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...

It was the first full week of school. I am covering a "vacant class" until they are able to bring in a teacher for the rest of the year. I have three periods of seventh grade English and two periods of eighth grade English. Because of this, I got to do something I've never gotten to do before. I got to go over the syllabus with the students. The next day, the eighth graders had a writing assignment. (The seventh graders did too, but they are way more cooperative than the eighth graders. Good for me, bad for the blog.) They were to write a letter of introduction. It's their first writing assignment of the year. Every day I've tried to have a list of what they'll need for the day written on the board for them. (Some days I'm able to, others not so much.) On this day I had that list up. They needed a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. I explained the assignment. They got to writing. Only about half way through the period, one boy said he was finished. That...

At the heart of much speculative fiction (and fiction in general) is a question. What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out there and see what you make of it. Do with it as you please. If a for-instance is not specified, feel free to interpret that instance as you wish. And if you find this becomes a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a thank you in the acknowledgements.  😉 Have you seen the show Flip or Flop ? What if you had to work with your ex?

Oh my! What a week I've had. You may have noticed that I wasn't around much last week. I got slammed. With everything. And next week doesn't look to be too much better. Apologies in advance. Things should settle in another week or two, but until then, I'm just trying to keep my feet under me. First things first. I went from this... ...to this... ...to this... ...to this... ...last week. They started on Tuesday and finished on Saturday. And so, now it's finally done. Whew. (You may remember this all started in January .) But, as all of this is right above my bed, I spent most of last week displaced in one way or another. The first night I slept on the couch in the living room. The rest of the week I could sleep in my bed, but I had to strip it first thing in the morning and remake it when I got home from work, so the contractor could flip it up towards the wall and out of the way during the day. All the while, half of my bedroom was in the living room and out of the ...

Yesterday I whined about getting stuck with a vacant class. But this wasn't my first rodeo . Even when the sub caller told me it wasn't a vacant class, I prepped for the day as if it was. And that saved my butt. Because while there was a school-wide activity prepped for the first day, there wasn't one for the second. I decided to have the kiddos interview each other. It was a simple activity. I prepped ten questions for them to ask each other. Then I gave them a sentence frame to insert their partner's answers into. Finally, everyone got a chance to read their sentence frames out loud. The seventh graders did very well. The most popular wish was to ask for more wishes. I was surprised how many students considered Alfredo their favorite food. One student told how his partner had gone to Ohio over the summer. The partner clarified that he had actually gone to Idaho. The eighth graders... Yeah. Um. They finished interviewing each other. That was cool. However, we did not ...

When I write next year's end of year post, I get to write this sentence: I did cover the first day of school (and this time, it definitely does count ). The thing about the first day of school is, teachers tend to not miss it. There are very few events that would pull a teacher out of class on that very important day. (One year a teacher took her daughter to start college. Another teacher missed because she was on maternity leave. Those are the only events I can think of.) This means, when one is covering the first day of school, one is generally covering a vacant class. Vacant means there is no teacher assigned. No lesson plans. Nothing set up. Thrown in on the first day with no support... So, when I got the call the day before the first day of school, I asked. "Is this a vacant class?" I was told it wasn't. Okay, so technically it wasn't. In actuality... The official teacher is on a leave of absence. His replacement (long term sub) couldn't start until Mond...

The other day as I was clearing out some old papers, I found some blog posts that I'd never posted. I wrote them down with the intent of putting them on the blog, but then... I suppose something more interesting happened that week. That's my only guess. "But if I get another referral, I'll be kicked out of school." He should have thought of that when he refused to step outside and stay outside when I told him to. "If I get another referral, I'm going to be sent to my dad in Texas. I don't want to live with my dad. He drinks." And yet, when I asked him to stop talking so I could go over the day's assignment, he couldn't manage it. "I can't get another referral. Could you make this a warning?" And what were those three other instructions? The "stop talking"? The "step outside"? The "go back where I told you to go"? And what about continuing ot talk after I said he'd get a referral for disobeyi...