Skip to main content

Dancing on the Ice

3.5 hours of decorating = one semi-formal dance.

It's an ice theme. While going through suggestions, I jokingly said "someone in Florida chose Ice, Ice Baby!" And they loved it. The students can even recite all the lyrics to the song. It's cool. Everyone over the age of 30 is still shaking their heads. However, the decorations ended up looking quite nice - we did have an argument about the colored rocks (fake ice)... some students really wanted to scatter them on the table. Every teacher/parent knows where those rocks would end up in a matter of 3 seconds. Flying through the air... so they're regulated to the glass bowls. It should take them about an hour to figure out tossing the rocks and if you add in an hour to wait in the photo line, and time for waiting for punch, using the restroom, making out with your date and a dance or two, they just might not have enough time.

The semster ends next week. It's been a hard semester. Partially because the AP class produces at lot more work and there is a lot more explaining responsibility to the students. (they all thought I would read the novels to them in class!) However, I think it's been more of a change we made last year to the English Department - we started offering "Honors" classes in 9/10th grades. That meant that the "regular" english courses ended up overloaded with students who hate everything. They hate school, homework, reading, writing, books, stories, poetry, drawing, coloring and virtually everything that does not include the word "movie". Negativity is a huge motivation killer. Next semester the students are being mixed around. I'm hoping that it will create a little more positivity.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

“They Don’t Get It”

I hear that a lot these days. It used to be mostly from various teens trying to negotiate the drama unfolding in their lives as they wandered into that no-man’s land between adult and child. These days it’s from adults trying to navigate the education scene these days. So many people talking and no one listening. The other day I was reading a post by a blogger I’ve been following for several years. Before there was such a thing as “blogging.” We all know spring is IEP review season. This blogger wrote about his daughter’s. Among the various elements, there was the discussion about the state assessment tests. She did not pass. There was discussion about what this means… and why said student needed to pass this test. Would she be taking a modified test? While reading, all I could think about was what would happen to that child as she entered middle school and high school. A history of not passing the assessment test vs. teachers who will now be evaluated on how many students pass t...

Summer Notes

Books to Read: New Kelly Gallagher   Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions  by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana  Notes for Art: Group Project for the First Day Expectations from group project exit question

The Cruelest Month

I know T.S. Eliot favored April as the most cruel, but we teachers know that May is… even more so these days. Most importantly, it is the final testing month. National ‘assessments, state ‘assessments’, district ‘assessments’, school ‘assessments’… on and on. It’s impossible to actually get anything done. Toss in graduation activities, planning for the upcoming year and the 2011 bonus, lay-offs and transfers, and you have to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to save money by simply shutting down school entirely except for a few test proctors. Meanwhile, there seems an air of hopelessness permeating the education world. Plans to lay-off thousands are coming to fruition. Schools are being closed, despite protests. Charters are increasing where they can whether they should not. Unions have lost a lot ground and teachers are trying to decide if it’s even worth it any more to continue talking about education . ( not that I blame anyone for that, we all have lives to live ) For myself, I...