Sort of Cool

When I was teaching, I was always trying to find really cool but still educational things for the students to do. One time, I had them try to write This I Believe essays. Go to thisibelieve.org for more information.

I had them do this while we were reading To Kill a Mockingbird, a book about morals and beliefs. I had each class choose two of their peers' essays to submit to the organization for publication. I've never heard that any of the kids had theirs published, but I think that's probably because they wouldn't think it was as awesome as I would. They did get really into it though, because of the competitive part, I'm sure.

Anyway, to help them through the process, as it is really difficult, I wrote an essay of my own with them and went through the submission process as well.

And here it is, on the This I Believe website: http://thisibelieve.org/essay/96171/

I'm Either Teaching or Thinking About Teaching

It's so true.  It takes up so much of my time.

I have a student teacher this semester.  I was very excited about this at first, but as time has gone on, I have started struggling with this pretty massively.

It's really hard to watch someone else teach students that I have been working with for about seven months.  Different teachers have different ways of going about things.  Trust me, I completely get that.  It's the same as students having different needs.  I try to be understanding and find the good in everything.

But my student teacher's way of going about things gives me a headache.

He's very much about teaching Literature (yes, capital "L").  He is really smart and philosophical and enjoys the content he is teaching (read: he was a legit Lit major, unlike myself, which means that he has read every thing ever written and enjoys the really hard things most, whereas I got away with reading mostly just the things I enjoyed).

The unfortunate part of this is that it doesn't really work for 9th graders.  I don't teach Literature; I teach reading.  I would love for my students to see the relationship between what happens to Jem Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird and Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (poems).  In reality, I don't understand Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience...because they are seriously god awful boring.  And if I, who love reading most of the time, think they are boring, then please take a moment and think about how a 9th grade boy might feel about them.

I also think that he had no idea how much outside-of-the-classroom work goes into teaching.  Here's my schedule this week: I had a meeting today that took up 1/2 of my planning period and then another from 3 pm til 4:30; tomorrow I am giving the 10th grade writing test during my entire planning period; Wednesday I have two parent teacher conferences that will take up all of my planning period again; and on Friday, I have another parent teacher conference during 1/2 of my planning period.  That means that Thursday is the only day this week that I will have a full planning period.  There's also things like taking attendance and sending weekly numbers in, making copies and transparencies, faculty meetings, remembering which students get modifications, and grading papers, not to mention the very babysitter and mother like things that teachers have to step in and do.

His level of professionalism leaves something to be desired as well.  He wore the same outfit for the first three weeks or so, and it didn't seem to have been put together with the idea of a career in mind.  We had a conversation about dressing professionally, and what I'm getting from him now is the same outfit every day, but it's at least a button up shirt.

Also, my student teacher lacks classroom management skills.  This is the part that really gives me a headache.  He is constantly yelling over students instead of having them be quiet.  He lets them be all over the room and yell at each other and talk while he is talking.  I'm not saying they always have to be in seats and not talking; far be it from me to say my classes are perfectly managed.  I'm a big believer in balance, and I always try to have a good balance of quiet sitting time and talkative moving time.  Honestly, I'm afraid of taking the classes back because they're going to be ridiculous, and it's likely that I will be writing a lot of referrals and driving myself crazy trying to reteach them how to sit down and be quiet when they need to do so.

He is doing some good things.  I think that new teachers have such an "innocent" view of what students can and cannot do and also will or will not do and are therefore more willing to try things that may end up crashing and burning.  They're often the kind of things that I just mentioned, like some of William Blake's most intensely boring poems.  Those kinds of things work occasionally and make the students have to think and work harder than normal.  My student teacher is really willing to try things that I would normally say are WAY over the students heads.  And yes, they fail miserably sometimes, but he has had some good successes, especially in the Honors class.

He is also good at connecting with the students.  They really like him, though I'm unsure the reason for that and am not entirely convinced that it's a good reason.

I am kind of wondering if my headache is coming because I rather miss teaching my own classes...

Luckily, I Can't Kill a Student Today

Not that I would, really.  But I will take ridiculous pleasure in meeting with a certain student's parents or guardians, a guidance counselor, and an assistant principal as soon as possible to discuss the fact that this student...well, I shouldn't say bad things about students.

So we have yet another snow filled day on our hands here, and we are, unfortunately, going to make up this day by going to school on Saturday.  I've decided the only way to deal with this is to have a good attitude.  The silver lining WAS that my student teacher had already told me that if we did have to have school this weekend, he wouldn't be able to make it, meaning I would get to teach all of my classes again.

I am oddly excited about this.

Anyway, this is no longer the silver lining.  These kids are so lucky we aren't in school today because I am super angry.  And they're definitely unlucky that we will still have four days of school this week.

About a month ago, I had the students do essays on Romeo and Juliet (yes I know, a month ago.  Don't  judge me).  When we are learning to write essays, we start off with me giving them just about everything and them just filling in the examples and their own analysis.  I call them Fill in the Blank Essay Assignments.  It usually makes their grades on them better than if I just gave them the topic.  Over the course of the year, we work our way all the way down to them writing their own whole essay!  Amazing!

So I'm reading essays and they're pretty bad, so in my head as I am doing this, I am brainstorming ways to fix it this year and different things I can try next year.  I get to an essay from a child who came in for help on his essay the week before he turned it in.  What he brought to me was clearly copied directly off the internet.  I read one paragraph of his six page monstrosity (I don't give the kids page limits, but this essay should be about 2 pages) and didn't even bother with the rest.  I told him it was clear this was not his own work as it was not on topic at all and obviously not his own writing.  I refused to give him the extra credit he was looking for, went over the assignment with him again, and sent him packing with what I assumed was his tail between his legs.

As it turns out, he was not at all phased and on top of that, he thinks I am an idiot.  He turned in the exact same "essay."  I took a few minutes to look at it because anytime this happens (plagiarism, not their own work), I actually take the time to find the essay on the internet so that I can call the student's parents or guardians and have the proof that I have good reason to be giving them a zero on the assignment.

A zero on the assignment is not a good enough punishment.  I think they deserve to fail the grading period, if not the class.  In college, they kick you out.  I digress.

As I'm looking at this essay and googling sentences from it to find the source, I start realizing that he didn't use one essay, he used FOUR.  He used a whole essay for each different paragraph except for his conclusion.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  What's most ridiculous about this is that when you put them all together, they make nothing but NONSENSE.

The topic was to explain how Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy by writing one paragraph about how Juliet is heroic, one paragraph about how Romeo is heroic, and one about how fate takes control of their destinies and they can't avoid their deaths at all.  THIS IS SO NOT A HARD ASSIGNMENT.  He could have written straight crap and gotten a D.  In fact, I put a D on a straight crap paper a few minutes before reading this one.  Instead, this student's first "paragraph" is an essay from the internet about what strategies Shakespeare uses while writing his tragedy.  It's actually a good essay structurally.  It's got an intro with a thesis that states the three examples of strategies he uses that are then going to become the three body paragraphs.  And now he's got a zero.

Earlier today, I was commiserating about how being excited to have all my classes back for just one day would suggest that going to grad school for library science would really hinder my ability to teach.  Now, I am struggling with the thought that I am going to have to teach students like this for one more year before being able to go back to school to do something else.  I know I will forget all about this eventually, but things like this are a really good, quick way of hurting my feelings.  Ugh.

By the by, it's ridiculously easy to find these essays online; all you have to do is google a sort of unique sentence.  Try it.  Google "Friar John was quarantined so the letter could not reach Romeo."  The essay this student used for his first paragraph is the third hit.

Dear Whoever Did This To Me,

Whoever you are, you suck.

The powers that be cancelled school today and have already called it off for tomorrow as well. Don't get me wrong; I appreciate the unexpected days off. The problem is that someone messed up somewhere and even though we have only had 4 days off because of snow, they are already taking away our Spring Break.

Last year, we probably ended up having at least 7 or 8 days off and they never even touched Spring Break.

What happened is that for whatever reason, our school system didn't receive some "waiver" from the state that allowed us to start before August 25 or go past June 10. So we started later than normal and have to end on June 10. Our calendar for this school year already goes to June 10, so we cannot add school days to the end of the school year. Thus, good bye Spring Break, as you are the only thing they have left to use to make up days. Tomorrow will take one day from it, and any other days we miss because of weather will continue to take days until there are no more to take.

Oh wait. Spring Break isn't the only thing they have left to use to make up days. There's always all the Saturdays left in the school year!

Bite me, powers that be! Bite me!

A Snowfall Kind of Love

We are having a pretty intense winter storm on the East Coast right now. And by right now I mean that there is an inch or so of snow on the ground already from the 2 hours of snowfall we've already gotten, that we are now in a sort of holding pattern as there is no precipitation of any kind currently, and that the worst of it is supposed to be this afternoon and evening.

And by worst of it, I mean best of it. :D

School was cancelled this morning, which is both a blessing and a curse. I was at school last night til almost 9 working technology for senior project presentations so not having to teach today is nice. I also really hurt my finger by getting it caught in the railing on the stairs at school and pulling really far out of place. And my head hurts. Thus, blessing. But we will have to make this day up, which means they will probably take a teacher work day away from us in February or March, when we have very few days off and the months just longer and longer.

OMG I just realized that since school was cancelled today, it is now officially the start of Winter Break!!!! YESSSSS! You know, if I were still in college I would probably already be a little drunk and I would definitely be out sledding on stolen cafeteria trays.

There are pictures in one of my many photo albums that would prove this, but they are not digital. Instead, here are some pictures of the last time I got to play in the snow, which was in the Alps in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Yeah. It was a bit more awesome than our current storm will be.

Also, it is currently starting to snow again.

I'm On a Roll!

I felt like a good teacher AGAIN yesterday! Actually, I guess I should clarify; I felt like a good teacher at precisely 2:28. But that's a moment for sure!

English is a hard class because you have to teach grammar, writing, reading, and everything that comes with those things. Grammar is usually the hardest. I teach grammar every other day (alternating with vocabulary) in two week blocks. We work with one sentence for 5 days and do different work with that sentence each day. It's really very easy, but it's like pulling teeth with the students.

Basically, the first 4 days introduce or re-teach different grammar rules and on the 5th day we do practice, where they will apply any of the rules (very often comma rules) that we have learned thus far. The 5th day is usually god awful, so around halfway through the year I try to come up with ways to make it go faster or make it more fun. I tried three different things with my first three classes yesterday, and they didn't work.

Finally, what I did with my last class, which we completed at 2:28, went really well. I won't explain except to say that I felt like an idiot for not trying it a little earlier and that it basically consists of them teaching the class how they got the answer, and if it's wrong, the class helps them get the right answer. I felt like an idiot because I know better than anyone that the easiest way to learn something is to teach it. I'm the perfect exam

ple; I was terrible at grammar before I had to teach it. I could tell you where a comma went but not why. Now I know why. And I'm kind of crazy about making sure it's right.

Genius.

On a related note, I really hope I don't make too many mistakes in these posts. I don't usually read them again before I post them.

On another related note, this is from the plane Mom and I were on when we went to see Renee in Paris. I've still never figured out what it means.

I Felt Like a Good Teacher Today

So. You may or may not know this about me, but I get seriously irritated when things aren't done in a logical or practical way. Ironically, I spend much of my time at school irritated not with the students, but with the powers that be. Usually it isn't anyone in particular but just a general thing.

Today was kind of cool though. I actually got my ideas across and was listened to by people in positions of power. You see, I used to think I was a good teacher. I may have been, but every year gets better in certain regards. This year, I'm really bad at patience with students, but I'm really good at keeping up with the workload. It's a trade; I don't think you can be good at everything all at once. Anyway, because this year I've been so comfortable with the workload, I've been trying to get more actively involved at school, in clubs and sports and stuff like that. I was sort of involved before, but not by own choice.

Anyway, the point of this is, I got more actively involved today and my head is still attached to my body. I volunteered to take on more responsibility within the Graduation Project Committee. I usually help with the technology aspect of Project Presentations (as a young teacher who is good with computers, helping with technology was kind of thrust upon me), but I heard something at school the other day that worried me, and as I am a huge proponent of the Graduation Project, I decided to take on more there in order to hopefully help bring logic to a huge school-wide program.

I also made a suggestion that I thought would help our meetings run more smoothly and I was met with enthusiasm, rather than anger like I was afraid of.

And now the part where I actually felt like a good teacher. My English I classes are through Act I of Romeo and Juliet, or most of the way through it anyway. We did a worksheet on Act I sc v (the party scene where Romeo and Juliet first meet and kiss). I felt like a good teacher because the worksheet I have for this scene is sheer genius. It's a table that breaks the scene into beats/rows and has 4 columns about each beat: the characters speaking, that character's attitude, a quote to support that attitude and sum up the main point of the beat, and the main point or the consequence this moment has to the action of the play. For each row, at least one of those last 3 columns is blank and the students have to fill it in.

This works really well because Act I sc v has a two big moments that have a big effect on the outcome of the play. Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love, thus setting up the entire conflict. Tybalt recognizes Romeo at his party, hence wants to fight him/kill him, which he attempts to do but ends up killing Mercutio instead and then being killed by Romeo. This causes Romeo to be banned from Verona, which leads Juliet to fake her death, which Romeo does not know about...

You all probably know the story.
It's also a good sheet because it requires the students to both provide and interpret "textual evidence," a phrase that appears literally hundreds of times in my Standard Course of Study.

Anyway, the students did really well with this, even the ones who don't do that well in general. And I was patient with them! So I was good at two things at least today. They all actually seem to be really into the story, which makes me happy.

In honor of this, here's an old video from my trip to Italy over Spring Break this year. Haha do you think I should show them this video? They think I'm crazy already, so it probably wouldn't hurt much...



And also some pictures from around Verona...

At "Cassa di Giuletta." Please notice the statue of Juliet in the background. Guess which part of her body is touched the most.

Nice little market.

Ancient Roman ruins. Apparently Verona was a Roman hotspot. Who knew?

The world goes by so fast...