Josh Jenkins for City Council!

So, as you may have heard if you are from the Northwest Arkansas area (or if you are just absurdly interested in politics) there was a Josh Jenkins running for city council in Springdale. Just to clear up the rumors, this was NOT me. I have had many enthusiastic parents, students, and coworkers let me know that I have their vote and their full support. Unfortunately, it is not I, but an imposter. Sorry to disappoint.... maybe one day! Whattaya think???

Book Review #2 Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Let me just say to begin with, out of fairness to Maguire and to the book, that I am a HUGE Wizard of Oz fan. I loved the Baum books. I loved the movie. I loved the little-seen sequel Return to Oz. I loved the characters, the imagination, and the SIMPLICITY of it all. In addition, let me add that I LOVED the musical Wicked. I am a fan of musical theater, and it was one of my favorites musicals ever. So, to be fair, I had astronomical, gigantic, probably unfair expectations for this book. It did not deliver. There were a few moments in this book that were pure genius. There were rare, wonderful times when I was reading and just thought to myself “YES! That is exactly how I imagined it!” But, overall I simply did not like the book. I wanted to. I had heard that I should. But alas, I did not.
I think that the primary reason for this is how completely disjointed the book feels. It feels more as if it is a collection of short stories about one character, rather than a novel. In each chapter we are just coming to be interested in a supporting character or characters, when BAM! the story jumps forward x years and the nearly interesting characters are never seen or heard from again, or show up in such limited and uninteresting capacity that it makes little difference. After the second time of this happening I realized that this book was more a little series of vignettes about Elphaba, rather than a cohesive whole.
I also felt that there was a lot of unnecessary difficulty with the names of the characters and the places. I felt like after a while these became more of a distraction than an addition to the plot and the setting.
I think that the biggest problem I had with the book was that it was simply not that entertaining. I understand that there are a lot of "morals to the story" in this book and that it wants to study issues of prejudice and morality... but for me, there also needs to be a good strong STORY to back that up. I just didn't find that here. I need to be able to get invested in the characters, particularly the main character. But the supporting characters were constantly being whisked away, and the main character never seemed fully realized.I have been told that this book is much better the second time. I don’t know that it will get that chance. There are just too many great reads out there.

Drawing the Skeletal System

Over the last week or so, we have begun our unit on the human body. We have completed an overview of the organ systems in a human body, and are now going into more depth with each system. We began with the skeletal system and are about to move on to the muscular system. As a wrap up activity on the skeletal system, my students laid on a large piece of paper on the floor and traced their bodies. Then, they drew the major bones of our bodies and labeled the 21 that they will be tested on.

The students had a really good time with this assignment and many of them actually turned out really good. Here are just a few pictures from our exciting day!

Book Review #1 The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer

So, I realize that this is technically more than one book review, but I have recently finished the first 3 Twilight books and am currently reading Breaking Dawn. I have to admit that I was more than skeptical when I heard about these books. I had never heard of such an absurd idea for a story. A girl that is struggling between her love for a vampire and her love for her best friend, a werewolf. First off, I'm not too big on reading about love stories. Most are poorly written and come off as pathetic rather than romantic. All the angst and pining usually gives me heartburn. I must say that if these books were just a love story, I don't think that I could handle them. However, there is so much insight into human nature and so much other story line that it makes the (moderately excessive) ookey stuff bearable. I must also admit that these books have gotten better as they have gone along and that they are easily the most addictive and hardest to put down books that I have read since the Harry Potter series. I am glad that I took the time and went against my better judgement to read this "sappy love story."

Springdale Sonics!!!

This year I have been blessed to have the opportunity to coach a 7th grade basketball team from our school. This is not a "school team" and is not affiliated with the AAA, but it has been a great experience thus far. It is my desire to one day coach at the junior high and high school levels and this has given me some great experience to draw from.

Our team is part of the Springale Sonics program, which is designed both to provide a program for these students to be involved in and to give our middle school basketball players an opportunity to develop their skills in preparation for playing basketball in junior high.

My team is amazing! We are 0-2 so far, but we are constantly improving. More importantly, they are a group of guys that have a lot of fun playing basketball and really enjoy each other. I have 11 players on my team. This includes 8 Marshallese students, 1 Asian, 1 Hispanic, and 1 Caucasian. This has led to some minor communication issues at time, but has also been extremely educational and exciting for me. Here is a picture of our team from before our last game:
Here is a more accurate picture:

Who couldn't love these guys!!!

THANKSGIVING BREAK!!!!

So... I hate to be negative, because I love my job and would not trade my students for anything. But, I am soooo excited for the 5 straight days I am about to get with NO 7th grade interaction. Don't get me wrong, they are truly wonderful. But, they are also very draining. Every day, regardless of how I feel or what I am thinking about outside of school, I have 115 12-and-13-year-olds who are expecting me to be focused completely on them. It will be nice to simply have some time off!

Also, I wanted to make sure, in case anyone actually is reading my blog, that I take a moment to say "Thank You" for everything that I am thankful for. I am truly blessed. I have an impact on a large number of kids every single day and that is an amazing blessing. Even more wonderful is the impact that they have on me. I am thankful to God, through whom all of my blessings come. I am thankful to my family for helping me get to this point in my life. I am thankful for our country, for our schools, and for our future.

Having said all that, enjoy your holiday, be thankful for all that we are blessed with, and be sure to watch some football. Let's all go ingest some tryptophan!!!

Diversity!!

Diversity is something we pride ourselves in at J. O. Kelly Middle School. Here is a typical sampling of my students.

As you can see, we are a diverse group even to the outsider. Our school is approximately 60% minority students (which I guess makes them the majority) We have a very large number of Hispanic students, and we have a sizable number of students from the Marshall Islands. We also have a small number of African American and Asian students. Oh yeah... and we have quite a few Caucasian kids as well. I love the different racial and ethnic backgrounds because of how much experience we have to draw from in each and every class.

However, there is much more diversity in my classes than just skin color or family background. We have several students with IEP's, and we have several students who are in GT. We have several students who love soccer, others who prefer basketball or football or band. We have one child who is in a wheelchair due to a traumatic brain injury. In both of the groups below there is (intentionally) at least one student who seriously struggles in school, one who is a very strong leader, and at least one who is a strong student. Knowing the differences in my students has led to much more effective and productive group activities.

Each kid in my class is a completely unique individual. Trying to list all the ways in which they are diverse is like chasing after the wind. I have, however, found that they are all similar in some major ways. They all want to succeed. They all want you to love them (though not all of them want you to know they want that). They all can surprise you at any given moment with what they might say or do and they all change substantially from day to day!

Mixtures

On Friday, October 3rd, our class did some explorations in the lab regarding mixtures. We had been studying the differences between heterogeneous and homogeneous mixtures and the different techniques used to separate them!

We made some pretty neat mixtures, like salt water, Kool-aid, and oil and water. Then, we learned why you should not just randomly try to mix things together by mixing baking soda, vinegar, and food coloring!

After making some mixtures, we demonstrated some of the different ways in which mixtures can be separated. We used filter paper and evaporation, but the students' favorite was easily separation by magnetism! Everyone wanted to touch the iron that we extracted from some "crime scene dirt".

My classroom!

Here are some pics I finally got around to taking of my classroom. It is not as well equipped as I might have dreamed, but it has certainly come to feel like home over the last 2 months.

And here is my "famous" Words to Know board. My students write vocabulary words on it and we then write an easy-to-understand definition together. Then, they use a graphic organizer called a KIM sheet to assign meaning, a picture, and a sentence to the word.

Gladiator's Family Night

On Wednesday night of last week, our team, the Gladiators, had an amazing family fun night! We invited all of our students to come and bring their families. We had hot dogs, chips, drinks, and Little Debbie snack cakes. The best part was, we managed to get it all donated! So, all that our students and their families had to pay was 50 cents a person to cover the cost of their drink. We had to move the event inside due to the threat of inclement weather, but we still had a great time. Also, the weather never really got too bad, so we were still able to go outside and play football and soccer. I had a great time with this. The kids definitely seemed to enjoy the fact that I was playing with them and were all eager to show off. It was a great event.

LABOR DAY!!!!

I have made it through the first two weeks and we have all successfully arrived at Labor Day! To be honest, "made it through" is not at all accurate. I have love every minute of it so far. And to think... it almost never happened! Let me take you back a few weeks, so that you can all know what I have experienced coming into this school year.

I spent the entire summer confident that I would be working at a junior high that I had interviewd with in April. As far as I knew, we were just waiting on the green light from the district offices. I felt assured that I was the man for the job and did not even persue other jobs all summer. Big mistake! Turns out, things were not as certain as I had thought and the night before New Teacher Orientation I had no job. Luckily, a principal at a local middle school was talking to the assistant principal of my wife's elementary school and mentioned that they had just had a job open up for a 7th grade science teacher. I interviewed on the Monday before school started and got my official hire on that Wednesday. So, I got to go to 2 1/2 days of inservice and had that weekend to prepare my room (and myself) for 7th graders!

The first week was a blur. I have 30 students in my "homebase" and 116 (as of now... the number seems to change every day) spread out over my 5 science classes. Our school does something called "Bootcamp" for the first 3 days, where the students learn the different rules for various places in the school (the cafeteria, the gym, the hallways, etc) So, the schedule was all weird for the first few days. However, we got our lockers assigned, got all of the necessary forms handed out, and got to know our homebase kids well. I also met with each science class at least once in those first three days and had an opportunity to go over my expectations and classroom norms. The last two days of the week were on the normal bell schedule. In science, we began talking about (and passing around) the different pieces of science equipment we will use in lab this year, as well as going over lab rules and procedures. I remember being amazed by how well behaved my students were the first week!

The second week was much more structured than the first. We had the regular schedule all week. In science, we had a quiz over the lab rules and equipment. Then, we did an activity about observation. I gave them 7 minutes to look around the room and make any notes or draw any pictures that they wanted to from their observations, then I had them sit with their heads down while I changed 10 things in the room. They then had to find as many changes as they could. This activity went over really well and led perfectly into our discussion of how important observation is in science. From there, we did an activity to introduce them to the text book we will be using this year and ended the week with a brief intro into experimental design. On Friday we did an activity where they designed an experiment to determine which type of paper makes a better paper airplane. It went very well, projectiles flying through the hallway!!

So, I made it to Labor Day! It has truly been great thus far. My biggest issues have been simply with getting comfortable with middle school. I never thought I would teach such a young age. They present different challenges, but are so engaged and so happy to be talked to. I defnitely think I am in the right place.

Oh! Also, I should mention that I am on an amazing "team". In middle school, the teachers and students are placed into teams (1 science teacher, 1 math, 1 social studies, and 1 lang. arts). Mine is amazing. They are all so willing to do whatever it takes to help our kids. I love that. We already organized a family night just for students on our team. More on that later.

Introduction

Allow me to introduce my blog.. After the Bell! This blog will chronicle all of the excitement, fear, confusion, frustration, joy, and general ups and downs of my first year of teaching. I will try to post weekly regarding the activities going on in my classroom as well as to let everyone know how I am holding up. I am super excited going into this year and I think that this blog will be an interesting read. WELCOME!