Hedgetoad Teaching

If you teach seniors, Saturday’s Dear Abby may have caught your eye. Students get the message throughout their high school years that all they have to do is get good grades and the world is their oyster. Then in the final semester of their senior year reality dumps on them like a brick wall in a earthquake zone.  They don’t get accepted to college of their choice; they can’t afford the college of their choice; scholarship applications are denied… the real world is not a helping hand up. It’s a harsh competition for diminishing resources. When confronted with a student whose dreams are… umm… altered… because of money, I try to point out the positive. “ A large college may not be the right choice for you, but are you determined to get a college education? If so, I know that you can find like-minded students. I, too, attended a well known party school. It also had a strong Honors program, a multi-national student body and some of the most out there technology on the cusp of bei...

The school year ended without a principal at my school. A rudderless ship, leaving us all wondering and worrying about the upcoming year. How to put it in a politically correct manner…? More worried about the choice maker, rather than any actual person taking the position. Clear as mud, right? Anyhow, no principal was found. Or rather, none that would accept the position or was sufficiently appropriate for the position. I’m sure it was for economic reasons as reported in the local paper – our only source of information. Instead we now have an interim principal. First order of business: get every single student who failed the HSPE into the building in August (Ha!) to retake the test. Do not worry about the fact that only a few registered… there is sure to be extra booklets (ha!). So what if your contract doesn’t start for another two/three weeks! If you cared about kids, you would cancel your father’s surgery and recuperation time! Hire a nurse! (who would make more than you if you ...

This week, my students will be taking the High School Proficiency Exam (HSPE), formerly known as the WASL. I’ll have to admit that I’m nervous… there has been a lot of pressure this year to improve scores. Weird pressure… it’s been a weird year altogether, but suffice it to say that this year many people will be biting their nails until the June scores.  If I can convince my students to take the test seriously they should all pass. The problem is that there will be those who won’t take it seriously. They will finish in less than 30 minutes and sleep for the remaining hour and half. And I can’t really do anything about it. If the student decides he/she would rather sleep in with the rest of the juniors and seniors who passed last year and mom thinks it ok? There’s nothing I can do about it. The student who transferred last month from another state, who may or may not have an IEP in that state? Hope for the best. And when these students don’t pass, according to the President it will...

Next week is finals week. I'm desperately trying to reteach everything that I can think of for my sophomores. Sadly, even though most really need the points from this test, many put a real effort in. We've talked daily using the words that will be in the vocabulary section. I will still have at least three students who will define an allusion as "something you think you see, but ain't really there".  Less than half will answer the essay question with more than one paragraph. In the past I've tried offering points for filling out the graphic organizer to help construct the essay. I've written on the test that the answer must be more than three paragraphs. I've taken tests out of the turn in box, read them and given them back the student with instructions to give more detail or tell me where the poem says this; use a quote. Nine times out of ten, the paper is handed back in without any changes or addition. It's too much of a bother. Since I won'...

During my pre-service teaching, one of the community service projects I worked on was mentoring teens in the local juvenile hall. Usually I played cards and listened to kids talk. One day however, I showed up as usual and for some reason we all got into a large group and played " Murder ". The 'inmates' taught the mentors how to play. How surreal is it be playing the game of " murder " while inside a jail? I kept waiting for someone to point out that this might just be innappropriate, but no one did. Today we played the game in my advisory group. It was as supposed free day - no goal setting - and my group has already played all the interesting games in the little advisory book. So I picked the murderers, the doctor and a sheriff and the killing started. I have to say, my students were pretty good at picking out the bad guys for never having played before. Maybe I am teaching them life skills. Twisted parlor games and the ability to recognize murderers ...

Seriously, I've never abandoned a resolution so quickly! I've not had a moment to actually plan anything out fully. My lunches have been spent on the phone, my prep period trackdown other people and so on. This first week back, a new student arrived. Now, this student was expected and had actually attempted to enroll just before the holiday break. Mostly that week was spent in a furious round of emails being sent from various people within our district. Why such a flurry? Oh, this student speaks no English. Now, we have plenty of students who do not speak english as their first language, but according to the information we recieved this student spoke very little english and had even less formal education. What do we with this student? What do we use for evaluative tests? What classes should this student be placed in? Now that this student is here, we discover that actually, he/she has no english skills at all. Nada. Everything that we have pretty much requires some english ...

“If you don’t do it this year, you’ll be one year older when you do” ~ Warren Miller When I was younger, my father took us to see the new Warren Miller film every fall, just before ski season started. They were the most awesome movies I’d ever seen. Back then, I don’t think anyone was shooting the type of real action, quasi-documentary of crazy people jumping off of snow covered cliffs for fun types of movies. In fact, they weren’t even shown in a movie theater. They were shown at the Opera House and we wore our best ski bum clothes. I swear, once, Mr. Miller was actually there. Even though I haven’t seen one of his films in 15 years, I can still instantly recognize his voice and immediately be transported to the days when I was sure that “ski bum” was the best career choice out there. One of key themes throughout all of his movies was the idea that life should be lived to it’s fullest right now. Just do it and do it now. Sure it may be crazy to jump off of a cliff covered with snow o...

Today, while reading To Kill A Mockingbird, we came upon a reference to “going off on a snipe hunt.” Apparently, snipe hunts aren’t all that popular any more… not one of the students knew what a snipe was or why someone would hunt for one. In my most serious tone of voice I told them all that snipes are worth a lot of money, being rare and all. To catch one, the person has to wait until a dark night – no moon – and go out into the woods carrying a paper bag and stick. Find the biggest tree, stand underneath and open the bag. Then take the stick and hit the bag several times. The noise should scare the crap out of bird causing it to fall out of the tree and into the bag. Guess how many students asked me if snipes lived in the area? After making sure they knew I was kidding, I told them the truth about cow tipping. For a rural area, they are pretty gullible.

Major fundraising activity for the fall is over. We raised a bit of money, but not as much as previous years. It was a combination of poor attendance, a limited number of donations and poor student involvement. I’m not sure how to fix it, other than becoming the stressed out freak who verbally attacks students in the hallway about the status of their donation hunt. And let’s be honest, they just lie to me anyways. Conferences are coming up next week. I’m wondering if “itchy butt”’s parental unit will appear. Finally succumbed to school-wide tradition of offering extra credit to those whose parent/concerned adult makes an appearance. My personal belief is that it won’t make a big difference. The fact that our core english classes are now mixed ability may have an impact on the numbers I actually see, but those parents would have come anyways. I’m making Thanksgiving dinner for my brother and the kids. The exciting part is that I get to make the stuffing, which means oyster stuffing. Su...

It was a busy weekend, as usual… but this coming week will be even busier. Two of our local high schools have a major fundraising competition for the area food banks. It’s a huge deal. Mind blowingly huge. The kind of huge that really should be on the Oprah show. In honor of this fundraiser, I’ll be singing tomorrow night not once, but twice. For the record, I can’t sing. I do, however, love to sing and signing in front of an audience where people will applaud no matter how bad – oh yeah, nothing better. I’ll be part of team singing Mahnahnahnah and doing red hooded sweatshirt solo. I am really excited about it. Really. If only I wasn’t so tired… and had so much still on my to do list. Plus, this Wednesday I’m the advisor for another event and even though Wednesday is officially a holiday… I’ll be at work bright eye’d and bushy-tailed at 8 am. Maybe I’m just to tired from today. Current To-Do List Find someone to remove moss from roof pay bills figure out if this is water bill month o...