Peace on Earth, Mercy Mild...

and good will to all!

Oy

I have been sick now for more than a week.  Not the push-through-it kind of sick, either.  The have-to-get-a-ride-to-and-from-school-to-work-at-all kind of sick.

I've been eating up sick days, and the most I'm able to accomplish in a day is writing lesson plans for a substitute teacher OR teaching.  Last week I went in a couple of days, and one day I was a complete mess, which the kids enjoyed, but...oy.  Not a single kid left the room without learning that day, but as for learning about the novel, eh.

The worst part is missing the kids.  I'm planning for them pretty intensively so that they continue to move forward without me, but I really hate not seeing how they are doing and being able to ready them in person.  I went back last week to absolutely glowing notes for them, which does help.

I feel my brain rotting by the DIY TV hour.  My husband is ready to kill me: I can barely do a load of laundry (my chore) without needing to lay down, I'm pretty sure I smell bad, he's been waiting on me since I got sick, and now he is sick, too.

Procrastination Station

It's amazing to me that I am able to rate my undesirable tasks in such a way that I finish a number of "white goldfish" (not whales) that I've been trotting about with, while never finishing the one I set out to complete.

For example, tonight I renewed a prescription online, photocopied my car title for my refinancing paperwork, and found cocktail recipes for my grandma's Christmas party next weekend.  I'm now considering whether I would rather write a test on Modernist American short stories or grade Lord of the Flies essay tests.  At school this evening, I worked on unit objectives rather than lesson planning; I made myself leave my planning materials at school so I would only have the tests to deal with, but now the interwebs are oh, so attractive, and there is still that test to write.

Where does it end?

Since Teachers Get Paid Sooooooo Much

 Mrs. Mimi brought this ridiculousness to my attention (original article).

Apparently, teacher's compensation is so out of control that districts are trying to claim a right to funds teachers earn by selling their lesson plans.  Below, I respond to comments on the article, as well as comments on Mrs. Mimi's post.

Without specifically stating it in the contract, the districts don't have a leg to stand on. 

The professor on the article upset me.  I'm still physically ill at his reaction, actually.

While some college professors split intellectual property rights with their college, it's not as if any and all work they produce becomes automatically and permanently the possession of the university.  In addition, those professors are frequently publishing the products of their work at the university, e.g. experiments and research, which is actually what they are there for--for some, teaching is something they have to do to support their research. 

If lesson plans aren't the intellectual property of teachers, then let's seriously consider work to rule.  Counting an hour of lesson planning a day (with my previous experience and curriculum I created at previous schools) along with my English teacher's paper load, I wind up with at least 10 hours of work that cannot be completed in 40 hours a week.  I'm not interested in trying to remember if I wrote a quiz at 8am, 3.20pm, or 4pm.  Let's just say it comes out in the wash.

What about the lesson plans I wrote to fill requirements in my Master's program and then used in my classroom?  Do I get no cut, since the university should get half and the district should get half?

It's important to remember that teachers are being paid to teach--the product is kids who know what we were supposed to teach, not lesson plans.  If I were being paid to produce lesson plans and not to teach, I would have far less stress in my life!  Also, I could probably teach by regurgitating whatever Houghton Mifflin the district shelled out for, and kids probably could still learn.  To me, this means that the work I decide to spend time on is mine.

Jimminy, I'm getting carried away. 

Ridiculosity

Remember how my projector bulb blew?  Well, apparently the district has already purchased a whopping two new bulbs for our building and I am just too darn late to hop on that particular gravy train.  Awesome.

Also, the administration's response to complaints about room sharing, no place to prep in, etc. is to say that none of us will be able to have a room of our own at all next year.  Perfect.

A parent of a student in my honors class thought an appropriate response to "your child is currently failing because he has not turned in the last three assignments" was "he says all her friends are failing, too."  Sensible.

When a student asked me to write out her missing assignments for her for the third time and I asked her where the last list was, her response was to walk away saying, "I'm going to fail English because my teacher won't tell me what I'm missing."  Delightful.

Approaching the land of grading hell

Eight school days left of the term and approximately 110 papers to grade in that time, not including re-writes.  Here I am again, not only behind the eight-ball in terms of grading with two class sets turned in so far and three, COUNT 'EM, THREE graded.

Boohoo.

Choosing a rewarding job that cannot be completed during the duty day kinda stinks sometimes.

Can you hear the butterflies crying?

I was listening for that sound, because today we talked pre-Puritan English history.  I love history--my second love after literature.  In the process, I stomped a few fairytale-history butterflies: the Pilgrims and Indians didn't love each other right away.  A bunch of the Pilgrims died the first winter, even after ransacking a Native American home they found.  Thanksgiving is supposed to be in October.  John Smith and Pocahontas were never in love, and they never sang about a river bend, and she married another dude.

Friends, then I get on a roll.  One kid asks,"Why didn't anybody tell us about this stuff?!"  Mostly because the totally true story is kind of heavy and complicated for a little kid.  "Why do you know this stuff?!" Well, partially because I'm cynical and when something sounds like it is too tidy a story, I research to find the whole truth.  "Is there anything else we should know about?"  Jesus wasn't born in December.  They think it was more like August and probably in the year 6.

Stretching things out a bit

Stayed late again today, calling the parents of students who are currently failing my class.  It's about a third of each class, which is appalling to me.  It's all missing work.

I know about the discussion about no credit for missing work.  I actually don't let it affect the final grade in my regular classes, and my honors kids don't get their credit for the class until they complete all their assignments--I only grade about 10 assignments a term, and the daily work that is grade actually goes through editing and polishing.  For research papers, the kids outline first--I grade it and make sure they haven't hared off down a rabbit hole, and give them suggestions and guidance in terms of organization and argument.

This year I spread out the editing over a few days, more by accident by design, and I kinda like it!  I spread out the entire assignment over more time on purpose, and changed its timing in the term, as well.  The cool thing about spreading out the editing is that I told the kids they could revise every night if they wanted, so that the next day we would be editing a draft that is already better than the first.  With the extra time available, the kids also had time to check their paper on turnitin.com so they could find problems with citations/quotation punctuation/uncited paraphrase, etc.  I put the responsibility on them, and made it clear that a problem by the time it's a graded draft will mean a zero they can't afford.

I also liked the lead in to editing this time.  We started with the 6+1 rubric, and we looked at a crummy writing sample, a decent writing sample, and then an excellent example from my class a few years ago.  The kids vote on scores in each of the six traits, and we discuss the why for their scores.  On the last one, we also look at how my previous student set up his citations, both in-text and works cited.

The kids then highlighted their sentence beginnings while they were reading out loud quietly to themselves so they would notice repetitive sentence patterns and, in the words of Annie Lamott, who I adore, be able to "Hear what a jerk [they] sound like" and catch any awkwardness.

The next day, they swapped papers with their critical friends and I reminded them that, again in Annie's words, they "have a sacred duty to be genuine and tender" as editors, both honest and kind.  After their skim for spelling & mechanics, they edited using the ideas I found on the UC Santa Barbara English Department site.

Finally, we talked about phrases, and using participle and gerund phrases to spice up their sentence variety.

My first set of drafts for grading are due at 11:59 tomorrow night, and I look forward to seeing what the final results are.  Then, the next set, then rewrites for the kids who wants to earn a higher grade.

Adding to the list of topics to come: the conversation with a friend-colleague after school today (what I thought I was going to write about when I started this post).

A little bit of everything

I ain't got no organization today, friends.  Sorry.

New favorite student anecdote, care of a student "struggling with behavioral norms":

Student enters colleague-friend's classroom.  He knows the student via previous year's communications.  The young person points to the room across the hall and hollers to my friend, "I'M GOING TO S*** ON THAT F***ING SUB!"

My friend, knowing that coming down on the child for swearing is only going to make her freak out on him super-angry-style but obviously needing to address the behavior, responds, without missing a beat, "[Insert student's name here], that's GROSS."

Friends, I can understand being f***ing angry.  I can even understand calling the sub crummy by using a four-letter word.  However, I have never, in my life, ever considered defecating on someone in anger (or in any other mood, for that matter).  Where on earth did the child even come in contact with this idea?  This is one time that I am glad I have NO idea where a kid is coming from.  It sounds like they're getting her some help, and my fingers are crossed that it works quickly.

In other hard to believe or understand areas,  GLEE tonight:

• Is anyone else disturbed by a teacher in a tighty-tee singing "Busta Move" to the children...
• not to mention the actual move-busting with the children?
  
• The mandatory reporter in me is already dialing Family Services. 
• Where are the teachers in the hallways during all this slushy-throwing?
  

Today I presented to a small group of colleagues about a new web tool we are using.  Somehow, I have never been able to get used to what awful listeners teachers are in a group setting.  I don't think I've ever been to a meeting with colleagues where people aren't whispering throughout.
Teachers are just like kids when they are the students.  Allow me to set the scene:

We're in the computer lab.  I'm at the SMARTBoard showing how it works and checking in with individuals as they complete the steps and get set up. In the session, I have

• the boys in the back who aren't really listening to instructions,
• the girl who is still stuck on step 1 when the rest of the group is finishing step 2,
• the girl who finished the entire task in the first ten minutes and spends the remaining time checking email, then stays late because she's confused,
• the boy who cracks jokes and distracts me,
• the girl who wants my undivided attention the whole time,
• the kid who decides she'll just see me after school and so wanders and bounces around,
• the student who calls my name over and over after being asked to wait while I finish with someone else,
• and the one who races ahead, thinking she's hot stuff, until she messes up on something I haven't explained yet and wants me to fix it for her while everyone else waits.

Next time: Peer Editing & Being an Artist

It happened, and I'm worried.

Remember awhile ago when I started by praising Karl Fisch and ended whining about tech in my district?  I mentioned something about it being easier to purchase a soul than to get a new bulb for one's LCD (or as a friend-colleague calls it, the LSD projector).
On Tuesday, when my 4th hour was studiously working on their American Romanticism essay test, there was a sound like a gunshot.
My SMARTBoard went dark, friends.
I entered the problem in our techy-no-worky-reporting-thingy.
I have nothing but the automatic response that the concern was logged.
When considering said situation, and the fact that all of my curriculum has been transferred to PowerPoints but I don't have a means to use them, the only action that comes to mind is keening and crying, and I just know that's not going to work.
At least not quickly.
And it will probably freak the kids out.