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 7^th.  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. 

And now I will channel my inner-Dorothy and click my ruby slippers together, because if my Math is right, “3 per day, 3 per day, 3 per day…”   and I am done! 

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…

 

 

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. 

A JOLLY GOOD TIME TEACHING GRAMMAR!

 

On Friday, I had one of the best grammar lessons with my sophomore classes ever!  English teachers know what a victory this is.  But, I have to give my 13 year old credit for helping me with the lesson’s success.  I was telling him how I wanted to make Grammar – types of clauses and classifying sentences, specifically – more interesting and important to my students.  I was feeling that they were not really seeing the importance of learning Grammar (HUGE battle to overcome with some), that they were not really getting it as much as I was trying to help them “get it, “ and that they were not really having any kind of fun.  And we all know that Grammar needs to be fun, right?

“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. 

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.