"When Feasible"

State officials: Schools can open on Monday! Yay! Schools are so important to a functional society!

School employees: Oh great! This must mean that the infection rate is down! We did it! We worked and sacrificed together as a society for the common good! The pandemic is finally over!!!

State official: Well, not exactly. But we have gone from “unchecked spread” to “escalating spread,” What a success story! Yahoo!

School employees: …. Um…. okay, but it will be okay because employees will all get the vaccine before the schools open though, right?

State officials: Nope!

School employees: Alright, then that must mean that in the year we have been closed,  HVAC systems have been improved or replaced to reduce the risk of catching an airborne virus, …. Right?

State Officials: Nope! (Not unless you had a bake sale to pay for it. Haha!)

School Employees: Okay, well surely at least enough N95 respirator masks have been acquired for everyone that spends time in a public school building. 

State officials: Nope! But remember that mask drive where the kids crafted homemade masks with the scraps from their grandma’s sewing baskets? Wear those! (Better wear two.) Oh, come to think of it, the state provided you with a little blue surgical mask in September! Wear that!

School employee: Wow. Geez. Will we have access to some kind of affordable health care in case we get sick?

State officials: Sure! You have the health plan you’ve always had! 

School employees: You mean the one that has a $6500 deductible? The one we pay $12000 in premiums for? That one?

State officials: That’s the one! But try not to miss too much work if you do get sick or you could be terminated and lose it. FYI! Stay safe! Maintain 6 feet of social distance! (when feasible). 

Public: IF YOU’RE TOO SCARED TO DO YOUR JOB, THEN QUIT AND SOMEONE ELSE WILL DO IT!

School employees: Really? Who?... 

Public: SOMEONE ELSE! YOU HAVE NO SPECIAL SKILLS! ANYONE CAN DO WHAT YOU DO! 

School employees: We're "scared"? Seriously? But what about the mandatory lockdown drills where we are supposed to pile the kids up in a closet and bar the door armed with a stapler and a three-hole-punch to fight off an armed intruder? We do that every year. That's pretty scary, not to mention the idea that we are drilling to prepare for ARMED INTRUDERS AT SCHOOL because that's a real thing that happens regularly. Come to think of it, how can we maintain social distance during those drills; or any kind of drill?

State officials: We did say “when feasible.” Geez, nitpick much? 

Public: GET TO WORK!!!!! MY TAXES PAY YOUR SALARY! YOU WORK FOR MEEEEEEEEEEE!

School employees: But… we have been working all year; teaching over the black box hell that is Zoom class.

State Officials and public: Also, kids are really suffering out of school. Their mental health is in free fall because you won’t go to work in your classrooms. This is your fault. You doing your job the same way it has been done for a hundred years is the only way to combat this problem. There are no other causes or solutions to the mental health crisis youth are facing; it is 100% because you keep asking questions and refuse to JUST GO TO WORK. 

School employees: Uh,... yeah… a pandemic is devastating for ….. everyone, not just kids who can’t go to school in their school building; but I take your point and I am more than willing to do my part for the mental health of our kids. We should definitely work together to solve this problem. Could we hold off on standardized testing maybe? That’s pretty arduous in the best of times. 

State officials: NO. We need a way to hold schools accountable and arbitrary standardized testing provided by giant private companies is the only way to do that. You suck. You do a bad job (as the results of standardized tests tell us) and we have never needed anything more than for you to go back to work right now. But please be safe. (When feasible)

Public: We don't really care about the standardized testing, but we concur: you do suck.

School Employees: ... Well. Okay, but can we get some sort of compensation like combat pay, or get paid more for delivering hybrid and in-person instruction? That's pretty demanding and is a lot more work. And since we are so vital perhaps compensating teachers for taking on additional risk and more work is a fiscal priority.

State officials: No. We're sorry, that is not feasible.

Kira's Boyfriend

In Kira's social studies class, the kids were assigned to do a project on one aspect of WWII. Kira chose the Holocaust and decided to focus her project on how Hitler tried to eliminate all the Jews. This is a story about how being hyper-focused on a goal can lead to problems.

First of all, she decided that her project would be in the format of a tri-fold posterboard. She likes tri-folds. She does a lot of them. She usually makes them multi-colored or neon on black, but this time the only color board she could get was white. No biggy.

Next, she had some time in the computer lab at school to type up her information and print out pictures. She wanted a picture of Hitler to put on it. She chose a big picture so it would take up lots of space that would otherwise have to be devoted to research and writing. She didn't choose one of the Hitler pictures where he is screaming like a mad dog, she chose one where he looks sort of regal. Whatever. She didn't look very long. She chose the first 8x10 she saw and picked it. She tried to print it, but it wouldn't print. The solution? Keep trying to print. Keep hitting the print button even though nothing was happening. Eventually whatever the printing problem was resolved itself, and about 30 pictures of regal Hitler printed. Kira took all of them, embarrassed, and was planning to secretly recycle them when she got a chance. She put them in her folder.

Later, as she was walking down the crowded middle school hallway, she stumbled and dropped her books. The 30 pictures of regal Hitler scattered. A teacher saw the whole thing happen, picked up one of the pictures and said, "Kira, this is inappropriate," as if Kira was planning on tacking up the pictures of regal Hitler all over the school. Because why else would someone have 30 pictures of regal Hitler, if not to tack them up around school? Inappropriate, Kira.

Later, Kira assembled her board. She made some questionable choices. She had a giant picture of a swastika, a picture of a little kid whose head was being measured with calipers, the Nazi/Eagle/Swastika insignia (two swastikas! Yeah!), and titled her project "Master Race." All on a white board. In her defense, the white board really made the swastikas pop.

When she was done, all she saw was a slapped together, good-enough project that met all the specifications of the assignment. However, Sam and I looked and saw something totally different.

Sam looked for a long time and then asked Kira, "So..... you're FOR Hitler?" She was appalled. "NOOO! Why would you think THAT?" she shrieked. He said, "Um, because of everything: the white board, the title seems like you are FOR a master race, the huge picture of Hitler, the swastikas (plural), the kid getting measured.... everything."

Kira then looked at her project with new eyes and said,

 "Crap."

But it was too late to change anything because in true middle school fashion, the project was due tomorrow. It was going to have to go as-is.

Because of this, Kira has had to endure some teasing from Sam (and me. I admit it. How else will she learn? ~ parenting 101) Sam said that if we look in her school notebooks she probably has "Mrs. Kira Hitler" written 100 times. He also was caught quietly singing, "Kira and Hitler sitting in a tree, k-i-l-l-i-n-g," which although inappropriate and mean, is hilarious because if you're going to make a project like that, you deserve some ridicule.

Red Flags

I got a new job.  I told you last week about my dilemma with the job I accepted at the middle school, which is different than the middle school I worked at last year, but in the same district.  I was offered the position of teaching what I did last year with the addition of one class to get me up to full time.  I was a little nervous because I've heard terrible, TERRIBLE things about this particular school.  Apparently they had an awful principal for years and staff moral was as low as low can be.  But this year they got a new principal!  The school is in a gorgeous new building!  Things will be fine!  Right?

One of the first red flags was before I even went to the school.  I printed out the staff list.  It lists who works there, what they do, and their phone numbers.  About half the staff is for special needs students; like special education teachers, emotional and behavioral specialists, social workers, psychologists etc etc. Normally in any public school situation, at most 20% of the students have special needs. What is with this one?   Red flag.

Another red flag is when I went there the first few times.  I did not have a classroom, or even a desk, and I was not scheduled to teach the two classes I agreed to.  I was scheduled to teach four classes, one of which included a class teaching kids who have managed to get to middle school and are still functionally illiterate.
Some people are good at teaching that.  I am not.  I would never have agreed to teach that.

The class I had agreed to teach, Read 180, is a program that the district bought several years ago that cost tens of thousands of dollars.  It is highly researched, intense reading program that is proven to work at getting readers who are a little bit behind up to grade level.  The most important part of the program is that the classes are taught in two hour blocks because if someone needs to acquire and make up skills they didn't get before, it's going to take more time than one 50 minute class a day.  I was signed up to teach that, but because of scheduling conflicts, they cut it down to one period blocks, which totally dismantles the program and dooms it to fail.  They spent lots of time and money training me to do this program.  I know how it works and I know that it isn't going to work in one period blocks.

Aside from teaching remedial reading, and reading to non-readers, I was scheduled to teach one section of English for seventh grade, and one section of English for eighth grade.  These classes with "normal" kids are jam-packed.  Last year there were 40+ kids in one class on average.  That is overwhelming.  Can you imagine the amount of correcting?  Yikes.

Also, one day I stopped by the school to drop my stuff off and as I was between loads, I discovered that the building automatically locks down at 3:15.  Why?  I don't know.  But it's like a prison.  I had to have a custodian escort me in and up to my room, unlocking doors all along the way.  Why does a school need to be locked down like a maximum security prison?  Red flag.

In the midst of freaking out about all the red flags and feeling like a trapped animal, the college prep charter school called me again and asked if there was anything they could do to lure me away from the public school.  Yes.  Yes there was.  They offered me a little more money than they had previously.  I took their offer.  Now I will be teaching small classes of 9th and 10th graders.  I'll be teaching World Literature and English Fundamentals.  I also get to teach an elective of my own choosing, which will of course be The Biography in which we will begin the course by reading a biography of George Washington.  Duh.

I'm a little overwhelmed right now trying to figure out a new system, and meeting new people etc. etc. but I have not seen any glaring red flags as of yet.  

Why sixth graders can't be spies:

Like every teacher in the world these days, I have trouble with kids taking out their phones and texting when they are supposed to be working on something else.  Frankly, I'm not much of a stickler for the no-phones-in-class rule, but it is a school policy so I follow it.  I have one student who is super sneaky.  I never see her texting, but the girl who sits next to her, (I'll call her A), does and it bothers her that the texter gets away with having her phone in class.  So A came up with a system for the texter to get caught.  She stayed after school one day and worked this out with me, (all her idea.)  She said, "I am going to give you a signal when B is on her phone.  What should the signal be?  It should be something subtle, but obvious to you.  Hmmmm.  What should it be???  How about if she takes her phone out I will scratch my forehead like this," and she scratched her forehead like a meth addict. I agreed and then promptly forgot about it.

The next day during quiet reading time, A had apparently been scratching her head like crazy because she did an obvious "Heh HMM!" and I looked up and her forehead was all red.  She gave me the eye that said, "WATCH ME!" and then she went back to reading.  Apparently the phone wasn't out right that second.  So I watched.  Soon A scratched her forehead so I quietly asked B to come up and see me.  I was going to tell her to give me her phone until the end of class and rock her world by letting her know that I knew she had it when she was so sneaky.  Then A interrupted and said, "Oh no!  I just had an itchy head that time!" 

Cover blown. 

Bad news that at first I thought was good news. Common sense goes out the window when talking about public school.

I went to a staff meeting at school the other day and the principal told us that there will be 70 less 6th graders in next year's class than there is this year.  My optimistic brain immediately said, "Yes!  That means that there won't be 40 kids in a class next year!  Only 35!"  Then I heard the collective groan from the rest of the staff.  "What are you moaning about?"  I thought to myself, "This is good news!..... Isn't it?" 

No.  It isn't.  Especially for me because I'm at the rock bottom of the seniority list.  Classes will not be smaller, they will be the same size, and there will be less teachers.  So that means I will mostly likely be out of a job next year which stinks, but on the plus side: more time for blogging! I can get back into the groove of writing all about water stains that look like vaginas, my farrier-needing hoofs, and why pandas are such a monumental mistake. 

Lazy asshole

MinnCAN

Last night I went to a program at school that the PTA was sponsoring.  It was given by a group called MinnCan.  It's an educational reform group.  They are basically a lobby group whose aim is to make public schools better. I'm all for a political lobby group that wants to make public schools better, but I am highly suspicious of this particular group. They successfully lobbied the Minnesota Legislature to pass a bill that allows for "alternative" teacher licensure. This basically means that anyone with a bachelor's degree can be  certified to be a teacher with FIVE WEEKS of training.  Americore is one of the outfits that provides "teachers" in this way.  These young college grads take a summer course after they graduate with degrees in anything from marketing to nursing to engineering, and in a miraculous five weeks they can get enough credentials to go into a public schools to teach, all on their own, classes with 35+ kids.  But you know what? Their education and experience isn't nearly as important as their ❤heart and enthusiasm and if they believe they can make a difference! EEEEEEEEEEEEE❤!!!❤!!

(Sorry.)

I have a real problem with that.  If the goal is to improve public schools and to close the achievement gap, isn't putting unprepared people who are not teachers in the classroom in charge of teaching the kids, the exact opposite of what you want to do? And isn't that obvious?  So why would a supposed educational advocacy group want to do that?

I went to this program with a group of about twenty teachers and I was easily the least educated person in the bunch, and I've had five-plus years of college dedicated to the sole purpose of educating children.  Altogether I've done almost 20 weeks just student teaching to get various degrees and certifications.

Before the program I was talking with a man who is in his fifties and has been teaching for decades.  He was telling me about all these new apps he's using with his geography class.  He's also doing an educational fellowship.  And then the program started.  It was called "Improv to Improve" and it was supposed to be an improv group doing an entertaining show about public education.  The gist was that old teachers and methods are obsolete and we need new blood in education.  What a kick in the teeth.  I was sitting in a group of people who together have had hundreds of years of teaching experience and we were being told that old is bad and obsolete, and new and young is better.  Screw education and experience; to improve education, we need to employ LESS educated, experienced and prepared people.  Please.

The teachers watched the show and clapped politely, but when it ended, we were asked if there were any questions. Oh, there were questions.  The teachers wanted to know what MinnCan's stance is on teacher seniority, alternative licensure,  union busting and other specifics.  The MinnCan people cut the Q and A portion short and told us they had another improv performance for us instead.  No thanks.

But I guess I have to look at the silver lining of "alternative licensure."  If a nurse can be a teacher, then it only makes sense that with a few weeks of preparation, a teacher can become a nurse.  Or a lawyer.  Or an airline pilot.  When the alternative licensure law came up in Minnesota I wrote a post about all the things I will be doing when anyone with a bachelor's degree can do anything they want.  Here it is again:

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Minnesota legislators are soon going to vote on a bill that would allow people with a bachelor's degree, but no teacher training, become teachers!  You could spend four years in college, get a degree in underwater basket weaving and then get out and teach school! All you will have to do is take a 200 hour crash course in teaching.  (I was a real sucker for taking over five years to learn to be a teacher.  It apparently only takes five weeks.)

The second having to have a license or any kind of specific training to practice a profession is moot, I think I will try out all kinds of things, why not! I have a bachelor's degree!  I can do anything!

The first thing I'm going to do is become a nurse.  RNs  have bachelor's degrees, I have a bachelor's degree, therefore, according to the Minnesota legislature, I could probably do a pretty decent job of being a nurse. Better than the old hags that have been doing it for decades, anyway! I'm new! I'm fresh! And I want some scrubs.  However, I'm kind of squeamish so as soon as bodily fluids come into play, I'm out.  Kind of like when I joined track in high school to get the cool sweatsuit, but then learned I was expected to run. Every day. Yeah, right.

Then I think I'll be an electrician.  I use electricity literally all the time.  In fact, I'm using it right this minute. I'm an electricity expert; flip switch up: on.  Flip switch down: off.  I'm trained (enough)!  I have a bachelor's degree in education.  I'm educated.  If I'm educated, I can do anything, right?  All that's been in my way are these pesky standards and licenses!

Need anything rewired?

Oh, you know what I'd really like to do?  Fly commercial airliners!  I'm sure that YEAR LONG course I suffered through: Methods and Materials of Teaching Secondary English will really help out with takeoffs and landings. Once I get my job being a pilot, flying will be much more pleasant (for me).  Trips go by so much faster when I'm the driver.  I have lots of experience driving a car, and a little bit driving a boat, and I actually took over the yolk (that's what they call it!) in a small plane and controlled it myself once for about five minutes (actual flying experience).  I'm totally qualified.

Then I think I'll become an architect for a while.  I live in a building, I go in buildings all the time, I've built Sims houses.  I could do it.  I'm qualified because I have a bachelor's degree, and more importantly, I ❤BELIEVE❤ I could be an architect although I have a degree in English Education; just like some Minnesota legislators believe that anyone with a four-year degree can walk into a classroom and teach 30 kids.  Easy.

If this bill passes and you can do ANYTHING with your bachelor's degree, what do you want to do?

Candy

As any good middle school teacher will tell you, a bucket full of candy is a must have school supply.  Adolescents will do almost anything for a piece of candy.  They will do almost anything for the mere promise of candy.  I suspect that is why pervs use candy as a lure to getting kids in their teardrop-window vans.  It just never fails.

"Hey kid, you like Twizzlers?"

I usually get to school a couple hours before my first class to do my work because I refuse to bring anything home with me.  Yesterday I opened my candy drawer and ate candy while I worked.  Usually I'm not that crazy about the stuff I buy, but yesterday for some reason, it was really hitting the spot.  I'd eat a piece, throw the garbage away, work for a few minutes and eat another piece.

When my first class came in, the kid that sits right up next to my desk looked into the garbage and we had this conversation:

Kid: Mrs. Lindahl, do you have a class before this one?

Me: No, why?

Kid: Well, who ate all that candy then?

Me: I had a few pieces before you guys came in, so what?

Kid: A FEW PIECES?  There's like, a hundred wrappers in there!

Me:  There's not a hundred wrappers.

At this point other kids came up to look at the collection of empty wrappers.

Another kid: Hey! She has Twizzlers!

Different kid: Are there any left, Mrs. Lindahl? Can we have some?

Original kid: Did you eat breakfast this morning?

Me: Yes, there are some left, and yes I had breakfast, why?

Original kid: You did have breakfast?  Wow.

Me:  Hey, it's not that much candy!  I like candy too, ya know.

Original kid: Not that much?  There's enough wrappers in there to feed a village!

At this point my aide was curious also, so she came to look at the wrapper carnage.

Original kid: Mrs. P., you must have been in here helping her eat all that.

Mrs. P.: No, I wasn't invited to this Twizzler party.

Me:  I'm never sharing my candy with you guys again.

Original kid: That's because there's probably none left.

Me: You have detention.
 

As Promised...

I got my school pictures back.  Remember when  I told you that I forgot it was picture day and then I found out that not only do all the kids have their pictures taken, but the teachers do too?  I am notoriously unphotogenic and this was emphasized by the laughing and re-taking of my picture three times by the photographer who saw the pictures on a monitor.  She eventually put me in the most unnatural position ever, had me crane my upper body one way, tilt my head down, and then look up off to the side.  It felt so weird.  It was so weird.

It doesn't look like a totally unnatural position when you look at it here, but my legs were pointing out behind me. I especially like the way my chin bunched up because she had me look down, and the way my eyes are pointing different directions because I was confused about which direction I was supposed to be looking.  I have chameleon eyes, did you know?  Mitch insists that I give him one of the wallet-sized ones and write something meaningful on the back.  "Hey Mitch!  You're AWESOME!  We should totally get together and party this summer!  BFFs 4EVA!  Love, Your wife!

Puppies

Remember last year when I described teaching kindergarten like having to manage a room full of cats?  They all had their own agenda and didn't give half a crap what my agenda was.  Just like cats.  Well, after a few weeks of teaching sixth grade I can honestly say that unlike a room full of cats, they are like a room full of puppies.  They are all eager and frantic and playful and have whippy tails and sharp little teeth, and their play looks a lot like fighting.  Just kidding. (They don't have tails.)

We had a teacher workshop the other day about "Learner Engagement."  There are five levels. Level one is "authentic engagement."  The student is truly interested in the topic at hand, wants to participate, and wants to learn.  I can't remember what the fifth level was called, but basically the student is not at all engaged in the topic being taught, and is causing problems and distracting other students.  Levels two, three, and four were something between the two, but I didn't really pay attention to those because I have found that my students are either at level one or at level five.  There is no in-between.

The funniest thing about them is that in my class, I seem to have a gravitational pull.  This is what my class setup looks like every morning:

The kids all have their own desks and I have a kidney shaped table at the front (I don't know how to make a kidney shape on Microsoft Paint) and a side table where I keep my lesson stuff.  Our room is nice and big so we have lots of room to spread out and I have a microphone and stereo system so everyone can hear me.  The kids actually only spend about 30 minutes at their desks, and the rest of the time we are all moving around.  I started the year mostly teaching from the front but I found that by the end of the day, this is what my room looks like:

The kids have all moved closer to the kidney table, in fact some kids who were in the back are now sitting at the front tables, and the side table is pushing into my side because it has been moved so close to me.  The kids still sitting in desks are complaining that they don't have any room to push their chairs back and the kids left in the back are complaining because they don't want to be "waaaay back here!" when in reality they are about eight feet away from where I am sitting.  I have tried to watch this happen, but it must be like watching a plant grow; you know it's happening, but you can't ever see it in action.  I have started teaching the first half hour of class - when everyone is in their desks - while walking around the room to see if this has any effect on the migration of desks.  It doesn't.  I end up moving every desk back about two feet every day after school.

They are just as fun as a room full of puppies, but they are also as exhausting as a room full of puppies.  One day when we were discussing whether the word "consistently" is an adjective or an adverb one girl raised her hand and told us, "I have ADHD."  Then about five other kids said they did too and before I knew it the conversation was no longer about vocabulary, it was about who does and who does not have ADHD.  I wrangled them back in and taught them the word "analogy." I told them that our class is like a train, I'm the conductor, and everytime someone blurts something out, or says something totally off-topic, it's like they just jumped off the train, and then I have to stop the train, back up, and pick them up.  They are so funny because now whenever someone says something off topic, the rest of them say, "GET BACK ON THE TRAIN!"  It's the ADHD Express and it's a pretty wild ride.

Stories

One of the dozens of techniques my students use to get me off topic is to tell me crazy stories.  They can tell I love their crazy stories so there is an absolute fight every day during small group for them to tell me something outrageous.  I have tried to parlay this into a writing assignment by telling them that if it is so vital to have their story told, they need to write it down and then they can read it to me.  It's funny how they can pare down a twenty minute blabathon into one hilarious sentence.  One boy had what I could tell was going to be a long story about how he is afraid of spiders and how he thinks they might kill him blah blah blah blah... and I said, "WRITE IT DOWN!" so he sighed a sigh of resignation and started to write.  When it was his turn to share he had reduced his long-winded story to this:  "I am afraid of spiders and death."  Another boy said he had a hilarious story about what happened to him last weekend.  I told him to write it down.  So he did.  He said he was on a city bus with his brother and there was an old lady sitting across the aisle and one seat ahead of them (at this point in his reading I interrupted and said, "Nice details!  I am getting a good image!  Go on..." Then he said, "and she farted and dust came out."  

Reluctant Readers

I've been talking about "avoidance" a lot with my reading class lately.  The class I'm teaching is an intervention class aimed at kids reading below grade level.  Of course, some of them loathe the idea of being in the class because everyone in the school knows that kids in my classes are reading at lower levels than most of the other kids.  They don't want the stigma of having everyone think they are stupid.  Who does?  They aren't stupid.  They are extremely clever.  They have been avoiding reading as much as humanly possible since first grade.  I know because I've known many of them since they were in kindergarten.  They are the kids who have to go to the bathroom, go to the nurse, go to the office, get a drink, sharpen their pencil etc. etc. etc. every time they have been required to read in class since day one.  I don't know why they start avoiding it in the first place.  Learning to read is hard.  Maybe that's it.  But over the years it has taken a toll and they are now starting to face the consequences.  I feel bad for them because they are frustrated, but I'm also exasperated with them because they work so hard to avoid learning anything new.

So we've been addressing the problem of avoidance.  Part of my program splits the kids in to three groups and during our time together they go to different stations.  One of the stations is on computers set up with reading software that is awesome.  It modifies itself to their level and works individually with them on reading passages and answering comprehension questions, vocabulary, and spelling.  Of course they always want to go directly to the spelling so they don't have to read anything.  They seem to like the software though.

Another station is the individual reading station.  They pick a book from the class library (high interest, short, age appropriate books supplied by the program) and get twenty minutes to quietly read in a section of the room with bean bags and comfy chairs.  I have been watching them while they do this and for the most part they don't actually read.  They sit in the chairs quietly (because if they don't they have to go back to their desks), and they hold a book and they stare.

The last station is the small group station where one group at a time comes to me and we work in their text book together on the skill we are trying to master.  They are like popcorn in this group.  It's less like teaching and more like playing whack-a-mole.  They work together like a pack of wolves to keep from doing the task at hand and keep me from focusing them on "finding the main idea."  I have to say, their diversions are entertaining to me because of their pure ridiculousness.  When asked to use our target word in a sentence one girl said,"Wanna see me do a backbend?" and before I could say no, I wanted her to use the word "consequence" in a sentence, she was doing a backbend.  It was pretty good.  When asked to identify the topic sentence in a paragraph, one boy said, "I wrote a song, can I sing it?" Um...no.

They all are capable of reading, like I am capable of running; but much like me and running, they will avoid it at all costs.  So I have to ask myself, what in the world could possibly motivate me to run because maybe that is the answer to how to get my kids to be more open to reading.  The truth is that the only thing that could cause me to run is if something dangerous was chasing me.  So I guess the answer to the "how would I motivate myself to run" question is pure self-preservation.  I don't think that translates to getting 6th graders to read.  I wonder if Scholastic has any cute "READ OR DIE" posters I could hang in my room.

Well?  I'm open to ideas.  Were you a reluctant reader when you were a kid?  Obviously none of you are now because you're reading this blog, but maybe you used to be.  What can I do to get these kids to do my bidding?

Boot Dance

I'm finally NOT overwhelmed at work so hopefully I can be a better blogger.  So far, two weeks in, I am loving the job.  I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm a pretty good teacher.  The hardest part of the job is acting like an adult and being professional around the other adults.  Seriously, that is really hard for me.  I wore some new boots to work the other day and someone complimented me on them and I had to stop myself from doing a tap dance in them.  Specifically the move where you twirl your arms like windmills while your legs are doing jumping jacks.

inappropriate

That was my first instinct.  Something like that happens every second of every day I'm around a coworker.  Now you understand why I have been avoiding the work-a-day world for so long.

The kids are a lot of fun.  They openly enjoy a good boot dance.  They are just now learning how to run their locker combinations.  I told them they will dream of forgetting their locker combination for the rest of their lives.  One girl was coming to class late all the time with a huge pile of books and I found out she had given up on her locker and just decided to carry everything with her all day long for the next three years.  I've been making her practice opening her locker and now she can do it like an old pro.  Yesterday the kids really buttered me up by telling me that I look like I'm 37 and feigned shock when I told them I'm almost 42.  (Who says they don't have social skills!) They said that I look good in yellow, and that they like my fingernails.  One kid asked me if I dyed my hair.  I told him if I didn't, it would be mostly gray.  He said, "You can't even tell you dye it."  Which was weird, because how did he know to ask me if I dye it in the first place if it looks totally natural?  

The Story of the Gummy Bear

Last September, after getting to school at the crack of dawn, Kira and her friend Mallory decided to kill a little time by the vending machines before the bell rang.  Mallory got a package of gummy bears (breakfast!) and Kira surreptitiously stole one, bit off the head, licked its whole body and then threw it on the ceiling.  That's what kind of a girl my daughter is, stealing from her friends and defacing public property.  Anyway, that defiled gummy bear was stuck to the ceiling by the vending machines all year long.  The girls enjoyed looking up with astonishment through the months to see that the disgusting little thing was still up there, virtually unchanged.

Mallory

On the last day of school, the girls were yet again killing time by the vending machines, eyes trained on the ceiling, reminiscing about the day Kira stole the gummy bear; amazed at how sticky a headless, wet gummy bear must really get, and applying what they learned that year in health and science classes to try to explain the utter lack of decay.  It looked like it did they day it was thrown up there!

Kira and Mallory in the panto-horse

That's when Mallory decided to make right the wrong committed against her those many months before, "That's it, I'm eating my gummy bear!" she cried!  "Give me a boost!"  The sixth graders gathered around and hoisted her up to the ceiling where she tugged against the asbestos tile to claim what was hers.  She got it down, and to the joy of all who watched, she finally (finally!) ate the gummy bear she was unjustly separated from a mere nine months before.   How was it?  "Crunchy!" she cried! 

School starts and I can't tell you how happy I am about it

Sam started high school yesterday and Kira starts middle school tomorrow.  Tonight we went to her open house and got her schedule and learned where all her classrooms are.  God, I hate open house night.  The kids are stressed because nobody can open their locker (that's the overwhelming source of middle school stress before the first day.  Little do they know there are WAY worse things to worry about in middle school! Just wait, kids! You're gonna hate it!) and the building is huge compared to elementary school blah blah blah.  And it was hot.  Really hot.  Like I-think-they-had-the-heaters-on kind of hot.  I had sweat dripping down my spine and I'm not much of a sweat-er.  And every time I get in a crowd of people I am reminded of what a misanthrope I am.  I hate people so much.  Actually, that's not true.  I really like the idea of people (like internet people that probably aren't even real.  Hello, THE MATRIX), but I hate actual people... So I guess it is true.  Never mind about when I said it's not true.  One lady had a pack of kids with her and she was yelling down the crowded hallway for her littlest to catch up and was screeching at the crowd to get out of his way; she said, "God!  Get out of the way!  My poor baby is getting rambushed!"  Which I assume is a blend of  ram and ambush.  Or rambo and ambush.  You know, now that I write it down, I think it's kind of clever and perfectly descriptive but I don't think she knew she was making up a word and it really annoyed me.  Mostly the yelling-down-the-hall-of-a-thousand-people-while-I was-sweating-and-putting-up-with-a-nervous-and-cranky-11-year-old was making me crabby, but still.  Don't make up words and yell them at me when I'm sweating.

Kira saw a lot of her friends and I overheard one conversation where she told her friend that when she was buying her school supplies she chose the wide ruled paper instead of the college ruled because there are less lines on the paper so she won't have to write as much as the idiots who buy college ruled.  Score one for Kira!

Sam is on the fence about whether he likes high school yet or not.  He will.  What's not to like?  Homework, that's what.  He's had homework both nights already.  But he's very conscientious so he will be fine.  He has a few classes with one of the big bullies from middle school and already, the second day, three of the teachers have told that kid to SHUT UP.  In one of the classes his former victims tittered a bit after the teacher said it and then she said to the bully, "Hear that laughing?  That's all the people you've picked on."  Score one for high school!

Ninth grade, nine fingers, get it?

New School Year

Sam and I went to his high school orientation last night.  He starts school next Tuesday.  I am so happy and relieved he is out of middle school.  Middle school is the worst place in the world after prison and concentration camps.  I can't believe we send kids there.  Kids that age should not be with other kids that age.  I don't know what the solution to the problem is.  Don't ask me, I just recognize the problem and complain about it.  I don't want to think of solutions.  Why do I have to do everything anyway?  Huh?  Can't you come up with solutions sometimes?  Geez.

So anyway, one of the teachers came up to Sam and said, "And you are?" and he said, "Your worst nightmare."  Yeah, I couldn't believe it either.  Sam is about the mildest, most vanilla person in the world so to hear that come out of his mouth was surprising.  The teacher wasn't even fazed.  She smiled and said, "It's going to be a long year.  For you."

I'm really jealous that Sam is going to high school.  I loved high school.  He gets to take computers in a really nice lab, he gets to take Spanish from a woman who looks incredibly like Peggy Hill, he gets to read Romeo and Juliet in English class.... sigh.  Lucky.

Kira, on the other hand is just starting middle school.  This is the sweet little child who just last week thought "pecker" was a bird's beak and nothing but a bird's beak.  Over the next three years she will learn countless ugly slang words for genitalia; she will either see, experience, (or perpetrate) bullying; she will see, experience (or perpetrate) sexual harassment; she will hear creative swears that she will be compelled to come home and tell me about because one of her favorite things to tell me is, "I have to tell you something but I have to swear for it."  I wish I could just plug information into a Matrix like brain portal on the back of her neck so she would know everything she would need to know to go to high school and then send her to high school instead of subjecting her to middle school.  But I suppose it is a rite of passage?  I have to try to convince myself of that so I don't feel bad for subjecting her to it.

I'm gonna be a Pilot!

Minnesota legislators are soon going to vote on a bill that would allow people with a four year degree, but no teacher training, become teachers!  You could spend four years in college, get a degree in underwater basket weaving and then get out and teach school! All you will have to do is take a 200 hour crash course in teaching.  (I was a real sucker for taking over four years to learn to be a teacher.  It apparently only takes five weeks.)

The second having to have a license or any kind of specific training to practice a profession is moot, I think I will try out all kinds of things, why not! I have a four-year degree!  I can do anything!

The first thing I'm going to do is become a nurse.  RNs  have four-year degrees, I have a four-year degree, therefore, according to the Minnesota legislature, I could probably do a decent job of being a nurse.  I want some scrubs.  I'm kind of squeamish though so as soon as bodily fluids come into play, I'm outta there.  Kind of like when I joined track in high school to get the cool sweatsuit, but then learned I was expected to run. Every day.  Yeah, right.

Then I think I'll be an electrician.  I use electricity literally all the time.  I'm an electricity expert; flip switch up: on.  Flip switch down: off.   I'm trained (enough)!  I have a bachelor's degree in education.  I'm educated.  If I'm educated, I can do anything, right?  All that's been in my way are these pesky licenses!

Need anything rewired?

Oh, you know what I'd really like to do?  Fly commercial airliners!  I'm sure that YEAR LONG course I suffered through, Methods and Materials of Teaching Secondary English will really help out with takeoff and landing. Once I get my job being a pilot, flying will be much more pleasant.  Trips go by so much faster when I'm the driver.  I have lots of experience driving a car, and a little bit driving a boat, and I actually took over the yolk (that's what they call it) in a small plane and controlled it myself once for about five minutes (actual flying experience).  I'm totally qualified.

Then I think I'll become an architect for a while.  I live in a building, I go in buildings all the time, I've built Sims houses.  I could do it.  I'm qualified because I have a bachelor's degree, and more importantly, I BELIEVE I could be an architect although I have a degree in English Education; just like some Minnesota legislators believe that anyone with a four-year degree can walk into a classroom and teach 30 kids.  Easy.

If this bill passes and you can do ANYTHING with your four-year degree, what do you want to do?

You're wrong Danica McKellar, math does, in fact, suck.

You know how every middle-school aged kid gets frustrated with math and says, "Why do I have to do this anyway?  I'll never use this in my life!"  Being an English major, I never had an answer to that question because really, who gives a gigantic rat's ass what x is anyway?  Nobody cares.  After I got a D in Mr. Turry's 8th grade math, I sort of gave up.  (and by 'sort of' I mean 'totally')

I took one algebra course in high school and was excited if on the tests I got a double digit percentage correct.  12% AWESOME!  I usually wavered around the 9% area.  I was just going to blow it off and take Math for Today the next year to fulfill my math credits and call it quits on math altogether.  Unfortunately my dad, who was a teacher, happened to run into my math teacher at school one day and innocently asked how I was doing and good ole' Mr. Mueller said without hesitating, "She hasn't handed in one assignment all quarter.  She's getting an F."  What a blabbermouth.  So I spent my entire spring quarter doing algebra with my dad every single night for hours and hours.  I wonder who hated it more, me or Dad?

Now I'm the parent, and Sam got a bad grade in math so I'm trying to help him out at home and today I hit the wall on my math knowledge.  Yesterday was problems like this:  5m+18=15m-24-4m.  Easy.  Well, not exactly easy, I had to work this one problem at least three times before I got the right answer, but I got the right answer! (7!) Today's problems were like this:  -7/20f+2/5=1/4f.  I can get it down to 2/5=3/5f (and I don't even know if that's right, but it's damn close) but from there on, I don't know how to do it.  One of my answers was 15876/1218.  That just doesn't seem reasonable. 

So the answer to those kids who say, "Why do I have to do this!  I hate it!  I'll never have to use it!"  is "Yes you will, you will need it to help your child with his or her 7th grade math and believe me, you don't want to look like a total idiot in front of your 13 year old.  That totally sucks.

What's going on

I'm watching the Olympics again tonite and to tell you the truth, I'm getting a little sick of it. Sorry, America, sorry World.

Kira's class has been doing a unit on the physics of sound, so their culminating project is to make a musical instrument of their own using what they know. Mitch and Kira have been working on hers tonite. She calls it "the Snowflake." Here it is:


When Mitch was showing it to me he said, "Ding Dong, here it is!" which is a horrible (horribly funny) reference to something we saw on the internet years ago. Here's the link. Enjoy!

http://robandjaime.com/oldStuff/funny.htm

Here's Sam:


Here's some flowers:

Bye!

Holiday Program #2

When Sam was getting ready for his school holiday program and tried on his new pants that he just got in September, he discovered that they were a little tight. I tried to primp him a little and he would have none of it. He wouldn't let me comb his hair, or tie his tie, or see how many fingers I could fit in the waistband of his pants to see how tight they were. He came out of his bedroom with me following close behind and Kira looked at his pants and said, "Holy... You look like Michael Knight." (of Knight Rider fame) I thought I was going to pee my pants laughing.

He wouldn't let me take a picture of his pants so I had to sneak one when we got to the school and he walked ten feet ahead of me pretending I didn't exist.

The concert was very good and the kids did a great job. The gym got boiling hot, but I loved every second of it because I haven't been warm for three months.

watermelon watermelon watermelon

Holiday Program #1

Kira's big Christmas concert was today. It was pretty good. It was crowded, as usual. I had to get there an hour and a half early to get a seat in the third row. I forgot my iPod too so I just had to sit there and talk to people to pass the time. Oh, the humanity. (just kidding) But the concert wasn't too long and the kids were SUPER cute. I absolutely love boys in little tiny ties. One second grader was wearing a short sleeve dress shirt and a tie and he looked totally natural and comfortable, like a tiny pharmacist.

Kira was cute too, as usual. Here she is by the tree this morning:

And here she is singing her solo, Oh Holy Night. She really belted it out and if you closed your eyes you'd think it was Barbara Streisand.

Just kidding. She wasn't singing. She had to say one line about Kwanzaa and she did it perfectly, however as her mother, I could hear the almost unnoticeable pause in the middle of her line and saw the split second look on her face that was sheer panic. But she pulled it off. Good girl! After that she went up to her spot on the risers. Here's the best picture I could get of her up there:

The kid with the Santa hat wouldn't get her gigantic head out of the way so I could get a good picture. Thanks a lot, kid.

One last thing; we had a who-can-make-the-ugliest-face contest this morning in front of the computer. Who do you think won?