Spilled Coffee & Comfy Outfits | Friday, September 17th 2021

[Music] you guys uh say a prayer for me [Music] it's friday at 7 11 and i just went to mobile order the starbucks for taylor and myself because it's my week to pick it up and according to the app they are just out of iced coffee all together out of cold brew all together at the one that i normally go to and at two others in this general area so i'm gonna hope that that's just an error with the app because we know the app is tripping sometimes um but if they don't have it i really don't have a backup plan because i didn't make any iced coffee last night so i don't have that and a beverage a coffee in the morning when i work is like a security blanket it gets me through the day it gets my day going it gives me something to do i just feel like i need it psychologically so just cross your fingers that they actually do have something that i can drink um in other news i'm wearing my nike outfit today because it's nike day and i'm just really glad i bought this little set because i'm already extremely comfortable the set itself is comfortable the shoes are comfortable it's great i'm loving it so i don't know if they still have it but i suggest you get it because i'm loving myself for wearing this right now so stay tuned for the coffee drama well good news i got my drink so the issue is is they have these items they're just very low in stock so they're not offering it on the app let's do a taste test that one's good um which in some ways is not great because now that means people cannot mobile order and they might be going in instead like i did making the lives long and that starbucks i just tell you every friday i feel sorry for the baristas because it's just busy on fridays because you know people are getting a friday treat like taylor and i do and they are working and some people are just in there and they just don't have the patience either because they aren't making use of things like the mobile app or they aren't recognizing that friday is always like going to be a busy day so one guy was in there just giving them a hard time telling them no one's even working the bar when clearly they are all doing something so i just i just try and plan ahead and i couldn't mobile this time but i just went in and knew it's going to take a minute and somehow my drink came out before someone else's that had been there before me i don't know how that happened but i wasn't really going to argue about that so anyway i got the coffee i'm going to get to school and um i'm gonna either you know show you guys what i've been telling you i'm gonna show you before school starts i'm gonna show it to you during my prep it's gonna happen today but i'm also going to warn you that i don't know how much checking in i'll be able to do because i'll be teaching most of the day and then i have to leave right after school because i have a very important appointment to get to which is my manicure so um i might be oh my god yeah this manicure needs to happen like yesterday i'm i'm gonna be bopping out real quick so you'll see me you'll see me soon we just spilled some coffee see you guys later okay i'm on my prep period it's 8 38 and i have a moment to check in and show you the things that i've been meaning to show you for the past couple of days so again i teach eighth grade u.s history that really starts like post-revolutionary work war um and the goal for me is to get to reconstruction i have yet to accomplish that in the three two this is my third year of teaching middle school and so last year just doesn't count because it was just not the normal year my first year i didn't know what i was doing really so it was just kind of like let's see what happens so hopefully this is the year so um our textbook spends uh a chunk of time talking about the european explorers and um the battles of the revolutionary war and all of that and i just don't feel like that's super necessary for me to do because i know from teaching fifth that that is a big part of the fifth grade curriculum but at the same time i need to remind them of those things so that they know where we're picking up when we start talking about you know the declaration of independence and the drafting of the constitution so i don't use the textbook at all um for that and i really don't use our textbook very much in general so we do talk about um like we did the thing on the boston massacre and i used that to kind of talk about the idea that you know once the colonies were established the middle southern and new england colonies they were really all operating as their own separate entities and then there came a point where britain was taxing them heavily to pay for the french and indian war and they were outraged like generally speaking and that started to unify these colonies uh to kind of band together and just talking about the fact that they were taxed and taxed and taxed and tax and tax and it just came to a head to the point where um you know thomas payne writes common sense and starts talking about we don't even need britain we should really just declare independence from them and then more and more people catch on to that idea and start to agree with that and then the revolutionary war comes from that so i show them this video that is called the revolutionary war or the american revolution oversimplified and it's in two parts i think i've said before i only show them part one because if i remember correctly part two spends a lot of time like talking about the actual battles and i just that's not critical for me um i do i the kids this year really enjoyed this video like they found it humorous because it is funny and so they wanted to see part two and i said i doubt that i i show you part two because we're always so pressed for time but i told them i would give them the link to part two if they wanted it and i haven't because i forgot and no one's asked but um i may post it at some point uh but i do always let parents know before i show the video that i'm showing it and i give them the link to the video so they can watch it and i let them know like they either allude to um inappropriate language like bad words or um they partially will say it like i can't explain they don't actually say the words but they allude to it like to the point where you know what word they're gonna say um and so i've yet to have a parent in the three years i tell them that and i say if you don't want your child to watch this let me know and i will give them an alternative assignment and i've yet to have one parent i'm just trying to really think i've not had one parent say i don't want my child to watch the video um and this may be something a teacher's not supposed to say but i think we're just at a point where with music and social media and tv shows and movies like this is not language kids are not hearing they're not that sheltered anymore so most parents really are just kind of like look like i don't have an issue with it this is not anything my kids haven't heard before but i always do that just in case so i give that ahead of time and it's about it's 15 minutes long there is like a commercial in the very beginning um that i always just fast forward to i think it's a commercial for like a video game or something but it really is funny to teens and adults so it looks like this and i will see if i can just play like the briefest clip so you can kind of get a feel of it holy smokes christopher columbus that is no way to address the king and queen of spain what is wrong with you okay okay so you know how we're looking for a new trade with india right right and the earth is round right right so i'm thinking we can just sail the other way around the planet right yeah so i set sail right and i reach india right right wrong wrong i did not reach india i did not all right all right get to the point did you know there's a whole nother freaking continent out there okay and you think i should care about this why oh i'm sorry did i forget to mention there's gold everywhere gold so that is how the video opens and usually from that point on kids are kind of engaged by it so i show them that um and that's what we did there and then after i showed them this we read the first two chapters of stamped which i highly recommend if you teach u.s history um we read the first two chapters of stamped because what i found last year is if we're not actively talking about slavery the kids forget that in the midst of all this stuff happening like the revolutionary war and all the stuff there's still the issue of slavery off on the side and so they kind of forget that um so i need to do a better job of like when we're talking about like this saying but also don't forget simultaneously we're having slavery is starting to pick up in like use and popularity so we watched that video and then the next day we were at the first two chapters of stamped the first chapter is titled america's let me make sure i get it right no not america's the story of the world's first racist and that chapter really talks about how it came to the point where african slavery was justified what were the things that people did during this time to start justifying the use of africans as slaves and make it seem like it wasn't necessarily a bad thing and that maybe it was benevolent and that maybe it was a good thing and that maybe we're saving the souls of these africans um so it talks about that in that chapter and the second pa second not power the second chapter is titled puritan power where he talks about the puritans and like how they um use religion to kind of justify slavery and say you know we're saving the slaves we're saving their souls and they were using religion to kind of justify what was going on and it just kind of differentiates between there were some people that just viewed slaves as like money makers couldn't care less about their souls that wasn't really an issue but that was in direct conflict with people that were like we need to save the souls of the slaves so we read those two chapters and when um we read it not yesterday but the day before i just had them take out all their highlighters and say you know again you're in the eighth grade and you should be actively reading meaning like you're responding and reacting to all the things that you're hearing and the things that you're thinking as you're hearing them and then i just show them my book to say like as i read this like there were so many things i highlighted and tabbed because there's just so much information some that i knew some that i didn't know some that sparked questions for me so just trying to use myself as a model for that so we have good discussion in both classes um based on those two chapters and um that's kind of where we paused i didn't do history yesterday because we're trying to wrap up this whole group writing with uh the monkey's paw but the next thing that i'm gonna do i might show this video today but if not today tomorrow we're gonna look a little closer at the puritans we're going to watch a video by mr heimler who is a ap history teacher in georgia i believe that makes videos that i always like so he has a quick video on the puritans and then there's a stanford history education group lesson on the puritans and like the essential question is um what is it let me look at planbook.com because i have it linked oops um the focus question of that lesson is were the puritans selfish or selfless so that will be the next thing that we do with history and then as far as language arts you guys saw a little bit of that yesterday um and so we're writing together like my goal is to teach them what they should be doing as they respond to these first three questions how they should prepare how they should ensure that they get a you know a good grade and um it's taken a while it's taken me much longer than what i thought but this is what we needed to do so let me put you guys down for a second all right so what we've been doing is we've tapped the prompt that was the first thing we did then we collected text evidence that we thought we could use to respond to the prompt then we worked together to come up with a topic sentence and a closing sentence and what we've been working on the past couple of days is outlining the order in which we want to introduce that text evidence the transitional phrases we're going to use and then transferring that into an actual paragraph so what i've been doing is this part was all done together like this was not the competition part of it but when it comes to writing the sentences because the thing is they have to learn how to take these notes and turn them into actual sentences that you would put in a paragraph and so i did this in third and i think it was just something i came with came up with on the spot like i was like oh maybe i'll just make these words table points and that might get them more engaged and it really worked well and it's working really well at the eighth grade level because a lot of kids just don't like to write they find it intimidating and so then they just like get paralyzed or something and so what i do is i take it one transitional phrase instead of text evidence at a time i tell them that you guys are going to work as a group to take the transitional phrase that we chose as the class and the text evidence that we chose as a class and then convert that into a clear and coherent sentence or two so they're actively working together one person is delegated as the person that's recording the sentence they come up with and then um then the sentence that we choose as a class gets table points it just varies like sometimes i say 50 table points sometimes i say 25 like it doesn't really matter um and so i give them about four minutes usually they need more than that so i would say they need somewhere between five to ten minutes to do this together they write um their person four writes it down and then each table group will stand up and share hold on one second mr robinson okay thanks bye okay so i think what i was saying is once every group has had time to write their sentence then another person is like the spokesperson they stand up they read the sentence we all listen if i hear the sentence and i want to give it some kind of feedback or some kind of constructive criticism i'll do that i let them know that i might do that and i like doing that because it lets everybody else kind of hear what i'm hearing or kind of think through or kind of learn like oh like that sentence was wordy i understand what she means now when she says a sentence was wordy or that transitional phrase doesn't really make sense with what you're saying so we do that and then i narrow it down to like the top two or three and then as a class they vote which one they like the best out of the top two or three and whoever they choose is the sentence we're going to use and then they that table group gets whatever the point value is and so it really does work um which what's interesting is yesterday my kids are like are these responses supposed to be this long like they really get shook up when a paragraph exceeds like five sentences so i had to tell them like guys like i hate to break this to you but you guys are about to be high school students and this is the expectation like if you're writing a five sentence paragraph to respond to a question like this something is uh something's amiss something's wrong so i'm just telling them like this is this is it like this is what we need to do especially if you not only are going to high school but then you plan to go to college as well like you even if you don't like this you got to like suck it up and accept that this is a part of what you're going to have to do in your education so that's what we've been working on literally all week and it's one of those things that takes time but i truly think it's valuable and worth it because kids i don't think are being instructed on how to write um just in general and then we get frustrated as teachers when their writing is not that great but we're not maybe doing what we should be doing so that has been what's going on i'm gonna stop talking now because my leadership class is coming in a few minutes um but yeah i might try and check it at lunch so that you guys can see taylor's nike day interpretation and so that i can do this outfit justice because it is super comfortable i know i said that before but it just is and i've gotten many compliments already from kids and adults so one of my best purchases yet so i'll talk to you guys later it's 3 23 i am packing up cleaning up to really go home and let riley out and then head out to my manicure friday thank goodness i love friday afternoons hold on there's just like a sense of freedom about it all um as far as the day went it went exactly as planned we did exactly what i thought we would do in all my classes my leadership class um we were supposed to do one thing but we ended up just sharing our all about me boards i would show them to you but have student information on it but they were like i thought the kids would be bored just hearing everybody present they're all about me boards but i was wrong i was just gonna do five a day and then like spend the rest of the time planning for a potential rally that we might be able to have but after the first five it went by so fast i was entertained and they were like let's keep doing it so we did that um darn it i was supposed to send this email do i feel like turning the computer back on i guess i will um and then in my homeroom class we finished up the draft our paragraph responding to that first read question gave him the whole speech again like this is what the expectation is now that we've walked through this very meticulously together you should know that this is what i'm expecting you to do or this is what you should expect to do if you're looking to get a a or a b on these assignments and then in my switch class we did the same thing but they're just slightly behind so they're almost done but not quite done drafting it um so that's what we did there um during my universal access time right now we finished up where i finished up meeting with groups of students to go over their i ready results talking about goals establishing a specific goal establishing a plan of action on how they're going to achieve that goal and as tedious as that could be sometimes i really do feel like it is bye it is definitely valuable because you get to kind of hear their thought process as to what happened during that test or what they think their strength is or what they think their weakness um and you also just kind of get to know them a little bit more because you're in a smaller setting so we finished that which means next week i should actually be able to do some actual small group lessons with the groups um and that was it because my homeroom class is a little bit ahead we did get to listen to some more of all your twisted secrets um and continue to talk about that they are still enjoying it the last chapter i read with the homeroom class was a nice quick little impromptu discussion because one of the characters in this book sasha is a character that you really are not supposed to like like from the get-go like she's supposed to get on your nerves um because she's written that way but then the chapter that we read you kind of get a glimpse into our home life and so after we listened to that chapter i asked the kids why do you think the author included this particular chapter like what was the purpose what was the function of this chapter in relationship to sasha and they immediately knew like it's so that we can kind of understand why she is the way that she is so that we can maybe have a little bit of sympathy for this character we don't really like because her mom is extremely strict and always comparing her to her sister um and so that was nice and then we listened to a piece of another chapter and then we stopped so that's it as far as everything else if you're a middle school teacher we've been also here dealing with the devilish lick challenge where kids are stealing parts of the bathroom and or damaging them we've had to do some investigations there so if you teach a middle if you teach middle school or high school possibly even i don't think let's hope they're not doing this in college it's like a tick tock challenge and the kids are like stealing soap dispensers pieces of toilet seats um damaging toilets flooding urinals like and so when i talk to my class about this i'm like guys it's the toilet like let's just think of the sanity or not the sanity the sanitary factor or lack thereof of that situation so we talked about that hopefully that comes to an end at this point right now we only have one bathroom open on campus because the principal said we can't trust you guys in all the bathrooms so we have to have this one bathroom open that can be monitored and so it's rough one of my kids tried to go to the bathroom today and she came back and said she couldn't go because there was like a line of 30 6th graders trying to go to the bathroom waiting to be monitored and i said that's the consequence so hopefully that's put behind us and the other bathrooms could open but i was like guys come on like we know middle schoolers are going to do things but i'm like really the toilet the bathroom what are you going to do with a toilet seat like literally the seat of the toilet i don't know so on that note i'm going to go ahead and end the vlog here because i'm gonna be heading out if you enjoyed today's vlog please give this a thumbs up if you're not subscribed make sure you subscribe and if you're not following me on instagram head over there and follow me at smartystyle and as always i hope that you guys are well and if you're not well please be well and i'll see you guys tomorrow happy friday [Music] you

Channel: SmartieStyle

Views: 1,677

Rating: 4.9591837 out of 5

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Id: -J5Z7Ev1fLQ

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 18 2021