I attended a Classroom Management workshop where I learned two magic words that have the power to save a first-year teacher: Procedures and Routines. 

You have a procedure for everything--how to enter a classroom, how to pass in papers, how to properly head a paper.  Then, you rehearse those procedures until they become routines.  The result: Better management = less discipline = more learning.

When Ralphie isn't following procedure, I am to quietly make eye contact and ask him," Ralphie, what is our procedure for...?"  If he doesn't know, I restate it.  If he knows, he tells me and I say, "Now, show me."  He rehearses the procedure until he gets it right. (For example, re-entering the classroom properly) Classroom rules are clearly visible, as are consequences for choosing to break a rule.  Procedures are for doing things and don't have punishments attached,  rules are for conduct and have consequences for choosing not to follow them.

As a paraprofessional I saw to it that the students followed the procedures taught by my teacher until they became routines.  As a new teacher, I am now responsible to establish those procedures as well as to see that the students follow them.  There's a big difference. 

Procedures and Routines -- magic words!

We've had many weeks of drought.  Yesterday afternoon, it began to drizzle; we got less than 1/4 inch.  This morning began and remained cloudy and cool.  Now, it has begun a soft rain.  I checked with weather.com and they had suggestions for rainy day activities:

1. Paint a picture of a rainbow.
2. Have an indoor picnic.
3. Make a bird feeder.
4. Jump over mud puddles.
5. Play a rainfall trivia game. (you'd expect that from a weather site)
6. Act out a play.
7. Do a rain dance.
8. Make a list of all the things that make you smile, laugh, and cry.
9. Make a fort out of the kitchen table.

If you need me, I'll be in my fort.

Every Wednesday is "Western Wednesday" on one of our cable channels.  I make a meal that goes with the theme: hot dogs and beans , hamburgers and home fried potatoes, steaks, chili, etc.  We settle back and enjoy the days of yesteryear-- where the bad guys wear black hats and the good guys always win.  It's a simple thing, but I find myself hurrying home after work on Wednesdays because Gene and Champ have a "swell story to tell me!"

"Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop to look around once in a while you could miss it."  ~From the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off

"Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any one walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world" --Jesus, the Christ, as recorded in John 11:9 (RSV).

We continually strive to improve on the perfection that is in nature.  Daylight savings time has begun; again, man thinks he knows best.

After church, we're off to see the William Bouguereau exhibit at the Appleton Museum in nearby Ocala, Florida.  I can't wait; realism is my favorite. 

My diploma arrived with my name spelled correctly, so it's official -- I am a teacher.  I feel an enormous sense of relief.  I work with one of my fellow-graduates.  She was so happy that she cried when hers came.  That got me thinking about the different reactions people have to this sort of thing.

I remember a colleague sharing with me her reaction to the arrival of her Master's Degree.  She said she laid it on the bed and began to weep.  When I asked her why, she whispered, "It wasn't worth it." The cost to her family and her own mental well-being had been too high.

People are already asking me if I'm going to go for my Master's, National Board Certification, or a Reading Endorsement.  I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Yesterday, my husband raised the lid to the kitchen garbage can and immediately began to fuss about my not putting the bag in correctly.  I explained that the reason for the bag covering only half the opening was that I had washed the can and was waiting for it to dry.  "Oh", came the embarrassed reply.

We have a new resident in the yard. It began making mounds in the side yard and worked its way through the back, under the house, and popped up in front. 

When I first moved to this part of Florida over twenty years ago, I had asked the locals about the sandy mounds dotting the pasturelands.  They called them salamander mounds.  Now, I couldn't imagine a salamander that large, so I looked them up and found that they are actually a burrowing rodent, the pocket gopher.

My husband's assumption that it is a pest has led to many loud threats against the creature's life.  This morning, I looked it up again and found that it is a beneficial little animal.  It not only aerates the soil, but according to zoologist Mark Bailey, The "sandy-mounding" habits of pocket gophers help maintain soil fertility by returning some of these leached nutrients back to where they can be reached by plant roots. One study found that, under optimal conditions, pocket gophers can return more than three and a half tons of soil per acre to the surface each year. The mounds of bare soil provide natural seedbeds where longleaf pines and herbaceous plants can germinate. The pocket gopher's burrows provide shelter to a diverse assemblage of other animals, as do those of the gopher tortoise. For example, at least fourteen arthropods (mostly insects) are believed to be unable to exist anywhere but in the burrows of southeastern pocket gophers.

"Oh."

Many circumstances seem, at first glance, to be a clear-cut nuisance or trial.  Closer examination can reveal an unexpected benefit or blessing.  "Salamander slander" is an ugly affliction, but happily it does have a cure.

Happy Sunday!

It's drizzly-rainy this morning, so the sunrise was just a bright rosy glow.  That's good, too.  Happy New Year, Xanga friends, whatever your circumstances!

Life is full of little absurdities.  Before our graduation "celebration"  we were reminded not to flip our tassels from left to right.  Apparently Barry University's "official" graduation (in Miami) is not until Saturday.  Tomorrow, I can flip my tassel.

People get paid to know these things.

I finished my interning on Friday, and we graduate next Saturday.  I started my Christmas poem this morning; the hardest part for me is deciding what to write, so the rest should flow fairly quickly.  I look forward to decorating and preparing for Christmas.  Last year I had too much schoolwork, so I had to let decorating go undone. 

I collect ornaments.  I wondered what I might find to commemorate my graduation.  I can't believe I found a tassel ornament in Barry University's colors of Black and Red!  It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Have a perfect-fit Sunday; may it contain an unexpected surprise just for you.