Fowl Weather

After a couple of weeks of relatively dry weather – and even some occasional bouts of sunshine – the rain has returned with a vengeance. And it’s not even a misty rain, either. It’s a heavy rain with huge, heavy drops that plop on you as you walk into the building. There are puddles everywhere, and water runs in rivulets through parking lots, in streets, down driveways, and from unfortunately leaky gutters. (...In case there was any doubt that we're in Portand.) Outside my classroom is the dirt baseball field, which is currently occupied by a huge muddy puddle because of the rain. There are two ducks who have taken up residence in the baseball mud puddle. I can see them from my window, and at the moment, they are happily splashing around while the rain showers on them. They have returned to the large puddle (which looks more like a small lake at this point) for a couple days in a row now. I adore ducks, especially puddle ducks. They are quite cheerful about the weather today, and they have cheered me up immensely.

Worst Valentine's Day Ever

I'm not entirely sure what to say about this, except to lay out the facts. A friend who worked with Mr. Chandler and who was important and very dear to both of us died on Monday evening. Later the same night, my grandmother in California died.

As a rule, I don't believe in Valentine's Day. I was never left out of the valentine-giving as a kid, and I don't have some traumatic experience that made me hate the holiday... If anything, you can blame Safeway for my negative perspective about this stupid holiday. Safeway, where you can normally buy a dozen lovely roses for the unbelieveable price of $9.99, jacks up their flower prices around Valentine's Day and suddenly charges $29.99 for the same dozen roses. I vehemently object to this.

In the early years of our marriage, Mr. Chandler used to buy me Valentine's Day gifts anyway, perhaps thinking I was one of those girls who protests, but really does want to be recognized. HA! Fortunately, he's older and wiser now. It's kind of a waste, too, because he's quite good at gifts and valentines. The nicest Valentine's Day I think I've ever had included a couple hours playing Grand Turismo 3 on a PS2 with Mr. Chandler's brother, interrupted briefly by a singing telegram via telephone that Mr. Chandler had ordered (and paid for) from the choir at his college, and finished by 99 cent Happy Meals at McDonalds with a group of friends and a bouquet of yellow flowers (my favorite flower color) ordered by Mr. Chandler even though he was multiple states away at the time.

So my students asked me the next day how my Valentine's Day was, and I told them it wasn't my favorite holiday and that I generally don't celebrate it. I don't need to distract them with the particulars of friends and family members dying. They're young and hormonal and have other things to worry about -- like plastering pink hearts all over each other's lockers and trying to sneak in a little PDA before class without getting caught by a teacher. I let them have their fun (although I didn't let them have their PDA). They'll grow up and face real life soon enough.

Capture the Flag

This was fun and different… after two days of studying an overview of the American Revolution, I took my students outside and had them play a rigged game of Capture the Flag. It worked amazingly well, although the red team got pretty annoyed as they lost advantages throughout the game (much like the British lost their advantages over the Americans in the war). The students went home over the weekend and made charts showing aspects of their game that compare or connect to aspects of the war. They did a great job with it, too, and most of them picked up on connections during the game itself. I’m generally against activities – so hard to control, and the kids are always so noisy! But they had so much fun AND remembered so much about the war itself… So once again, I think I will have to work in more activities.

The most entertaining part of the game came at the end of the day when another 8th grade teacher sent some of his students outside to ask if they could play with us. We ended up splitting into "our class" and "their class." At that point, I didn't rig the game; I just let them play. And would you believe... even when they were just playing for fun and I wasn't directing the discussion between rounds, they STILL talked about how their game compared to the Revolutionary War. It warmed my heart! My class won, which also warmed my heart. :)

What Happened to January?

Good grief, where did January go? It’s like I came back to school, forgot to look at the calendar, and suddenly lost four weeks! I can’t believe how fast it’s gone; it’s been crazy! Now suddenly it’s February? January has completely flown the coop. It seemed to be an endless parade of meeting after meeting after meeting…

I’ve decided that the time goes by much faster when I’m teaching an integrated curriculum. If I’m mixing language arts and social studies, there isn’t a clear structure to my weeks – LA on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and SS on Tuesday and Thursday. Instead, it’s a mix of both every day… which contributes to my lost sense of time, I think. Interestingly enough, research shows that students retain the greatest amount of content and skill knowledge when they are immersed in one subject for an extended period of time. I don’t think the students like this very much, and few teachers actually use this method anyway. But it really is best for them. Oh well. For now, they’ll have to learn to live with social studies content and language arts skills meshed together.

Tomorrow

So my school district is launching this new website newsletter for keeping the community informed of our goings-on. Keep this in mind; it will come back to haunt me.

Today (which is mid-January, although I didn't manage to post this until much later), we watched and waited as the weather turned deliciously nasty. The sky darkened, and the heavy, dark, laden clouds gathered, and the daylight waned even in the middle of the day. Some teachers closed their blinds and tried to keep the students from getting distracted by the weather. Not THIS teacher... I opened wide the blinds in hopes of keeping as much light as possible in the room. I checked the online weather reports frequently and read happy reports of expected snow and ice. Gradually, we received word that evening activities were cancelled. After school, my principal came in to talk to me about something, and he, too, mentioned the pending bad weather. (I swear I noticed some underlying glee on his part at this thought.) While we were talking, he mentioned something about an email that we’d received, so I opened my email account to look at what he was referencing. As I opened my inbox, an email pop-up from the district office appeared. The subject line said, “The District Tomorrow.” I opened the email hoping and expecting to see something about school being closed tomorrow due to impending inclement weather. Instead… it was the new newsletter from the district, which they confusingly titled, “The District Tomorrow.” There was nothing about a snow day or even a two-hour delay. Stupid newsletter.

Back to the Grind...

My winter break included some notable introductions, including an introduction to some new games. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas afternoon with my best friend’s family, who taught us to play a new and incredibly easy dice game called Farkle and a fantastic new board game called Ticket to Ride. Apparently, there are several versions of Ticket to Ride – the US version, the Europe version, a Germany version that we played, a Scandinavian version, and one other from somewhere more obscure. They’re all made in Germany, and the cards and board are lovely and artistic drawings. We liked it so much that we tracked down the US and Europe versions of the game and found them at a discounted price. It’s unusual to find a game that only two people can play successfully without it being repetitive, so we’ve enjoyed it a lot.

I also started a new sewing project, met a new nephew, and got lots of pictures and videos from my parents, who bought a new video camera so they could record more of my niece’s adorable life. She’s able to pull herself up on things and even walk around as long as she has something to hold onto. My favorite part is that, in some of the pictures and videos, you can see my brother’s little Boston terrier Lenny following her around. The dog follows her everywhere as if he intends to catch her if she falls – even though he’s rather small and clumsy and probably wouldn’t be able to catch his own butt if it fell off.

So now we’re back at school again. As it turns out, my 85% homework return prediction was not far off for the compare/contrast assignment. Not too shabby for 13-year-olds fresh from two weeks of little to no academic thought!

Winter Break

Around Thanksgiving, I was thinking, “There is a hot tub overlooking a snowy hillside with my name on it” as school got out for the three-day break. Today, the last day of school before winter break, I’m too busy to think about the break. I think tomorrow I’m going to sleep in, and as I look at my calendar, I’m shocked at how quickly I’ve managed to fill the two weeks off. There’s something almost every day already, and no “vacation” in sight. I’m going to have to make sure I leave time for baking and playing with the dogs.

I sent my kids off for winter break with a writing assignment, and they went whining all the way. They are to write a 5-paragraph compare/contrast rough draft for the book we just finished. If they were to sit down and do the whole assignment in one go, it would probably take them about an hour, give or take some middle school math… (Take the individual writing ability of the student, multiplied by a numeric ranking representing the student’s quick-thinking and critical thinking skills – 1 through 5, 1 high, 5 low – and add in the number of family, recreational, and parentally-forced activities and events in the student’s 2-week vacation… the higher the number, the longer it will take the kid to write the paper.) ONE hour out of two weeks… and yet, I know I will have students who show up on Monday, January 3rd with a bunch of excuses about why they couldn’t complete the assignment. Seriously lame. I predict an 85% homework return rate on this assignment.

Third Week of December... Two Days Until Vacation

What a crazy month. What a crazy WEEK, even. So far this week, I have had a meeting before school every day AND a meeting after school every day, as well as a sub for the second half of one day (and I'll have a sub in the morning tomorrow). Mr. Chandler has similar issues this week -- basketball supervision after school, a 3-hour class with a giant project due, etc. On top of everything, he has a sister who flew in from Africa and subsequently went into labor (long story), causing the whole family to gather at the hospital. I'm hoping he doesn't expect to be visiting her today, as I have a meeting in 15 minutes.

Winter break is fast approaching, and in spite of all the crazy, my students are holding up well. They are calm and focused, which is rare during normal weeks and downright miraculous this week. This is good because we have a LOT to finish before they leave for two weeks. Originally, I had grand plans of wrapping up a compare/contrast essay with them by the end of this week, but we're just not going to be ready. I could rush it by skipping the practice round we're doing in social studies... but it would be at the expense of their mastery of this particular writing skill, and I don't think that's wise. Fortunately, it occurred to me that it would not be such a bad thing for me psychologically (or schedule-wise) if I had to give them the first two days in January to finish up their essays. Hm... No lecturing, no activities, very little explanation, even... just students writing. I think I can handle that. That means I will be assigning their rough drafts as homework over winter break, which suits me just fine and makes their lives slightly easier.

In other news, I have once again been invited to go to the dance on Friday with one of my students. (And, again, I said no, although I managed not to laugh this time.) The other bit of seasonal middle school mischief this week is the "winter gram" sale at the student store. Students pay $1 to send a small card and a candy bar to another student. The winter grams are delivered every day during 7th period, so I get to read all the cards before I give them to the students. (I've substituted fake names on these examples to protect student identities.) Yesterday, there was one in my class that said, "To Jane. Here's some candy. From Jane." It's probably easier to send one to yourself than to get someone else to send it to you, right? I also saw one that said, "You're awesome. Love, Mom." That's sweet! Perhaps the most memorable card, although slightly depressing, was the one that said, "To Jim. I just want to be friends, sorry. From Jane." Dumped by winter gram... I don't know how a kid gets over that.

December

December is a terrifying month for teachers. The usual four weeks of school is shortened to three, and they seem to fly by at break-neck speed. The students are hyper from their time off at Thanksgiving and wired in expectation of their upcoming two-week winter break. There are holiday plans to distract everyone and concerts and field trips and the start of the winter flu season to keep students away from class. Whatever plans you had for November are probably far from completed in the classroom, while January and the middle of the school year loom over your lesson plans like a vulture waiting to rip the flesh from your dying scope and sequence. Meanwhile, the weather hovers between standard Portland rain and what I like to call the "Troutdale teaser" -- freakishly sunny with the frigid, blustery east winds. (Winter on the West Coast is a strange thing...) The Starbucks cups change color, as do the interiors of most stores, and radio stations play classic Christmas songs sung by the most unlikely artists. (I recently heard a rock-and-roll version of "O Holy Night" that I have not yet managed to forget.) For whatever reason, my local Safeway is now selling penguins in its floral department. I'm not sure why penguins are so meaningful at holiday time, except for their association with cold weather, but these were intriguing enough for us to buy one. He sits on our porch, and his name is Pierre. Why? It's December. Why not?

You're Not in Sixth Grade Anymore

At my previous school, I attempted to cultivate an image as a strict teacher. I encouraged my students to make comments about me to the 6th graders, and my 6th grade colleagues joined in as well with comments like, "Oh, Mrs. Chandler is really strict. You can't do that in her class next year." From a behavior management standpoint, this worked quite well for me. The students would come into my class as 7th graders prepped to follow a lot of rules from a really strict teacher. It was almost a shock to some of them when I turned out to be a little fun as well.

This year, quite by accident, I have developed a completely different reputation. I still operate with all of the same classroom rules that I had at my previous school, and I'm still just as kooky in the classroom as I have ever been. But I am not known for this. Apparently I am known for being a more academically rigorous teacher. My students don't necessarily know this unless they've been talking to students from other teams. But I heard 6th grade students talking about next year and advising other students that they should try to get into the upstairs team because "the downstairs team makes you work harder." I gained several students from another team this year, and a few of them like to remind me that they did not have me last year. Whenever I bring up concepts we covered in 7th grade, one of them will say, "We had [this other teacher] last year, remember? We didn't learn that." (I had to have a little chat with one of them because he started the year by saying, "[This other teacher] didn't teach us anything last year. We just colored maps." So now we've changed it to sound less like a deficiency and more like a choice on the part of the teacher. Not that a deficiency isn't also a choice on the part of the teacher--because it is--but that's a topic for another time.) At any rate, I feel more strongly than ever that my mission of preparing my students for high school is vitally important, especially when I hear what they do NOT know. So I push them academically, and this inevitably leads to quite a bit of homework for them.

My last post received a comment from Swanie Boy, who I happen to know is a middle school student himself. I was not surprised that he was amused by my students' lack of attention. Oh, yes, I've heard stories about you, Swanie Boy. I've heard stories. And now let me tell you a little story that will probably make your middle school blood run cold...

My 6th grade teacher friend came to laugh with me about a student assistant of hers who I have in LA/SS class. Yesterday, with the ominous-sounding snow forecast looming and the potential for a snow day today stirring through the school and making it impossible for students and teachers alike to concentrate, I shifted some things around in my plans and managed to send my students home with an assignment that I would normally have reserved for a weekend. My teacher friend said her student assistant was bemoaning the fact that I had given them extra homework just in case there was a snow day -- quite loudly, in front of the 6th grade students. My teacher friend said her students' faces showed their worry and fear when she told them, "That's right, and that's who you will all have next year."

Hey, Swanie Boy, why don't I send Mr. Chandler to school tomorrow with some extra homework for you?