Fun Photo Friday

In honor of everyone's (including myself) love for Fridays, I am trying out a weekly theme.  I used 2 of my favorite Hawaiian sunset photos today because school hasn't started yet.  Once school begins we will choose our class photo of the week for "Fun Photo Fridays".  I'm looking forward to it! 

Aloooha!

Classroom Nightmares

Earlier this summer I described my dreams for the class I teach in.  Unfortunately those dreams take work and time; time, time, time.  Today I want to share the transformation photos.

 I started out with dust, dirt, boxes, piled furniture, and disorganization to the MAX!!

Ew.  The first thing that drove me crazy is the furniture.  I reorganized them keeping small group work stations or centers in mind, reducing clutter, and producing a maximum efficiency environment.

The next obstacle is cleaning.  Cleaning the cubbies, cabinets, baskets, containers, dividers, books, and furniture.  What a feat!  My classroom doors and windows stay open for breeze flow.  Therefore my room is very susceptible to collecting dirt and dust.  It is important to clean and maintain cleanliness throughout the year.  I am going to instill monthly cleaning days for the items in the classroom.  Otherwise, it gets DIS-GUST-INGGGGGGG.

All of these containers got cleaned out:  Hosed, scrubbed, and set out in the sun to dry.

  

Next came the unpacking.  This can be fun, like opening presents.  I found homes for all the manipulatives and supplies.  I know it's important to have materials out for students for easy access, so I put them in areas students can reach independently.  I labeled all containers in the cubbies to promote word knowledge, vocabulary, and organization.  Words everywhere!  I love Reagan's labels.  I used them on storage containers, math manipulative containers, and library labels.  I also downloaded a few fun fonts from here.  

Finally, I worked on bulletin boards.  They are incomplete at the moment, but I used my classroom theme of polka dots to help design.  The content of the boards will be added as students learn new things.  I laminated the bulletin board decorations for long-lasting durability.

I am continuously improving my room.  August 5 is the first day of school.  All will be complete by then (I hope)!  To be continued...

New Year

If you're a teacher, you're probably like me in welcoming the "New Year" in August (September in some areas).  My years are based on the school calendar.  And, yes, a new one is upon us, PEOPLE!

I changed my look a bit for the occasion.  I feel like this theme is a little more compatible.  I cannot take all the credit, though.  My inspiration was from a fellow blogger's profile I am absolutely in love with.  Thanks, Denise from "Sunny days in Second Grade"!

It's been a while since my last post.  I've been working hard in my classroom (there's still more work to be done...) and keeping up with my healthy living goals.  I'm so proud to say I ran my longest run ever of 10 miles this summer! and lost 10 pounds to match it.  That weight was all from Christmas vacation 6 months ago thanks to my mom's delicious baking.  It couldn't be helped.  I'm going to try my very best to maintain the healthy mentality throughout the school year.  I'll have to run after school when I get home, which will not be easy.  I'll let you know how that goes...

As for my room, I have before and after pictures.  I really want to wait and post when it's completely finished, but I will share a little at a time until the students come.  Teachers started meetings/trainings today, so I will not be able to dedicate as much time to my room as I'd like.  Sad, but I still have a week (11 days to be exact).

And with that... the countdown to the first day of school (the New Year) begins!  

A Lesson in Culture

When I moved to Hawaii 4 years ago I knew no one here and nothing of the state except what I had seen in the exotic photos and the friends I knew lucky enough to vacation here.  I had a conversation today with a friend's mom that made me realize how far I've come since that wide-eyed, college graduate ready to take on second graders in a community I knew nothing about.  It wasn't easy at first- my students said things I didn't understand and had names for things that had to be explained to me.  "Slippers" are flip-flops, "puka" means "hole", "da kine" is a phrase that means "whatchamacallit", and so on.  Now these are words I use without blinking- if I said them back in South Bend people would look at me with blank stares and it would take me a moment to realize why.  It was so powerful knowing that teaching and learning was being reciprocated almost equally among me and my students.

Having a grasp of the culture is part of engaging students in prior knowledge that is so important to teaching. I used to catch myself using snow as a relationship with winter, road trips as an example of traveling (it takes 1 hour to drive to the other side of the island- where I LIVE), or even using squirrels when thinking of park animals (there aren't any squirrels in Hawaii...).  These are things I'm used to.  But that was the problem, I needed to think of my STUDENTS' prior knowledge.  To do that I had to gain more knowledge myself before I could teach to my students.

                                 

I embraced the culture in Hawaii the moment I set foot on the island.  I love it.  I love learning about it.  I know much more and can connect with my students better now.  I've gotten to visit other islands of Hawaii that some of my students haven't, gone to beaches that some of my students haven't, and have visited places around the island that some of my students haven't.  BUT what I need to do is take my experiences a step further and try learning and using even more of the language, historical culture in my lessons, and actually teaching students about Hawaii.  Sure, I've taught geographical lessons about the different islands, their characteristics/what the island is known for, and even studied Hawaii's natural resources.  Today, though, I had an eye-opening experience with one of the Kumus (Hawaiian for "Teachers") at my school.

Being led through the hei'au

We took a day off of Healthy Living to explore the community with Kumu Pua, learning Hawaiian Culture. More specifically, we visited a hei'au.  A hei'au is the ancient sacred ground of the Hawaiian Temple.  There were at least 30 students engaged and listening intently to the legends, stories, facts, and history of Hawaii.  I was one of those students.  I learned so much from this field trip and wanted to share with readers.  Hopefully someone out there is as interested as I am- I'd like to pass the knowledge on.

Getting permission to enter the sacred hei'au

1 Year Luau Tradition

How the babies were blessed at their 1 Year Luau, and explanation of white coral

The engineering behind building the walls of the hei'au 

This is just a taste of information she shared today.  I learned so much from Kumu Pua.  I can say with certainty: it left me craving more!

Summer So Far

It’s been over a week since my last post and I have been dying to catch up!  Since summer break has started, I've had a chance to de-stress a little.  My friend from college came to visit me in celebration of her graduating medical school in New York.  She’s a doctor!  Could work to my advantage in the future… HA!  :) It was so nice to play tourist around the island.  She’s a city girl, so being in Hawaii was a huge change of pace.  I took her snorkeling, hiking, camping, shopping, stand up paddle boarding, kayaking, sun bathing on some of the best beaches, and on a catamaran sunset cruise!  It was so nice to have her!!! 

Hike to the Pillboxes on the east side of the island. View of Lani Kai Beach- my favorite!

Unfortunately, part of the time my friend was visiting I had to work.  “During the summer?!” I can hear you gasp… Yes, yes- summer is the best time ever for this kind of thing!  In addition to being a second grade teacher, I also coach Robotics for fourth-eighth graders.  It’s a relatively new program at my school; one that I’ve loved getting involved in!  This will be the third year I've coached Robotics as well as the third year this program is offered to Kamaile students.  I am so fortunate to have the support of the University of Hawaii’s Program for After School Literacy and Support (PALS) in my team’s endeavors.  They carry the behind-the-scenes care such as purchasing the supplies, organizing events, finding resources, and helping in any way they can.  As I’ve found the past 2 years, there is a great amount that goes into Robotics.  The PALS schools participate in the First Lego League (FLL) Competition.  It’s an annual international competition that test students’ skills in core values, programming, robot design, and a project based on a theme (students create an innovative solution in the FLL theme for the year).  This is intense for new teams- as you can imagine!  Part of why I love PALS is that they listen to our needs and act on it.  The Robotics coaches from the PALS schools asked for PD, so we spent the entire week coming together as a PALS community to plan as a group, learn more of the programming techniques and pieces for building, brainstorming project resources for this year’s theme:  Nature’s Fury, and not to mention getting pumped up for the season! 

This is a video of me and my co-coach learning how to build using gears. 

Now that this professional development is over I have a full week to myself until I teach summer school for two weeks.  What to do, what to do!  

I have a few things I can't wait to catch up with, but first... reading on the beach.  My life is tough!

Introducing... ME!

Hello fellow bloggers!  I am so excited to start this blog I don't even know where to begin.  I guess I will start by introducing myself.

I am a second grade teacher at Kamaile Academy.  Kamaile is located on the west side of Oahu, Hawaii.  We are in a town called Waianae.  The 2013-2014 school year will mark my fifth year teaching second grade at Kamaile.  I am originally from Edwardsburg, Michigan.  I went to school at Saint Mary's college in Notre Dame, Indiana close to where I grew up.  My students learn about college and strive to prepare for it.  We celebrate on College Day every Wednesday by singing our Kamaile Cheer and the Notre Dame fight song.  They are so cute!


I was inspired to create this blog when I stumbled upon a couple master teachers who have blogs of their own.  I was searching for ideas for my grade level's summer "Reading Toolkit" 'Ohana Night coming up.  I was immediately blown away with ideas that would apply to the workshop I will be leading on writing- thanks to the blogs I looked at.  I decided to come up with a blog to log my professional ideas/development as a teacher.  Maybe I will also be able to help other teachers.  If not, this will still be a useful tool for my own projects, lessons, family communication, and reflections.

When I graduated college and moved to this beautiful place I created a blog to track my growth as a teacher and a new independent person in this big world.  Additionally, I created a website for my class.  As time went on, I became too busy to blog my daily life in my personal blog, and parents weren't really utilizing the class website, so I slowly stopped both.  With this blog, I plan on combining the two to create an easy stop for families to follow what we do in school and how they can help support their child's learning at home.

Stay tuned!