hipteacher

Book Meme

From Early Modern Material Culture:

Copy this list of 10 authors. Remove the ones not on your bookshelves and replace each of them with ones that are (replaced authors are in bold). [Not sure if this is meant to be non-fiction only but I ran out of fiction authors because I've recently sent a lot to the charity shop]

            1. William Trevor
            2. Hanif Kureishi
            3. Daniel Mason
            4. Thomas Pakenham
            5. Matthew Pearl
            6. Keith Thomas
            7. Christopher Hill
            8. Richard Brilliant
            9. Antony Griffiths
            10. William Shakespeare

Here's mine:
1. Audrey Niffenegger
2. Dave Eggers
3. A.S. Byatt
4. Nancy Farmer
5. Alexander Dumas
6. Don DeLillo
7. Margaret Atwood
8. Art Spiegelman
9. E.L. Doctorow
10. William Shakespeare

My Third Christmas Ever (Or, Why Grilled Cheese is Gourmet Eatin')

I grew up sans Christmas because of my 'rents semi-cultlike religious beliefs. Now both mom and I have defected to the lush green grass on the other side of the fence and enjoy a pro-gift, pro-family, if not pro-baby-jesus, Christmas with pagan-like glee. To help make up for lost time, a friend included a special little lady in my stocking. I wasn't overly into dolls as a girl, but I did always carry around the little, plastic body of Strawberry Shortcake. I didn't watch the cartoon or collect her plastic pals. I do like both red hair and strawberries, but her charm was primarily nasal...er, olfactive.

I firmly believe that scents house some of our deepest, most powerful memories. This is strangely true for me even though I don't really have a sense of smell. I have the only septum my ENT has seen that is not only deviated, but shaped in a figure-8. Combine that with ridiculous allergies and, poof!, no smeller.

Every once in awhile, though, I can smell something, and one of those things is Miss Shortcake. Catching a whiff of her plastic-y strawberriness immediately makes me feel terribly small--and good. So, aside from her trendy sleepwear and glow-in-the-dark properties, this doll's built-in stink makes me feel like I just got the Christmas I always wanted.

A case for my powerbaby, cool speakers for my ipod and the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry didn't hurt either.

TMI

I'm wading through the snot to wish y'all a Merry Crimmah.

I decided to clean my house, and I unleashed some pretty virulent dustbunnies that are trying to rot out my insides. But that's ok, wrapping Christmas presents with a Thera-flu-induced-fuzz-head makes me feel extra festive. And I'm breathing out of my right nostril now, so things are lookin' up.

While in recovery, I've been reading The Lovely Bones and The House of the Scorpion, which were recommended by a fellow teacher and my librarian respectively. I am trying to decide what novels I want to teach next semester, but I'm having a hard time. Next semester, I will be teaching two honors 9th Lit. classes and one general American Lit class. I carefully chose Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood for 9th H and Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow for 10th. My department head, after reading my email asking for thoughts about my selections, said both were too difficult, even for honors.

I'm not sure. My head is an awesome teacher and vastly more experienced than me. However, I don't see my selections being any more challenging than Silas Marner by George Eliot or The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Oreczy, which are other books recommended by my state for 9th grade. Of course, that list also includes Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird which I read in the 4th grade. My school and department are beyond cool, and I know I am allowed to choose anything I want, but I feel like I should defer to the wisdom of her experience.  On the other hand, I recklessly chose to teach Dante's Inferno last semester in my general World Lit class, and it was way to difficult for them, but I am still glad I taught it and would do it again. I liked pushing them, and even though it was too hard, they worked harder than they did for anything else because I was so into it. I also believe there are levels to reading literature. I read Lady Chatterley's Lover in the 8th grade, and while I didn't really get the book, I still took something away.

Here is a list of books we currently have and teach for each grade level:

Ninth Grade Titles
House on Mango Street, Bless Me, Ultima, The Chosen, Great Expectations, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Pudd’n Head Wilson, The Secret Life of Bees, The Chocolate War, Ellen Foster, A Separate Peace, Frankenstein, A Gathering of Old Men, The Odyssey, The Count of Monte Cristo, Anthem, The Bluest Eye, The Joy Luck Club, A Member of the Wedding, The Miracle Worker, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Bean Trees, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Romeo and Juliet, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Angela’s Ashes, Night

American Lit Titles
Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, A Raisin in the Sun, The Women of Brewster Place, Mama Day, The Great Gatsby, Billy Budd, The Scarlet Letter, The Grapes of Wrath, A Lesson Before Dying, The Glass Menagerie, Ethan Frome, Cold Mountain, The Crucible, A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, All the Pretty Horses, House Made of Dawn, Wise Blood, The Killer Angels, Slaughterhouse Five, The Color Purple, All the Kings Men, Black Boy, Native Son
   
British Lit Titles
Here on Earth, White Teeth, The Tempest, David Copperfield, Wuthering Heights, Grendel, Beowulf,
Sir Gwain and the Green Knight, Oronooko, Gulliver’s Travels, Emma, Jane Eyre, Villette, Things Fall Apart (11th graders), And Then There Were None (12th graders), The Turn of the Screw, Wide Sargasso Sea, Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Paradise Lost, Pride and Prejudice, Tess of the d’ Ubervilles, Importance of Being Earnest, A Room of One’s Own, The Canterbury Tales, Macbeth

World Lit Titles
Hard Times, Tale of Two Cities, Death of a Salesman, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Song of Solomon, Oedipus Rex, The Awakening, The Sound and the Fury, The God of Small Things, As I Lay Dying, Ceremony, Things Fall Apart (11th graders), And Then There Were None (12th graders), Heart of Darkness, Othello, Hamlet, The Handmaid’s Tale, Heart of Darkness, Dubliners, A Doll House, The Metamorphosis, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Pere Goriot, Siddhartha, The Iliad, The Inferno, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Brave New World, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

I almost wish I taught at a school that dictated what I had to teach. I spend too much time over-thinking my selections. But, not really. I like my school.

I mean, look at all those books. Plus, each English teacher gets a budget of about $350 to buy books and supplies each year. And to think that during AmeriCorps, I ran a literacy program at a school that only had one book for each subject and year. We had to check our one book from the office and make photocopies each time we wanted to read something.

I just need to stop stressing and pick something so I can get on with planning. I intend to start off next semester with a whole lot more planned than I did last semester.

Feeling Final

My first semester is over, and you'd think I'd be overjoyed, but not-so-much.

I have, however, learned some very important lessons:

1. Teachering is a female-dominated profession. Therefore, one should expect to give and receive cards, candy and homemade craftiness for Christmas. Start preparing 3 months early with homemade gift baskets or knitted scarves.

2. Do not believe anyone, even when he/she is your department head, when they say final grades for the semester aren't due until after the holidays. They are in fact due exactly one hour after the last exam ends.

3. Only pretend to grade the finals. (?!) As the teacher, you "already know what they should get anyway."

4. Ignore computer gradebook program. Buy throwback, black-faux-leather gradebook and write in it with a number 2 pencil.

5. Blatantly ignore students when they ask to know final grade.

6. Keep a running log of absolutely every conversation you have while at school. Especially make note of conversations with other teachers to help prove you are not one of those teachers that hides in room and only cares about what goes on behind his/her closed door--even if you have collaborated with other teachers on twenty million lessons/units/projects. No one knows what you are doing,even if it seems obvious, and you will need proof.

7. Don't let students give an anonymous sex surveys--even if it relates to research project.

8. Do not believe in cool, interactive, authentic assessment when it comes to finals. Make a 50-100 question multiple choice test to be completed on scan-tron form and sent through machine. (See 2 & 3)

9. Keep very accurate lists of student book numbers. When a student says, “It’s in my locker,” he/she really means, “I tore it apart, page by page, and threw the remains into a sewage drain.”

10. Don’t complain or be grumpy. I guess teachers get enough of that from the kids.

I Am A Dork

James Farmer of incorporated subversion is hosting the first ever Edublog Weblog Awards. And--I've been lucky enough to be nominated in the best newbie catagory.

You don't have to vote for me unless you happen to be my mom or my boy, but everybody should go check out the nominees. I found several awesome blogs I'd never been to before just by browsing them.

Check out the main awards page.

Vote here.

Pottymouth

I said bullshit. Ok?

My first two classes went exceptionally well today, so I was, like, in the habit of seeing students behave and follow directions. Then, fourth period came in. They turn the lights off, bring in food, roughhouse, and generally bring chaos into my classroom. Numbering 23, they are by far my smallest class, and yet, the hardest to handle.

The bell rings. I immediately direct students to get into their desks and get out their journals. Two continue to mill about in the back right-hand corner, but they head to their desks as I get out the clipboard. I don’t understand what it is about the clipboard. I don’t actually ever do anything with the points I give or take away, but the mere sight of my purple plastic clipboard works on most of my kids. Then, I notice a few students are out of their assigned seats and are in the back corner--where Pimp sits (when he sits).

I look back and music fills the air. Loud music. Pimp quickly covers his backpack and very large boom box with his coat. Students are not even allowed to bring backpacks to class, and this child brings a boom box?!

It was absolutely the last straw. In the last week, he’s had three detentions. He won’t stay in a desk. He talks constantly in class. He brings food in my class and leaves french fries and ketchup packets smashed on my floor. He leaves his Biology book and whole newspapers spread out on my floor. He  harasses the girls and taunts the boys. Every journal entry he reads ends up mentioning pimps, murder or poo. I knew, eventually, he would get to me. Today was that day.

I sent him and his boom box to in-school suspension. He will be there again all day tomorrow. I was right to kick him out of class, and I realized that I should have done it a long time ago.

Still, I maintained an appropriate level of professionalism.

I had the laptop cart in my classroom because we are doing pseudo-research papers on blogs (more on that soon). There are thirteen laptops, and it never fails that two or three will not work. Jackson* brought one up to me that was on the fritz. We could see the screen but just barely. I thought maybe it needed a little battery lovin'. I carried the laptop over to the cart and bent over to plug it in. As I bent over, I heard the rip of my pants splitting in half along the butt.

You may be laughing, but it is not funny.

Ok, it is a little funny. I can have a sense of humor about it because I don’t weigh much, so I just chalk it up to crap pants and not large arse. However, since it was a large rip and I would be showing off my, uh, business if I walked around, I sat down at the desk nearest me for the rest of the period. I said I was sick of always coming to them. They could come to me for a change.

You’d think that would be where I’d say it. But, you’d be wrong.

A few students surrounded my little desk island as I helped them with their blogs and using quotations. From the backside of the room (heh, heh...), I see a girl in a white puffy coat enter the room and go over to speak with Tamara. I snap to attention. Last week, another teacher asked me if I had sent a student to her 4th period class to deliver a message to a student. I said no. I didn’t even know her student. So, she told me about how the student interrupted her class saying she had an urgent message from hipteacher. A day later, a girl interrupted my class to “deliver a message” to one of the girls I suspected of interrupting the other class. My two girls are cheerleaders, and so are the other students, so I didn’t really remember which student interrupted my class the other day. So, I assume it is this same girl. I ask puffy coat girl if she has a pass.
    “No.”
    “Well, you can’t come in my classroom without a pass.”
    “I just have to talk to her for a second.”
    “I don’t care. You’ll have to speak with her later. You need to leave this classroom,” I say as I am desperately wanting to get up and escort her out, but, of course, I can’t do that. I have to stay firmly planted to my orange plastic seat.
    “Just hold on.”
    “No. You need to leave.”
    “But, I’m her tutor,” she says.  That’s when it happened.
    “Look, I don’t need your bullshit. I need you to get out of this classroom.”
    “And, I don’t need your attitude,” she snapped back.
    “As much as you’ll need my write-up, I’d imagine,” I said as she swung around to leave.
The door slammed and my students sat in stunned silence.

And that’s not all.

After class, one of the counselors comes down to my room with the girl. Turns out Puffy Coat really is Tamara’s tutor.

Oh.

I explained why I was suspicious to the counselor and apologized to the girl. I said some nifty, backpedalling thing about how at school you are “guilty until proven innocent.” Then, I sat back and sighed deeply as the two left my class.

A few minutes later, my Taiwanese Superhero came in to fetch me for a faculty meeting. I told her my “bullshit” story as we walked to the meeting. I had tied a found sweater around my waist and was feeling much better. Then, I saw Puffy Coat in the hallway.
    “That’s the girl I said bullshit to.”
    “You mean the Principle’s daughter?”

That's right. The Principle's daughter.

*Names changed to protect the guilty.

From the Teacher's Lounge

My World Literature class has been reading Dante's Inferno, and they would be able to tell you that thieves inhabit the 7th Pouch of the 8th Circle of Hell. That's bad because there are only 9 Circles in Hell, and Judas is in the last one, so you can see where I'm going with that. In Dante's Hell, a thief lives for eternity naked in a pit where thousands of huge snakes chase after him, binding his hands and feet. Eventually, the snake bites the sinner, and the sinner catches fire and disintegrates into ashes. Like the Phoenix, the sinner rises again, only to return to the snake pit.

So, unless that sounds like a fabulous Friday night to you, don't steal.

Especially when the thing stolen is my lunch.

Note: I sent the above email to my entire school this afternoon. That's right. Be afraid.

It's Got Nothing On Him

One miraculous first grader's take on the CRCT.