We debated issues
such as the responsibility of parents, the root of evil and whether or not
people are born evil or benevolent, and who is the bigger monster in the
novel: Victor Frankenstein or his
creation. Students would walk into class
and the first thing they would say is, “Are we debating today?”
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Polarizing Debates in English Class
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Selling the Romantics
If
any non-English teachers has ever wondered what it is like to teach Romantic
Poetry…I can tell you that it is very similar to being a Used Car
Salesman. I mean, why bother with something
old, unstylish, and outdated when you can get the newer, sleeker, cooler
model? The one with all the snazzy
buttons and things that light up….when, for pretty much 100 years, all you
really need are the basics: wheels,
engine, windows, etc. Here is where we
need all the old-timers to help me spread the “they sure don’t make ‘em like
they used to” sentiment.
To
them, nature was something we were sometimes “out of tune” with and that we had
“given away our hearts” for the acquisition of things. Today’s generation with their faces in their
phones need to be reminded of Thoreau’s famous lines “I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not
learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had
not lived.”
Here is an article that
proves what these Romantics were saying all along about nature being a teacher
and a healer:
Doctors Explain Why Going On A Hike Changes Your Brain. How It Works Is Fascinating
http://www.wimp.com/what-hiking-does-to-the-brain-is-pretty-amazing/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=story/
Sunday, April 10, 2016
If only…
This week, I am reflecting on some of the things I wish could come true as we head into the 4th marking period (yup, that means the countdown to summer vacation has officially begun). 4th marking period means, 3 down, just 1 more to go. We all see the light at the end of the tunnel. But, we still have ¼ of the curriculum still to cover. That being said, here is my
If only…
o my students would see me and treat me
exactly like they treat their coaches when it come to their writing (*remember, I teach at an all-boys school)
and I am wholeheartedly trying to “improve their game.”
o the parents of my students would be okay
with their students learning from their mistakes more and not trying to swoop
in and explain to me why they made the mistake or that it was my fault that
they made the mistake…can we just be cooler that making a mistake and learning
from it is a critical part of education?
o my seniors would realize that I 100% get their
Senior-itis, and even had it more that they did when I was their age…however, we
still have 3 weeks left and I am not going to spend those three weeks having us
all look at each other or not doing anything.
We can take it down a notch and they can enjoy their final weeks as high
school students, but we are still going to do some work.
o those same Seniors would understand that
their Senior-itis is contagious! And if
we all caught it, well…
Sunday, March 13, 2016
The Week Before Break
One of the benefits of teaching at a private school
is that we sometimes get more time off for holiday breaks. This is the last week of instruction before
our 2 week Spring Break which everyone needs and deserves. But, there are a few things that need to be
considered when we do not see our students for two weeks.
Here are some of them:
1.
They will think every day this week is
the day before break. Monday will feel
like Friday. Tuesday will feel like
Friday. Wednesday will feel like
Friday. Thursday will feel like
Friday. And Friday will feel like, well,
better than Friday.
2.
Students will be in state of incredulous
wonder in every class where a teacher is still instructing and working through
the curriculum.
3.
Teachers will want to get any important
tests, projects, etc. done before the break to avoid any gaps in learning the
material.
4.
If you add #2 and #3 together, you get
teachers vigorously trying to finalize parts of their curriculum and students
who either joining them in the fight or looking like cartoon figures with two
question marks instead of eyes.
5.
There will be countdowns. Teachers will be doing the counting down more
than students.
6.
Teachers will need to decide what to
assign for homework over this long break.
There are two schools of thought on this. The first is to let break be break and let
students spend time with their families without the stress of homework. The second is to assign something that they
can actually get done because they might have some time on their hands. I do assign homework (reading or an essay)
but it is not due the day they get back.
It is usually due 2-3 days after, so students can choose whether they
would like a homework free break or to get it done when they have some extra
time to do it.
7. Not only will the classrooms feel different this week, so will the hallways, the
cafeteria, and the library.
7. Not only will the classrooms feel different this week, so will the hallways, the
cafeteria, and the library.
The week before break is a certainly a special week
in the school year. In order to get to
our long break, we will embrace what will be a long and crazy week. And
this year, when we get back to school after break, we will have about 2 months
before summer break. So, there will be
more even more counting down.
Monday, March 7, 2016
One of my favorite activities to do with my Sophomores is called Vocabulary Challenge. The have to choose from 50-75 vocabulary words and create a story that makes sense and shows that know the meaning of the word and can use it appropriately.
So for instance:
This will not receive credit: The girl show a great deal of apathy.
This will: By constantly rolling her eyes and sighing loudly, the girl
clearly expressed apathy at her mom’s lecture.
We do this challenge once a marking and students can earn
Extra Credit for using more words (and we all know how much they love Extra
Credit). I tell the students to feel
free to use sports, cartoon characters, movie figures, etc. to make their story
interesting. Because of media and it
being an election year, several students have even tackled satirizing
politicians for their stories!
The creativity and the humor in some of these stories is the
best part of it for me when I am grading them.
However, they are also upping their vocabulary game manipulating such
words as charlatan,
pernicious, pusillanimous, adulation, sycophant, grandiloquent, harangue,
galvanize, juggernaut, just to
name a few, into their stories. (You can
now also see how they can have fun in the political spectrum with these
words!) I have to place a 1 page maximum
on the story or some of them would write 2-3 pages.
Vocabulary instruction and assessment is predominantly
memorization, even when we know that our goal is building. And, we know the students making flashcards
and quizlets…we tell them to! This
activity takes the assessment a step beyond memorization and it is one of the
activities my students anticipate and really enjoy doing. After I read them all, I compile a list of
all of their story topics and then read 2-3 really creative or funny ones to
the class.
Here is a list of some of the story topics that they have fun
writing:
o
the 1985 Celtics vs. the current Golden State
Warriors
o
a noxious gas actually coming from a culinary
school improperly disposing of eggs
o
a farmer trying to win the annual pumpkin
competition
o
a charlatan trying to pull off a hoax on a genial
couple
o
a restaurant date ending in an altercation
o
a boy who loves the WWE, but his mom thinks it is
a fallacy
o
a myriad of people trying to get the new iphone
o
a letter to 007 about planting a bomb in a
clandestine location
o
a yachting trip the faces a formidable storm
As you can see, they are very creative with their topics!
Monday, February 29, 2016
When Teaching English Becomes Math, Part 2
I knew
everyone would want some news on how I was faring underneath this pile of
Junior Research papers, ha ha ha! So,
here is the latest report:
I am down to
the final 17 papers to grade! I would
like to have them finished and back to students in one week, Monday, March 7th. So, if I read 3 a day, I can do it! The thing is, something (or many things) will
happen that will cause me not to be able to do 3 per day and I will have to
redo this very complicated (for an English teacher) Math equation several times
before all is said and done.
That being
said, I would like to comment on the papers I have read so far. I am so proud of my students. Writing a Research Paper is tough! It is extremely labor intensive and requires
the components of many parts to come together in a final product. Also, many people often forget that writing
is a skill – just like shooting a basketball, ice-skating, or cooking. Just like running, trying to lose weight, or
making hand-crafted birdhouses. Sure,
there are a few people that are naturally good at it. But, all the rest of us, have to keep at
it. We have to keep writing, keep
revising, keep reading about writing, keep editing, keep brainstorming, keep
going to the Purdue OWL website when we have questions about MLA formatting,
keep on keeping on! And as with most
skills, the more you keep practicing, the better you get. No, you may never be Steph Curry, Bobby Flay,
or whoever is the world-renowned maker of handcrafted birdhouses, but you will
get better. I promise, you will get
better.
The papers I
have read so far are very good! I am
looking forward to reading the rest.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
When Teaching English Becomes Math
Right now, I am in the process of grading 43 rough
drafts of Research Papers for my Juniors on the topic of societal fears and the
hero or solutions that these fearful societies need to overcome the fears. They are very interesting papers. My students have put a tremendous amount of
time into these papers. I actually
really enjoy reading them and providing helpful comments, suggestions, and
feedback so that they can make revisions and turn in a more polished final
draft. And, they are really quite interesting to read. But, the whole process becomes
amazingly and ironically mathematical.
Here is how:
o
I have 43 to grade.
o
I spend about 15-20 minutes on each paper.
o
That equals 3 papers per hour (and that is if
I do not get distracted)
o
That equals approximately 15 hours to grade
them.
o
Not to mention that I used a pretty specific
rubric addressing 10 Research Paper Skills I would like my students to
master. I need a calculator to determine
the grade. And that is how teaching English
become weirdly, insanely, and sometimes irritably mathematical.
And now for some funny memes and comics that
may or may not make the grading of these papers easier…
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Snow Days!
It is truly not possible to determine who loves Snow Days
more—teachers or students? So for the
benefit of not causing any issues, let’s just say it is 50/50. But, it isn’t. It is really, truly, factually,
scientifically, and abundantly proven that teachers love Snow Days even more
than students.
When I was first teaching and we had a Snow Day, I went to
school the next day and told the veteran teachers how much grading I got done
and how I had planned ahead and felt so productive and pretty awesome. They all stared at me with a “What’chu talkin’
bout Willis?” look. One teacher put her
arm around me and said very sweetly, but also quite seriously, “Um, you are not
supposed to do any school work on a Snow Day, dear.” Then it was my turn for the “What’chu talkin’
bout Willis?” look. She continued, “Snow
Days are a gift from God to teachers and he doesn’t want you to work. He wants you to take the day off and sleep,
read, make a snowman, do ANY thing you want to do, EXCEPT any school work.” All the other teachers nodded and it seemed
like the phrases “gift from God” and “NO school work” and “read, sleep, make a
snowman” were leaving their lips and forming these crazy dream-like bubbles
that started swirling around my head so that they would never EVER be
forgotten.
And those were the days when one had to listen to the
radio for school closing or watch the scroll at the bottom of the screen before
declaring a Snow Day victory. Nowadays,
a nice phone call or text and BAM, turn the alarm off! Back to sleep, and no school work today!
Oh, and every once and awhile those weather people do such
a nice job preparing us for snow storms that some schools declare a snow day
the night before and we don’t even have to wait for the call or text in the
morning. Those snow days are Gifts from
God with a cherry on top.
Sunday, February 7, 2016
A JOLLY GOOD TIME TEACHING GRAMMAR!
“What can I do to make them like Grammar more?” I asked my son.
“Give them candy,” was his response.
So I told my son, that I was not going to just give them candy just
to make Grammar fun. I needed more than
that.
Again, a very short response from him, “Make it a competition.”
He even helped me with choosing candy they would all
like: Jolly Ranchers.
Best $5 I ever spent in the name of Grammar. I will continue to see to it that none of my students makes a Grammar error like the one on this magazine cover.
And guess what? Those
beautiful watermelon, grape, cherry, sour apple, and blue raspberry candies and
a little competition worked. No one
could get a Jolly Rancher until they answered all sentences in the exercises
correctly and as a class they had to agree with the individual student whose
turn it was to give an answer or help him get to the correct answer.
So basically, they had to “get it” in order to get a Jolly
Rancher.
Best $5 I ever spent in the name of Grammar. I will continue to see to it that none of my students makes a Grammar error like the one on this magazine cover.
Friday, January 29, 2016
Being Sick and Being a Teacher
This week I came down with a sore throat and had
to take a sick day to recover. This is
usually not a problem, you just take a sick day, right? But, it was the week after exams and also the
week grades were due and because of some student absences right before exam
week, I was bogged down with trying to get grades up to date and complete my
gradebook.
Basically, it was not a good time to take a day off. For some teachers, there actually never is a good day to take off. Here is a funny meme that encompasses this vey thought:
Basically, it was not a good time to take a day off. For some teachers, there actually never is a good day to take off. Here is a funny meme that encompasses this vey thought:
So just don’t ever get sick if you a teacher during the school year and you will be fine. I mean, it’s not like you are around tons of people and countless germs all day!
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Twas the Week Before Exams and all Through the Halls…
This week is the last week
before exams and the level of stress in the building among all the students and
the teachers is palpable. And so instead
of droning on and on about losing sleep or eating badly due to stress, let’s
talk about why it is all worth it.
First, it all does
eventually get done.
Second, we are turning out
some great products. My Creative Media
class finished the semester with a bang and while I have been spending quite a
bit of time preparing content and interesting projects for the class, they have
been creating fun promotional videos and really nicely edited book trailers.
And third, as we remember the
great Alan Rickman who brought to life one of my favorite characters in all
literature, if all of this work, effort, sweat, (and tears? mine,
mostly and maybe my Juniors who were creating Notecards for their
Research Papers this week) leads to students who love reading (especially Harry Potter) or making movies like Harry Potter and are confident and
comfortable writers, then it is all worth it.
RIP Alan Rickman. Here is a great link to Important Scenes from Severus Snape in Chronological Order:
Good Luck on your Midterms CBA. You know your stuff. You can do this!
Friday, January 8, 2016
Mr. Mielke: An Inspirational Teacher, An Inspirational Blog!
I am going to cheat a bit this
week and take you to the blog of an incredible teacher I just stumbled upon
today. His name is Chase Mielke
and in 2014 he was a Michigan Teacher of the Year nominee. It s titled “Affective Learning” and as you
will see in just a few clicks and reading a few of his posts, this teacher is
for real.
Here is the link to his blog: https://affectiveliving.wordpress.com/
Mr. Mielke seems a bit younger than me, and that made his
posts even more significant for me to read.
He really reminded me of a few key reasons that I became a teacher and
why I think this is an amazing job. He even
has made some videos to go along with this posts, showing us all that there are
many mediums of communication. This is
one of the things I am trying to impress upon my students taking my Creative
Media Class. I want them to be able to
write well, but also to take that to the next level and create a product such
as a video.
So here are two of my favorite videos from this outstanding
blog by an exceptional teacher. Enjoy!
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