year, so I pledge to give them more opportunities to reflect and evaluate in their own words.  I used to be really good at getting gets to evaluate performances and reflect on them.  I don't know what happened, but this year I felt their writing about theatre hadn't improved.

My returning students will already have the basic notes from last year, so they will definitely have less writing.  (And I can create assignments based on their notes for when I have a sub!!)  I packed up all of the notebooks in May, and come August I will unpack them and recycle those who are not in the class any longer.

Another thing that did not work again this year was getting students to do their warm ups.  In previous years, their notebooks were warm up books. They would write a paragraph or vocab word as their warm up in their notebooks.  Many students didn't do it, or lost their notebooks (in the classroom again), which is why I moved to interactive notebooks and I changed my warm ups.  They were a question with a short answer each day, written on a paper Monday-Friday, turned in every Friday.  Students did not even do this simple task, and I put them on my website.  Many students earned a C because their warm up was a daily grade every week.

Y'all, I even had an entire class that would not do active theatre games/activites, NOR would they sit and do worksheets!  They sat and did nothing all year!!  I got burned out from trying to motivate this class every day.  What can I do with a group of middle school students who don't respond to any type of activity or lesson?  I don't like to just put movies on; that's not my style.  But every day, that class wore on me.

So, after taking a good long break from even thinking about school, I think I am ready to dive back into it and try to retool my classroom, yet again, because that's what teachers do.  We are always trying new things to engage our students and help them grow.  I want my theatre students to grow academically, so I will not take writing out of my curriculum.  However, I know they need more hands-on, active learning.  As a teacher, that type of learning in the middle school environment is hard to monitor and control.  I will spend the rest of my summer figuring out how to do just that.

Sorry for the lack of posts.
Sorry for no pictures in this one.  (ain't nobody got time for that in the spring semester).

I'm going to direct you to my TeachersPayTeachers page where I have my "Make Your Own Lesson Plan Book" documents on sale until Saturday, and I will be adding more resources to my store in the upcoming weeks, as well.

Ms. Korth's Theatre Classroom and Other Tools

I hope my fellow educators are getting the rest and family time they need to be the best they can be for their students in August!  Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Cheers!
Kasey

Create Your Own Lesson Plan Book

I've been teaching Theatre Arts at the middle school level for two years now. I also have a hard time finding a lesson plan book that is cute and functional for me. I find that all the "cute" ones are structured for elementary, and the one that had the best layout for me was brown. That does not accurately represent at Theatre Arts teacher, in my opinion. Instead of spending over $50 on an Erin Condren planner that is beautiful but not completely useful for me, I decided to make my own.

 What you will need:

• tons of printer paper.  I used watermarked paper that I had left over from printing my graduate thesis.  Thicker than regular printer paper and looks nicer.
• full ink cartridges. I ran out of ink when I was almost finished.  I also used black and white 97% of the time and saved the color for the covers.
• MS Word.
• Pinterest.
• your favorite calendar template

Before I printed a signal page, I spent a good afternoon working on my documents in MS Word.  I first created my very own weekly lesson plan 2-page spread.  I created a row for each class.  I teach four different sections, so four rows across.  I included a space for TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills), Objective/Activity, and Assessment for each day.  I knew I wanted the week to be on a 2-page spread so I could have room to write and it could lay flat on my desk.  I also had room to type the TEKS strands right on the page, as well as room for after school activities and school events for that week.

I printed enough for the entire school year.  You have to babysit the printer and feed the pages in so they print on both sides.  (make sure you leave room on your document for binding in the center).

The next thing I tackled was getting a calendar in the book.  I always get a great 2-page spread academic calendar from my fundraising company, but it wouldn't work with the binding in this book.  So, I scoured the internet for the perfect calendar template and I found one!  Check it out here. This calendar is an Excel file and you can customize for any month, year, font, and type in your dates you already know.

Again, you need to babysit the printer and tell Excel to print one page at a time so you get the correct pages on both sides.  This was the most tedious part.  (Sometimes my printer printed the wrong thing, or it ran out of ink the middle of a job on the nice paper...)

I also included things I found I used and frequently misplaced in the pile of stuff on my desk.  I made a detention record.  I don't assign lunch detention very often, and when I do I usually forget.  So, now I have two pages to record who's going to show up and when, and if they didn't show at all.

Next I created a page for me to record Staff Development/Teacher Choice Hours and my absences for the year. I put this on the back page of my calendar section, and the following page is curriculum at a glance for all four sections.

The last section is 14 pages of blank class rosters.  I used to print them out and have them on clipboard for performances, presentations, and daily grades.  Then I would lose the clipboard.  Now they are in this book!

The cover is something I found on Pinterest, of course.  You can find the covers (and more!) that I used at Teachers Pay Teachers for free!

For the finishing touches, I took my carefully printed and organized stack of papers to FedEx/Kinkos.  I had never used their laminating machine and thought it was thin like the one I use at school so I had them copy my covers on cardstock.  When I used the laminating machine, I realized that the cardstock wasn't necessary.  After laminating the front and back covers, I had them bind it with a coil binding.  They didn't have white, which I preferred, but black is just fine.  It cost $5 for the binding and $2 for lamination.

To recap, here's a Table of Contents of what I included in my personal planner:

1. Cute front cover with district calendar printed on the other side.
2. Goals for 2014-2015 (my list of possible plays for the year)
3. Monthly calendar (2-page spread) August 2014-August 2015
4. Teacher Choice Hours/Absences
5. Year-at-a-Glance Curriculum
6. Weekly lesson plans
7. 2 pages of Detention Records
8. Blank Class rosters
9. Notes for Next Year
10. Back Cover to match the front

Now that I have all of my documents digitally made, it shouldn't take me as long to make another one for next year.  The best part is I can always add more to it if necessary.  I thought about getting tabs for each section, but I think I'll use colored paper clips and binder clips.  If I need tabs I can always add those later.

Thanks for reading this huge post about my super awesome personal planner!  I can't wait to use it and I hope you can use these tips to make one that works best for you.  Pinterest is a gold mine for lesson plan templates, calendars, and binder covers.  Lots of them are FREE!

Enjoy!
Kasey