Adventures of a Teacher in Transition

I keep seeing super adorable elementary-centric crafts and blogs on Pinterest and notice a very severe lack of high school. I was just wondering if you all knew of any.

Thanks!

I’m not even done with it and it’s already 50 slides long. 

Granted, there isn’t a TON of information on each slide and a lot of slides are examples dissected step by step. But still. This is intense.

But I’m enjoying it so far and I’m super proud of it already.

PLUS THERE’S AWESOME HUNGER GAMES PICTURES AND EXAMPLES!!!!

Also, why did no one think to tell me that I can download free PowerPoint templates online? Seriously, ridiculous.

He started the speech by knocking over the podium, which is big and metal. I was still finishing writing a few comments on the rubric from the last speaker and I swear I nearly had a heart attack. He used the bang from pushing it over as his “attention getter” and then proceeded to pull up a classmate for a question and answer session that I still can’t figure out the connection between it and his speech.

He rambled on for a while with this person (who, when asked how he was feeling at that moment, replied “Pissed because Ms. H gave me a D- on my speech” which caused the rest of the class to do the “ooooooooooh” that they all do. [aside: he deserved the D-]). Then he talked about Freud, the Id, Superego, and sexual objects. Somewhere in there was something about unconscious reasoning for doing things. He was walking around the classroom during his speech and using strange arm gestures. He also kept making random comments in the middle of his speech to random class members asking things like “how are you” in the middle of descriptive sentences. 

He argued briefly with the girl keeping the time when she showed him the 6 minute card (speeches are supposed to be 4-6 minutes) and said he wasn’t going to stop. 

I still don’t know what this speech was about. The speeches are supposed to be persuasive and I never even heard a problem. It was literally the strangest and most awkward thing I’ve sat through as a teacher or a student. Scott and I kept looking at each other with an “I have no idea what’s going on” expression on our faces. It was so strange.

I’ve never seen it until now.

I opened a word document so I could take notes… and I’ve been too enthralled watching the movie to take any notes. 

I’m actually quite excited to see the same movie twice in a row all week. This is fabulous.

There has been an influx of support on my failed MLA lesson and I really appreciate it! 

I’m completely finishing my poetry unit on Monday with a poetry slam. It’ll be a fun way to finish it out since they’ve taken their exam already.

Then Tuesday I’m starting Romeo and Juliet. But I can’t be there because I have to go to a job fair that’s mandated by my education program. So the students will be in the computer lab starting a Shakespeare Online Scavenger Hunt as a way to learn about him in a fun, non-lecture way. There will be 5-6 groups which each focus on different parts of his life and work and then they’ll teach it to the rest of the class. FUN!

I will admit. I’m excited for all the fun activities that I want to do with R&J. I’m just terrified of the language barrier. I taught The Raven during poetry, and they had issues with Poe, so I’m worried what they’re going to think of Shakespeare. I’m planning on using a variety of approaches including reading aloud, acting, and listening to different oral versions. But I know that I had/have issues with Shakespeare myself and I’m just not sure how to address that every day with the freshmen. 

Edit: My student population is fairly diverse. It’s a “regular” level class, but in it there are a couple of ELL students (both are from Germany originally), some future honors students, and some uninspired, uncaring students. 

Any suggestions?

I was in charge of the two sophomore periods because Ben had to go home during first hour for a family crisis. The first hour didn’t listen to me when I asked/told them to be quiet.

Then third hour I was informed by Scott that my plans for a lecture by the librarian fell through so instead of being in the library I had to come up with plan B. Luckily, I had all of my stuff ready for tomorrow, so I just switched days.

Unfortunately, I had tech issues, and tried to deal with them as best as I could. But the lecture on MLA formatting did not go well at all during fourth hour. Part of it, again, is them refusing to listen to me. I even got frustrated and told them that I was sick of having to stop and wait for them or to try to talk over them and that they need to listen better. But part of me literally just wants to give detentions to every student in that room. Ugh.

Fifth hour did go better, but I couldn’t do everything I wanted because I didn’t have enough time to procure a document camera, so I couldn’t show and go over the student example papers for MLA formatting, but I did pass them around as the students were working on their anthologies. So hopefully they gleaned something.

But I confused myself as I was explaining MLA, so I can only imagine how the kids probably felt. I want to give them a handout or something that easily explains quotes and citations but I’m not sure how to structure it. Any ideas?

The last two days, I was in Springfield at the Illinois Association of Teachers of English (IATE) Conference. It was required by ISU for us, but I’m really glad that I ended up going.

I went to a lot of really great workshops, including one about making Shakespeare (focusing on Romeo and Juliet) fun, which is perfect because I start R&J in two weeks. On Friday, there was also an open discussion forum for student teachers/new teachers where we could go and ask questions to/seek advice from veteran teachers. It was a really educational experience just listening to veteran teachers talk about what’s worked in their classrooms and how to even just get through day-to-day.

I was originally only planning on going Friday, but in the program, I found out that my HS junior English teacher was presenting a workshop today and I absolutely had to go because this teacher is my absolute favorite teacher I ever had and is the reason why I am an English teacher. It was so amazing to see her and hear her talk - and for a moment I felt like I was back in high school (especially since she calls me Ally, which no one, except people from HS calls me). 

But the best part of seeing her? That she was so excited for me to be a teacher. And that she told me to keep in touch and email her in the spring and she will keep her ear to the ground about job openings in the district and in the schools around us and let me know. Plus, she’s the English department chair (and my AP US teacher is the principal) so I have connections all over that building. SCORE.

I need to make it a point when I’m a full-time teacher to go to the IATE and NCTE conferences whenever I can. They’re invaluable; not just for new information, but just being in a building with a bunch of other people who are just as, if not more, energized and excited about teaching is amazing. You leave absolutely feeling like you can change the world, one student at a time. And that’s more important than anything, I think.

Last week, I assigned my freshmen a “Haiku Calendar” where they had to write a single haiku for each month of the year. It’s really not a lot to write, if you remember a haiku is only 3 lines long. 

Well I’ve been working on grading them since I got them yesterday. Today, I read one and was sort of immediately suspect about it since some of the haikus contained words that I honestly do not know the definition of. If I - a voracious reader with a rather large vocabulary - don’t know these words, then chances are a freshman doesn’t.

So I came home tonight and Googled the first haiku, word for word. And what did I find in the amount of time it took to load the search page? EVERY. SINGLE. HAIKU. ON. G’S. PAGE.

G not only just plagiarized one haiku, G plagiarized every single haiku G turned in. I am not prepared to deal with plagiarism, at least not yet. Tomorrow, I will be having a talk with my CT about what he recommends I do, but I’m leaning toward a 0 for sure on the assignment, probable detention and possible letting the principal/dean know. But I want to talk with Scott first, although he’ll probably let me do whatever I think is best.

Welcome to the real world of teaching, I suppose.