Today was a good day.

If you want to make God laugh, just plan. God has to be chuckling everytime He catches a glimpse of me lesson planning. My first day I had to teach 8th graders when I planned for 7th graders (no worries, I got my 7th graders. Phew!). My class size changes on a daily basis. My lesson plans are cut short by impatient bells. Holy cow, why do I spend hours lesson planning?

Ok, now that I have that rant out of the way, I am going to focus on the good things. I spend all day encouraging my kids to focus on the good, so I'm going to take one of my own notes.

Today was a good day.

A lot of bad things happened today, but today was a good day. It started off as usual: 5:15am alarm, run a straightener through my hair, eat some oatmeal, meander to the bus pick-up, then drive out to Watts. I slowly wake up over some coffee on the bus and review my lesson on solving word problems with multiplying/dividing fractions. Step 1, read the problems. Step 2, underline numbers... Yea, I'm ready for this. I got my poster modeling some awesome Cornell Notes. I got my model word problem prepared. Sparkle clap for Ms. Lyons being on top of her game.

Like I said, God laughs when we make plans. I'm sitting in the back of my classroom watching the first teacher give her lesson. I'm staring at the board, my mind slowly coming to as I realize my kids aren't learning the lesson they need to understand mine at all. Shit. After about five seconds of "shit what do I do?", I turned to my adviser for suggestions. After a short, hushed conversation with her I quickly walk over to the side board and write down a mini-lesson on multiply and dividing fractions. As I'm finishing the last notes, my co-teacher announces "Let's give Ms. Lyons our attention!" Ok, folks, let's make it happen.

To anybody unfamiliar with teaching or even just presenting, this may not seem like a big deal, but teaching at an inner city school to kids with such low achievement requires an incredible amount of planning and execution. Hence my freak out.

So, I take a deep breath, look at my kids, and start, well, teaching. It. Was. Awesome. I had a sense of urgency that had never been present before. My kids yesterday were rambunctious, quick to call out without raising hands, talking back to me, giggling... today they were taking detailed notes, answering my questions, responding to my calls and checks. They learned what a reciprocal was, what Cornell Notes look like, and how to set up a multiplication and division word problem.

Ok, here's the awesomely ironic moment: Today, or all days, into my room strolls one of my Instructional Leaders, one of my Literacy Specialists, and 4-5 Teacher For America full times staff members. My Instructional Leader, impressed with my new found sense of urgency, goes and tells my advisor about the awesome lesson I just gave. This is the point where I would have my students give themselves two pats on the back.

Anyway, I just needed to talk about a good day because Lord knows I've had quite a few rough ones on very little sleep. Speaking of sleep, I'm looking at four hours until 5:15 am. Gotta get some sleep so my kids don't get the best of me! Good night