Law of Gravity

I'm slowly getting up to speed in this middle school English class. During the first full week (the first week of school was just Thursday and Friday), one of the major things I worked on was establishing some sort of routine. I don't have a lot of resources. There weren't many supplies left in the room from last year. (I've been slowly acquiring things. I learned who the keeper of the dry erase markers and paper clips is. So, I've gotten a few necessary supplies thus far.) The one thing the room did have is a working projector. And the teacher in there from last year left behind his laptop. Well, it's the school's laptop, but he didn't return it, so I commandeered it. But the laptop was buggy. There was some antiviral software that needed to be renewed, and getting logged in was a trial. I got help from the technology person, and things seemed to be working. The first couple days the computer asked for a restart a few times. I suppose since the computer...

"Friday! It's movie day!" Last block of the day. Second semester eleventh grade English. Mr. G had been out Thursday as well. The reason was mysterious--confusing texts to the summer school principal. Sudden absence. No plans... Movie day? I'm down with that, provided that they're not lying. (If we watched a movie every time a kiddo claimed the teacher had promised them a movie, all I would do all day every day is watch movies. Seriously. At least one student every day  claims this.) But, even if I had wanted to, I could not do a movie. I did not have a computer to hook up to the projector. (Once upon a time, every classroom had a TV and VCR. Then a DVD player. A couple years ago, all of them were removed. Now every classroom has a projector installed with speakers in the ceiling. One can hook up a DVD player to the projector--I've done this a couple times--but most of the time teachers just hook up a computer and stream something.) I do not carry a computer w...

"Would you like to buy my AirPods ?" Tuesday. Period four. World history (sophomores). It was day two of a week-long assignment. Alan only asked me about the AirPods (and gave me the hard sell) when I questioned why he wasn't in his seat. He explained that he had to sell them. He was looking for a buyer. Alan gave me a sob story about needing money to contribute to his mom for *mumble mumble mumble* . While this may be true, the whole scenario played out less like a needing-the-money and more like a game Alan played. In a middle school class, this would have been chaos. But the older kiddos have learned (mostly) to not be distracted by such silliness. Alan showed off his ware to a friend. He demonstrated its features. The friend looked at it, but decided against. He tried a couple other of his classmates. At one point, Alan even went over to a girl on the other side of the room when she expressed interest. He returned, his AirPods still in his possession. Did he do any w...

Integrated math 1 for eighth graders (read: advanced eighth grade math). They had a test. The whole district is adopting a new textbook that has an online component. When I covered that co-taught class a couple weeks back , one of the days the class was logging into the website for the first time. So, I wasn't unfamiliar with what the kiddos were doing. But new programs mean glitches... The whole class logged in and got started on their test. Then one boy raised his hand. There was no test for him to access. He explained that he had switched classes, so he was still enrolled online in the teacher's second period class. He logged into that, but there was no test there. I don't have access to the teacher's view, so there wasn't a lot I could do... It took me longer than it should have to remember that I could email the teacher. (I mean, seriously, I email teachers all the time about the crazy that goes on in class . Why it took that long for it to occur to me that I c...