Last Friday I assigned my kids a simple task: write a story with at least two characters and at least three plot points.  Predictably only about half of my kids did it*, and most of them wrote the bare minimum.  That’s fine, writing English sentences of any length is challenging for them, so even the bare minimum was an impressive feat.  However ( Read more... )

I had one of those moments that make teaching worthwhile yesterday.  I was teaching the kids in my best class some words pertaining to stories, specifically “character,” “setting, “and “plot.”  To practice I went around the room a few times and had each student add a few sentences to a collective class story*.  For homework I told the kids to ( Read more... )

Well, my Tuesday class has come and gone.  You know, the class that I’ve been bitching about for weeks now.  The class that makes me question whether I even want to do this job.  The class of such surpassing stupidity that I had to scream at Leslie to fix it or else.  You know this class?  Have you heard me mention it?  Well I just had another ( Read more... )

Ugh, here I sit.  Tuesday is almost upon us.  The worst day of my week.  The day of single combat against a room full of asshole six-year-olds.  Wait, single combat you say?  But I thought you had a TA, Tina, who you specifically cited as the only thing between these classes and utter disaster.  Well, yeah, I did have Tina.  But that was so three ( Read more... )

I need to step into the confessional booth for a minute here.  I’ve got a huge burden on my conscience.  Hmmm, I’ve never done this before.  Am I supposed to pray first?  Do the Hail Mary’s come before or after the confession?  Ah fuck it, I’ll just say it: today I yelled at a kid for making fart noises in class.

( Read more... )

I know I already ranted a bit about my weekly 1st grade class, but fucking shitballs in a washing machine, this class is horrible.  There is literally nothing I can do with them.  The two hours I spend with them each week are the worst of my life.

A typical class consists of yelling, screaming, cajoling, begging, student cattle wrangling, ( Read more... )

When I was a young lad, I used to while away the empty hours by reading Dilbert comics.  In retrospect, I’m not sure why I liked Dilbert so much, considering that my average reading experience went like this:

ME: Dad, what does this comic mean?

DAD: Well, you see, SRX5-X1000 implementation is very common, and many times your boss would…uh, ( Read more... )

First impressions, are they overrated?  Aren't they simply intellectual laziness, where you decide that your initial, knee-jerk reactions are good enough?  Well, lets find out.  Lets be scientists.  Lets do a thought experiment.  Imagine if you will seeing a new person across a room.  This person is a colleague; say he's a fellow teacher.  You've ( Read more... )

You don’t know what you got till it’s gone, as the fella says. Last year my schedule was a cakewalk. All my classes were the same grade and used the same textbook. Fundamentally, they were all the same class. Not so this year, my children, not so at all.
( Read more... )

Some months ago I read the book “The Sirens of Titan,” by Kurt Vonnegut. It blew me away, easily my favorite book by the Man Without a Country, and also probably my favorite book of 2009*. Anyway, at one point, just as Malachi Constant is about to embark on the last phase of his journey, he turns towards the crowd watching him go and proclaims “I ( Read more... )