At our first faculty meeting of the year, before school started, one of the items that came up was funding for our after-school “math lab” aimed at kids who are having “math issues.” (Don’t most all middle-schoolers have math issues? Just saying.) The math teachers were complaining that the kids who get sent there for not doing their math homework, or the ones who are forced to go by their well-meaning parents, are the ones, even though they probably need the help the most, are the ones who are getting the least benefit out it. “They don’t want to be there, they disrupt, they don’t bring their stuff, they don’t listen.” Let’s see, they’re in junior high. They hate math, and are failing, and someone is making them sit through more math. Hmmm. Now I’ve never been a fan of rewards in my class. I don’t give out candy, I don’t give prizes or incentives for good behavior or for turning in homework regularly. We don’t have class parties or anything like that. I offer some extra credit for going above and beyond, but that’s about as far as I go. No stickers, Weepuls, or nights off homework. (Although I
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OK. This time for real. Daily, baby. Well maybe… It seems like I wait longer and longer each year to get ready for school. We started today. I went in Monday and started hooking things up, but most of that day was spent in meetings, checking out our district’s latest software purchase, DataDirector (more on this later in the post), and hounding IST to fix all the stuff they broke over the summer (they were actually very nice about it…except for…well anyway…) First Day Quiz Question One: What was the most common computer issue your gallant narrator had to fix for people yesterday, during our one prep day? a) printer not working b) mouse not working c) software that used to be there isn’t any more d) monitor resolution e) can’t play dvd’s You’d think I might have started earlier this year, what with teaching eighth grade for the first time since 03/04 and all, but you’d be wrong. I was at Refugio Beach all last week, instead of getting ready. Oh well. Our district has subscribed to a new web-based data service. IST, it seems, has been spending their a good portion of their time entering three years’ worth
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As my loyal readers may remember, I passed the dreaded CTEL test last June. Having a CLAD certificate (which passing the CTEL gives you) is the only way to remain employed as a teacher in California, and a lot of teachers are going through a lot of stress these days as the deadline for passing looms. The pe and math teachers at our site have been particularly stressed about it. Several didn’t pass the first section (the one with all the lingo and language acquisition theory) the first time, and were really worried about the retake in December. Some of them asked for advice on passing. “You’re an English teacher; you know what a morpheme and a phoneme are, and you’re used to writing essays and stuff (there are three “open ended response” essays over the course of the three sections). No wonder you didn’t have any problem.” My tips for them came down to four things. “You can game this test, especially the essays. This is the kind of thing where the test writers have a party line, an ideology. They want to hear their own words back. “One. Read the book. Focus especially on the vocabulary and the little scenarios that
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Back in the day, the San Francisco Chronicle had a columnist named Herb Caen. With the exception of eight years or so in the 50′s when he jumped ship for the Examiner, he wrote a daily column for the Chronicle from the 30′s until he died in 1997. He’s the one that invented the word beatnik. He called what he did “3 dot journalism.” As you know, because you followed the convenient link provided above, he called it that because his column was usually just a long series of short comments or news items or intimations of coming news items, broken up by a series of ellipses. (Good extra credit question: “What is the punctuation we usually refer to as dotdotdot really called?” ) It finally dawned on me today that that is where Twitter stole their idea from. (D’oh! Sentence ending with a preposition!) Good Tweeters (it’s really difficult for me to even type that “word”) are channeling the spirit of Herb Caen. I haven’t done any research, (I did use to read his column fairly regularly), but I would bet that in at least one or more columns he wrote about what he had for lunch. Also where
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I know it’s been a week since our last session. (Wait a minute! That sounds waaaaay too much like what we were taught to say in confession back at St. Mel’s: “Bless me Father for I have sinned; it has been _____ weeks, months, years since my last confession…” I’d always end up committing more sins right there in the confessional by lying about how long it had been, and leaving out lots of stuff. Shudder.) But what a week it’s been: 1. STAR testing. 2. Open House. 3. I received most of the kids’ research topics, and there aren’t any cute animal or “history of” topics. 4. Our IST department disabled flash drives district-wide. 5. I complained district-wide. 6. The assistant superintendent sent me an e-mail saying that I was “out of bounds with basic human behavior,” and that he would be “pushing all the buttons for an appropriate discipline.” 7. I was told not to use “reply: Everyone” for IST matters any more. 8. Our IST department re-instituted flash drive support. (5 and 8 are not connected. I know much better than that.) 9. It was “Teacher Appreciation Week.” 10. We had chicken barbecue for lunch Wednesday (OMG,
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Random Featured Post
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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