So when I say "I teach high school" I don't mean just any high school situation. I have the baddies--the ones with ADD and dyslexia and attitude problems. It's not bad at all, they are charter school kids after all which means all parents are at least mildly aware of/concerned with their kids. Nice. Also, I'm convinced that these kids are actually more fun to teach. Yeah, they talk out of turn, but they also take no crap from me or anyone and they are hilarious.
This morning my alarm didn't go off and my car was coated in rough sticky ice and the roads were icy and awful. I was ten minutes late not to mention the fact that my books and folders and everything got locked in my office so I hadn't prepared a thing. Walking down the hall to my classroom I hear a laughing grumbling coming from my room--a teacher's least favorite noise: mutiny! chaos! I open the door which has been blocked by some large piece of furniture, and I notice that the lights are off. I love Mondays, I do.
But I think my reaction was successful: "get out a piece of paper, and you guys could never pull off a coup, I could hear you from outside the building. If you're going to try to take over the school you have, at least, to be sneaky about it."
We spent the day on the 5-paragraph essay and the Romans and I aced it. Not my best 5-paragraph essay lecture ever, but they were taking notes and writing on the board and they had opinions.
I love my job.
Monday, March 31, 2008
How teaching is going
Posted by Kjerstin Evans Ballard at 9:19 AM
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8 comments:
I love it. I feel like I am not a high school teacher because I would relate too much with the students and give in to laughing at their antics, perhaps even joining in occasionally. Blocking the door with furniture! Classic!
I would have had an urge to talk about how mutineers and pirates were the harbingers of democracy in the modern world since they were the first ones to elect their captains rather than honor the tyrannical military hierarchy of the old world.
But then, that probably wouldn't help them learn to write a 5 paragraph essay.
I don't know. We manage to discuss some pretty entertaining stuff--Alexander the
Great's sexuality (ninth graders love homosexuality), FARC, the juicy dripping details of the plague of Athens, etc.
And some kid used his 5-paragraph essay to try and convince his mom not to ground him so much, which I think was not very successful, but we've not even touched persuasive writing. I think a little subversion/digression is a healthy (and necessarily diverting) thing.
Admit it: you just want them to stand on their chairs and say "Oh Captain, my Captain."
(yes)
Isn't a five paragraph essay inherently persuasive, even if not overtly so? Or is that just law school talking?
Well, you know what Richard Weaver says.
No? Oh, that language is sermonic--that every verbal encounter we have with every other person is inherently persuasive.
So no, law school hasn't ruined you completely. Yet. In this.
Having been one of those kids, i respected the teachers with a sense of humor over the ones that had a massive stick up their a**.
Erin The Great
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