Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Hail, the Conquering Hero!
Today is the day that my dearest friend arrives home from her time in Iraq (and a short visit to Fort Lewis). She arrived back in the states last week on Friday, and she’s been completing her post-deployment evaluations and stuff like that for the last ten days. She will be home this afternoon for real, and my heart is glad.
Third Week of April
Monday
Today was another workday. I spent the morning planning a project for the last month of the school year with a friend of mine from my former school. I missed this! I have been starved for collaboration, and even though she’s at a different school and has to teach a slightly different version of the project, I’m so excited that we’re even close to teaching to the same thing. We talked through different book options, grading rubrics, and final student presentations. Then, in the afternoon, we met again at her school to look at book options. (She has no financial filter, so she purchases books prolifically. She owns more book sets than I can find in the book storeroom at my school.) I came back with three different options, although I’m not sure how to choose. Maybe I’ll ask the students tomorrow.
Tuesday
My mission for today is to choose a novel to use with my students in language arts. I’m not excited about asking the students for their opinion; I generally discount the literature preferences of thirteen year olds. But I’m finding myself at a loss to choose the right book.
Here are my three options:
Boy by Roald Dahl – autobiography of the author’s school days (includes a headmaster spanking kids, younger boys serving as gophers for older boys, and other awkwardness that 21st century middle schoolers might not handle appropriately)
The Wild Children by Felice Holman – historical fiction about homeless children in Moscow following the Bolshevik revolution (includes homeless kids whose families were arrested, street gangs, stealing food, escaping from wretched conditions in an orphanage, sneaking out of the country; lovely book but not necessarily enough action to keep my modern kids interested)
Shabanu by Suzanne Fisher Staples -- modern fiction about a thirteen-year-old girl in Pakistan who resists when her parents try to marry her off to a rich man (needs careful handling to keep the puberty-related content from being inappropriate, but the themes of teenagers struggling against tradition would hook my students easily)
In my last class, I let the students look over the book options and vote on them. They were so careful with it! They would come up in pairs and look at the covers, the summaries on the back, flip through the pages, and then set the books down and point to their choice, saying, “That one.” (I found that funny. Every kid said that.) I asked each student about the reason for his/her choice, and the majority of them decided that The Wild Children sounded the most interesting. I’m surprised, but pleased. That’s the easiest book for me to teach (for the fifth or sixth time). It’s also the book with the least amount of questionable content, so that’s a relief as well. I love the themes in the book, and they’re applicable even now.
Wednesday
As I handed out copies of The Wild Children to my students today, one of them raised his hand and showed me the open book in front of him. It had notes written in red ink all over the page he was showing me. His initial comment of, “Mrs. Chandler, someone wrote in my book…” made me think a student had drawn something or written “Joe was here” or some other middle school nonsense. Instead, I discovered the copy of the novel that my good friend, now retired, used as her own copy for many years. I’ll admit it; I got a little teary-eyed. She was such a fabulous teacher and a good friend, and it was a lovely discovery. I decided to use her book as my own, so I’ve been transferring all of my notes into her copy. Now I’ll have my own notes AND hers. I know my students’ experience with this novel will be better because of her influence.
Thursday
Today in social studies, I used an activity to illustrate the medieval Chinese version of bureaucracy. I don’t normally do activities with my students. There’s so many of them, and they are so noisy… But in a moment of lesson-planning weakness, I went ahead and prepped for it. This one worked quite well. My first class was a little too noisy, but we used that to keep the groups quiet in the other two classes. I was impressed with how well they did, and with the conclusions they came to. It’s almost enough to make me want to plan more activity-based lessons… Almost!
I think I get more relaxed as a school week progresses. Tonight, after a "standing-in-Home-Depot" phone call from Mr. Chandler's brother about what kind of adhesive to use on art glass, we piled into the car and drove over to his brother's house, even though it was 10 p.m. There's no way I would have agreed to that on a Monday or a Tuesday night. Anyway, we stood around in his garage while he showed us his kitchen cabinet project and I showed him how to use tile nippers on his art glass and talked through using adhesive as he places his glass pieces. He's creating a glass mosaic top for a coffee table as a present for his wife. (Truly, he is a man of many talents.) So we were there for about 30 minutes visiting with him before we went home. I believe this lax attitude of mine signifies that a weekend is coming soon...
Friday
I was sitting at my desk after school working on updating grades in the computer. On a Friday afternoon, most of the staff checks out pretty quickly, so there weren’t very many people still in the building. Around 4:10 p.m., the power went out. The lights went out, and my computer made a worrisome “blip” sound while the screen went black. I sat in the dark for a moment, wondering if the power would come back on. The auxiliary generator kicked in, and one solitary light came on in the pod outside my room. I could hear alarms going off in other parts of the building, and adult voices calling to each other as they responded to the alarms. I continued to sit at my desk for a few minutes, staring at the darkened room. (I don’t know why. I was tired, I guess.) I decided that it was stupid to keep sitting there, and that the universe was telling me to go home. So I packed up and walked out in the dark.
Outside, there was a bit of chaos in the southwest corner of peaceful Troutdale. The electricity had been knocked out from 257th to 223rd (and beyond). It took me 45 minutes to get home, and the power was out at my house as well. The house was dark, the dogs were barking at the sirens, and the ham in my freezer was defrosting against my will. So I took some iced tea and my dogs and we went outside to sit in the sun. They sniffed things and dug holes in my lawn, and I read my book and ignored grades, defrosting hams, etc. This may be the start of a very relaxing weekend.
Today was another workday. I spent the morning planning a project for the last month of the school year with a friend of mine from my former school. I missed this! I have been starved for collaboration, and even though she’s at a different school and has to teach a slightly different version of the project, I’m so excited that we’re even close to teaching to the same thing. We talked through different book options, grading rubrics, and final student presentations. Then, in the afternoon, we met again at her school to look at book options. (She has no financial filter, so she purchases books prolifically. She owns more book sets than I can find in the book storeroom at my school.) I came back with three different options, although I’m not sure how to choose. Maybe I’ll ask the students tomorrow.
Tuesday
My mission for today is to choose a novel to use with my students in language arts. I’m not excited about asking the students for their opinion; I generally discount the literature preferences of thirteen year olds. But I’m finding myself at a loss to choose the right book.
Here are my three options:
Boy by Roald Dahl – autobiography of the author’s school days (includes a headmaster spanking kids, younger boys serving as gophers for older boys, and other awkwardness that 21st century middle schoolers might not handle appropriately)
The Wild Children by Felice Holman – historical fiction about homeless children in Moscow following the Bolshevik revolution (includes homeless kids whose families were arrested, street gangs, stealing food, escaping from wretched conditions in an orphanage, sneaking out of the country; lovely book but not necessarily enough action to keep my modern kids interested)
Shabanu by Suzanne Fisher Staples -- modern fiction about a thirteen-year-old girl in Pakistan who resists when her parents try to marry her off to a rich man (needs careful handling to keep the puberty-related content from being inappropriate, but the themes of teenagers struggling against tradition would hook my students easily)
In my last class, I let the students look over the book options and vote on them. They were so careful with it! They would come up in pairs and look at the covers, the summaries on the back, flip through the pages, and then set the books down and point to their choice, saying, “That one.” (I found that funny. Every kid said that.) I asked each student about the reason for his/her choice, and the majority of them decided that The Wild Children sounded the most interesting. I’m surprised, but pleased. That’s the easiest book for me to teach (for the fifth or sixth time). It’s also the book with the least amount of questionable content, so that’s a relief as well. I love the themes in the book, and they’re applicable even now.
Wednesday
As I handed out copies of The Wild Children to my students today, one of them raised his hand and showed me the open book in front of him. It had notes written in red ink all over the page he was showing me. His initial comment of, “Mrs. Chandler, someone wrote in my book…” made me think a student had drawn something or written “Joe was here” or some other middle school nonsense. Instead, I discovered the copy of the novel that my good friend, now retired, used as her own copy for many years. I’ll admit it; I got a little teary-eyed. She was such a fabulous teacher and a good friend, and it was a lovely discovery. I decided to use her book as my own, so I’ve been transferring all of my notes into her copy. Now I’ll have my own notes AND hers. I know my students’ experience with this novel will be better because of her influence.
Thursday
Today in social studies, I used an activity to illustrate the medieval Chinese version of bureaucracy. I don’t normally do activities with my students. There’s so many of them, and they are so noisy… But in a moment of lesson-planning weakness, I went ahead and prepped for it. This one worked quite well. My first class was a little too noisy, but we used that to keep the groups quiet in the other two classes. I was impressed with how well they did, and with the conclusions they came to. It’s almost enough to make me want to plan more activity-based lessons… Almost!
I think I get more relaxed as a school week progresses. Tonight, after a "standing-in-Home-Depot" phone call from Mr. Chandler's brother about what kind of adhesive to use on art glass, we piled into the car and drove over to his brother's house, even though it was 10 p.m. There's no way I would have agreed to that on a Monday or a Tuesday night. Anyway, we stood around in his garage while he showed us his kitchen cabinet project and I showed him how to use tile nippers on his art glass and talked through using adhesive as he places his glass pieces. He's creating a glass mosaic top for a coffee table as a present for his wife. (Truly, he is a man of many talents.) So we were there for about 30 minutes visiting with him before we went home. I believe this lax attitude of mine signifies that a weekend is coming soon...
Friday
I was sitting at my desk after school working on updating grades in the computer. On a Friday afternoon, most of the staff checks out pretty quickly, so there weren’t very many people still in the building. Around 4:10 p.m., the power went out. The lights went out, and my computer made a worrisome “blip” sound while the screen went black. I sat in the dark for a moment, wondering if the power would come back on. The auxiliary generator kicked in, and one solitary light came on in the pod outside my room. I could hear alarms going off in other parts of the building, and adult voices calling to each other as they responded to the alarms. I continued to sit at my desk for a few minutes, staring at the darkened room. (I don’t know why. I was tired, I guess.) I decided that it was stupid to keep sitting there, and that the universe was telling me to go home. So I packed up and walked out in the dark.
Outside, there was a bit of chaos in the southwest corner of peaceful Troutdale. The electricity had been knocked out from 257th to 223rd (and beyond). It took me 45 minutes to get home, and the power was out at my house as well. The house was dark, the dogs were barking at the sirens, and the ham in my freezer was defrosting against my will. So I took some iced tea and my dogs and we went outside to sit in the sun. They sniffed things and dug holes in my lawn, and I read my book and ignored grades, defrosting hams, etc. This may be the start of a very relaxing weekend.
Second Week of April
Monday
Resolution Report: Wait, are we still doing that? Crap…
My students are constantly asking me if they can switch seats. No matter where I put them, they complain. In my largest class, there just aren’t enough seats to make them all happy. And in creating a seating chart, I have to consider so many things – which girls have to be separated, which boys won’t work next to which girls, which boy is constantly turning around in his seat, which students had conflict earlier this year and need to be across the room from each other, and which students are frequently absent and should therefore only sit in certain seats so as not to leave two chatty kids with no one between them... It's rather daunting.
Today in my last (and largest) class, a boy once again asked if he could switch seats. In a moment of frustration, I ended up using 7 minutes of class time to shuffle students. I could only shuffle about a third of the kids successfully while still maintaining good principles of classroom management (i.e., Zachary and Marco can’t sit next to each other, no matter how responsible Marco is or how much Zachary begs… ditto Bethanie and Kelsey). I finally reached a strange compromise that involved one boy sitting by himself at the back of the room, rather than in one of the rows of seats on the seating chart. I wasn’t thrilled with this, but felt quite strongly that we had temporarily reached seating chart equilibrium. (Seating Chart Equilibrium = (noun) state of classroom management when the number of noisy/easily distracted students is equal to or greater than the number of quiet students in a class – see “teacher, nervous breakdown”.)
The punch line of this story is that in all of my shuffling, I left two open desks at random places in the classroom. (I have 33 students and 35 desks.) Anyway, the original student, the boy who started the entire shuffle, looked at me with his whiniest expression and again said, “Can I move?” As the gears in my brain ground like an old stick-shift pick-up truck in the hands of a novice 15-year-old city girl, and I began to hear the imaginary sound of nails scraping on chalkboards inside my mind, all I could manage for the first few moments was to stare at him with no answer. The haze in my brain shifted and cleared for a moment, and I noticed an empty desk. I nodded at him and pointed him to the open desk, identifying it by the names of the students he would be sitting by. He picked up his binder and moved swiftly to his new desk as if I’d promoted him to the mythical homework-free zone. I realized before he did… As I started to smile, he relaxed and slouched down slightly in his seat. Then, he sat up abruptly and whirled to face me. I laughed as he sputtered and finally protested, “But Mrs. Chandler, this was where I started!”
I made him stay there.
Tuesday
We went for a walk in Grant Park this evening. We left our dogs at home, fortunately; I had no idea there was an off-leash dog area there. We walked around the high school and the tennis courts, skirting the track due to pee-wee baseball practice on the football field (no, you read that correctly). Past the tennis courts is the Beverly Cleary courtyard where the statues of Henry, Ribsy, and Ramona are surrounded by marble tiles listing all of her books and the years they were published. Being teachers and book lovers, we lingered, examining each tile and marveling at the whimsical statues.
When we wandered back to the walking path and around the playground, we discovered the off-leash dog park area. It has connecting trails that lead to 34th Street and 35th Street in the neighborhood north of the park, and there were several dogs running around. Their owners were lined up watching, chatting companionably, while the dogs chased tennis balls, sticks, cats, and each other. One particular dog caught our attention immediately – he was chasing a tennis ball and being chased by another dog of a similar breed. When he caught the tennis ball, he ran back toward his owner… but only as far as a large mud puddle at the edge of the main path. While the owner encouraged him to come back with the ball, the dog plopped cheerfully into the puddle and tossed the ball to the side. The owner got a little louder in calling the dog back, but the dog ignored him completely and proceeded to roll in the puddle. When the other dog got close to the tennis ball, he leaped up and grabbed it and then launched himself back into the puddle. It was hilarious, and the dog seemed so aware of what he was doing! When he finally ran back to his owner, the owner grabbed the tennis ball and threw it away from him as fast as he could. I don’t blame him; that dog was happily coated in mud.
Wednesday
I lost my voice. Ugh… I have a “Plan of Assistance” meeting at another middle school this afternoon, and I have to be able to talk. I’m supposed to get the principal to change significant portions of the plan before the teacher signs it. I don’t need this kind of stress, especially the day before the end of the quarter. At least my sub wore a tie… maybe the urchins won’t eat him alive.
*Evening update: The Plan of Assistance meeting went remarkably well, in spite of my sounding like a 12-year-old boy hitting puberty. The principal only made fun of my hoarse, cracking voice once. (It’s okay; I’ve known him a long time. He’s a good guy. Also, I think he felt sorry for me – he agreed to all of my proposed changes to the plan.)
Thursday
Today is the last day of the quarter… Don’t panic!
Yes, you can turn this in at the end of the day.
No, I will not accept that if you only did half of it.
No, you can’t do a book report on a book your teacher read to you in 5th grade.
Yes, I’ll be here tomorrow for the teacher work day, and yes, you can walk to school and turn in work tomorrow, even though it was due four weeks ago.
Yes, this is a final report card, not a progress report.
Yes, it will be mailed home.
Yes, I’m going to tell your mom that you’re planning to intercept the mail.
No, you cannot turn in work from October.
Yes, I believe you can do better next quarter.
Yes, you can stay in at lunch.
Of course you have homework this weekend.
Friday
Today is a workday, and while I do have to get my grades done, I’m also trying to finish and submit my final, colossal assignment for my graduate research class. My professor liked my final project, I aced the final, and as of tomorrow, I’m free for the next 6 weeks from all graduate work. All’s well that ends well, I suppose. I think a celebration is in order.
Weekend
Saturday was the end of my stupid class, so we decided to celebrate by having a late lunch on Sunday at one of our favorite restaurants at the beach. I drove over, and Mr. Chandler drove back. It was lovely. We visited our favorite gallery and walked on the beach and looked at some super cute beach cottages and arrived at the restaurant just after their lunch rush had left – perfect timing. We made it back to our house in time to have some backyard play time with the dogs while it was still daylight. As an added bonus, I don’t feel stressed about getting a good night sleep tonight because tomorrow is another workday. I’m thankful for peaceful days like this, especially when they happen in the school year.
Resolution Report: Wait, are we still doing that? Crap…
My students are constantly asking me if they can switch seats. No matter where I put them, they complain. In my largest class, there just aren’t enough seats to make them all happy. And in creating a seating chart, I have to consider so many things – which girls have to be separated, which boys won’t work next to which girls, which boy is constantly turning around in his seat, which students had conflict earlier this year and need to be across the room from each other, and which students are frequently absent and should therefore only sit in certain seats so as not to leave two chatty kids with no one between them... It's rather daunting.
Today in my last (and largest) class, a boy once again asked if he could switch seats. In a moment of frustration, I ended up using 7 minutes of class time to shuffle students. I could only shuffle about a third of the kids successfully while still maintaining good principles of classroom management (i.e., Zachary and Marco can’t sit next to each other, no matter how responsible Marco is or how much Zachary begs… ditto Bethanie and Kelsey). I finally reached a strange compromise that involved one boy sitting by himself at the back of the room, rather than in one of the rows of seats on the seating chart. I wasn’t thrilled with this, but felt quite strongly that we had temporarily reached seating chart equilibrium. (Seating Chart Equilibrium = (noun) state of classroom management when the number of noisy/easily distracted students is equal to or greater than the number of quiet students in a class – see “teacher, nervous breakdown”.)
The punch line of this story is that in all of my shuffling, I left two open desks at random places in the classroom. (I have 33 students and 35 desks.) Anyway, the original student, the boy who started the entire shuffle, looked at me with his whiniest expression and again said, “Can I move?” As the gears in my brain ground like an old stick-shift pick-up truck in the hands of a novice 15-year-old city girl, and I began to hear the imaginary sound of nails scraping on chalkboards inside my mind, all I could manage for the first few moments was to stare at him with no answer. The haze in my brain shifted and cleared for a moment, and I noticed an empty desk. I nodded at him and pointed him to the open desk, identifying it by the names of the students he would be sitting by. He picked up his binder and moved swiftly to his new desk as if I’d promoted him to the mythical homework-free zone. I realized before he did… As I started to smile, he relaxed and slouched down slightly in his seat. Then, he sat up abruptly and whirled to face me. I laughed as he sputtered and finally protested, “But Mrs. Chandler, this was where I started!”
I made him stay there.
Tuesday
We went for a walk in Grant Park this evening. We left our dogs at home, fortunately; I had no idea there was an off-leash dog area there. We walked around the high school and the tennis courts, skirting the track due to pee-wee baseball practice on the football field (no, you read that correctly). Past the tennis courts is the Beverly Cleary courtyard where the statues of Henry, Ribsy, and Ramona are surrounded by marble tiles listing all of her books and the years they were published. Being teachers and book lovers, we lingered, examining each tile and marveling at the whimsical statues.
When we wandered back to the walking path and around the playground, we discovered the off-leash dog park area. It has connecting trails that lead to 34th Street and 35th Street in the neighborhood north of the park, and there were several dogs running around. Their owners were lined up watching, chatting companionably, while the dogs chased tennis balls, sticks, cats, and each other. One particular dog caught our attention immediately – he was chasing a tennis ball and being chased by another dog of a similar breed. When he caught the tennis ball, he ran back toward his owner… but only as far as a large mud puddle at the edge of the main path. While the owner encouraged him to come back with the ball, the dog plopped cheerfully into the puddle and tossed the ball to the side. The owner got a little louder in calling the dog back, but the dog ignored him completely and proceeded to roll in the puddle. When the other dog got close to the tennis ball, he leaped up and grabbed it and then launched himself back into the puddle. It was hilarious, and the dog seemed so aware of what he was doing! When he finally ran back to his owner, the owner grabbed the tennis ball and threw it away from him as fast as he could. I don’t blame him; that dog was happily coated in mud.
Wednesday
I lost my voice. Ugh… I have a “Plan of Assistance” meeting at another middle school this afternoon, and I have to be able to talk. I’m supposed to get the principal to change significant portions of the plan before the teacher signs it. I don’t need this kind of stress, especially the day before the end of the quarter. At least my sub wore a tie… maybe the urchins won’t eat him alive.
*Evening update: The Plan of Assistance meeting went remarkably well, in spite of my sounding like a 12-year-old boy hitting puberty. The principal only made fun of my hoarse, cracking voice once. (It’s okay; I’ve known him a long time. He’s a good guy. Also, I think he felt sorry for me – he agreed to all of my proposed changes to the plan.)
Thursday
Today is the last day of the quarter… Don’t panic!
Yes, you can turn this in at the end of the day.
No, I will not accept that if you only did half of it.
No, you can’t do a book report on a book your teacher read to you in 5th grade.
Yes, I’ll be here tomorrow for the teacher work day, and yes, you can walk to school and turn in work tomorrow, even though it was due four weeks ago.
Yes, this is a final report card, not a progress report.
Yes, it will be mailed home.
Yes, I’m going to tell your mom that you’re planning to intercept the mail.
No, you cannot turn in work from October.
Yes, I believe you can do better next quarter.
Yes, you can stay in at lunch.
Of course you have homework this weekend.
Friday
Today is a workday, and while I do have to get my grades done, I’m also trying to finish and submit my final, colossal assignment for my graduate research class. My professor liked my final project, I aced the final, and as of tomorrow, I’m free for the next 6 weeks from all graduate work. All’s well that ends well, I suppose. I think a celebration is in order.
Weekend
Saturday was the end of my stupid class, so we decided to celebrate by having a late lunch on Sunday at one of our favorite restaurants at the beach. I drove over, and Mr. Chandler drove back. It was lovely. We visited our favorite gallery and walked on the beach and looked at some super cute beach cottages and arrived at the restaurant just after their lunch rush had left – perfect timing. We made it back to our house in time to have some backyard play time with the dogs while it was still daylight. As an added bonus, I don’t feel stressed about getting a good night sleep tonight because tomorrow is another workday. I’m thankful for peaceful days like this, especially when they happen in the school year.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
No Furniture So Charming As Books
(A quote by Sydney Smith)
Another favorite library quote of mine:
My library was dukedom large enough.
(Shakespeare, The Tempest)
Every other Friday, we have library check-out. We march down to the library, and the kids disperse into the large circular room. Some make a bee-line for the couch. Couch seats are prime real estate in the library -- ten minutes of slouchy comfort and chatting in the middle of a rigorous day. Some end up at the computers checking the catalog of books for ideas. (It’s interesting to me that these students find a topic-specific computer search less daunting than actually looking at the books on the shelf.) One lucky student per week gets to sit and read in the claw-foot bathtub filled with pillows by the entrance. What bliss, after a day of hard student desk seats…
Some kids park themselves at tables to read or chat. I especially like one of my groups of boys. They collect over by the magazines and group around a table, some of them so anxious to see what everyone is looking at that they can’t even sit down. Leaning over each other to see the table, they stare at skateboarding magazines, pouring over the pages as if they hold the key to the world’s most important puzzles. They’re immensely serious about their study, which is surprising for a group of boys who normally can’t stop goofing off. Earnestly, they discuss the tricks portrayed in the photos, listening to each other explain their own attempts, desperate to learn from each other's failures and master the technique themselves. They congratulate each other on successes and nod at each other when they remember the name of whatever professional skateboarder is pictured. But they never smile. They're far too serious for that. Even when a page is turned and collectively they lean back from the table, saying, "Whoa..." at a particularly impressive stunt, they never smile. Then one of them remarks, "That's tight," and the others all nod and agree, eyes still glued to the magazine.
The remainder of the students begin their bi-weekly ritual of pacing along the round edge of the room, trolling the shelves for literary options. Something that’s not too long… but not too short… something interesting, not boring or dorky… something their friends will think is cool, or at least not notice as being dumb… something they won’t mind reading every single day in Mrs. Chandler’s class because you lose points if you don’t have a book, and she’s always making you take out your book and read whenever there’s down time or the class gets too noisy…
I love this ritual. I love to watch it, and I love to help with it. I divide my time in the library between shushing the chatters who are having a little too much fun, and wandering around behind the “book-lookers.” (Book-lookers = (plural noun) during library time, students who have not yet made it to the check-out line because they are still looking for books.) I don’t talk to my students while I wander behind them; instead I let them come to me. And they do. Together, we look for certain types of books: nonfiction, realistic fiction, science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, books about girls or books about boys (respectively), books about sports, books that aren’t about sports, and mostly books that aren’t boring or dumb. If you’ve never realized how many books in a school library are boring or dumb, try finding a winner for a middle schooler.
And then they line up at the counter to check out their treasures-for-two-weeks. I call for the couch people to line up – "make sure the cushions are put back on the couch" – and for the computer people to line up - "go back to the catalog homepage" - and for the table people to line up – "push in your chairs first… Cory, go back and push in your chair!" - and then we march back down the hall and troop into the classroom. I love the first few moments when we get back from the library. Some of them chat, and some of them show their books to their friends, and some – my kindred spirits – open their new books and start reading immediately. It is these students that I loathe to interrupt, even to get back to the lesson. We’re supposed to be cultivating our students as readers, aren’t we? So I drag my feet about restarting class, just to give them a few more minutes of restful, precious reading time.
Professional Responsibility Test
Question #1: What important after-school duty should teachers always show up for?
Answer: Bus Duty
Question #2: How many days this week did Mrs. Chandler show up for her assigned bus duty? (10 points per day)
Answer: none
How pathetic. I even put up a sign on my door to remind me to go to bus duty, and I still didn't make it.
Three different factors joined forces to prevent me from fulfilling my assigned bus duty:
1) There are only two teachers in our pod, and, in what must have been a drunken stupor, those responsible for the bus duty schedule assigned both of us to bus duty in the same week. In fact, every week during this school year that one of us has bus duty, the other one does as well. The problem is that we also have pod duty for 90 students every day after school. So when one of us goes to bus duty, the other has to stay on pod duty. Since my teaching partner is usually ready before I am, she went to bus duty and I stayed to supervise the pod.
2) There is only one week left before the end of the quarter (and report cards), so students have been flooding me with requests to check their grades or give them extra copies of missing assignments. And they all show up after school. So I’m usually delayed in getting out of the classroom after school.
3) My last class is BAD. (I’m sorry to the girls from my last class who read my blog, but you know that it’s true.) They are chattier than caffeinated sophomore girls prepping for Homecoming. They waste SO much time talking, and I usually end up fining them by holding them after class in 30-second increments. They average one to two minutes after class every day. In their defense, there are 34 of them, and it’s their last class of the day. Also, they’re 12- and 13-year-olds. They’re really smart kids, and very sweet... they just can’t be quiet.
Anyway, by the time I actually dismiss my last class, the rest of the school has already moved on. Then the students who want to talk about grades or missing work come in. Then my always-organized teaching partner beats me to bus duty, and I have to stay in the pod to make sure the kids at their lockers don’t burn down the building or anything. (Actually, it’s more like making sure they don’t beat each other up and rip the pod apart in the process.) So I failed bus duty this week...
Mrs. Chandler’s grade on the Professional Responsibility Test: F-
Answer: Bus Duty
Question #2: How many days this week did Mrs. Chandler show up for her assigned bus duty? (10 points per day)
Answer: none
How pathetic. I even put up a sign on my door to remind me to go to bus duty, and I still didn't make it.
Three different factors joined forces to prevent me from fulfilling my assigned bus duty:
1) There are only two teachers in our pod, and, in what must have been a drunken stupor, those responsible for the bus duty schedule assigned both of us to bus duty in the same week. In fact, every week during this school year that one of us has bus duty, the other one does as well. The problem is that we also have pod duty for 90 students every day after school. So when one of us goes to bus duty, the other has to stay on pod duty. Since my teaching partner is usually ready before I am, she went to bus duty and I stayed to supervise the pod.
2) There is only one week left before the end of the quarter (and report cards), so students have been flooding me with requests to check their grades or give them extra copies of missing assignments. And they all show up after school. So I’m usually delayed in getting out of the classroom after school.
3) My last class is BAD. (I’m sorry to the girls from my last class who read my blog, but you know that it’s true.) They are chattier than caffeinated sophomore girls prepping for Homecoming. They waste SO much time talking, and I usually end up fining them by holding them after class in 30-second increments. They average one to two minutes after class every day. In their defense, there are 34 of them, and it’s their last class of the day. Also, they’re 12- and 13-year-olds. They’re really smart kids, and very sweet... they just can’t be quiet.
Anyway, by the time I actually dismiss my last class, the rest of the school has already moved on. Then the students who want to talk about grades or missing work come in. Then my always-organized teaching partner beats me to bus duty, and I have to stay in the pod to make sure the kids at their lockers don’t burn down the building or anything. (Actually, it’s more like making sure they don’t beat each other up and rip the pod apart in the process.) So I failed bus duty this week...
Mrs. Chandler’s grade on the Professional Responsibility Test: F-
End of March / First Week of April
Teacher's Note: I don’t know what to call this week. It has three March days and two April days. I’ve decided to call it the first week of April because all of my meetings are on a regular schedule, and according to my second-week-of-the-month meetings, which all happen next week, this is the first week of April. If you don’t like it, blame the meetings.
Monday
Back to school… It’s like we never left. Literally. This afternoon, a bunch of us teachers were all standing around in the hallway talking to each other about how we still feel like we need a vacation. That’s not a good sign…
Tuesday
I really like the last couple weeks of the quarter. It’s fun when the kids start kicking things into high gear and getting all their make-up work done. I feel motivated to get all of my grading caught up and entered into the gradebook, and the kids check the posted grades on the wall for anything they might be missing… but it’s not so late that any of us feel overly stressed about report cards. Next week we’ll panic. For now, everyone is suddenly industrious, assignments are turned in, work sessions happen quietly, and the aura of academia is almost palpable in the classroom.
Wednesday
I don’t even REMEMBER Wednesday. When’s spring break again? (Bad sign... again.)
Thursday
There is a round-about in front of my school. Back when we lived 5 blocks from the school, I thought the round-about was kind of obnoxious because I approached it as a driver. Or, I was frustrated by the lack of sidewalk because I approached it as a dog-walker. Now I’m just amused by it. I’ve heard about round-abouts in England that cause drivers (and pedestrians and cyclists) incredible consternation, but this one seems fairly harmless. Then again, there isn’t much traffic on a suburban side street in Troutdale.
Anyway, I think the round-about is funny. It has rocks and grasses and regular grass and tiny little “wanna-be” birch trees and round-about signs with graffiti on them. Every year, the PTSA organization gets together and plants tulip bulbs in the parking strip flower beds on the outside edges of the street that goes around the round-about. Right now, most of them are blooming, so the round-about is surrounded by a border of red tulips. It’s quite cheerful. Here's a picture of the round-about. I’ll try to take some pictures of the tulips next week.
Friday
Okay, I'm a weirdo. We had library check-out today. I took my kids down to the library, and they settled in to read or chat or search for books. In a random, unguarded moment while no one needed my help to find a book, I was caught acting strange by a couple of my students. (Shocking, I know…) I happened to be walking in a funny way across the library carpet, and these girls started laughing at me. I decided that it would be less complicated to act like it was an accident and like I didn’t know why it had happened. So I laughed at myself along with them and talked about how I’d spaced out there for a second.
The truth is much more embarrassing than that. The truth is, I was imagining what the library would be like if the floor were an ice rink. While I pictured students scooting tables and chairs along the ice, I imagined myself gliding – ice skating, even – on the ice floor, and apparently I took a few fake ice-skating glides while I was lost in this alternate reality. Of all the moments for my students to decide to watch me…
Monday
Back to school… It’s like we never left. Literally. This afternoon, a bunch of us teachers were all standing around in the hallway talking to each other about how we still feel like we need a vacation. That’s not a good sign…
Tuesday
I really like the last couple weeks of the quarter. It’s fun when the kids start kicking things into high gear and getting all their make-up work done. I feel motivated to get all of my grading caught up and entered into the gradebook, and the kids check the posted grades on the wall for anything they might be missing… but it’s not so late that any of us feel overly stressed about report cards. Next week we’ll panic. For now, everyone is suddenly industrious, assignments are turned in, work sessions happen quietly, and the aura of academia is almost palpable in the classroom.
Wednesday
I don’t even REMEMBER Wednesday. When’s spring break again? (Bad sign... again.)
Thursday
There is a round-about in front of my school. Back when we lived 5 blocks from the school, I thought the round-about was kind of obnoxious because I approached it as a driver. Or, I was frustrated by the lack of sidewalk because I approached it as a dog-walker. Now I’m just amused by it. I’ve heard about round-abouts in England that cause drivers (and pedestrians and cyclists) incredible consternation, but this one seems fairly harmless. Then again, there isn’t much traffic on a suburban side street in Troutdale.
Anyway, I think the round-about is funny. It has rocks and grasses and regular grass and tiny little “wanna-be” birch trees and round-about signs with graffiti on them. Every year, the PTSA organization gets together and plants tulip bulbs in the parking strip flower beds on the outside edges of the street that goes around the round-about. Right now, most of them are blooming, so the round-about is surrounded by a border of red tulips. It’s quite cheerful. Here's a picture of the round-about. I’ll try to take some pictures of the tulips next week.
Friday
Okay, I'm a weirdo. We had library check-out today. I took my kids down to the library, and they settled in to read or chat or search for books. In a random, unguarded moment while no one needed my help to find a book, I was caught acting strange by a couple of my students. (Shocking, I know…) I happened to be walking in a funny way across the library carpet, and these girls started laughing at me. I decided that it would be less complicated to act like it was an accident and like I didn’t know why it had happened. So I laughed at myself along with them and talked about how I’d spaced out there for a second.
The truth is much more embarrassing than that. The truth is, I was imagining what the library would be like if the floor were an ice rink. While I pictured students scooting tables and chairs along the ice, I imagined myself gliding – ice skating, even – on the ice floor, and apparently I took a few fake ice-skating glides while I was lost in this alternate reality. Of all the moments for my students to decide to watch me…
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