Today I went to verify my rosters before final exams. As I
walked into the testing center, the testing coordinator groaned.
“You have more students than any other teacher. This is
going to take forever. Buckle up.”
Maybe I'll ditch my crowded classroom and move to China. ... ornaw. |
What?! I’m glad I only found that out with six days left of
school. It does confer a nice distinction.
This article says that teachers spend, on average, $500 of
their own money on school supplies for their students.
Sounds a bit low. My kids really breeze through pencils.
The kids are writing skits for trials-- they're all putting various violent groups (IRA, Tamil Tigers, Weathermen Underground, ANC, etc) on trial, and the jury (the rest of the class) must vote on whether it's terrorism or freedom fighting. I introduced it with the line "You guys will have to decide, are they terrorists ornaw?" and the classes went crazy each time. It's so easy to make them happy. Our new class logo: #terrorismOrNaw?
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Some days, I just don’t know what to say to my kids. I usually end up with "oh."
One of my
students who has struggled with motivation and behavior all semester has really
been on point the past few weeks, and scored above an 80 on his last test.
We’ve been getting along—he answers me with more than a grunt, and favors the
class discussion with insights and grins. Yesterday I asked him, towards the
end of class, what he’d be doing this summer.
“Going to see
my mother. In Puerto Rico.”
“Puerto Rico!
Cool.”
“Or
Connecticut. I’m not sure which.”
“Oh.”
“She has breast cancer.”
“Oh… how is she doing?”
“Stage three.” Jesus. What… why? Remember, you don’t like
me. You don’t share with me.
“You know, they’re getting a lot better at treating it. I
hope she’s okay. I’m glad you get to see her.”
“Yeah, I haven’t seen her in seven years.” Oh.
Me with confiscated chocolate |
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