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Leaving the Classroom Made Me Fat -- UPDATE

Good News

It has been about three and a half months since I blogged about my fatness and vowed to do something about it. Three and a half months since I walked into Miss Fit and begged for a miracle. I'll keep it short and sweet and just report my results:
*I have lost just over 15 pounds.
*I have lost almost 11 inches of fat from my waist, hips, and flabby bum and thighs.
*I'm building muscle.
*My blood pressure is normal.
*I am energetic and now able to do physical activity without getting winded.

Still Working At It

I have a ways to go before reaching my goal, but the progress I've made so far has really helped me function better at work. No more blaming leaving the classroom!

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Leaving the Classroom Made Me Fat

It Could Have Also Been the Fact That I Love Chocolate and Brownies and Ice Cream and Candy and Doughnuts, but Whatever

It's no secret that teaching is a physically taxing job. You are on your feet almost every minute of the day -- and not just standing, either, but zipping around the room from student to student, trekking from one end of the school building to the other, climbing stairs (in some cases), even running and jumping from time to time. There's hardly time to eat lunch, let alone have a snack. Besides, the stress level is so high, you can't stomach much food anyway.

For these reasons, year after year, what weight I gained during my lazy summer I easily shed the first few weeks of school. And I could easily maintain a comfortable weight without having to worry about what I ate (see subtitle). I was happy with my size and fitness level (even though "fitness" didn't mean aerobics classes and lifting weights, but rather teaching and all that the job entails).

But, alas, all good things must come to an end. Since August, I have gained approximately 25 pounds and have had to go up two sizes in pants (and even those are becoming too tight now). 

Clearly, this is a drastic change, so, naturally, I would like to blame something -- or someone -- for it. So here are all the factors that may or may not have contributed to my saddening and maddening flabbening:

* I'm getting old. At 44, it is not as easy to drop weight as it was when I was 43. Obviously that one year of aging must have done something to my metabolism.

* Possible thyroid issue? I have no evidence of this (other than the rapid weight gain), but I will get it checked.

* I spent two summers doing virtually no physical activity. First, I was doing online grad school, which meant hours upon hours of sitting on the couch working on my laptop. Then I started my TeachersPayTeachers store, which meant more hours upon hours sitting on the couch working on my store. I felt fine at the time, but perhaps all of that inactivy has caught up with me.

* See subtitle. I have always had a bit of a sweet tooth. If I make a pan of brownies "for the kids," I could seriously eat every single one of those brownies in one sitting. "Sorry, kids. I was just testing them to make sure they were good for you to eat." And now my sweet tooth is making me pay.

But here is the real reason I'm getting fat:

* I am no longer in the classroom. All that exercise that teachers get every day? I'm not getting that anymore. I have to sit at a desk more often, or sit behind the wheel as I drive to different campuses. I have actual proof that this is to blame for my growing waistline: I have a Fitbit, and when I do the Workweek Hustle challenge with my teacher friends, I have to try really hard just to get 8,000 steps in a day, while they're easily getting 15,000 or more. And you know how teachers hardly have time to eat a decent lunch? For eight years I had to scarf down a Hot Pocket in 20 minutes or less. These days, I usually have a little bit more time to eat lunch -- and sometimes that means running to Jack in the Box, which is right next to our building, or zipping through Braum's in between campus visits. And then there's the fact that we have a basket of chocolate in our office -- it's for guests, honestly.

It was a real eye-opener when we had a rare "jeans day," and my favorite jeans that I used to wear just last school year would not even fit over my thighs. I was so distraught, I went out and bought elastic-waist pants. Elastic-waist pants!

So, What Am I Going to Do About It?

I knew I had to do something when I started to jiggle when I walked down the hall. The first thing I did was ask for the aforementioned Fitbit for my birthday, and my husband got me one. I was so sure that, just like the Wii video game system helped me lose the baby weight after my last pregnancy, the Fitbit would help me slim down and shape up.

I quickly discovered that I was going to need to do more than count my steps, because no matter how many steps I managed to take in a day, I was still gaining weight. So I downloaded the FitStar app, a companion to the Fitbit app. It contains a variety of video workouts, and I would have gotten more out of them if it didn't take 10 minutes for one video to load on my phone. Disenchanted, I started looking into gym memberships, but I found that the big-box gyms are so expensive. What I really wanted was to be able to just take some zumba classes or something like that, without having to pay an outrageous gym membership fee.

Then I stumbled upon Miss Fit, a women-only fitness and 

nutrition center in my neighborhood. They offer a variety 

of classes -- the first one I tried was zumba -- and they have 

a smoothie bar where they make high-protein shakes. After 

a couple of classes and trying a couple of shakes, I had a 

consultation and was introduced to Herbalife and talked into 

a three-day trial of the nutrition products. I was skeptical but 

willing to try. I just completed the three-day trial, and I don't 

want to jinx anything, but I seriously can see and feel results 

after just three days. I have more energy; I feel comfortably 

full all day; I feel good about myself for eating well and 

drinking more water; and even my after pictures compared to 

my three-days-earlier pictures show a tiny improvement.

So, I will try to keep up the pace with three classes a week 

along with the Herbalife meal replacement system, 

and I hope to update you soon with the great news that I can 

fit into my favorite jeans again. I may no longer be in the 

classroom, but that doesn't mean I have to totally let myself go. 

I will get back down to my normal weight and my normal 

clothing size. I will triumph!

The Book that Changed My Life as a Teacher

At some point in your teaching career, you will find yourself asking, "What in the world did I get myself into?" and thinking, "I wonder if there are any openings at Home Depot." These thoughts swam in my brain every day during my first year of teaching, at least once a week during my second and third years, and even by my fourth year, I was checking the jobs ads every now and again.

Then, in 2012, something magical happened: I attended an Edcamp professional development workshop. Click here to learn more about Edcamp. At Edcamp, which was without a doubt the best professional development I had attended in four years of teaching, I learned about a phenomenal new book called Teach Like a Pirate, by Dave Burgess.

In a nutshell (even though you can't really put the greatness of this book in a nutshell), this book teaches you to rethink your teaching -- every aspect of it: lesson design, relationships with students, self-reflection. It's about teaching with passion and giving students memorable experiences in and outside the four walls of your classroom. Here are a few ways I used ideas from this book to pirate up my teaching:

The pirate in me

I'm sure I already knew this, as we all do, but was reminded by the author that students' days at school can be monotonous, boring, even dreadfully miserable. This book gave me a plethora of ideas to change that -- at least for my class. One of the simple ways to do so (and I seriously kicked myself for not having thought of this myself) is by creating some suspense.

The teaser

On the second day of my fifth year of teaching, I had planned to do a lesson on learning styles -- so that I could learn more about my students and their learning preferences and so they could learn more about each other, and themselves. Based on Burgess's book, I was going to focus on brain research, and I found a fantastic video to show about how amazing the brain is -- and how it can be fooled by sleight of hand. I also purchased some dollar-store stress balls in the shape of brains, and I had my own brain-designed hat to wear. I planned to throw (er-- gently toss) the brain balls out to students who asked questions and participated in discussion. Now, of course I was extremely excited about this lesson, but I needed to get my kids looking forward to it. So at the end of class on the first day of school, I gave them a simple teaser: "You don't want to miss tomorrow; we're going to be throwing brains around!" And that's it. No more said, even through the onslaught of "What?!" "What do you mean?" "Throwing brains?!" "What are we gonna be doing?" I needed to leave them wondering, leave them in suspense, leave them curious. Sure enough, the next day, students bounded into class asking about the brains.

The mystery

In my 7th-grade ELA class, we would soon be reading Pandora's Box, as well as a few other Greek myths. When planning this lesson, I focused on Burgess's ideas for using props to engage students. I found three small boxes at home (a ring box, a small gift box, etc.). Inside the boxes, I placed a little note that read something like, "I told you not to open it!" Then, the day we were going to be reading Pandora's Box, I handed a box to three random students, telling them, "This is a very special box just for you. But you must place it on your desk and you may NOT open it until the end of class."

As class went on, I watched those students, and so did the curious others. One student sat on his hands so he wouldn't be tempted to open the box. Another student tried to peek without really opening the box. Another had no problem setting the box at the corner of her desk and ignoring it henceforth. As we read the myth, students began to make connections between the story and my act of giving students a box and telling them not to open it. Of course there were other parts to the lesson, other activities we did with the myth, but this simple sidebar with the boxes made it interactive for the students, as if they were part of the story. It created suspense and mystery and engagement.

Selling tickets

Last year, I had a lesson planned that I thought was awesome -- so awesome that I could sell tickets to it. So I did. I had a roll of those red raffle tickets that you can buy at Staples or Office Depot, and I stood at my classroom door. As students approached, I told them I was selling tickets to today's lesson. The cost varied; sometimes it was three smiles and a laugh, for some students the cost was a positive attitude, and for other students the cost was two compliments. As I tore off tickets for students and accepted their payment, I could see in their eyes and their smiles that this was not something they were used to. Yes! I created curiosity. Then, during the lesson, I stopped at three natural breaks to call a ticket number for door prizes.

Using social media

I often used my teacher Facebook page, Twitter, and Edmodo to send out teasers to the next day's lesson. It was such an easy way to get kids excited about coming to school. One day I had a new seating chart, but instead of just telling my students where to sit, I wanted to make it fun. So I made up a little riddle for each student to find the right seat. The Friday night before, I sent this out on Facebook:
"Where, oh, where will my students sit on Monday?
Solve your riddle to have a fun day.
Can you find your seat with just one clue?
If you can read rhymes, you'll know what to do."

Another time, I used Tellagami.com to create this teaser video for my 6th-grade students: https://tellagami.com/gami/KAN1EL/ and posted it on my Facebook teacher page. And this one was for my 8th-graders: https://tellagami.com/gami/Q3LKP5/

Here's a teaser I posted to create suspense for a newscast activity: "Are you ready to be on camera? If so, you will love our next assignment!"


Doing simple teasers like these created excitement for my kids, and the more excited they got, the more excited I got. It was like a crazy, excited cycle of excitement! I've posted before in this blog that I believe if you're not having fun, you're not doing it right. These little nuggets of golden ideas from Teach Like a Pirate helped me find the fun in teaching again when I thought I had lost it.

Giving them something unexpected

For four years in a row, after reading Teach Like a Pirate, I opened the school year with Dave Burgess's first three days activities, which included using Play-Doh on Day 1, and doing the collaborative groups "Who Will Survive" task on Day 3, complete with a costumed skit by Yours Truly. If this sounds like Greek to you, you must read the book. One of the main concepts the book emphasizes is giving students memorable experiences. When you make your lessons stand out from the rest, when you allow yourself to take risks and do something different, you will find your students so much more engaged and willing to participate. Until reading this book, I never imagined that I would dress as a witch and come to school as Mrs. McGonnawrite for a weeklong Hogwrites School of Word Craft and Editing. I never imagined that I would hold a dance-off with a difficult student. I never imagined that I would be able to turn workbook-style lessons into games and kinesthetic activities.

Pirate on, teachers. Pirate on.

This book truly saved my teaching. It lifted me up from the depths of "What have I gotten myself into?" and brought me to "What will I do for my students next?"! Now that I am no longer in the classroom, I miss having the chance to change students' lives with inspiring lessons. So I am spreading Burgess's message in my new position as an ELA strategist, sharing my passion for this author's theories with the teachers I am coaching. There are so many PD books out there -- some fantastic ones, yes -- but this one is the only one I would say is a must-read. Really. And I am not alone. I quickly learned after the aforementioned magical Edcamp that Teach Like a Pirate had developed quite the cult following. It has become so popular over the years that I feel a bit like I'm arriving late to dinner by posting this now. But if you haven't read it yet, go get it! You will not regret it. It made such an impression on me that I have asked my boss to purchase copies of the book so I can present a Teach Like a Pirate PD and distribute books to secondary teachers in my district.

8 Tips for Implementing RTI in the Middle School ELA Classroom

I've been MIA since school started. All educators know what that's like. The school year is simply too busy for us to keep up with extras like blogs. Thank goodness for the weeklong Thanksgiving break -- we get a breather, a minute to relax, and a minute to write a blog post.

Time is all we need

Lack of time is one of the biggest issues secondary teachers face when it comes to conducting small-group interventions. I was lucky to teach at campuses with double-blocked ELA classes (90 minutes!), but not all campuses in my district follow that schedule. Several have class periods that are roughly 50 minutes long, and once you subtract minutes for settling in, administrivia, housekeeping, and the like, those classes are more like 40 minutes, on the generous end.

I've been working with a new teacher to help her get small groups for RTI started, and last week when I co-taught with her, I was hit with an eye-opening reality check. Those 50 (or really 40) minutes absolutely fly by, and it can seem virtually impossible to carve out time for interventions.

That reality check got me to thinking long and hard about how middle school campuses can effectively implement RTI, and I've come up with some tips -- all of which I would be following if I were still a classroom teacher.

1. Shorten the length of your whole-class direct instruction.

This may require a paradigm shift for many teachers, as it calls for a whole new way of thinking about lesson planning. But think about it this way: If your whole-class instruction (the "I do" part) is cut to 15 minutes or less, and guided practice (the "we do" part) is about 15 minutes, that leaves 15-20 minutes for independent practice (the "you do" part). And it is during this independent practice time that you can maximize student learning by pulling a small group for a targeted intervention.

2. Consider flipping the classroom.

The flipped classroom design has its disadvantages (not all students have Internet access at home, many middle school students simply will not do the at-home assignments, etc.), but if you can give students even just a portion of the "I do" part of the next day's lesson to do at home, you save yourself a few valuable minutes that can be spent on guided and independent practice during class -- which means you'll also open up more time to pull small groups.

3. Invest in stations.

Some secondary teachers may view learning stations as an "elementary thing," but I can tell you from first-hand experience that middle schoolers love them and they were about the best thing I ever did in my classroom. I often set up literacy stations with reading and writing activities that were fun for my kids (and for me!). They included board games, card games, fun writing prompts, and reading response activities. This always took more time to set up on the front end, but the results were unarguably positive: Students were engaged in the activities (didn't even realize they were actually learning while playing); the class time had built-in brain breaks, because students were rotating every 12-15 minutes to a new activity; and it freed me up to pull small groups. With station rotations, you have a couple of options for RTI. You can oversee the whole class as they work in their groups, and when the time is right, you can go work with specific groups of students who need intervention. Or you can make one of the stations a guided-reading-with-the-teacher station, which is what I did quite often. That way, all groups eventually rotate through to me, and I can intervene for the struggling kids and extend for the stronger readers. (This required pregrouping based on data.)

4. Take advantage of SSR time.

Through recent classroom observations, I have seen many teachers using SSR in the classroom (yay!!). But in all cases, the teacher sat and read independently as well. While this is a good practice because it shows students that the teacher values reading for pleasure as well, in that 20-minute SSR period, the teacher could have easily worked with a struggling reader or two while everyone else read silently. During my grad-school program, I did extensive research on SSR, and one of my findings was that a more structured SSR period -- in which the teacher holds reading conferences with individual students or pulls small groups for interventions -- was more effective and beneficial for students. Perhaps the teacher can read silently with her students for 5-10 minutes to show her passion for reading, but then she can swing by the desk of a few students and have a quick reading conference, work with a student on fluency, give a quick mini-lesson on using context clues, or pull a small group for a targeted intervention.

5. Put students with partners.

One way to shave time off of guided practice and independent practice is to have students work with a partner. Many secondary teachers scoff at this idea because they feel that middle school children need to learn to work efficiently on their own. Indeed, when I first started teaching, I was under the tutelage of a quite brilliant veteran teacher who believed in rows and silent independent work. I tried to follow in her footsteps, but over the years I observed that kids really do learn better, learn more, and learn faster when they are given opportunities to be collaborative. And so one year I finally did away with rows permanently, and from then on out, I had my desks arranged in groups of 3 or 4, and sometimes pairs -- but never rows (except during testing, of course). After your direct instruction, when students practice the skill with your help and then apply the skill without your help, if they work with a partner (or in a small group, even), they can complete the assignment in less time than if they had to navigate it alone.

6. Use timers religiously.

This may sound like such a simple thing, but sometimes this happens: You teach and teach and teach, and before you know it, it's time for the bell and you're only halfway through the day's lesson plan, and you wonder where the time went and why nobody finished their work. When you plan your lesson, you should pace it out and set a time limit for each portion of the lesson. Then stick to those times as best as you can. Use your phone -- or better yet, one of those handy online timers that you can display for your students. Yes, interruptions will happen, things will need to be retaught or explained more than you originally thought, but at least by using a timer for every activity, you have a guide to go by. And later you can analyze where the time went. Setting time limits will allow you to plan time for interventions.

7. Hand over some power.

Elementary teachers seem to have this down -- all routine classroom chores are delegated, every child has a job, and the teacher is free to teach. By turning over the mundane tasks (sharpening pencils, handing out journals, moving desks, gathering textbooks, or even turning on the projector), your classroom can run like clockwork without you at the helm every second of the class period. So while you are working with a small group of intervention students, someone else is in charge and students can handle little issues that arise. You won't have to stress and try to rush through an intervention lesson thinking that you still have to do X, Y, and Z, because you will have students whose job is to do X, Y, and Z for you.

8. Be realistic.

Understand that you will not be able to meet with all RTI groups every day. Get yourself a planner and set up a realistic schedule. Decide which students need the most help, and plan to meet with them for 10-12 minutes two or three times a week. Once you get started and ease into a routine, you can add on groups of your middle-tier students. Contrary to the pressure that society tends to place on teachers today, we are not all-powerful. So you do what you can with what you have.

Some ideas for intervention lessons

* Use your district's most recent benchmark exam and do a guided reading on a passage students had the most trouble with.
* Use a lower-lexile version of a text the whole class is reading and target a specific skill your intervention kids need help with.
* Try word work. Many struggling readers are struggling because of gaps in their learning -- they're missing basic phonics skills or elementary vocabulary and grammar skills. In my TPT store, I have a bundle of word work and word puzzle activities designed to help fill those gaps. You can access it by clicking on the picture:

I would love to hear how other secondary teachers are making time for RTI! Leave a comment below.

How to Teach Theme in Middle School

Let the unteaching begin

There are a number of concepts that students learn one way in elementary school and a different way in middle school. We essentially have to unteach what they learned in elementary to address misconceptions. Linear plot is one that comes to mind, as in elementary, students are taught plot using a triangle, where the climax of the story occurs perfectly in the middle. Google "plot chart," and you will find a gazillion of these plot triangles. Say it ain't so. As an ELA teacher, this is highly frustrating, because in no story ever does the climax occur in the middle. So we unteach that -- over and over, in 6th grade, 7th grade, and still in 8th.

Theme is another concept we have to reteach in a more accurate way, because students come to middle school thinking that theme is one word -- like courage, or hope, or love. It appears that this is the way theme is taught in elementary. This creates a huge misconception for students, especially as they read more challenging texts.

What is theme?

Theme is not one word. That one word -- courage, hope, or love -- is a topic. If a student says a story or poem is about courage, she must ask herself, "What is the author trying to say about courage?" Then you have the theme. Hence the misconception: Students in 6th grade and beyond have trouble distinguishing between theme and topic. So we must extend students' thinking beyond that one word.

Theme is a message embedded in the text. A lesson. A moral. A universal idea. All parts of the story (or poem) contribute to or influence the theme. How the characters feel and act, how they respond to the conflict, how the conflict is resolved -- these things develop the theme. The setting plays a role in development of the theme as well. So how do we get kids to comprehend this complex idea?

Concentric circles

Last year I learned about a method to teach the theme of a poem, and I found that it works well with all literary genres. It uses a concentric circle graphic organizer:

How it works: 
1.) After reading the text, students write the topic of the text in the inner-most circle. That should be just one word, such as "Friendship."
2.) In the next circle, students write the text evidence that proves the text is about that topic. For example, how do you know it's about friendship? Text evidence may include the title, or perhaps the two main characters are best friends and in the story these friends go through the trials and tribulations of friendship, or perhaps there is a sentence within the text that says something specific about friendship.
3.) In the third circle, students answer the question, "What do you as a reader learn about the topic?" So for our example -- the topic of friendship -- students would explain what that text teaches them about friendship. Answers will vary, but the key is providing text evidence. Perhaps the friends in the story struggle through a conflict but in the end they stick together. So the reader learns that true friendship is lasting.
4.) In the final circle, students answer the question, "What do you think the author believes about the topic?" This will be based on text evidence and what happens in the text. This answer may be very close to what students wrote in the previous circle. Students would write, "The author believes that..." and for our example, perhaps it is something like, "The author believes that friends should stick together no matter what."
5.) The last step is to cross out "The author believes that," and what remains is your theme statement -- a complete sentence that expresses  a universal theme and is based on text evidence!

Get it for free

You can download my Finding Theme with Concentric Circles activity for free at my TPT store: