Hedgetoad Teaching

“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...

Tomorrow we leave the land of snow to return home and reality. Tuesday should bring an exciting post about the perils of grading sophomore assignments and recreating my poetry unit. Will there be performance poetry? And if I include it, will I actually be able to get students to recite something in front of other people? If you do this, how do you motivate students to participate?

Our library has been hosting a book fair this week. During my prep period, I went down to check out the books... see if anything jumped out at me. I'm going to buy books anyways, why not support our school library. I found a book I'd read this summer - Life As We Knew It . I almost didn't recognize it. The publishers changed the cover for some reason and made it seem like one those teen chick lit books. No longer a large moon photo; instead the cover is dominated by a cartoon drawing of a pink dresser covered with various girly accessories. Above the dresser is a small window with a moon photo dominating. It's barely noticeable. A quick check with several students, not one was even close to the supposed content of the book. I think that any student picking up the book would be greatly disappointed. The story is about the end of the world for cripes sake! There is a significant portion of the story devoted to food - not good vs. bad food, but rather, "do we have en...

On Friday, the district released the seniority list. For a small district, it’s not much of a document so we all get to see everyone’s information. See Me After Class has a resource post about retention in urban schools. We all know it’s not good. Teachers leave in droves every year, taking what little training they had and all of their enthusiasm with them. And then there is my school. After 6 years of teaching in the same district I am in the exact same place I was four years go. After I completed my provisional contract. As an added bonus, when the newest teacher in my school completes her provisional contract (should she actually do that – there are already rumors of lay-offs. A story for another day.), I will be below her. Seniority sucks sometimes. What is the difference between the schools? Ok, we have relatively easy access to a copy machine and toilet paper/bathroom, but having taught in a NYC middle school there isn’t that much difference. The students are students in genera...

The class I gave up on yesterday and I had a frank discussion about what happened yesterday. I explained my frustration, remained calm and listened while they talked. As usual, it boiled down to miscommunication. Like when I say research for a paper I mean, find information and distill to use in a paper. The student definition was look at stuff on the web to use for a paper… someday. We also examined definitions for the words “work” and “prepared”. I’m sure it won’t surprise any teacher that their definition of ‘coming prepared to class’ means ‘walking through the door under your own power’ and everything else is a bonus. I wish I could write something pithy or funny about the scene, but really, it was 20 kids silently staring at me with slightly scared/guilty looks on their faces. They were still talking to me, but treading lightly. Then we came up with a compromise. I drew a calendar on the board and said, “these days I’m willing to schedule as work days” and asked them what they nee...

Did you ever have one of those days when you just felt like you were possibly the worst teacher ever? Your students have no respect for you, they’ve learned nothing and, in fact, everything you are doing is setting them back… possibly to elementary school days. Plus you suck. I have this never ending conscience battle with my AP seniors. There is a class they are all required to take. In this class, the teacher assigns an extensive research paper. The teacher chooses the topic theme, tells them the due date and never speaks of it again. Until, you know, the due date. The first year I taught AP seniors, I asked this teacher if I was supposed to do anything about this research paper. I was told “no, you don’t have to do anything, unless you want to”. This year the core senior English teacher spent nearly a month dragging those students through the process of writing the paper. He gave me all of his handouts (thank you!), and I gave my students two weeks to do their research. Apparently,...

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.

Just give me the snack and the squeaky toy goes free.

After all my angst about who would actually show up for conferences, I only made it to one session before I collapsed into a fever crazed sick person. There was supposed to be a sign up sheet to leave phone numbers, but either few could be bothered or, as one parent claimed, the paper was hidden somewhere that only special parents could find. I do have about 15 to call next week. In the meantime, I’m still trying to recover from said illness. And get caught up on grading. Usually, I get tons done during conferences since I’m forced to sit in the cafeteria for hours with little entertainment. I had it planned… and, it didn’t work out. Instead, it was a marathon session today. So what made the day suck? It should have been great. Only one class, tons of time to get stuff done, get qualified for my energy rebate without having to take time off, maybe even grocery shop… well, I did get one class all caught up with grading and will be getting my rebate check. But! am apparently broke, disco...

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...

While most people had the day off today, I did not. Instead my department gather in the early morning to grade and evaluate essays written by the sophomore students. It was a wide array of levels of writing, mostly caused by how the assignment was present. In one of my classes, I simply instructed the students to do their best. In another I instructed them to do their best and explained that “multiple-paragraph means at least 5 paragraphs while using elaboration” Another teacher instructed the students to “get out five sheets of paper” and told them to do a pre-write, rough draft and final. The third teacher did a pre-write with students the day before and has posted a sample outline on his white board while students wrote. Tomorrow, I’ll be finishing a spreadsheet to really look at how the students did. I didn’t grade my own students ‘ papers – it makes the grading a more objective and hopefully more like WASL grading. For example, the grader will not know that student B is on an IEP ...

Every time I start this post, it sounds like I’m leaving blogging… which I’m not. I like writing too much and need to have that random shout out to the world, even if no one is actually listening. You know that old question, if a tree falls in the forest, but no is around, does it really make a sound? My answer would be, who cares… the tree still fell and that is all it cared about. When I first started this blog many, many years ago it was primarily a place for me to put down thoughts. I didn’t really have a focus and there weren’t that many “blogs” out there… actually, when I first started, there weren’t even “blogs”, but those writings are long gone. (yes, if what is write is lame enough, it will get dumped from the internet… it’s only the stuff you don’t want saved that is never erased). Then it became the in thing to be all nichey and I jumped on the bandwagon. I’m teacher, so this should be a teaching blog. At this point in my life, however, I’m really too tired from teaching to...

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...

We're all in a state of flux... I think it's the nature of an educational professional to constantly evalutate, adjust and change. Sure, lots of ideas get recycled; tweeked and presented as new, but it is in our nature. Problems arise when things change for reasons that are not thought out or focused so tightly that the change causes more problems in keeping that focus. This summer our district chose to change it's online presence. The reason for this was because the old system could not be searched for on a search engine. Yes, this change had to be made because no one could "go*gle" us. Sadly, no one in our tech department (that one guy) made the connection in how google ranks it's links... and why "googling" kept bring up numerous links to G*&eatSchools. Two years ago, the old system was installed because it was very compatible with our electronic gradebooks, making it easy to put grades online. Guess what the new system does not do? And so, si...

Our school district, like many others, is short of money. We're all tightening our belts and trying to make do with what we have. It's meant many sacrifices. For example, if anything breaks down… forget about it being fixed. If a chair breaks in my room , a pretty common occurrence, the student will have use an absent student's chair for the rest of the year. It's not that big of deal, until you also realize that due to overcrowding, I have students doubled up on designated seats. So far "Bob" has not actually been here when "Joe" chooses to show up. Luckily for me… not so lucky for either Bob or Joe. Our technology is fairly gone as well. Forget about using the internet for research for the most part because most sites are blocked by our super strict blocking company (we are the only school they serve that allows student to access the internet) and there is not one available to unblock. Computer problems go unresolved and although our superintendent...

Things have been going fairly well with my classes. I'm starting to get worried/suspicious... itchy butt was actually on task all period on Friday, thanked me for moving his assigned seat and returned promptly from a trip to the library with a book to read . It's a bit freaky. I'm thinking the flu epidemic is having an impact on this long streak of calmness. Only any given day, at least three kids are gone from every class. Even itchy butt has been out a few times, and you know that kids like that are never gone. Not that anyone has had swine flu, they're all just staying home at the slightest sign of sickness. Today I had my first pro-cert culminating seminar. Five hours people... five hours! During the pre-assessment pro-cert we had long discussions about the use of the refresh button , how important it was use the ,jpeg format for photos and other technological conundrums. Today we had a 30 minute discussion on how a document appendix works. Labeling each document ...

One of my goals this year is to really get into purposeful teaching... I know, I know. If it doesn't have a purpose why are you teaching it? But let's be honest. Anything can have a purpose if the teacher is creative enough. My mentor teacher spent three days watching "Finding Nemo" and turned it into a really great spring board for an essay topic. The students really connected with the topic she drew a parallel to and it was probably the most worked on writing assignment the entire year. I am not that good. I posted on the English Companion Ning, looking for a planning buddy. I actually got way more replies that I thought I would. However, I have yet to really figure out the Ning technology. (You cannot believe how hard it was for me to type that... I am disgusted with myself. The fact is, I just don't have the time.) So, I'm posting what I've done so far here. I have a lot of great ideas. Many, many great ideas and materials from others, but it just fee...

When I lived in NYC, it always made my day when I found a new poem displayed in the subway car. Sitting alongside advertisements for English lesson and zit removal, it was a little pick me up amongst a sea of riotous ads. How's that for poetic? I never claimed to be good. The other day, I forgot to erase a poem I'd written on the board for one of my AP classes. A couple of sophomores mentioned it - one had seen it before; another asked what it meant... and suddenly an idea was born. If I post a short poem on the board and just never mention it, all of my students will assume it's meant for another class. They'll still read it, thinking it may be important, and get a little poetry in their lives. It's an idea anyhow.