I was cleaning out the back room all weekend. You might well ask why, considering that my regulars know the state of my classroom. (Here are a couple of flashbacks to last year’s picture tour: Part I, Part II.) The answer is… My wife bought me a pinball machine for my 50th birthday (still a little over a week away, but close enough when a machine goes on Craigslist only 25 miles away) and it’s being delivered on Wednesday, and I have to make room for it in the pantry/junk room. I have wanted to have a pinball machine in my house for over 40 years. Finally! Here’s a picture of the kind I’m getting. Mine’s a little more “well-used,” but plays beauty. I CAN NOT WAIT. Anyway, while I was hauling shtuff out of the back room, I came across an “artifact” from one of my BTSA training sessions a few years ago. We were supposed to be brainstorming with our table groups about what teacher behaviors we would be looking for to cover each of the California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CSTP). We were, I guess, supposed to watching our BTSA charges, and encouraging said behaviors. It
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It never gets old; the first day of school. This is my 21st year of teaching–19 at my present school–and still I didn’t get more than four or five hours sleep last night. And it’s not like I don’t know what I’m going to do or anything. This morning I was talking to another English teacher (the one who got me hired 19 years ago, and she had already been teaching for more than ten years before that), and she told me she didn’t sleep a wink last night. “I never do,” she said. “My wife didn’t either, what with the boy coming here today, and being in my class and everything.” “Oh I know all about that. Just tell her that I always need ‘volunteers’ in my classroom. You know, here at school, but not too close to your room…if you know what I mean.” I do. And Mom is stoked on the idea. Meanwhile… IF I had time to “tweet” about what I was doing today, and IF I had the inclination to interrupt what I’m doing in order to tell everyone about it, this is probably what it would have looked like: #Almost forgot seating charts; there goes the morning
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Optional in-service Monday. Optional, but @ $210 for the day and free lunch, I figure I can cope with the getting up early. Also I think I’ll have at least a couple of hours to actually work, whereas if I’m at home purportedly working, it’s oh so easy to find a million distractions. At least this way I’m getting paid to avoid working. Actual work day Tuesday. I don’t THINK there are any “meetings” scheduled for Tuesday. I think it’s just doughnuts in the lounge in the am, with PTA provided lunch at noon, and home in time to nap and skate by 3:45. Oh, and I also have to unpack all my shtuff and hook everything up and make seating charts since our genius gradebook software STILL doesn’t do something as simple as a seating chart. I also have to get all those kids into the clicker software AND the STAR reading testing software. (Wait I have a servant for that sort of shtuff. Phew, at least HE can type if the software import doesn’t work.) And there’s always the whatnot; you know, lesson plans and such, although after all these years, I’m in trouble if I can’t do
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(I’m referring to teaching, of course, although the same is true for living through it, if only because it’s half as long. And I get to still say junior high instead of middle school because ours is still only a two year school.) I ended my previous post by saying that one of the biggest eye-openers of my student teaching experiences way back in the day was that I decided that I liked teaching junior high better. I know that high school teachers (do any of your kind stop in here?) will scoff, and non teachers might not see that they are two different species, but I like the junior high animal better. Obviously, in public school, the range of diversity is even greater than that of dogs. (Aside: I read somewhere that there is more variation in the size, shape, and abilities of dogs than in any other species. Update: I guess it only takes the flipping of a few genes to cause such variations in dogs, which is why it has been so easy for humans to breed so many sizes and shapes is such a relatively short time.) Anyway, with so many variations in (and intermingling of ) the
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Before I started student teaching, I thought I wanted to be a high school English teacher. I thought anything younger than ninth grade was of a species that I didn’t want to deal with. I wanted to read stories in class like “The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol, and talk of doppelgangers and satire and samovars. Dead Poets Society hadn’t yet come out (still a year or so away), but I guess I kind of pictured that sort of thing. Although I hate that movie, now that I think about it. I thought that junior high–this was still at the beginnings of the “middle school” movement–was too close to elementary school, and I wouldn’t like reading the books, and I’d have to babysit too much, and blah, blah, blah. Student teaching is an eye-opener for most people. It’s easy for me to say this now, because I’m finished, but I think that a much larger percentage of teacher education should happen in the classroom. Much. Larger. Those places where the kids go to school at the teacher college should be copied everywhere. (More on this in a future post.) Most education undergrads have no idea what they’re getting themselves into. My biggest surprises: The
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This afternoon, I asked my friend and colleague, in his experiences with junior high, how many times he could remember seeing two seventh grade boys hugging. Sincerely. “Like a man-hug, or a real one?” “What’s a man hug?” “You know, you start out with the soul shake, and then you pull in and sorta bump chests, and then the other hand sorta slaps the back.” “Not that kind.” “Ummm. None.” “I knew it. It was a first for me too!” Milk and Cheese, the “True That” boys, were at it again. They were moving their desks closer together (again), like they like to do, and jabbering nonsense. Nothing major, and technically it was before class, but I said, “Well the quarter does end Friday, and I change up the seating chart every quarter, so next week I get to move you guys far, far apart.” One of our recent vocabulary words was crestfallen. I should have taken a picture of them to use as an example. Milk holds out both arms pleadingly (and it if it wasn’t sincere, he should be an actor) and says, “But…But…But… What about The Team?” OMG. The class is dying. Half of them are happy [...]
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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.)