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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Our tip of the day this time is from someone we haven’t heard from in a long while. In fact it’s been almost three years since this guest artist made his first and only appearance here. Since then he’s been spending a few years down under. And I don’t mean Australia. I mean 6th grade. But now he’s seen the light of day, and by luck there was a spot open again at our site, and so he’s back torturing both 7th and 8th graders in math (my boy included–who also had “mrJ” last year for 6th grade). And I’m back to stealing tips from him. First go read his first appearance here. Ok. On to the tip of the day. I know that when I have subs (sorry, they’re called guest teachers at our school), I always tell them to leave a detailed note about how things went. I also tell them to kick ass and take names, and I leave seating charts to make that easy. And I hate it when I get something like this: “All classes were great. Thanks for a great day. Hope to be back soon.” You are never coming back. Well mrJ had
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First off, the Standing Girl actually took a break on Thursday. “I just don’t feel like standing today.” “No sore toe?” “No. I just don’t feel like it.” OK. Friday was test day–she doesn’t stand for tests–but she was right back on her feet today. “I just feel like it.” One of the yahoos spoke my own thoughts today, though perhaps a bit less tactfully. “Can’t you think of anything else to say? Maybe Iiiii feel like, you know…far-” “Quiet you!” Second, another round of kudos to the brave Mr. M. He threw himself on the landmine, and it didn’t blow up. The not-missus (I couldn’t resist) was dead-on when she said that we teachers are a defensive bunch. In fact, that was my cooperating teacher’s only real beef with me as a young buck: “Does not take criticism well.” Ouch. The truth hurts, as we used to say in junior high. So Mr. M, it took a lot of guts for you to approach your colleague, AND you obviously had some tact, because she actually listened to you. That’s a one-two punch you gotta take advantage of. What else needs changing at your school? You should be working that
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Yesssssss, as the kids say when we’re checking a quiz or something, and they get a few in a row correct. If they’re on a streak as we go over it, it’ll be… “Number seven… D – savvy, the opposite of naive.” “Yesssssss.” “Number eight… E – none of the above.” “Yessssssssss.” It gets longer each time. “Number nine… there there… let me help you with that… C – patronize.” “Yesssssssssssss.” “You sound like you’re leaking air. Puh-leeze.” “Number ten… C – aghas–” “Nooooo!” “I mean E – none of the above. ” “Yessssssssssssssssssssss.” “Would you just stop it? Now?!” “Yesssss.” But anyway… Yesssssssss! The intervention was a success. Thanks for the update Mr. M. We are all glad to hear that your colleague has seen the light, and if she actually reads Readicide and gets it, we might see some real change. Just think how many kids we saved. (Do the math.) And I guess great minds think alike; I was just going to start blogging my way through Nurture Shock . I’m going camping this weekend, and we have a Survivor, Modern Family, Psych triple shot of tv love tonight that is like a long-awaited fix for a tv junkie
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Been a while, I know… So I’m going all dot dot dot on you. It’s been almost a month–since September 14 to be exact–that the Standing Girl first decided to stand for the whole period. Not all periods. Just mine. And she’s still standing. Just for me. She still won’t say why… She does sit for tests… Finally getting into chapter 7. Chapter 6 was fun as always. I think it’s my fave. It has a lot of humor, probably more than anywhere in the book–Dally’s line, “Forget those blasted kids!” never fails to get a laugh. This year though there was a new comment. “And all the kids’ parents are right there and heard that!” I never really thought of that. And Dally cussing out Pony at the hospital is another surefire laugh-getter. I love rolling around slouched in my rolly chair waving my fist like Dally… In fact this is the chapter where we really start to like Dally. First, he’s funny. (I think he might have more funny lines than the supposed clown Two-Bit.) Second, we see that he cares about Johnny. Miss Susan Eloise is setting us up nicely for chapter nine. I read somewhere that the plot
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When I was a rookie, I was always on the lookout for some sort of regular activities that would happen every week, and give me some sort of skeleton to hang the rest of the week on. When you’re a noob, that 54 minutes show looks mighty long and hard to fill. When I started here, they already had a few of these sort of things in place department-wide. Nowadays (as the kids say) I would chafe at the idea, but back then I was stoked to have some of those minutes already filled. “OK. Monday we have a spelling pretest (the lists were even provided back in the day…and probably will be again soon…sigh), we all had to do a current events thing of some kind (I liked that one…hmmmm), we checked KBAR on Fridays…” KBAR? Wait. I just realized I already ‘splained the history of KBAR back in 2008, when this here blog first started. So here you go. (December, 2008.) When I started at my school (1993), they had an independent reading program they called Kick Back and Read (KBAR). Mostly, it was a chart with a picture of Snoopy on it. Actually there were two kinds
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The first couple of PSA’s from my first quarter video production elective class are ready for prime-time. Amazing what can arise from amid the chaos of late-arriving equipment, unworking computers and crashing software. (Actually, the past week has been really good; we might be getting the hang of this.) PSA Videos.
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I was going to tell the whole story about how my KBAR program came to be (the granddaughter of the inventer of the name is in my class this year), but since it’s Wednesday and it’s ten minutes until eight, I’ll save the back-story for later and get right down to the nitty-gritty, as someone used to say sometime. Here’s a short version of how I deal with reading the responses and checking the charts. I ass-u-me (seventh graders love that one) that you have already familiarized yourself with the KBAR concept. What? Fine. Click the link. Then read the rest. I’ll be back, as our former governor used to say. This is from July, 2009′s mailbag. What is your experience with doing the KBAR notebook? I have found that during my student teaching, the students rarely turned in homework if I wasn’t checking it (worksheets or whatever) at the end of every week. Also, is it used just for KBAR work at home? I’m nervous about leaving them to do something at home on a notebook (that many of my students wouldn’t buy since it’s 75% free/reduced lunch). Any alternatives to that issue? During the first week of doing KBAR, I check daily, just to make sure they
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I was working on a post about a book every teacher should read. It’s called Nurture Shock, and I will finish the post about it later. We have a bigger issue to deal with here right now. Over yonder in the comments sections, Mr. M appears to have a rather pesky coworker, and he’s also looking for a little help in the independent reading program department. First of all… O. M. G. I can see why you have “disagreements” with this person. She is obviously insane. She should seek out a mental health professional at once. A 140 page per week quota? What is this, a sweatshop? Do the kids earn piecework for every book and notecard they churn out? Your word exorbitant is not even sufficient to describe this. What does she do with the notecards? How does she prevent lying–both parental and student? (That book I mentioned says that 97% of adolescents lie to their parents about 3/4 of their real life activities.) Is it tied to what she does in class, or is it there just because she’s supposed to have an independent reading program, and of course “mine has to be ‘rigorous’ because I don’t want
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The boy seems to be liking middle school so far. The adjustment has been smooth, and he seems to have things under control and then some. Not like a lot of my kids. Wait a minute. I just mistyped kids as mids… hmmm, I might like that. Anyway, the boy seems to be acing middle school so… Wait again. His mom is over there making faces, and she’s all, “Duh.” “What?” “Let’s see. He has his dad for two periods, he has his 6th grade teacher for one period (yes, his 6th grade teacher last year is back here at the junior high, so we dialed him in), he has another friend of the family in whose pool he has swum for another period. So he already knows four of his six teachers. Plus his father makes sure he’s first in line for lunch and showed him the ins and outs with the lunch ladies…” (Aside: If my class before lunch is good, we always leave for lunch one minute early, because I like to be first in line. If they’re bad, only I leave for lunch. The rest of the yahoos sit until I have piled up my tray,
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First off: Ok, Ok. I’m starting to find my happy place with research. Thank you for the comments and suggestions; I think next year will be better. You guys gave me some good ideas. We’re working on outlines this week, prepping for research. Among other activities, I give them partially completed outlines and word banks to fill them in with. I strategically place a few clues in the outline, and they have to determine the hierarchy of the various entries I provide, and fill in the blanks. Like this (the stats are kinda dated, but it’s a topic near to my heart): Topic: The automobile has become the American Nightmare kills 265,000 and injures millions annually, road rage and reckless driving have increased, better city design to decrease auto dependence, leading source of air pollution, alternatives to the automobile, main means of transportation, too many people dependent on the car, large SUV’s: rollovers and danger to smaller cars, more cars and more roads mean more traffic congestion, average car: 5 tons of carbon dioxide each year, contributes to acid rain and smog, leading cause of death and injury, new dangers with 2 recent developments, public transportation I. Main means of [...]
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