Struck by lightning!

Our writing prompt for journal/bell work today was:

Have you ever been in a thunderstorm before? What was it like? Describe the thunderstorm. What did you see or hear? How did you feel? What did you think would happen? Use a simile or metaphor to better describe the storm.

(we are working on describing things in detail, using actual words instead of bcawz, l8r, u r 2 4unny, OMG!, etc)

I walked by "Bob" in 6th period and read the following:

Getting struck my lightning sucks. You feel all tingly and your muscles move when you dont want them to and you have to stay in the hospital. You go all blind and deaf and stuff for 2 weeks after it happens. Never get stuck outside again. You will so be hitted again by the bright stuff it can find u.

I had to reread and then ask him. Yes, he was totally and completely struck my lightning.

I know my comments are messed up. Can anyone help me turn them on, or atleast figure out what I did wrong?

Sunday Night...again

It's amazing how fast the weekend goes. I'll wake up on Saturday thinking I have so much time to play, then in a blink Sunday is here again. And yet again I'm not ready for school. Go figure.

I had an interesting conversation with another photojournalism teacher tonight. He teaches at the new middle school that was just built in our district. I've taught with him before at an elementary school a few years ago. He moved up from teaching first grade to 8th graders. What a switch. But he's a wealth of knowledge. He has a degree in education and journalism, so he kind of knows what he is talking about.

As we were talking today he was getting worried about the direction he was taking his photojournalism class. Apparently the computer teacher at his school is pushing his students to think outside the box, think of big issues, think of things beyond themselves. While this is great, it's wonderful to force students to think of more than they are....this has some drawbacks. Our students are only 11-13 years old. There is only so much "outside" thinking they can do. I think it's important to remember they are still kids. As grown up as they think they are, I still see little kid tendencies.

With my one journalism class, I'm trying to take it slow and build a strong foundation before we even begin writing anything. We just began writing our first article on Friday. The topics thrown out during our brainstorming meeting: school lunches still horrible, first day of school, 6th graders scared and lost, new students from one of the K-8 schools coming to our middle school, our principal still being long winded on the intercom system, sports tryouts happening, cross country starting, 115 degree heat at the end of august, our lovely librarian coming back to school (everyone missed her so much at the end of the year)....and the best of them all: the girl fight on Friday morning before school on the courts. Yes, my students wanted to write about the girl fight.

So there is a level of maturity, but it really doesn't extend all that far. I allowed them to begin writing about the fight, but there were guidelines they had to follow. These guidelines were more like "here is your barbed-wire lined path you must follow, do not dare try crossing these lines for fear of certain death". The lines were: 1. you must give the entire account from all sides. 2. You will NOT call names or say who "won" under any circumstance. 3. You must put the school policy on fighting into the article and state why fighting does not solve anything. 4. Discuss alternatives to fighting. Sooo yeah. We'll see how this article fleshes out. I figure that this is news to them. I am here to guide and direct, and to gently direct back to the acceptable range. Hehe, fun days.

But in talking with this other photojournalism teacher, I've realized how much I really do know. I've spent so many hours pouring over the material because I don't know what is going on. There are a few things that have sunk in. Yes! That's good. Now if I can just apply them. I'm good in the philosophical and ambiguous nature of education. I can think of ideas for lessons and how to get concepts across to students. But ask me to apply, and I fall apart. Though the farther our discussion went, the more I realized that what I was saying actually made a little bit of sense. Double yes! In the end, he felt more comfortable in the direction he was heading with his students. They are for all intents and purposes kids still. They are just a little bigger than normal. I'm not prepared to treat all my students as teenagers/young adults 2 weeks into school. They need to show me they can handle being treated like adults. For now, I'll stick with what I have. It's worked so far. If it ain't broke don't fix it!

As far as lesson planning, 7th grade is good to go. I'm still working on 8th grade. And I get to teach an additional class on Monday. Super. There goes my only break in the afternoon. I'll have to get someone to come in to watch my class so I can pee. Yup, I need pee break person. Nice.

Hazards of teaching middle school: germs and urinary tract infections. It's so glamorous!

80's Redux

Here is a list of accessories I saw on students walking through the halls today. Please keep in mind that the current year is 2009

1. Slap bracelets
2. Large cheap plastic jewelery. (I don't think this is so out of place. Any middle school girl's jewelery collection consists of this, but the colors, oh the colors.)
3. Hair backteased and hairsprayed 4 inches about normal height
4. Neon dayglo colors
5. Acid wash jeans ( ON A BOY!)
6. Enough skinny pants to circle to the moon and back.
7. 3 toned backpacks in the following colors: day glo pink, day glo yellow, and day glo blue. (are we sensing a trend?)

And to cap it all off.....

A headband worn around the forehead and pushed up to poof the hair in the back, made of.....braided metallic leather!

I swear on my life all these things are true. The 80's are back in full force. It's not pretty. Can someone please change the decade of choice for fashion?

Other news, my stomach has finally calmed down enough so I feel almost human again. Being sick while trying to teach is not a fun combination. I'm not a fan. But I'm almost back to my normal self. Worked my students to the bone today. I had 7th period copying lots of notes. Almost handed out band-aids on the way out the door. They typed so much their fingers started to bleed. Hehe.

Sunday Night

It's Sunday night. I have to get back into "normal" for myself. That normal is going to bed early on Sunday so I can get to school at a decent hour. I've found that I either need to come into school extremely early or stay crazy late to get my own stuff done. I'm the tech rep for my campus, which means when someone's technology malfunctions, I am the first call. Which isn't bad, I get to be out and around campus instead of stuck in my little black hole. But it does interfere with completing a full thought. I'll get started on planning/preparing something and someone will stop by my room. I'll fix their problem, or attempt to, then go back to my planning. By that point I can't remember where I've stopped at.

So the moral of the story, get planning done before Sunday night, or go to work earlier than everyone else.

While I've spent the weekend in bed, I've had the chance to cruise around some teacher blogs from all over. I was sucked into one. The more I read this particular middle school teacher the more I liked what I read. He was articulate, well spoken, thought out, and generally seemed to know what he was talking about. The best part, even though the medium of a blog, I could sense his passion for his craft. The more I explored the more I wanted to know. Then I saw a picture that made me stop and stare for a second. It was the exact same picture a fellow teacher from my district sent out depicting his day of "professional development". This teacher I had just spent the last hour or so researching is a teacher in my district. Even worse, I met with him before school started. At that time I practically dismissed him because he didn't say much.

Go me. I need to remember to be slower with my snap judgments. It's a huge problem I have. For some reason I can't wrap my brain around another teacher going through the same issues I am. I don't know if it stems from dealing with adolescents all day and how self absorbed they can be. Maybe it's rubbing off on me. Or maybe I'm reverting back to an adolescent view of the world. Either way, I felt plenty chagrined at myself. This particular teacher is a huge resource. He may not have been teaching computers for the last few years, but it certainly more well versed that I originally thought.

Moral of this story: Don't judge someone because they aren't saying anything.

Can't stop this feeling

Done and done, survived the first week, barely.

So the honeymoon period I talked about earlier this week is officially over. It was over on Thursday afternoon 7th period. I got my first flat out refusal to do any kind of work. It was from a girl that I really didn't expect it to come from. Strange. I thought we were doing something that would get them excited about our class for the semester (18 weeks). Yah, not so much. She wasn't malicious about it, but passive aggressive flat out refusal to do anything except sit in class and tell me to my face, "I don't care what you do, I'm not working. There's nothing you can do that will make me do anything. I don't care." The scary thing, they girl had no fear. It was the 4th day of school!

Now normally this would roll off my shoulders and I could care less. Except I've spent too much time this summer with happy people who are willing to be flexible. I haven't developed my tough teacher hide yet. Need to work on that.

It didn't escalate into a yelling match, this girl was above that. Which is kind of weird, but I admire her for standing her ground. Granted it wasn't the correct thing to do, but she kept her cool. So it boiled down into a power struggle between the two of us in the middle of class. I realized that neither of us were going to back down. So I punted and dropped the activity completely and moved onto the next step of my lesson. I didn't want to continue with the same activity. Once one student has taken a stand and "won" in the students eyes, the rest of that activity is pretty much toast. So we just moved on, said student being kept back at the end of class. The rest of the class didn't say a word, they were trying to figure out what I was going to do, how I was going to react to this obvious display of a power struggle. We moved on, but with a marked change of the atmosphere in my classroom.

At the end of class I kept her back to discuss one on one what exactly happened. She again refused to say anything beyond, "I hate this class. I don't ever want to come back. It's boring here. You can't make me do anything." That was the extent of our conversation. It's the 4th day, of course you hate what we're doing, it's all rules and procedures. Without them, the class is chaos and nothing happens that is worthwhile.

I mentioned this student's behavior in passing to one of her team teachers. He was intrigued because this girl is apparently a nice student. Couldn't of fooled me. He in turn mentioned it to another teacher on his team who in turn talked to her. Middle schools are worse than a bunch of old women sitting at the beauty parlor with their hair in curlers sitting under the blowdryers gossiping. Be careful what you say, it spreads faster than wildfire.

On Friday this same girl came and asked very quietly to talk with me in private at the beginning of 7th hour, of course I agreed. Honestly I was intrigued at the marked change in demeanor. The day before she was disrepectful and arrogant. Give her a night and she is respectful and wanting to talk. As we step into the hall she pulls a paper out and asks if she can read a letter to me. Now I'm really interested in what's going on. As she begins to read this letter she starts to cry and can't stop. Now I realize that there is more going on to this situation than I thought. It took her a few times to calm herself down enough to read.

Turns out there are 2 students that she has repeatedly over the last few years that she has continually gotten into "drama" with. It is so bad that already on the 4th day of school, she can't even be in the same class with them. She shuts down. As I go over in my mind the events from the previous day, it all fits. She refuses because she knew if she did the task these students would have never let her hear the end of it. By refusing she saved face, granted she annoyed the teacher. But rather make the teacher mad than give these students ammunition to attack her with later.

I don't care what anyone says. Middle school is not for sissies.

Now that I understood the entire situation, I felt so bad. I can't believe I reacted in the way that I did. We both apologized. I'll be working with the counselor to find another class for her transfer to for 7th period. She can't function in my room right now. She is too worried about what these students are going to do to her. Fine by me. Students need to feel safe in order to learn. If they are too worried about what someone is going to say when the answer or share their projects, they are not going to be focusing on actually learning.

On another note, I think I picked up a bug. It's nothing really bad, but I feel awful. Tired, headache, tummy feels weird. Just generally yucky. So I've spent today in bed....all day. Still in my pj's at 4:45 in the afternoon. Hopefully it will pass quickly and I won't have to take time off. Sub plans are even more horrible to create than normal lesson plans.

Voluntary Middle School Attendance

This is my third year teaching middle school. Most people cringe when I tell them this. It's an interesting reaction. Most of the time people will politely smile and nod saying something to the effect of: "Wow, that's really neat. I bet you have fun." Oh boy is that the understatement of the century. But, every now and then I'll get a truly honest person to say, "Wow, you couldn't pay me enough to go back to middle school. You must be crazy!" I appreciate their honesty.

I guess you could call me slightly crazy. I spend my days with 11-14 year olds who really have no desire to listen to what I have to give them. Sure the first few days of school everything seems nice and rosy. That's the honeymoon period. Pretty soon, I guarantee someone is going to get a cute idea to see how far they can push administration. All of a sudden that nice lovely fluffy bunny version of school has come crashing down and the brutal honest reality of teaching pre-teens sets in.

But, dispite all of the previous doom and gloom, I really do love my job. I love being able to help kiddos learn about themselves and who they want to be. I love helping my students start to see that there is more of a world outside of their close circle of friends, outside of their classroom, outside of their school, outside of their neighborhood. A world of opportunity just waiting to be discovered.

See, that's the honeymoon period talking. I'm sure that my short notes here will soon turn into that brutally honest truth. Middle schoolers have no idea who they are right now. Their hormones are raging and they don't even know it yet. They want to remain cool enough so they have a circle of friends, but not cool enough to stand out among the crowd. Sometimes their soul purpose is to annoy every human being they come into contact with, and that suits them just fine.

But for now, the honeymoon period is still on. I'll hold onto this as long as I can. Because once it's over, the reality of the situation is this: I am stuck in a windowless room, down a deserted hallway with anywhere from 20-31 sweaty(sometimes stinky) middle school students in a room with 33 computers and airconditioning that has been set to a higher indoor temperature because some pencil pusher figured out that raising the indoor temp would save some bucks. THEY have obviously never been in an enclosed space filled with old decrepit computer machines running and a room full of middle school students, some of whom have yet to discover the joys of soap. So yeah, my reality is a bit jaded.

Though, there is one part of my job that I have desperately missed. Middle school student quote of the day. This is my favorite part. Everyday I try to find/remember something that someone said or did that day to make me laugh. It happens without fail everyday, I just have to find it. I have quotes from today and yesterday. Hopefully I'll be able to continue my quotes through this year, with a running commentary of course.

Student Quote of the Day:

Day 1
Me: What might disrupt or ruin computer class?
Student: You computer catching on fire will DEFINITELY ruin this class.
Me: Yup, you're absolutely right!

Day 2:
Studnet: Spongebob Squarepants, now there's a real man!


Oooo student quotes, how I've missed them.