Curriculum development, like many things, is a cycle. When I first started my job, we were towards the beginning of the cycle. I got to see many projects develop from an idea ("Let's write a unit for third graders about light!") all the way to a finished product ("Wow, we wrote a 600-page behemoth of a teacher's guide. Could this break someone's ( Read more... )

I ran into the mother of one of my former students at the grocery store the other day. (Teacher's Rulebook #47: Always dress like you're going to work when you go to the grocery store, because that is the main place you run into parents. You know, because they tend not to go to nightclubs.) We chatted for a while, she explained how her son is ( Read more... )

Remember that child from hell in my first class? The one who got suspended three times in the first grade, stabbed another kid with a pencil, pulled over an easel in the middle of class, and initiated me into my illustrious career of ducking chairs?

Yeah, he's old enough to DRIVE now.

You're welcome.

I have just inadvertently found kids I used to teach on the interwebz. This is what happens when you add those former co-workers who were the extra nice, over-involved type of teachers to your friends list -- they have the former student hookup ( Read more... )

Today was the first day of school ( Read more... )

It is Big Scary Presentation season once again, and once again I have somehow landed in the position of having to explain statistical results to an audience who probably expects me to know what I am talking about. I have absolutely no idea what the numbers I am looking at mean, and I sold my statistics textbook the minute my class ended. All I know ( Read more... )

I only had that one brief and nightmarish experience with older students, so I am not as familiar with their ways as I am with the little ones. However, I have been teaching fourth graders for about two weeks now and I am finding them to be quite pleasant. More than pleasant. In fact, it's kind of appropriate for an astronomy unit, because I think ( Read more... )

Starting tomorrow, I will be testing another curriculum unit for work. This means that I will be spending time almost every day in a fourth grade classroom in a land that is a far, far BART ride away. I have to be in this faraway land at 8 AM, which sucks. But do I hope that teaching about space will prove more interesting than teaching about light ( Read more... )

Me: "No running in the halls!"
First Grader: "I'm not running. I'm power walking."

It's time for the annual Author's Fair at our school. This means that we cram a bunch of writing projects down the kids' throats at the last minute and pretend we have been doing them all year. This year, the kids are writing books about themselves -- five pages, pretty good for a second grader. Their writing, as always, can be really funny. Here ( Read more... )