Everything Happens

           One of my favorite quotes from Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog is when Penny tells Buddy, "Everything happens..."
          "Don't say for a reason," Billy interrupts her.
          "No. Everything happens," Penny clarifies.

And sooner or later everything does happen.  Everything good, and everything bad.  Today, good things happened.  My wedding day started showing up on the long range weather forecast.  I picked up my wedding dress.  Today, bad things happened.  I woke up with a sore throat. I had to make cider using a longer process than usual.

But most importantly, today I lost my first student.

I've been teaching for six years now, and have taught around 1200 students between the ages of 12-15.  My first 350 students have graduated from high school (or not, depending on the student).  Some of them are probably scattered across the globe at college, or on missions, or working, or in jail, or wherever they are headed.  Some are probably already married.  A few are probably parents.  Working with the flood of humanity that I do, sooner or later, everything happens.

But the inevitability of losing a student doesn't matter at all when you find out which one it is you've lost.  When I checked the news this morning and found out that they had identified the body of a 14-year-old drowned in Hyrum reservoir as one of my students from the past two years, I sat crying in the kitchen for a long while.  A month and a half ago, I was saying hi to this kid in the halls and watching him grow up from the 12-year-old he was last year to a fully-fledged teenage boy.  He drove me crazy, he failed my class, and he was one of my favorites.  He had a smile that could light up a whole classroom.  I'd go out of my way to talk to him when I saw him because his green eyes and up-to-no-good smile always gave me a lift.  And yesterday he drowned.

More than once I have sat in on discussions among veteran teachers recounting all of the students they have lost.  And I've known that someday I would begin a list of my own, and that the longer I teach, the longer it will get.  Sooner or later, everything happens.  But today, I'm just so sad that it happened to Tucker.

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=30653153&nid=148&title=teen-drowning-victim-identified&s_cid=queue-14

http://www.gofundme.com/bbchp8

The Quiet Kid Raised His Hand

We were reading the first few chapters of Lois Lowry's The Giver together, discussing the way the community's rules were similar or different from our own.  We were deep in discussion when, in the exact center of the classroom, one student who doesn't say much raised his hand.  Delighted, I quickly called on him.

"Miss E., I found a bomb under my chair," he said, holding it out to me.  I took it from him with perfect calmness before beginning to laugh.

Perhaps some context?  I have a cupboard full of games that students can play before or after school or during free time during the day.  By far the most popular of these games is Stratego.  I even had to buy a new game set this year because of its popularity.  The class period before, with most of my students gone to the Christmas basketball games, the few of us remaining were watching Christmas cartoons while a few of them played Stratego.  Apparently they didn't clean up after themselves very well, which led to my quiet student the next class period finding a "bomb" under his chair.

While we all had a good laugh, some of the more skittish individuals confessed they'd suffered from some momentary alarm when he had made his announcement.  I have to admit, after I chuckled and took the game piece from his outstretched hand, I felt some retroactive unease myself.  There are certain things no teacher ever expects to hear in a discussion.  There are others that she fears, especially with the seemingly ever more frequent school shootings.  "Miss E., I found a bomb under my chair" is not a sentence I thought would ever be spoken in my classroom.  It makes me think about what I would do if my student had been serious.



But it's just a game piece!  haha.  twitch.  chuckle... shudder.

Catch Up

I am dead, nor have I abandoned this blog.  I just got really, really, really, really busy doing lots of cool stuff.  This is the post just to say that I'm coming back.  My school has unblocked blogspot, so I can blog here and there while my students work on stuff, like their journals, which they're doing now.  So blogging should happen again.  Huzzah!

Here are some highlights from the last six months:

April:  I had dreads
          I decided to move in with my boyfriend, the Pirate.

May:  I moved in with the Pirate
         I finished the school year and moved my classroom, again

June:    I ran away to the desert with my friend Brian for three and a half weeks of climbing, hiking, camping, and reading.
          I still had dreads.
          I got engaged!!
          I flew out to Indiana to be with my sister as she had her first baby.

July:   A new nephew arrived on the 4th of July, and I got to drive across country with my mom, which was awesome.
         I camped and hiked and camped and hiked, with family and friends.

August:  I hiked and camped some more, then went back to meetings.
           I still had dreads.
           School started.

September:    School kept going.
                     I still had dreads.
                     The Pirate and I decided to buy a house.

October:   We put our first offer down and are waiting for the counter offer.

Did you hear that?  That was the rumble of the earth shaking as tectonically big things happen in my life in a short amount of time.

Whew!

(I still have dreads!)

Well, it was a nice idea, anyway

When the counselor at your school walks in with a box of donuts for you, it's not a good sign.  It means that something awful got screwed up on your schedule for next year.

In my case, the counselors forgot to add debate to the registration forms for the incoming 7th graders.  That means that the incoming 600 students, who were supposed to swell my program and provide the base for future advanced debate programs, had no opportunity to sign up.  There's no real way to fix it, either.

Nothing much to do except accept my box of donuts with as much grace as I can manage and put my grand plans for a debate program off another year.  Never mind the conferencing I've done this year with administrators about the direction they want this program to take, a simple slip of mind on the part of the counseling dept. has set the whole thing back until the 2014-15 school year.

I'm angry, but you can't yell at the dear sweet counselor ladies.  I'm terribly disappointed, but the first bell just rang and I've got 32 students walking in my door expecting to see me smile.

damn

Twenty-four hours of weather, coffee, and partial hibernation.

I have a lot I want to say about Christmas in Idaho, New Year's in Vegas, etc., but who has time for long, juicy descriptive posts?  No sir!  This blog is just to fill you in on a few happenings of the last 24 hours only.  They're not earth-shattering, but the are a bit interesting.

First, school started again yesterday.  I was mostly prepared, except for that moment just before second period when I realized I needed a hundred copies that I didn't have, and I needed them in ten minutes, ten minutes in which I was supposed to be teaching.  So I improvised.  "Since I gave you a test the first day back," I announced, "you can have five minutes to chat about your break and what you got for Christmas!"  Then I darted out of the room and down to the copy machine, proud of my teaching prowess.  I don't think I was fooling anyone, though.

Additionally, it was cold yesterday, so they turned the heat on at school.  Unfortunately, my classroom has no outside walls, and didn't need the heat.  I have a thermometer at my desk, and at one point during class yesterday it read 85 degrees.  The lowest it got was 78.  Ever sat in in hot car with a few bored teenagers for an hour or so?  Miserable, yes?  Try thirty-five of them.

Yesterday, as I often do, I ensconced myself in a booth of one of my regular coffee shops to grade papers.  That's right, I have regular coffee shops, plural.  About four or five of them.  Why?  Because I can't stand to grade papers the same place every day, which is why I'm grading them at coffee shops instead of at home, anyway.  I also rotate in some public libraries for variety.  I particularly like this coffee shop for two reasons: first, it ran a groupon in which they offered a voucher for 25 cups of coffee for $9.  That's about 50 hours worth of grading bribes to myself for only $9!  The second reason is that it has a secluded area that is specifically for studying, complete with booths, outlets, and signs requesting quiet.  Usually people at these booths are wearing large headphones and have papers and laptops spread out across the tables, and they look intent, serious, and like they wish they could get their coffee in an IV drip because their paper is due tomorrow.  But last night one table was taken up by an attractive man who proceeded to have a conversation on speaker phone in the study area, for more than an hour and a half.  The table across from him was occupied by a first date.  Why, I ask you, would you take your coffee date to sit in the study area?  The entire purpose of your going out for coffee was to be able to chat and get to know each other.  There are two other rooms in this coffee shop, ones without plain signs asking you to kindly shut up and let us get work done.  Why in heaven's name did you choose this one?  After an hour or so of listening to their date, every word clearly audible, I had to resist a strong urge to say something to them.  At first it was, "I'm sorry to interrupt your conversation, but this is the study area.  Could you please move to a different table?"  As their date went on however, the things I wanted to say changed to things like, "Excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation.  Might I suggest, sir, that after forty-five minutes of talking about yourself, you switch topics?" and "Your discussion about gun control is interesting, even if your arguments are cliche; however, your main argument, which you have repeated at least ten times, has a blatant, glaring hole in it.  Let me fix it for you."

Finally, after the first date left, the only sound was the comparative quiet of the ongoing speaker phone conversation.  Besides, that wasn't in English, so it wasn't nearly as distracting.  When I finally got home, I went to bed nearly immediately.  Before snuggling in, however, I added an extra blanket and pulled on knee high wool socks.  The thermometer in Zhivie's tub read 60 degrees.  My room is on of the coldest in the house, but, being the veteran of many winters of being too cheap to turn up the heat, I am well equipped with wool socks and warm sweats and extra blankets.  Before I went to bed I lit some candles and turned on the lava lamp, both of which usually take the chill off of any room long enough to fall asleep.

I woke up around three or four to a strange sound.  Zhivie was moving.  Her internal clock has switched to winter mode these days, and she hasn't voluntarily come out of her substrate burrow in almost a month.  Every few days I dig her out, wake her up, and set her in front of some food.  She looks at me resentfully, and then eats some food before returning to sleep.  So to wake up to her rooting around in the middle of the night was disconcerting.  As I lay there I realized that, lava lamp not withstanding, it was cold in my room.  Too cold.  My clever tortoise's internal clock had woken her up to tell her to burrow deeper into the ground, where the cold air wouldn't reach.  In the wild, a Russian tortoise burrow can reach six feet deep.  But Zhivie isn't in the wild.  This comes with perks, like daily fresh vegetables, no parasites, no predators, and no being run over by cars, trucks, tanks, etc.  However, one major bummer in this case, is that she only gets 8 inches of substrate.  No six foot burrow.  I dragged myself out of my warm bed and checked the temperature as she scrabbled against the rubber floor of her tub.  50 degrees, rather cold for a cold blooded animal.  So I turned on a light and dug out the small space heater my sister had given me for my birthday.  When my alarm when off this morning, my room was back up to 60 degrees, and Zhivie had stopped trying to dig to China.

Apparently the heat had gone out in our house last night.  I had just assumed it was really cold outside, and that my room with its two outside walls was just unlucky.  As I hit snooze repeatedly, I was woken up by Randy, my wonderful, considerate landlord/housemate who's usually never awake before ten.  It was six a.m., and he was opening my door to stick in a much better space heater and apologize for the cold.

But don't worry, I won't freeze.  It's a balmy 80 degrees in my classroom.  Again.

Gripe

This morning I got the go ahead from my administration to start building a debate program.  So the first thing I did was look up the cost of membership for our school in the National Forensic League.  There's a junior league for middle school and the high school league for grades 9-12.  However, I teach at a junior high, with grades 7-9.  Should I sign up for a junior league membership or a high school league one?

So I called the NFL headquarters in Wisconsin to ask.  Do you know what they told me I needed to do?  Buy both.  The junior league membership is $35 a year, and the senior membership is $99 a year.  To buy both means I would need to convince my administration to fork over $134 a year, just to make the school an NFL member.  That would not include the fact that they're willing to let me create more classes (meaning I'll be able to teach fewer English classes), talk about tournament fees, etc.  

Grrrr.  $134 just to have my three grades of students get memberships. One $99 membership could get four grades at a high school.  

Sigh.

Trying My Patience

Today is my students' monthly book reviews, where they take a test on a book they've read over the course of the month.  One girl, who hasn't brought a book to class all month today brought The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan and told me that she "didn't exactly finish" her book.  She's on page seven.  But she's writing a book and has been working on that.  So I tell her to do her book review on the book she's been writing and I can give her partial credit for that.  She thinks about that.  She "didn't exactly finish" writing the book.  I explained she could write it on a fairy tale, and I could give her credit for her analysis, if not for her reading.  She thinks about that.  Wait!  She's been reading a book in her reading class!  She "didn't exactly finish" the book, though.  But she's 95% through it.  So I tell her to write her book review on that book.  Then she asks me for a pencil.

So I bring her a pencil, full of lead, from my desk.  She pulls it apart and says, "There's no lead in it."  I pick it up and shake it to show how much lead there was.  But now she can't get the pencil back together.  She's broken it.

Sigh.  Sometimes I think the most valuable asset I have as a teacher is a poker face.

My Mother's Daughter

My mother is a fantastic teacher.  She is the kind of teacher I mentally refer to as "a program builder."  This means she does a whole lot more than "teach a class."  She takes those classes and turns them into burgeoning programs at the school.  Soon there are extra curricular opportunities and competitions and festivals and the general quality of the program is shooting upward.

I have no idea if I'll ever be able to build a program like that, but I'm noticing that my instincts keep steering me in that direction.  Last school year I started a small, rather rinky-dink debate program at my school.  By the end of the year, I was campaigning to get an intermediate-level debate course added, and nearly succeeded (high hopes for next year).  Today I spent any extra time I had browsing the National Forensic League website looking for ways to expand this one semester, one class elective into some sort of soul-expanding program.  I know it will mean extra work for myself, extra hassle, and more working with many of the school's most independent minded and rowdy students.  But I can't help it.  I see a way that it can be expanded, and I'm emailing my administrator asking for permission to get right at it.

Sigh.  I might be my mother's daughter.  I'd burst with pride if I wasn't so busy signing myself up for extra things.

Overheard in My Classroom

"I started watching the Twilight Zone...Best TV show EVER!  And it was made in the 1960s!"

She went on to explain how it was black and white, and how she was watching it with her dad, since it was the show he grew up on.

Later, after class started and I was signing reading logs, one student raised his hand and called me over:

"Guess what?  Israel is going to invade Libya!"

"Oh no dear, you mean Gaza, and maybe they are."

"AND they're sending in missiles!"

Y'know, Libya, Gaza, same difference to a 12-year-old.  The important parts are the words "invasion" and "missiles."

New Places

At long last I shall produce pictures of my new room,  In another three months I'll get around to posting pictures of my new living quarters as well.  Don't get your hopes up though.  This is all about all I can give you of my new home:

It's a beautiful boa constrictor named Rod.  He belongs to my housemate Randy.  Someday I'll actually tell you about the move, but let's start with the classroom.  I probably spend more time there anyway.  Last year, as much as I loved my old classroom, I requested to move rooms.  I had two requests: a window and a bigger room.  I still don't have a window, but my new classroom is much bigger.  This summer, I used to the fact that I was moving as a reason to spend a much more time and money than I had before to decorate and set up my room.  Here's a few overview pictures.

If you're not a teacher, you might not notice, but those are bigger, newer, sturdier desks than my old classroom had.  My old room wouldn't have fit 40 of these babies, it barely fit 40 of the little rickety ones.  Not only that, but the room is big enough for me to have set up the desks in my favorite (so far) configuration, rows of pairs.

Zooming in to look at specific elements of my room, this bulletin board has been in the plans since my first year of teaching.  I finally have a bulletin board dedicated to letting my students get to know me.  It's got pictures of my family, my childhood, my crazy hairstyles, and my various adventures.

Next, we have the trophies.  Since graduating from high school, my trophies from high school debate, mock trial, and elementary school spelling bees have gathered dust a variety of places.  They've lined the top of bookcases at my parents' house, opposite of my sister's collection of similar trophies, and later they were packed into a box to be stored in my bedroom closet back home, right next to my junior year prom dress.  A few years ago, I almost took them all to the trophy shop to be cannibalized for spare parts.  However, last year I started a debate class.  Now the trophies are proudly displayed along the top of my cupboards.

When my debaters ask if I've ever debated, or if I've ever won a round, I just point to them.  They're still gathering dust, but now they're gathering dust with purpose, which is about all you can hope for high school trophies.

Next to the trophies is this sign.

I inherited it from a teacher who left year.  She though long and hard about who to give it to, and decided that I fit the profile.  I was truly flattered.

Another addition to my classroom this year, is this framed poster from postertext.  I found on a google offer just before school started and fell in love.

It's the entire text of Grimm's Fairy Tales, with a beautiful representation of Red Riding Hood and her wolf shaped from the words themselves.  I use Little Red Riding Hood for an example for about 300 different concepts, and I knew I wanted this picture from the moment I saw it.  

Of course, no classroom of mine is complete without my pirate flag.  I bought it my first year of teaching, and it's hung over my desk in three different classrooms at two different schools.

You'll notice that in front of the flag, floating over my desk are a small flock of paper cranes.  These represent books I've read this year.  In fact, I have cranes all over, some for decoration, some for motivation.  I challenged my students to read 40 books this year, over several genres, and for every book they read, they fold a paper crane as well.  Books that are 400 pages or more count for two, and so far we have put together an impressive amount of paper cranes.  The school year is only one quarter over, and I have over three hundred.  So far my students have responded well to this, and it's been a great way to see how much they've read.  Each color of crane corresponds to a different class.  I even give my students small paper cranes folded from fancy paper on their birthdays.

Here are cranes for decoration:

Here are cranes for the books they've read:

This is my desk at the end of the term, or it would be my desk, if it weren't covered in paper.

Look!  The teacher next door came in and offered me a donut!  I win!

7th Graders

The room is dead silent, everyone is bent over their journals, when a student comes up to me at my desk.  He tells me he is fighting off a cold and begins to describe his symptoms.  He's sneezed, he says;  he coughs, he tells me; and he has a lot of mucus.  Finally, he gets to the reason he's telling met his:  he wants to call his mom to have her make a doctor's appointment for him later.  

Talking to 7th graders requires some patience and faith.  Faith that there is a point to what they're saying, and, given enough time, they will eventually get to it.  

Oh, I guess I'm Crazy Then.

After all the exciting weight losses and gains over the last two years, I only have one pair of dress pants that fit at the moment.  Because of that, I've been wearing skirts a lot.  Out of all my skirts there is one that gets far more compliments than any other.  The English teacher next door asked me where I had gotten it a few weeks ago.  After thinking a moment I responded, "At a free store at an anarchist venue in Tucson."  It's true.  It was my first trip to Tucson with Cuny and we had stopped at Dry River, the local venue for bands and home to the local Anarchist collective and free store.  They had this skirt, it fit, and I loved it.  

Then, this morning, my teacher friend noticed the brightly skirt I wore today.  "Is that another anarchist skirt?" she asked.  I looked down at the skirt and said, "No.  It's just another hippie one.  I got this at the reggae festival in Tokyo."  

Then I realized that my life is pretty awesome.  Some day this spring I'll have dreads again, then I'll be the hippie teacher who wanders around barefoot and sits on the floor and teaches her students to chain themselves to trees.  I can't wait.  

Picture Source

Highlights of a Day

In the last 24 hours:

After not exercising more than once for weeks, I climbed for an hour and then went to a grueling yoga class. During the final meditation, as the trembling slowly ceased in my limbs and the blanket of sweat on my skin evaporated, my mind and body had a little chat.  We'd been feeling disconnected from each other lately, so it was a good chance to reconnect.  During our conversation, my body requested that I go vegetarian again.  Since my mind and body communication is usually a battle over who wants to eat the most cookies, I immediately made the goal.  Vegetarian again.  I will probably still eat meat on occasion--socially at least.  But no more buying it, fixing it, or eating it on my own.

This afternoon, after teaching four classes in a room in which the fans were not running, it was so warm that my projector was overheating.  During the journal discussion, one of my dear, sweet, 7th grade girls raised her hand when I asked, "What are places, people, and events that have influenced your personality?"  I called on a few students, and then when it was her turn, instead of contributing to the discussion, informed the whole class and me, "You have a shiny forehead!"  Oh really?  Thanks for mentioning it.

AAaand Here We Go

Summer is almost over, I have meetings beginning on the 9th.  Whenever I say that, people ask me when the first day of school is, and I tell them I don't know.  I figure someone will tell me on the 9th, and not looking it up makes the summer feel longer.  But...the back to school dreams have started. Last night I dreamed it was the first day of school, so when I woke up this morning I thought I'd check.  Apparently my subconscious knew.  This morning is exactly one month till the first day of school.  Well-played subconscious, well-played.

The dream is fairly uninteresting if you're not a teacher.  The first day of school must have come as a surprise, because I was totally unprepared.  The dream involved things like only having seating charts for the first class of the day, not having my disclosure docs printed, and not even being sure which classes I'm teaching that day.  Of course, there was also the grand constant of teacher dreams:  the students act up, then refuse to listen when you try and give them the stern speech, and soon you're yelling while they continue to giggle and ignore you.

I used to have teacher dreams my first few years of teaching, but they were much less specific.  Now the dreams reflect my experience in teaching:  something goes wrong and I come up with a clever adaptation to fix it, only to have something then go wrong with that.  See?  I'm much more experienced now.  I also for some reason this time went to school in a tank top, and so tried to scramble to my old classroom to grab my back up sweater (I'm changing classrooms this year), and in the process, mistook the second bell for the first, and came into class five minutes late.  Sigh.

Okay universe, I'll think about school more seriously.  I'll think about my disclosure documents, I'll actually start planning.  Besides, I moved my back up sweater to my new classroom months ago.

Bring it on.

Last fall, my old room, my old dreads, my new shoes.  

Whew! Ugh.

I'm tired.  Since school got out less than a month ago, I have been to Canyonlands and Dead Horse Point State Park, participated in a three day workshop on the new Utah Core curriculum, led a trip to Yellowstone, completed a three-credit hour class on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, and taken a trip to Boston where I toured Plymouth, Lowell, Lexington, Concord, the U.S.S. Constitution, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston's graveyards, and went to two Red Sox games in Fenway Park.  Now I'm sitting in the third day of my last class this summer, Creativity in the Classroom.  In between I've tried to squeeze in climbing, other exercise, family, friends, cooking, and cleaning.  Oh, and sleep.  That usually ends up being last.  Cooking, cleaning, and sleep.  This morning I looked at the dishes in the sink and realized they'd been there for four days.  I skipped a shower and washed half of them.  Maybe tonight I'll tackle the other half and the ones on the stove.  

But here comes the next stage of summer: adventure.  If I do everything possible so far, not counting last minute climbing trips that will probably get suggested by friends (I've already turned down three this month), I will assist in the pilgrim reenactment for Freedom Days, go camping in Glacier National Park, summit the Grand Teton, and go backpacking with my family.  That's just July, but my meetings for school start on the 9th of August, so there's not much summer left after July.  If I do all of that, I will have a grand total of 2 1/2 weeks of un-scheduled time, assuming I do nothing but those planned trips.

Here's the catch, I'd love to do all of them, but here are some things I have to get done this summer somehow:  Move and rearrange/redocorate my classroom, complete another 3 credit hour history course, adapt my English curriculum to the new Utah Core, read about 20 books I'm supposed to teach my gifted students next year, and figure out what the heck I'm teaching my gifted kids next year.  In there somewhere it'd be nice to get 8 hours of sleep (hasn't happened in weeks), do the dishes before they mold, and maybe hang out with some the friends I put off all school year because I was too busy.  And make healthy, good food.  Or try a new recipe for the first time in a year.  That's an impossible order for 2 1/2 weeks.  If I try to fit in all of those trips plus all those necessary plus a 10th of the things I'd like to do, I'm going to hit the school year exhausted, which is a bad way to start a school year where I will be teaching three subjects, one of them new, and once again taking evening classes.

But what do I take out?  This may be the only time I have an opportunity to hike the Grand, though it will require a lot of training I don't have time to do.  How can I not do that?  I already turned down the Freedom Festival opportunity this morning, despite the fact it would give me credit toward my history endorsement.  The family backpacking trip is also a must that cannot be skipped.  Not going to Glacier National Park would free up six more days, nearly a full week.  It's my longest time commitment for the rest of the summer, the easiest one to drop.  An extra week I could sleep and train and work on school stuff and do my dishes and work on school stuff.  But man, would I disappoint my parents and sister who have been looking forward to and planning this trip for a month.  I've only gotten to see my sister and my dad once since summer started, and my mother not at all.

Sigh.  I'm tired.  Yesterday morning I was so tired I lost my breakfast, so I skipped my training after class and went home and slept for three hours.  I didn't get up early this morning and exercise, I slept.  I've got a sore throat, and I'm feeling whiny (can you tell?).

Teaching Beliefs

Sitting in training for the new Core Curriculum on the first Monday morning of my summer break.  In the opening ceremony, they asked us to write down some of the core teaching beliefs that drive our practice.  This is what I came up with off the top of my head, unedited and fresh.

Students respond to honesty.  If your are honest about yourself, your subject, and your assessment of them, they will be more honest with you.

Students respond to respect.  If you look down on their hobbies, their clothes, their hair, their grades, their peers, or their opinions, why should they not look down on you?  And how could you believe you don't deserve it?

Students value your opinion.  Deep down, both teachers and students are human beings, they want to be liked, they want to trust you, they want each other's validation.  Just like original analysis is often the most important and interesting part of a good paper, the times you step out of Information Dispensary mode and into What You Really Think About That Information Mode are often the ones that even the kids you think have turned into zombies while they sit there will perk up their ears to listen.  

Students want to like your class--no one wants to be bored, left behind, or talked down to.  At the beginning of the movie Hitch, the main character points out that no matter how emphatically a woman says she's not looking for love, that she doesn't have time, that she's really into her career, etc., no woman wakes up and thinks, "I hope I don't get swept off my feet today."  The same applies to students.  No matter how much they say they hate you, your class, or school in general, no student wakes up and thinks, "Gee, I hope I'm miserably bored and fail today."  

Students can achieve, but you have to give them something they see as worthwhile to do.  If they don't like you, your subject, or the assignment, the only reason they'd complete it is because they already have a habit of obedience and success.  If they do, congratulations to their former teachers and their parents for instilling it in them.  However, they only form about 10% of your students.  The rest are going to need at least like one of the three variables to even try.  

Students respond to recognition.  Whether it be for their achievement in your class, their good fashion sense, their witty disruptive comments, their martyr-like position in the family, that their cold makes them sleepy, or that they doodles they draw on the worksheet you gave them are works of art, even if the worksheet is otherwise blank.  After repeatedly complimenting one student on his drawing, and even mentioning it at parent teacher conferences, he suddenly started turning in his worksheets, coming to talk to me before or after class about what was had happened over the weekend.  He still failed my class, but he started enjoying the class and learning from it, which I cared about a lot more than his grade. 

Students respond to patience and consistency.  You will be with those students for nine months.  Nine months of junior high is a lot of time for the quickly changing and developing students.  Keep patient with the ones that drive you up the wall first term: they may be your favorites the next term, if you haven't driven them away or written them off.  In a world where they themselves and all their friends are all changing physically, emotionally, psychologically, and friendships are formed and broken and mangled and affirmed multiple times daily, your consistency and the steady and dependable conditions in your classroom will be appreciated more than your or they realize.  Unlike their hormonal friends, you do not fly off the handle with no reason.  Though their families are growing, moving, changing, or even breaking, your classroom is always in the same place, with consistent rules and expectations  Your consistency and patience is an asset to both you and them.  

Students have the right not to listen, like you, or do their homework.  You can make them be quiet, you can make them sit still, maybe you can even make them copy down the notes, but you can't make them learn or care.  You can invite, encourage, threaten, plead, and gently tease, but there will be students every year who hate you, hate your class, and think you're a terrible teacher who tells bad jokes.  Some students will fail your class.  The government will tell you that every student should pass, but the government's never had 250 students.  In any sample of 250 early teenagers, a handful of them really will fail your class.  You can make them stay after, put a pen in their hand and a worksheet in front of them, their parents can threaten and bribe, and yet they will sit still, stare into space, and not do the stupid worksheet.  Don't look down on the student for it or for hating you if they hate you, they have that right.  Don't try and take it away from them.  

The second to last day of school, this was in the office.  It's a balloon version  of our mascot, the Caveman.   All I can say is wow.  

Buying Busy

In going back to school this year I have discovered two things about education: It is time consuming and it is costly.  It looks a great deal as if the carefree summer I so greatly prize is going to be cut in half by educational activities.  I suppose it's about time; I can't have summer vacations forever.  Eventually, like so many other teachers, I'll have to sell them for something: a second job, more education, extracurricular activities that pay a stipend, etc.  But I look forward so to my summer of freedom.  Mind you, I don't waste it.  I keep busy every possible moment with climbing, reading, cooking, traveling, biking, hanging out with friends, hiking, camping, watching movies, and adventuring as much as possible with as many friends as I can squeeze into my life. 

But this year it looks as if there will be no drastic hair change to look forward to, and only a marginal increase in free time until June is over.  Three days one week are taken up with training for the new Common Core that will be implemented next year.  One week is a trip to Boston for my Teaching American History Cohort (I can hardly complain about that, true.).  Another week will be consumed by a 2 credit teaching creativity class I'm planning to sign up for. (It's for my G/T endorsement, and since I'll be teaching one class of G/T next year, I'll need all the help I can get for that.)  And today, I decided to sign up for a class on the Holocaust for my one remaining free week.  Sigh.  It's all stuff I'm looking forward to learning (with the except of the Common Core training--bleck), but it will cost me hundreds of dollars I don't want to spend, and the opportunity cost in adventure and relaxation time makes me cringe. 

But it will give me knowledge I will need to teach next year.  It will mean that I'll have amassed a great deal of cheap college credit, about $425 for 12 credits, and that I'll be more than half way to changing lanes on my salary schedule.  I may be able to make it up to 15 credits if I really sell my soul.  I'm proud of all that.  I feel like I'm progressing in my career, using my time, becoming a better teacher, and learning things I've always wanted to learn. 

But some part of me is saying that I'm just buying being busier.  By the end of this school year and summer, I will have paid $425 to lose 1/7 of my evenings to class (not counting homework for class), one day of teaching a month, a free weekend during my winter, and a month of my summer.

Sigh. 

Wait, is it Pi Day?

Poop.  I forgot until one of my students told me about it this morning.  That's disappointing.  Last year Pi Day was a big deal, I had a party, I blogged about Pi's emotional role in my concept of womanhood.  I can't even go home and make a pie to make for forgetting Pi day.  Tonight I will go straight from school to my night class, then leave my night class early to go to an orientation meeting for the gifted program at my school at which I will meet my future students and their parents and pretend I know what I'm going to be teaching them.  From there, I'll drive the half an hour home and go straight to bed.

Oh, by the way, I found out I'll be teaching the 7th grade Gifted English class next year.  I found out Thursday.  Finally.

Well, happy Pi Day anyway.

A scene from last year's Pi Day.

Overheard in My Classroom, or Maybe Said by the Teacher

"Somebody died today?  Let's go shopping!"

"Don't come to my funeral; go shopping!"

"Terrible things happen on everyone's birthday, honey."

"Being buried in fire doesn't leave you nearly as well-preserved."

Expediency is the Father of Inaccuracy

Teachers are expected to know everything.  Students ask one million questions, on or off subject, and at any moment you need to be prepared to either speak with authority or own up to your ignorance.  In my debate class I have a student with a disability.  But not one of those, I sit there and quietly fail disabilities, one of those I'm-incredibly-smart-and-vocal-and-have-poor-social-skills disabilities.  He has to express his opinion about once every thirty seconds.  Things need to be just so, or I don't want to consider the consequences.  Well, I gave them three topics to choose from to write semi-impromptu speeches.  I would give them five minutes to prepare.  I gave them history, America, and debate.

Well, the room was dead silent except for the sound of pencil and pen on paper and the oldies music I play while my students are working.  Suddenly, a hand is thrust urgently into the air.  I walk over and before I'm even there, my student with a disability is exclaiming, "Wait!  I can't do this!  I don't know who the father of history is."  Uh-oh.  Crisis.  I was about to launch into a whispered explanation that history had began without a specific "father," when, to my surprise and delight, an easy explanation rose from the depths of my subconscious.  There was an ancient historian widely regarded as "the father of history," however technically incorrect such a title might be.  But the kid wanted an easy answer, so I smiled and smoothly replied, "Cicero."  "Oh good," he said, "How do you spell that?"