DIBELS and a Fifth Grade Guido

I spent a lot of time this week doing extra work that others teachers did not have time to complete. A I spent a large amount of time working DIBELS tests. DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) is a reading test that is taken three times a year to measure students' growth in grades K-6. Even though I am working with 8th grade, I found myself grading numerous DIBELS tests simply because I am an extra pair of hands and other teachers did not have time to grade them. After grading, I also alphabetized and made sure that we had all the tests for all of the students. Even though this was a pretty tedious job, I am glad I could help because it would have taken a lot more time if I had not been there.

I often find myself wondering how teachers can ever get all of their work done; there is always so much to do! I feel like they need to hire someone to do just the extra stuff that teachers do not really have time for, but need to get done anyway. Of course, with budget cuts and everything, this will never ever happen.

On Friday afternoon, I was volunteered to watch a fifth grade classroom because the teacher needed to work on ILLPs (Individual Language Learning Plan). An ILLP is basically like an IEP for students who are learning English. I was told to take each class to the library, they would read, and that would be it. However, it was not nearly that easy.  The students were awful: they would not listen and just kept talking throughout most of the class. Again, it reaffirmed my choice in being a secondary major. A fun bit of side information: there is a fifth grader who is a total guido. He has hair kind of like Pauly D's and was wearing an Ed Hardy style shirt. Seeing him almost made the whole afternoon worth it.

As far teaching this week, there is nothing too eventful to report. Jodi was actually here all week; I think a curriculum developer had an apoplexy (vocab word!) somewhere when they realized they did not send her to any training all week. Since she was here, she did about half of the teaching, which was fine. That will probably be her last week to get any significant amount of teaching because in two weeks I will be taking over full time.

Next Tuesday (no school Monday!), the 7th and 8th graders are going on a trip to Sky-Y, which is a leadership camp in northern AZ. This is not just a day trip though; we leave Tuesday afternoon and do not return until Thursday at 3pm. This means that I will be sleeping in cabins with junior high girls for two nights. I am kind of excited for the leadership activities, but the sleeping situation does not sound nearly as thrilling. At the very least I will have some good stories to blog about.