judifilksign

wake up
eat breakfest
Watch TV
Get dress
Get on the bus goto sc hool

Get on the Bus go home
do homework
eat dinner
go bed

I love love love getting insight into how Sparkle is thinking. I am impressed also by her writing, which is more advanced than I thought it was. Hooray for her hard working teachers! So much is coming together this year.

I note that Sparkle prefers to wear dresses all of the time. So, I wonder a bit if she means "get dressed" or actually, "get dress" for dressing.

Current Mood: pleased

We visited Sparkle's potential placement today.

( It's nice... )

Our special education coordinator (my old boss) actually called my cell phone as we were driving back from the visit, and I gave him the go ahead to continue the placement process.

Crossing our fingers that all goes smoothly...

update: We have a meeting next Monday at the school for Sparkle's change of placement paperwork, and she can start Tuesday if transportation is set up. The room will be ready for her!

Current Mood: hopeful

Today, at school, one of my students said he saw something on TV about a guy who could make sounds exactly like a Wookie, and it was just so strange that someone would take the time to learn doing that.

I made Wookie noises at him. He blinked at me, not exactly in surprise.

Across the room, my Star Wars fiend, who has corrected me on my trivia of that universe, starts in on the Wookie talk, and I note that as he's talking, he's making the American Sign Language for "water."

I make nodding gestures and Wookie approval noises, and jerk my head towards the door. The student leaves, making some terrific Chewbacca conversational bits as he walked out.

The Youth Leader was like, "Wait a minute. Where's HE going?"

"Oh, he just asked me if he could go get water. I told him it was okay, and to head out," I explained breezily. The Youth Leader takes this perfectly in stride, and goes back to his paperwork.

I turn back to the first youth. "You don't seem surprised."

"Well, you are so strange," he says matter-of-factly.

"Well, yes, yes, I am." And class went on.

Current Mood: amused

I so totally love teaching English class.

Today, I was all set to read James Thurber, Columbus' home-town humorist. I started in on "The Night the Bed Fell," and noted that EVERY ONE of my students had rested his head on his desk, prepared to doze their way through my rendition. (Heh, heh, heh.)

Thurber's story is chock full of thrown shoes, breaking glass, flipping furniture, rattling doors. The first the class knew about it, I was chucking my my shoe across my room, hitting the AV cart with a large CLANG! and my left shoe against my neighbor math teacher's wall. Every boy was bolt upright in his seat, and stayed so as I shouted the shouted lines. I flipped folding chairs to approximate the sound of the bed flipping over. I threw Checkers against the window to simulate breaking glass. Howled like a dog when the dog was supposed to be howling. Rattled my classroom door to simulate the stuck attic door. Knocked on everyone's desk in a row to emphasize trying to get to Father through that stuck door.

The boys' eyes were out on sticks. They didn't quite know what to do with me, but they sure paid attention! The story discussion/question and answer section went fantastically well, though; so well, that I just had to do it over and over for the next classes, too! A successful day, all-around.

And today, when I was hollering "Get it off me! Get it off!" and making choking, gagging sounds for Briggs Beall, the youth leaders outside my room trusted that I was in full drama mode rather than busting in. (I hope that this doesn't mean that my future is going to be like the boy who cried "Wolf!" though, and that someday, when I need someone to help bring order to my room that no one will take it seriously...)

And best of all, when my boss asked me what was going on in my room, he laughed in approval!

Current Mood: giddy
Current Location: home
Current Music: Thirteen, in preparation for tomorrow

hsifyppah, I heart, heart heart you! My students were just plain not getting the difference between simile and metaphor, and persisted in confounding the two, with mix ups with symbols, to boot.

So, I brought in my copy of Steel Cage Match! (Already, I knew my classes would be made of win.)

"You're a pricetag on a sticker; I'm an ebay auction bid" is the favorite metaphor that really seemed to sink home with most of the kids. (I rather think that some of the other techie comparisons were meaningless for their age), but "Whenever you're a perfect 10, I'm playing Sudoku" was also high up on the list, too.

And they *got* it. What use are metaphors? Not only to make comparisons without using "like" or "as," but to imbue the qualities of that comparison in a stronger way.

As one girl put it: "He might like, be a totally kewl guy, but like, not for her. Like, when we were learning unknown words, and you were like, doing context clues, you said that the word you didn't know followed by a list was like, understanding through example. Metaphor is like, making you understand something by like, totally making it the example, not just like, like-ing it to the something."

Like, I think she got it!

One of the guys in a different class thought that "Type Mismatch" was referring to how the class had been confusing the types of simile and metaphor. (I'm clever-er than I thought, doing that.)

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: home
Current Music: Runtime Error: Type Mismatch

This week, our school is getting the outer walls torn off (made of wood), replacement plywood , and added insulation and new siding put back on.

The noise is not to be believed. (Reminds me of the commercials "I have a headache this big, and it has EXCEDRIN written all over it.")

So, unwarned of this event, I am attempting to read a short story, drowned out by howling buzz saws, pounding hammers, cracking wood from the crowbars prying them off, and construction workers hollering at one another.

The students, youth leaders and I are all giving one another disbelieving looks as the noise just does not stop. And then, there are a number of really loud thumps and whacks, getting louder and louder, faster and faster. A voice on the other side of the wall suddenly snarls "What the f*ck is this sh*t?" as he uncovers something outside he doesn't like. Every student eye in the room flashes to me.

I slam my book down on my teacher desk. "Villains!" I shrieked at the wall, "Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! -- Tear up the planks! -- Here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous, tell-tale heart!"

Every student just about fell out of his chair, laughing. There is a looooooong silence on the other side of the wall, followed by a sudden flurry of activity and thumping, without any more shouting.

At school, one of the students in one of my afternoon classes said something funny, and I giggled.

Another student just stared at me, drop-jawed. "No way, man, that's just wrong," he said when I looked at him quizzically.

"What's just wrong?" I asked.

"Bitches don't giggle, and you're an English teacher, and you just, like, giggled and that's wrong." he said. "Oops. Shit. Um, sorry?"

It made me giggle more, and I didn't send the bewildered student to time out, as my moral authority to do so was out the window, giggling away.

"Dude," another kid helpfully put in, "She was not only smiling, but dressed as a pirate and singing earlier this year. If teachers aren't supposed to smile before Christmas, and she's giggling before Thanksgiving, what do you think the New Year will bring?"

"Dude. I don't even know. I don't even know. She's just not right. Giggling. Happy. It's just too weird."

Current Mood: amused

Today, our music teacher was out, and no one could find the keys to her cabinets to get out the supplies for the substitute teacher.

My music class was first, so I got my boxed copy of ENCORE!, the duelling "can you sing six words of a song using this word/topic?" game.
I made my class play, thus teaching the substitute, and left her the game for the day. She was a relieved, happy camper. S

My students? They said that at last I had found a use - a lame use, but a use - for my tendency to burst into random song. (And I handicapped myself by not permitting myself to use any filk, so all the tunes I used would be recognizable by teens.) Ah, recognition for one's skills.

Aaaand, because I have a couple of rappers, at the start of the game I made sure to set up the Tom Smith addendum: The song sung must have been in existance before the start of the game. "Excellent lyrics, Johnny, but extant to not being in existence prior to thirty seconds ago, our team must try again!"

Current Mood: pleased

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Entries tagged with school

Sparkle writing on her day:

School Visit

I am Wookie, Hear Me Roar

English class is TOO an adventure!

Metaphors as Descriptors: Runtime Error: Type Mismatch

Tell Tale Heart, Take Two

Stereotypes, and how I don't seem to fit them

Music class

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December 2011

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