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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Back-to-School sales have been going strong for weeks already. My boy went school supply shopping. My wife has already broached the subject of me buying some fresh shoes and shirts for once this year. I start teaching a new class in five weeks, and I don’t really know at all what we’ll be doing on the first day, let alone for a whole quarter. And only five weeks until we find out just how we will cope with my boy being in my class. ZOMG! So today’s summer rerun features my son and soon-to-be student. This one is from April 2009. I’ll be back at the end with a bit more. I was a teacher long before I became a parent. In fact, I balked at parenthood for a long time at least partly BECAUSE I was a teacher: “Why don’t you have kids, Mr C?” “I do. I have 150 of you every day.” Luckily, I was finally persuaded, and now I have a wonderful son. My boy is almost 10 now. In two years, he will most likely be in my class. I’m not sure how that’s going to play out. If you’re still reading this blog then,
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(Around these parts, just like on tv, summertime means reruns. This is from last September.) You all know the type. They might as well just walk in the door with their hand up. Actually some sort of do. They are the question machines, also known as IHAQ’s (pronounced I Hacks). “I have a question.” They have a question about EVERYTHING, many times BEFORE you even start talking. I have a couple of serious IHAQ’s this year. One girl would be a lock to win one of those challenges on Survivor where you have to keep your hand over your head or your bucket of water puts out your fire or something. I have a question. Actually I have four. Is that ok? One: Why do they always say, “I have a question”? Of course you have a question; that’s why you raised your hand. And if you have a comment, rather than a question, you can still just raise your hand, and make your comment. You don’t have to preface it with, “I have a comment.” It’s like those kids who think a conclusion to an essay sounds like this, “…And that’s why I think cheese-making should be an elective in the
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My. Oh. My. It’s been awhile since I’ve been here. Hafta to dust off the cobwebs before we get started. June has done disappeared, and July is well on its way to doing the same. How did that happen? I know I’ve been taking a lot of naps, but… I sound like a grandpa. Now get off my lawn. Actually I hope there are still at least few of you out here, because , what with me attempting to create a new video class from scratch (well I do have $120K to play with), and a whole buncha new “initiatives” (one of which is a pledge to raise our 90% of ALL our students to the proficient or advanced levels in math AND English) coming down the line from our new supe, and a host of other things I’ve been trying to ignore for the summer, I think this year is going be miiiiiiighty interesting. (Now THAT is one looooong sentence. Assignment due Friday: Diagram it.) At least I won’t have any S(ullen) and R(esentful) 8th graders this time around. I don’t think so anyway. What I’ve been doing this summer: Going to the Live Oak Music Festival. Peace, love,
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Mental Floss Question from last week: The Pope has one but doesn’t use it. Your dad has one, and your mom uses it. Nuns do not need one. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a big one, and Michael J. Fox’s is quite small. What is it? (An oldie, but a goody. Answer at the end.) As you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t been as regular lately. (Get your minds out of the gutter! I’m talking about posting here.) Here’s what I’ve been doing instead: 1. Fighting with again. This time it’s about the new spam filter for our e-mail system. In short: it sucks. It lets more spam through and blocks a lot of addresses that used to go through. Including my wife’s. Which is hosted on my domain. Hmmm. Coincidence? Maaaaaybe. Fixable? Easily. Fixed yet? Of course not. I finally realized why I have so much trouble with . is just like Sarah Palin. Pass the buck, blame the lamestream teacher, spout meaningless catchphrases (“have you rebooted?”), talk in that “lilt,” (“can’t she get a G-mail account just for this?”), smile a lot, and not really do anything but toe
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When my eighth graders were reading Flowers for Algernon, they all laughed at Charlie’s spelling in the early Progris Riport (sic) entries. It happens every time I do that story. But as you all know, Charlie ain’t got nothin’ on your typical middle schooler when it comes to creative spelling: radickulus begging (for beginning — Boy Howdy, I hate that one!) probly Satin-worshiping ballune But while reading their one page samples of their research papers in progress, one girl… Hold on. I have to interrupt this post with another brief aside. The girl in question here has made great progress this year. I hear that last year, as a seventh grader, she was the epitome of S and R (sullen and resentful: the teenage default) as well as defiant and etc. She also lived through some things as a kid that no one should have to, and is now being raised by her sister. But she is a sweet girl, who really just needs a dad. Anyway, today she was turned around jabbering with her friend while I was trying to give directions, and I called her on it. I got the perfunctory (vocab word for seventh graders this week)
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I know. You thought I was done with this whole blog thing. My seventh grade attention span finally got the best of me. It’s just testing. It’s just so… what’s the word? Enervating. I have a sort of love/hate thing with testing. Mostly hate these days, but back in the day, when I was actually a k-12 student, I used to love testing. I loved any chance to compete. SRA’s (remember those color levels?), SAT’s, state testing, spelling bees (we were old school at St. Mel’s); you name it, I wanted to be #1 when the results came out. Also, if you were done early, you could read whatever you wanted. I was always done early. Now as a teacher I have to say, rather guiltily, that testing season is one of my fave times of year. We get huge chunks of time to get something done, while the kids work for once. Over the course of four days of testing, I had about 10 hours of time to…work, yeah, that’s it. That’s more than two week’s worth of my regular prep time. Of course, we were instructed to walk around every now and then, but it’s not exactly an
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The other day I was bragging on the heartwarming comment a former student posted on my guestbook. Well, sometimes you don’t throw the life preserver quite far enough. After my skate today, I was stopping in at my local emporium for some liquid refreshment, and I had to maneuver around a rather unsavory (at first glance) pair, discussing their possible 40 ounce beverage choices. I worked in a beverage establishment like this for many years, so I am familiar with these types of conversations. They revolve around the central question of finding the most bang for the buck, and do we have enough bucks for the bang desired. But one of this pair obviously had more taste than the usual clientele in this market. “I ain’t drinking that $#*%.” At this point in the conversation, I skate past. “Look out. Sorry. Whoa. Wait! Hey Mr. Coward!” This is from the one who ain’t drinking that $#*%. D’oh. Yes. I now do recognize her, though it’s been about 10+ years. She nudges her sidekick. “This guy was my seventh grade English teacher.” To me: “How are you doing? You’re still skating? That’s so great!” And now she’s stooping over checking out
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We got another STAR testing pep talk yesterday. There must be serious pressure from the new superintendent on our admins to bounce back from our dip last year. The way I see it, we’re lucky the damage wasn’t worse, considering the seventh grade bunch we had last year. A lot of them had trouble bubbling their names. (Seriously.) And the talk I hear from the eighth grade teachers is that they haven’t really wised up much, so that doesn’t bode well for this year. But I will say that the one period of eighth grade that I have this year (first time in 8 years, only the 3rd time in 18), which has four reruns–students I also had last year–is doing pretty well, academically anyway. They’re still a pain in the Heineken. So needy and whiny. They all seem to need a dad to kick some metaphorical a** on them. Statistically, half of them probably don’t have one at home. Anyway, this time our vp was all, “It used to be that our school was the one everybody tried to beat. When my boys were in jr. high down in _____ (a school in the county, but not the district),
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(I’m posting this from my Nookcolor…How cool is that?) We had a meeting yesterday morning–the first day back…after two weeks off…a meeting…in the morning…after two weeks off. Anyway, there was an item about our upcoming STAR testing, and our admins were talking about ways we could raise our scores, since we dropped about 20 points last year. We talked about getting the kids to take the test more seriously, we talked about patrolling the aisles and making sure kids aren’t just bubbling shapes…but nobody talked about whether calling those kids on that would actually make them do any better. There was talk of incentives. I’m not a fan. It was suggested that we offer extra time at break for a week as a “reward.” Ugh. That’ll help. Great, more supervision time for some poor souls. One person brought up that many of the elementary schools hand out gum during testing week, claiming that it keeps them more focused and less fidgety. Uh huh. Like why don’t we just make it nicotine gum? Luckily our custodian nixed the idea of rescinding our no gum policy. (Dang how I hate to see them chawing away like cows or cowboys.) Then the talk
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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.)