It's Not Magic, It's Science!

Where has all the vocational training gone? Years ago, teaching in the Bronx in a building that was built in the middle of last century, the school needed more classroom space. There was a large room available on the first floor. The only catch was that the available room was a shop room, complete with tools and kilns. Fast forward a few months and all shop equipment had been ripped out and it had become a standard classroom (in more recent years I think it has been turned into 2 classrooms). My current building is new and was built with an art room. No kilns, but work stations with vices and cabinets specialized for tools. It is being used as an english classroom. I would love to teach the science of cooking but there are no ovens anywhere in the building and no space or funding for them. There are absolutely no shop rooms in the building. In NYC, it seems shop class is dead and vocational schools are few and far between. For many years, the push in NYC schools and in much of the ...

To my students, Life is all about choices. Who you are and will be has not been decided. YOU choose who you want to be. Yes, there are some things about you that you cannot change: your race, sex, sexuality. But there are so many things you can change. And if you don’t like them, change them. But keep in mind, being a complete person takes a life time. Don’t beat yourself up if you are not yet the person you want to be. Your journey has just begun. Who you are today is not who you will be a few years from now. You will change in countless ways.   And you can control the direction of those changes. When I was in middle school, I was shy and very awkward. I wasn’t cool at all . And sometimes that really sucked. I was sensitive, I cried a lot. I was overweight and had super frizzy hair, both of which were pointed out to me and thrown at me as weapons on a regular basis. I had friends but I was by no means popular. This continued for me through college. ...

I love teaching. Truly the most special part of teaching is the students. So, I thought I would share just a few of the many amazing moments I have had with students. Students like to share food with me. Several years ago, a very young colleague of mine passed away. The school community was devastated. Many of us, including staff and students, attended the funeral. At the funeral I got to talk to several students I rarely had the opportunity to chat with. While I was chatting with one that I had never taught, we somehow got on the subject of figs and how much we loved them. He mentioned that his grandparents had a fig tree and that season they had a lot of figs. He asked if I wanted some and I definitely did! So, the next day he shows up in my classroom with a big container of figs which took me about 2 periods to devour. At lunch he came back to eat a couple. Oops. They had been devoured hours before by this fig loving educator. He didn't have to share his grandparents preciuo...

This is the story of the best project I have ever done! I loved and the kids loved it. And it was the Plan B after I realized that Plan A wasn't going to happen. So, plan A. For the past several years I have taught circuits. I would always do the standard circuit building with circuit kits. Yipee. The kids liked it but I wanted to up the wow factor. So, I had the big idea that we would learn circuits in December and the kids would make light up holiday shirts! Brilliant! And , we would do a fashion show on the day before winter break. Amazing! I told everyone about it and everyone was super excited. Fast forward to November of this year when I started the nitty gritty of the planning...and figuring out what supplies I needed. And all my brilliant plans came to a screeching halt. This was going to be WAY too expensive and it was too late to fundraise. So, my co-teacher and I spent the next week desperately trying to come up with something circuits based that was fun, challenging...

As I work my way through year number 15 of teaching, I feel like I have finally reached a place where I can impart some wisdom to the new teachers that are just trying to tread water until summer and hope they can make it to the next year. So, here it is. My words of wisdom. 1. It gets better. I cried most days my first year teaching. Some times I had someone cover my class so I could go in the hall and cry. On Fridays I taught 6 classes with a double period at the end of the day. Whenever I needed a mental health day, it was always on a Friday. When I didn't take a mental health day on Fridays, I would often take a nap in my car after I got home because I didn't have the stamina to walk to my house after my exhausting day. For several months in my second year I could never turn my back on one of my classes because whenever I did, shenanigans would ensue. I even got hit in the back of the head with a paper airplane (though they swore they weren't aiming for me). This ...

I recently completed one of my favorite units of all time. It was also one I was teaching for the first time. The topics we covered were kinetic and potential energy, conservation of energy and simple machines. For kinetic and potential energy we used the anchoring phenomena of a skateboarder on a halfpipe.  We analyzed her energy as she moved through the half pipe. Students used an amazing  skate park simulator  to explore the skaters energy changes.  We learned about simple machines through a station rotation and trebuchets. The culminating project was construction of a trebuchet that was built in groups with the goal of launching a marshmallow two meters. I have rarely seen student engagement like I saw in this unit. They were excited to come to class and wanted to stay after to continue working. But, being that it was a unit I had never taught before, I knew that it could be better. So, I thought, who better to help me make it better than the students? I knew i...

"Ms. Cimini, you're one of the most real teachers I have ever had". At the end of this school year, when a student said this to me, I took a moment to digest it. Then I realized it was one of the best compliments I had ever gotten as an educator. If you have ever read my blog, you know that I teach middle school and I love it (I even wrote a post about how much I love teaching middle school - you can check it out  here ). I spent several years teaching high school as well, but middle school is my happy place for several reasons. I won't go into them all again, save one. Middle school is not just about what you are teaching. Most importantly it is about who and how you are teaching. Middle school kids are in the throes of becoming people and, as a middle school educator, I can help them to become who they are going to be. This aspect of the job is more important than any content knowledge I can teach them. When they leave my room at the end of the year, it is more ...