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What's
the best way to contact you?
FAQs for the First Days of School
What Should I Wear?
Teachers recommend dressing as professionally as possible. . Follow your own personal preferences but present yourself to students and their parents as a cool and comfortable, well-groomed professional. On the dressy-casual continuum, most teachers land in the center. While some suggest a dressy dress and shoes or suit and tie on the first day, most stress comfort. You will have to take into consideration climate, school norms, and grade level as well as your own personal taste. Sitting on the floor or handling paints and paste may dictate very casual clothing or, better yet, a smock that suits you. In middle and high school, males can wear a subject-related tie and females a pin or other subject-related accessory. Dress up on the first day. Look your professional best.
What
Should You Say First?
Somehow
we believe that first words are magical and make or break a situation.
If we can get the first sentence right, all will go well thereafter. In
reality, your students will never remember what you said first, but because
it is of primary concern to new teachers, here are some ideas:
The Welcomers: "Hi, I'm so glad to see all of you. We are going to
have a super year."
The Introducers: "I'm Mr. _____ and here are Boris and Natasha, our classroom pet rats."
The Managers: "What a nice line. I hope it's this way all year. Please walk in quietly and find a seat."
Favorite:
"Mistakes are permitted in this class."
Generally, you're safe if you take one from every category or create your
own unique way of breaking the ice
How Much Should You Tell about Yourself?
Beginning teachers are concerned about what to be called by children and how much to tell the class about themselves. In all but the most special circumstances, it is most appropriate to be called by your last name preceded by Mr., Mrs., or Ms. In some cases, primary teachers may be called by their first names (e.g., Mr. Mike or Miss Susan). Some teachers use only their last initials, especially when their names are long and difficult to pronounce.
In all cases, write your name on the chalkboard and pronounce it with your students. During attendance, children can easily learn your name by responding to your salutation "Good morning, Juan" with "Good morning, Mrs. Matsumoto."
Its always a good idea to share some personal facts with your students, most teachers do. They commonly tell their pupils about their families, why they love teaching, why they became a teacher in the first place, their pets, summer vacations, interests, prior career or experiences, hobbies, and any apparent physical disabilities.A few teachers encourage and respond to student questions about themselves.
How much you share will depend on your personal style and philosophy. You can share a little at a time as the year progresses as you prefer, but do share something about yourself that first day. Even minimal self-disclosure (the type and name of your pet, your favorite hobby) will ease the tension, satisfy curiosity, and bring you down to earth, where the kids can reach out to you. Developing rapport with the students in the class is an essential task that first day. Hopefully, you have enough suggestions for getting through the first two minutes of the day. It's time to sit down and relax.
How Do You Assign Seats?
The overwhelming majority of teachers favor self-selection as opposed to prearranged seating, at least the first day.
Allowing kids to choose their own seats on the opening day of school is their first exercise in decision making and taking responsibility in your classroom. We adults are often unhappy about assigned seats in airplanes, in theaters, and at dinner parties. We like to find our spaces and feel comfortable in them. And since we are creatures of habit, once we choose, we like to stay put.
Kids feel the same way too! Does this mean that once they have chosen their seats they never move? Never say never. Several circumstances are described by teachers who only partially subscribe to the self-selection pattern. They suggested two adaptations:
- Choices are modified when special needs arise or seatmates are incompatible. Usually, arrangements are not finalized until the end of the week and still can be modified thereafter.
- Kids choose new seats every month-or two or three times per year-for a change of scenery, and their choices are subject to teacher modification should the need arise.
- Another popular seating assignment method is random selection by lots. Students draw numbers that correspond to numbers on the desks. These selections are subject to teacher modification, and lots can be redrawn every month or several times per year. In this method there is a certain degree of fairness based on chance, but the risk is that no one may be happy with the outcome, least of all the teacher, who has to deal with the complaints.
- At the other end of the continuum from free choice and random selection are the prearranged, teacher-determined seating assignments. Although teachers who prearrange seating are in the minority, they base their decisions on three variables: ability, alphabetical order, or desire to integrate the sexes, the races, or ethnic groups. It is important to point out that prearranged seating can be dysfunctional.
- In the first case, seating by ability group can stigmatize children and is not necessary, since kids can easily change places for special remediation or enrichment. In the second case, ease of learning the names is not a good enough reason for seating in alphabetical order, since last names are not the common form of address and the Z's will always be in the back! A seating chart is a more reasonable way of solving memory lapses anyway. Finally, trying to achieve balance on all important variables (sex, race, ethnicity, size, ability) through seating will drive you batty, so why not let free choice prevail? Step in when necessary to correct obvious imbalances, especially when using cooperative learning strategies.
- Try to seat nonnative speakers in the front of the room so they can hear you clearly. At the same time, make sure they are sitting near a buddy who speaks their language.
- If you do prefer assigned places, label the seats or spaces on the floor with name tags and let the students enjoy the challenge and excitement of finding their assigned places on the first day. If they can't read, you can shape or color code their names and seat tags to make the task easier.
How Can You Learn the Students' Names?
There
is no greater compliment to a student than calling him or her by name
at the end of the first day. It requires concentration and extra effort
but it can be done. Always check the pronunciation with the student. All
kids should have the option of going by a nickname or shortened version
they prefer. Teachers suggest some tried-and-true methods that will work
for you, too, and even by lunchtime dismissal on the first day, you can
wish each child a good meal using his or her name. Here are some suggestions:
- One
teacher associates the names with faces from photos. Individual photos
taken at the time of the class picture are often attached to the permanent
record cards. Take time to make the name-face association before school
starts. Children will be shocked and pleased to be recognized.
- You
can borrow a Polaroid-type or digital camera and take instant pictures
of the students, table by table or individually. Writing the names below
the faces will help you remember who's who. Once the photos have served
their purpose as memory aids, you can use them to create a lovely welcome
bulletin board.
- Name tags and name plates are very popular aids for learning names. Teachers place them on desks or on the front of desks, pin them on young children's clothing, or string them around primary youngsters' necks (upside down so children can read them when they look down). You can have older children make their own and decorate them.
- After kids have chosen or have been assigned to seats, one of the most useful devices for learning their names is the seating chart. You can get a jump on the process by having the blank chart or map ready to go. The names just have to be filled in when you take attendance or look at the name tags. This is the preferred method in middle and high school.
- Some teachers learn the names through simple interaction or games like the ones that follow.
- Primary
Grades, K-1
The teacher holds up name cards, and the children recognize their names, retrieve the cards, and place them in the designated spot. The teacher can call the names as well at the beginning, but should encourage recognition solely by visual cues early in the year. The child then says his or her name and one thing about a favorite toy, pet, food, or television program. - Intermediate
Grades, 2-3
Students introduce themselves to the class. They can be given some guidelines and time constraints:
Tell us your name.
Tell us something about your family or your pets.
What do you do after school?
What are your favorite television programs?
Note: Students can be given a three-minute egg timer to hold to remind them they can talk under but not over the limit. This places the responsibility for self-monitoring with them and makes it unnecessary for you to interrupt or stop them.
Review alphabetical order by having children come up in small groups and alphabetize themselves, using their tags or cards. - Upper
Grades, 4-6
Children can interview a partner, following a set of guidelines, and then introduce the partner to the rest of the class. Guidelines can be duplicated, or children can make up the interview questions with you and the outline can be written on the chalkboard. Some suggested guidelines follow:
Partner's favorite subject in school
Partner's least favorite subject
Partner's favorite kind of stories
Partner's pets
Partner's favorite sports, hobbies
Partner's favorite television program
Language spoken at home - Children enjoy playing the scavenger hunt/Bingo game that requires that they find someone in the class who corresponds to a description on a prewritten sheet of paper.
What
are the teacher certification requirements for California?
California
Education Departments:
Department
of Education
http://www.cde.ca.gov/
Educational
Resources
http://www.cde.ca.gov/resrc/
Federation
of Teachers Funding Opportunities
http://www.cde.ca.gov/funding/
Standards,
Curriculum and Assessment
http://www.cde.ca.gov/statetests/index.html
State
Board of Education
http://www.cde.ca.gov/board/
Superintendent
of Public Instruction
http://www.cde.ca.gov/executive/
Teacher
Credentials
http://www.ctc.ca.gov/credentialinfo/credinfo.html
Downloading
Tip: Save documents directly to your computer.
Saving PDF files to your computer before viewing them allows you to open
them directly with Acrobat, thus avoiding any potential problems with
your browser.
If you have a two-button mouse, right click (or if you have a single-button
mouse, hold the button down) on the link until a menu pops up. Then select
"save target as" (the exact wording depends on your browser).
Save the document to your desktop. Then, go to your desktop, where you
should be able to directly open the item you downloaded. Using this technique
avoids having to open Acrobat in your browser, and should work even when
the Acrobat/browser interaction does not work properly.
How
do I organize my downloaded files?
If
you start downloading regularly, chances are that you'll soon have lots
and lots of files to keep track of. In order to avoid making a mess of
your hard drive, it's a good idea to create a separate folder to hold
all your downloaded files. That way you'll always be able to find them
and you won't have them scattered all over your computer.
How
do I go faster?
There are several things you could do to make your Web pages load faster:
- Turn off the image loading function on your browser. When using Internet Explorer, you can do this by selecting "Internet Options" from the "Tools" key at the top of the browser. Next, click the "Advanced" tab. Finally, in the Multimedia area, clear one or more of the Show pictures, Play animations, Play videos, or Play sounds check boxes. When using Netscape, choose "Preferences. . ." from the "Edit" key at the top of the browser. Then, click "Advanced" on the left side of the window. Deselect (or un-check) "Automatically load images."
- Try visiting the Web site at a different hour of the day, perhaps early in the morning or late at night. Choose a time when other people are less likely to visit: less traffic equals faster access.
- Upgrade
your modem. If you use a 14.4 or 28.8 modem, you're trying to fill your
bathtub through a straw in comparison to other available "faucets"(see
Why do Web pages load slowly? above). Upgrading to a 56k modem will
be a definite step up in terms of the speed with which you access most
Web sites. If you have the option, upgrading to a cable modem (available
through many cable companies), or to an ISDN line or DSL connection
(available from many phone companies), will improve your access speed
dramatically.
Why
do Web pages load slowly?
Think
of your computer as a bathtub. This may seem odd, but it will help you
to visualize the speed of the Internet. Visiting a Web page is like loading
your bathtub with water, and your modem is the faucet. Web pages with
lots of images, or just a little animation or sound, are very big-which
means you'll need to put a lot of water in your tub. If you have a slow
modem, you have a small faucet . . . and it'll take a long time to trickle
all that water into it.
Imagine further that thousands and thousands of people tried to fill up
their bathtubs with water at the same time, all from the same reservoir.
This is what happens when many people visit the same Web page at the same
time: the reservoir (or server) dispenses water (or data) to many different
places at the same time. It wouldn't matter whether you have a fast modem
or a slow one, because only so much data can be dispensed from the server
at one time.
The
background is too dark!
If
the Web page you want to print is difficult to read, there are several
things you can do to make it printer friendly.
1. Simply copy and paste the page into a word processing document (see
item 3 above).
2. Eliminate the dark background by altering the viewing preferences in
your browser.
Using Internet Explorer, you can do this by clicking the "Tools"
key and selecting "Internet Options. . ." From the "General"
tab, click the "Accessibility" button in the bottom right-hand
corner. Under "Formatting," check "Ignore colors specified
on web pages."
Using Netscape Navigator, click the "Edit" key and select "preferences."
In the left-hand column, choose "Colors." Finally, select the
box next to "Always use my colors, overriding the document."
3. Alternatively, some versions of Netscape Navigator have an option built
into the print command which allows you to ignore background colors. To
utilize this feature, use the "Print" button on the navigational
bar in Netscape and check the appropriate box.
My
PDF is blank.
If
your PDF is just showing up as a blank page, the first thing to check
is that you are waiting long enough for it to show up. Some of the larger
PDFs are 1.5 megabytes; they can take several minutes to download on a
modem connection. If you try waiting for a couple of minutes and nothing
ever shows up, the next step is to clear your cache. It is also a good
idea to only have one version of Acrobat Reader installed. Multiple versions
can cause conflicts.
How to clear your cache file:
AOL
In AOL, in your 'WWW' preferences, set your history to "0" pages
and clear the History. You must also delete the files in your Temporary
Internet Files folder. You must also hold down the 'Control' key on your
keyboard and simultaneously mouse-click on the 'Browser Reload' icon while
the browser window is active to clear your proxy cache and display the
latest data from the website. Use either Internet Explorer or Netscape
to make sure you are viewing our resources properly.
Internet
Explorer
Windows:In Internet Explorer, go to Tools> Internet Options on your
toolbar. In the Internet Options window, select the 'General' tab. On
this window, go to 'Temporary Internet Files' and select 'Delete Files.'
To ensure you are seeing the most recent pages instead of a cached page,
select 'Settings' on the 'Temporary Internet Files' window. In the next
window, where it says "Check for Newer Versions of Stored Pages"
make sure that the button next to "Every visit to the page "
is checked. This may make pages load slower, but it will ensure you are
always viewing the newest version of a page and that 'Unauthorized' messages
or damaged .pdf files are not being stored in your cache file.
Macintosh:In Internet Explorer, go to Edit> Preferences on your toolbar. In the Preferences window, select Web Browser> Advanced from the sidebar. On this window, go to 'Cache' and select 'Empty Now.' To insure you are seeing the most recent pages instead of a cached page, in 'Cache' where it says "Update Pages" make sure that the button next to "Always" is checked. This may make pages load slower, but it will ensure you are always viewing the newest version of a page and that 'Unauthorized' messages or damaged .pdf files are not being stored in your cache file.
Netscape:
Windows:In Netscape, go to Edit> Preferences on your toolbar. In the
Preferences window select Advanced> Cache from the sidebar. On this
window, select 'Clear Disk Cache' and 'Clear Memory Cache.' To ensure
you are seeing the most recent pages instead of a cached page, in 'Cache'
where it says "Page in cache is compared to page on network"
make sure that the button next to "Every time" is checked. This
may make pages load slower, but it will ensure you are always viewing
the newest version of a page, and that 'Unauthorized' messages or damaged
.pdf files are not being stored in your cache file.
Macintosh:In
Netscape, go to Edit> Preferences on your toolbar. In the Preferences
window, select Advanced> Cache from the sidebar. On this window, select
'Clear Disk Cache Now.' To ensure you are seeing the most recent pages
instead of a cached page, in 'Cache' where it states "Page in cache
is compared to page on network" make sure that the button next to
"Every time" is checked. This may make pages load slower, but
it will ensure you are always viewing the newest version of a page, and
that 'Unauthorized' messages or damaged .pdf files are not being stored
in your cache file.
Pictures Don't Print
Pictures Print Black
Pictures Print Garbled
All three of these issues are generally related to low system resources
(such as RAM or hard drive space). The best way to deal with these issues
is usually to download the PDF in question to your Documents folder and
print it from within Acrobat Reader instead of your browser window.
" To do this, navigate to the PDF you wish to print on the learningpage.com
Web site.
" Right-click the link of the PDF and choose "Save Transfer
As..." from the menu.
" Save the PDF to your Documents folder.
" Close all open windows.
" Launch Acrobat from the Programs submenu under the Start button.
" From within Acrobat, choose File->Open, navigate to the Documents
folder, and open the PDF you just downloaded.
" You should now be able to print from your PDF. Start by just printing
the first page that previously gave you trouble.
What
is a PDF?
Adobe
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html
Acrobat
Reader User Guide & Tutorials
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pdfs/acrruserguide.pdf
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/topissuesacr.htm
How do I change the way my Acrobat documents are downloaded in Internet Explorer?
IE automatically downloads PDF files to disk; you only need to do this if you prefer to have the files loaded into your browser window. Choose Preferences in the Edit pull-down menu. In the Preferences pop-up screen, choose File Helpers under the Receiving Files heading. This will show a list of plug-ins on the screen. Scroll until you see Portable Document Format and click on it. Once it's highlighted, push the Change button below the list. This will bring you to a list of options for viewing PDF files. You can choose between Save to File or View with Plug-in. The View with Plug-in option loads the files directly into the browser window
How
do I change the way my Acrobat documents are downloaded in Netscape Navigator/
Communicator?
Netscape automatically loads PDF files in the browser window; you only need to change this if you prefer to have the files downloaded to disk. Choose Preferences in the Edit pull down menu. In the Preferences pop-up screen, choose Applications under the Navigator heading. This will show a list of plug-ins on the screen. Scroll until you see Portable Document Format and click on it. Once it's highlighted, push the Edit button below the list. This will bring you to a list of options for viewing PDF files. Choose Save to File if you don't want the files loaded in your browser window.
How
do I know which version of Acrobat to download?
In most cases the newest version 4.0 will work. However, Acrobat reader 4.0 is not compatible with non-Power Macintosh (also known as 68k Macintosh) computers or Windows NT 3.5.1. If you have either of these install Acrobat Reader 3.0.1.
How
do I start to download a file?
Answer
Once you've got a place to put your downloaded files, you're ready to
download the software. For this example, you will want to go to Adobe's
page to download Acrobat Reader:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Follow their step-by-step directions. Make sure you save the program in your "Downloads Folder." You've now got a file transfer in progress - you're downloading!
For
Windows 95/98/NT users:
1. Right-click on your Windows desktop.
2. Choose "New," then "Folder," from the menu that
appears on the desktop.
3. After the new folder appears, type the words "Downloads Folder"
in the box that says "New Folder."
For
Windows 3.1 users:
1. Open File Manager.
2. Click your C: drive (or whichever drive you have designated as the
root directory - in most cases this will be the C: drive).
3. Choose "File," then "Create Directory."
4. A box will appear; type "Downloads Directory" into the box.
Click "Okay."
For
Macintosh users:
1. Select "New Folder" from the File menu in the Finder.
2. A folder labeled "untitled" will be placed on your desktop.
3. Type the words "Downloads Folder" over the new folder's label.
4. Click on to another part of the desktop; the folder will then be renamed
"Downloads Folder."