After almost 20 years of doing this job, I’d like to think I sort of know my way around the junior high psyche. Plus I remember 7th and 8th grade like they were yesterday, and some might still accuse me of being a seventh grader yet. But every now and then…well, I got nothin’. Sometimes I have no idea what is going on in their heads. It’s actually one of the fun things about this kind of work. Last week we were again slogging through prepositional phrases. I was going around checking their pink sheet homework. The pink sheets are about the only thing I use from the vast array of materials provided with our hefty literature anthologies. They are basic grammar and punctuation worksheets, and after we go over them in class, we use clickers for other exercises, and watch some grammar rock and such. This week’s sheet on prep phrases had a section on placing them near the words they are modifying. You veterans know from the old misplaced modifiers and “dangling participles.” (“Don’t let your participle dangle” is right up there with “Don’t let your meat loaf.”) You know like, Johnny mailed a letter to his gramma
Middle school teaching: Five shows a day, 180 days a year.
That reminds me of those great SNL skits about the Sofa King. You know, how the prices are "Sofa King" low, the deals are "Sofa King" great, etc. (You obviously have to say those phrases out loud to get the joke.)