minime mirabile dictu

the kids are talking

2007-12-08T23:59:12Z

two favorite quotes from the previous week of teaching: "This milk tastes like beer." -CM "See you on Monday, Mr. Walker!" -QD, my biggest discipline problem. At some point in time, he decided to man up and stop acting like a baby in my class. ...

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Semester Reflection

2007-12-01T10:52:40Z

I'll let this story stand for my experiences in general: On Friday I broke up my first fight at Simmons. Two kids in my fourth period--my lunch period--were involved. I should have seen the fight coming; while walking back from lunch on Thursd...

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What is something a student has done to make you laugh?

2007-11-17T14:34:54Z

One of my students made me laugh because he missed school for about a month and then showed up one day, not expecting to get back on track, not expecting to learn anything, but really just looking to bide time until he can miss school for another ...

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Success Story

2007-11-10T14:22:23Z

I will roll the past two weeks into one big success story: There exists a program "Future Educators of America," or FEA for short. The FEA is a sort of fraternal, tuition-aiding program that veers high school seniors towards educational careers...

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Classroom Management Update

2007-10-27T06:06:13Z

I want to talk about discipline and rewards separately, so I'll split this blog into two sections: Discipline: Taking Ben's advice, I reviewed classroom management and discipline with my freshmen last week. I don't know if it was the review, o...

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Favorite Students

2007-10-11T03:36:08Z

Nearly all of my seniors would qualify, but I'll choose a freshman to write about instead. CM is one of my favorite students not because he's academically gifted or motivated (since neither, really, is true) but because he can't keep a straight f...

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Failing Students

2007-10-11T03:28:05Z

I teach Englishes I and IV. English IV, almost universally, is an everyday pleasure. Unless something catastrophic happens on the exam tomorrow, none of my seniors will fail this first nine weeks. That bears repeating. NONE of my seniors will ...

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Delta Autumn and the Summer School

2007-09-22T01:30:00Z

As I understand it, I'm supposed to blog about "Delta Autumn," right now, right? If so, let's get to it: I am going to be as blunt and as honest as I can with this blog, and while I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings (though I don't think I wi...

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The Ruby Payne "Tribute to Academic Dishonesty" Blog

2007-08-25T10:25:28Z

I don't necessarily have a lot to say about Ms. Payne's book other than that I think it is first and foremost a moneymaking scheme for her and her company. It takes a rare book to be completely devoid of salient points (the broken clock rule), so...

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The Wong Blog:

2007-08-10T21:27:50Z

Revised (the older Wong blog was no good): Book is good, sometimes starry-eyed, occassionally cloyingly sentimental, and full of lots of nice advice. That being said, our principal showed us a video of Wong in action, and I far prefer his book. ...

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