Happy New Year!!

(end of message)

New Year's Eve Plans

If you are still drawing blanks for the kinds of debauchery you will be participating in tomorrow, here is a list of 57 New Year's Eve events ongoing in the bay area, all for under $20.

And if you are not a teacher, maybe you can afford the NYE events happening in SF on this other list, tickets ranging from $40 to $400 each.

Virtual Wishing Wall

About 34 hours left of 2007. Now's the time to come up with wishes and goals for the new year. You can submit these wishes to the Times Square virtual wishing wall, and they will be printed on the confetti that falls in New York City at midnight tomorrow. Here's one way to make those wishes come true (maybe?).

The Gymnasium

Penises everywhere. Sitting in a damp, sweaty locker room surrounded by walking, wrinkled prunes of men with graying hair and glasses—whom, did I mention, are naked—is not how I envisioned adulthood to be like.

At least put on your underwear, Mr. Geriatric, when you raise your right leg and firmly plant your foot on the bench near me to stretch your hamstrings, your toes wiggling with dreams of past alacrity.

I lose focus when I come here, and supposedly I come here to find it.

The college gymnasium wasn’t like this, no. We rabid brainiacs staved off all those 50-plus cake candle bearers with our shiny skin pulled taut across our cheeks. The towel racks? Ours. The handball courts? Youth-owned and operated.

Life is different with the elderly in my life, baring all. College wasn’t like this. I miss it.

Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas Eve, and best wishes to you and yours on this adjunct holiday and the more important ones to come.

Last Quiz of 2007

When my students saw the first multiple-choice question and its answers,

"What has the information necessary for making more cells?

a. DNA or b. Mr. Smyr"

they laughed blissfully, half smitten with joy that they found their teacher trapped in a test question, half cocky that they knew better not to bubble him in.


My anxiety, however, kicked in when they got to the next question,

"What are all living things made of?

a. Cells or b. Peanut Butter"

and didn't flinch at all. Motionless. Steady hands. Furrowed brows.

Reading

I need another list. This list doesn't involve school at all. I need to read more to write better, harder, faster, stronger. Someone tell me something good to read, anything. I probably haven't read it yet.

Writing

Upon further introspection whilst lesson planning, I have come to the conclusion that I want to be a writer when I grow up.

How does one become a writer? Google tells me I just need to write. So, I guess I'll do that.

Right after I plan tomorrow.

1st Period

Me: What's wrong, David?

David: *Staring at his desk with his head on his arms*

"..."

"Are you having a bad day?"

"..."

"You were smiling and happy to play the game 5 minutes ago."

"..."

"Are you mad at me?"

"..."

"Well, alright. I'll come back to see if you want to play in a few minutes."

*5 minutes of game time later*

Me: "Are you feeling better David?"

David: "..."

Jenny: *Raises her hand*

"Mr. Suh-meeer, David is mad because you didn't call on him when he had the answer to your question."

David: *A shocked and embarrassed look flutters across his face*

"Jenny don't tell him!!"



My kids are adorable. They are 6-year-olds disguised as teenagers.

No time for titles

* As a new teacher, I've witnessed my fair share of teaching advice slash refrains, both good and bad. One of the bad: "All students can behave well, you just have to teach them how." A noble phrase to rally the troops toward in theory, but a fine mess of bullshit when followed in the classroom. All kids can behave well, if you vary your definition of "all" and "behave" and certainly "well".

Out of the standard 30 kids in a class, you're bound to have kids that don't speak English well, or are emotionally troubled, or are taking medication, or are pregnant, or hate your guts, or live in an alternate reality. Having them all behave in a certain way is just not going to happen. You have to alter your expectations for kids. Lowering your expectations for troubled kids shouldn't be considered bad if your expectations for them-- to act the same way as all the other kids--were infeasible to begin with.

* Another fun one: "You don't need a variety of ways to track and reward good behavior and academics, you just need (insert awesome tracking idea here)." Crap, crap, CRAP.

There is no silver bullet in education, and it does beginning teachers a disservice to tell them such. I have about 4 different ways to follow my kids' improvement in behavior and study skills and 4 different ways to reward them, and each one bridges the gap between the cantankerous 22-year-old teacher at the helm and just a subset of his students. Not every kid likes every one of my ideas. Shocking.

I need to put my eggs in different baskets to maximize the number of kids I motivate and engage to do better in class. It's the same way with direct teaching strategies: kids learn in different ways and so they need teachers to use different modalities (visual, verbal, interpersonal, musical, etc.) in their lesson plans to reach out to more kids. Always giving lectures or always teaching directly from the book is not appropriate, and neither is relying on just 1 type of classroom management plan.

All my kids (and I) want for Christmas...

...is a new color laser printer.

Check out my new proposal, "Give Me a Color Printer to Use & My ELs Will Move the Earth!", where I ask for teaching supplies (printer and toner cartridges) and donors like YOU are given the chance to help pay for it!

I just put up this new proposal and already $300 got funded. I am so stoked about this website!! Make our Holiday wishes come true and check it out!

***

My other proposal, "$2 $4 $6 $8, I Need Funds to Laminate, for ELs! ELs! ELs!!", is still posted and waiting for funding ($72 so far!).

Moment of Silence

Stanfurd wins Big Game, capping Cal's collapse