Keeping It Classy

On Friday I made the juniors draw pictures of themselves. Of course, they had questions...

Boy #1: Do you want a full body picture or a face shot?
Boy #2: Hehehe, face shot.
Me: Oh my god, shut it down. Let's not be 15 year old boys right now.

At least they're not Edward or Jacob...yet.

It's the third week of school. The 14th day, to be exact. I should know kids' names by now.

Spoiler alert: I don't.

(To be fair, I should know them all since parents who had babies in 1994-1995 only named their kids Jake, Matt, and Sam, and then the gods of scheduling put them all in one of my classes.)

Let's be honest, isn't that really what Dr. Dre was talking about?

I love the website "Better Book Titles" so much. When I first discovered it, I spend a good hour going through all the past entries and laughing until I cried. Today's entry is especially awesome because my kids finished The Crucible yesterday. This is clearly a better title.

Source

A "Day Off"

I'm taking the day off today to grade. My co-workers were very quick to point out that it's not taking a day off if you're just going to grade. Yeah, I know. I felt a little bad at first because today is day 13, and maybe it's too early to take a day off. But, let's be real here, day 13 is also too early to be drowning in essays and various other assignments that need to be graded.

I'm currently waiting for my laptop to finish charging, then I'm going to take myself down to the local coffee shop (Starbucks, have you heard of it?) and grade until my computer runs out of battery, because we all know what happens when I attempt to grade at home. I'm grading essays online this year with an online service our district has purchased, which has been kind of awesome. No, it doesn't grade the essays for me, I'm still doing all the work, but it means kids don't have to print out paper, and I can say if it's not turned in online by a certain time, they don't get credit. I haven't figured out if it's faster than paper grading, but it seems to pretty great so far. The main thing it helps with is keeping me from fixing every punctuation, grammar, or spelling error. I tend to overwrite on essays. Now I just drag the "spelling error" tag over the word and they can figure it out.

Of course taking a day off is never really taking a day off. Teachers don't get to really get away. Before 8 this morning I'd already gotten a phone call from another English teacher with a question and a text from one of my co-coaches about an issue with a student.

It's my life, and I kind of love it.

EDIT: My Starbucks was full! Don't people have jobs, or a place to be? OK, too judgy. I ended up at a cafe down the street that also has free wireless and is also full of people on laptops and iPads. I feel so hip, which isn't a good thing.

Although, to be fair, that's what makes me a good teacher.

Last night was parent night, which basically consists of us going through the daily schedule and parents get to sit in your class for 10 minutes while you rapidfire information at them about you, your class, and whatever else you can fit in.

I hate parent night. I hate talking to large groups of people. OK, I know, that's ironic, considering that's what I spend my days doing, but hear me out. Talking to kids is WAY different from talking to adults. I'm smarter than kids. Yeah, it sounds terrible, but it's true. I know that I'm the boss in the room and that they are all my subjects. It doesn't help that, in real life, I'm really shy. My students refuse to believe this, but it's true. So talking to a bunch of strangers is awkward and I hate it.

But, the thing is, I'm selling myself short. Because I actually do a really good job on parent night. I'm energetic and fun and try to be the person the kids see everyday.

My favorite part of parent night last night was when, after a junior class, a parent came up and asked me, "Are you always like this?"

My reply? "Uh, you mean adorable, super caffeinated, and very very funny? Yes, sadly this is what I'm like all the time."

The parent responded, "Then that's fantastic! I'll never have to worry about my kid falling asleep with all that energy!"

Oh lady, if only.

Being older doesn't mean being more intelligent, obviously.

B is currently finishing his Master's, and he sent me the following email:

To: M
From: B

Subject: Are grad students ridiculous too?

From an essay: "when they tried to arrest him for a mister meaner charge..."

The Crucible is super romantic, you know.

There are currently 6 boys the floor of my classroom, cuddled up together, watching The Crucible. They were all holding hands for a bit until I told them I didn't care who they held hands with and I support all kinds of love.

Sometimes this is my life.

Granola Bars: America's Most Deadly Food

Yesterday in first hour I was hungry and I keep a couple of boxes of granola bars in my classroom for this very reason. When I'm hungry, I'm cranky, and no one wants to be in my classroom when I'm cranky. The main issue is that all my granola bars have peanuts in them, and I always have kids in class who have peanut allergies. So I figured that the best way to handle the situation was to ask the kid if he was going to die if I ate a granola bar in front of him.

Kid: As long as you don't stab me with the granola bar, I'll be fine.
Me: I don't even know how that's possible...but challenge accepted!

I really like my senior classes so far, which means my day is always off to a great start (with the exception of yesterday's skirt ripping incident and me blaming desks for everything that was going wrong in my life).

Happy Friday, everyone!

You know it's going to be a bad day when...

...you rip your favorite skirt on one of the classroom desks. Seriously. This is the third item of clothing I've ripped, including a skirt I loved and a dress I made.

We have these beauties...

You see what happens is the kids rip of that bottom side bar because it annoys them, which leaves a piece of really sharp metal sticking out of the side. So when I walk by in my super cute twirly skirt, it catches on the metal and rips a giant L-shaped hole in it. I may have, at that point, howled some made-up swear words and thrown a fit. OK, no may have, I did.

It's day 9, when are things going to start getting better?

Rules For Emailing the Teacher

1. Spell words correctly. Like Patricia Clarkson, who plays the mom in Easy A says, "Everything has spell check these days".

2. Don't forget your apostrophes. Words like "didn't" are contractions, which means "didnt" is incorrect. For clarification, see #1.

3. Use punctuation. Sentences need periods.

4. Capitalize words, especially at the beginning of sentences. Also, you should change the default name on your email account so your first and last name are capitalized. You're 17, put on your big kid pants and join the rest of the tech savvy world.

5. Make sure your sentence, despite misspelled words and lack of apostrophes, punctuation, and periods, makes sense. This is a key element in having your teacher understand what in the heck you're talking about.

6. Don't say ridiculous things like, you can't do this, or you don't know how. You do know how. We spent 10 minutes on Monday talking about how to. The internet is not a mystical, magical wonderland. You know how to attach a document and upload it on a website. It's 2011. Enjoy it.

7. Lastly, don't email a teacher at 9:15 at night and demand a response. Your teacher will not respond to demands and in the morning will say something like, "Oh, I didn't check my email last night, sorry.", because your teacher has already told you that she doesn't check her work email at home, because this year she's decided there should be some sort of separation between work and home life, in order to actually have a life outside school.

Some day my students will funny again, instead of awful and full of bad decisions.

I feel like I'm doing a lot of whining this year so far, but I promise the funny will come back tomorrow!!

Today my seniors had a personal statement due. We spent the last week and a half talking about college essays, which has actually been pretty fun. It's a new unit for the seniors this year and it was a great way to start the year. We spent a lot of time just talking in class about different topics from different universities, which was awesome because it let me get to know the kids. For the final essay, I gave them a list of topics from actual universities to choose from. They had to write a minimum three paragraph response to one of the topics.

Easy, right? Apparently not!

We use a program that the students have to upload their papers to, which catches online plagiarism. It's a beautiful thing that makes my life significantly easier because it does things like point out that one student took most of their paper form Yahoo Answers. Seriously, YAHOO ANSWERS?! Yahoo Answers is the stupid part of the internet. If you took all the internets and had to choose the place where the dumbest stuff is written, it would all get pinpointed to Yahoo Answers.

I'm not even mad. There's no point in getting mad because it's just going to give me wrinkles and heart disease. Instead, I'm disappointed. I mean, it's the eight day of school and there are already kids plagiarizing? What does this mean for the rest of the school year? I'm still trying to be hopeful that everything is going to get better, but I'm a bit disheartened right now.

Tell me something good, my friends!

My death glare is more effective than yours, kid.

Note: Kids packing up early is annoying.

Example: Kid in class yesterday packs all of his stuff. There are still 10 minutes left until the bell. I ask him why he's packed up. He replies, "Because I'm going to finish my work at home." To which I reply, "Maybe you should go ahead and get back to work." To which he replies, "Yeah, I'm going to finish it at home." To which I reply, "Yeah, let me reword that: unpack your stuff and get back to work." He gave me the death glare and opened his textbook back up.

Result: I win.

(A friend/coworker of mine, when kids are being rude or just talking back, will walk up to the kid, extend her hand and say, "Hi, I'm Mrs. -, have we met? I'm in charge here." She's extra sassy.)

The State of the Union, Thus Far

Last week sucked. I'm not trying to throw myself a pity party or get anyone to feel bad for me, because most of you are teachers, so you understand how sometimes the first week isn't so great. Your feet hurt, you have to retrain your bladder, going to bed at 9:30 (...or 8:15) becomes the norm, and you cherish the five minutes between classes where you can take a breath and relax.

I miss the class of 2011. I don't know what it was about those kids, but I loved them. Walking into my first senior class last Monday broke my heart a little bit because the kids I had had so much fun with over the past two years weren't there. It was a hard adjustment, but one I'm hoping will become easier as time wears on.

I'm not impressed with the class of 2013, which are my current juniors. I was told by sophomore teachers not to expect genius, but mostly at this point I'm concerned about their lack of maturity. I have a bevy of thoroughly obnoxious boys who are hellbent on making my life as miserable as possible. Maybe I'm being too harsh on them, but oh well. I'm a firm believer in the Magical Change that obnoxious sophomores go through during the summer and they turn into awesome juniors who are hilarious and smart and fun. These boys have yet to go through that change, so they're still acting like sophomores, and I think sophomores are the most miserable people on the planet (followed closely by middle schoolers, then by super close-minded conservatives).

I think I'm just spoiled because I've had a really great last few years. Everything, other than a few hiccups, has gone swimmingly. I'm trying to change my bad attitude and give everyone a second chance. This week is about making it fun, about getting the kids to open up, and to see what they're capable of.

So I'm resolved to have a better week, which is already looking up as R just brought me a container of chocolate chip cookies courtesy of his super awesome wife. Cookies and coffee for breakfast? Yes please. Hi, I'm an adult.

Has anyone else started work? How's it going so far?

Also, I'm pretty sure there's a Ryan Adams song in there somewhere...anyone?

I listen to everything kids say. It may look like I'm grading, or on my computer, but I'm listening. I like to know what's going on in my class. So when the kids are working on a creative writing and are chatting, I'm listening. And when they're talking about inappropriate stuff, my ears automatically perk up. For example, this is what happened in my last class of the day today (there is foul language ahead, and I apologize in advance, I try very hard not to swear on my blog)...

Kid: ...and she had never been drunk before, so she got super fucked up and it was craaaaaazy.
Me, looking up from my computer: DUDE. Just because I'm over here doesn't mean I can't hear you. Remember how 10 minutes ago I said we need to keep it appropriate so I don't have to visit counseling today? Appropriate includes your conversation. So you can talk about how drunk and fucked up she was in another 20 minutes when my class ends, but until then you need to shut that down.

Everything stopped and it was liked all the air was sucked out the room. They just stared at each other and I heard lots of whispers of "Did she just say that?!" Yeah, yeah I did. Deal with it. Sometimes I need to illustrate a point. And I can guarantee you that those boys will never disrespect me in my classroom again.

So glad I'm not a biology teacher.

Sometimes there are no words to describe the ridiculousness of teenage boys, so I have resort to just giving you a conversation. On the first day we went around and said what our favorite animal is, as just a get-to-know-you activity.

Me: What's your favorite animal?
Kid: A bear.
Me: Any type of bear in particular?
Kid: A snow bear.
Me: Um...that doesn't exist.
Kid: Yes it does. They're white and they live at the South Pole.
Me: I'm going to assume you mean polar bears, which live in the Arctic, which is north.
Kid: I don't think that's right.
Me: It is.
Kid: Fine. I'm googling it later.
Me: Awesome, make sure you let me know what it says.

Shockingly he never told me about his findings. Another kid later said his favorite animal was a snow tiger, (uh, white tiger?) which also doesn't exist. Class of 2013, you already make me tired.

I also would like all the jobs and all the money.

Super Awesome Rachel (I feel as though that should be her official name) over at Progressively Unnecessary posted this today and I loved it.

Source: http://forlackofabettercomic.com/?id=35

This is just to say...

I hate shoes. And I miss summer. Already.

Aaaaaaand we're back!

I survived the day. For the most part. Not shockingly junior boys are still obnoxious at the beginning of the year. On the other hand, I know a few juniors boys who are getting ready to be taken down a peg! To quote my mom, "If anyone can take them down, [I] can". Hell yes.

It didn't help that it was forty billion degrees in my classroom, so even though I tried to look nice, my hair was up in a ponytail within 15 minutes. Also I wore hurty shoes, so by the end of the day I was in flip flops. What can I say? I'm a classy lady.

The best parts of my day were both the beginning and end of the day. My friend C's daughter K started at the school-run preschool today. This is exciting for us all because K is awesome and I'm glad that she'll get to come visit more. This morning C brought her by my first class to say hi and give me a hug, which made the start of my day infinitely better. Even better was the conversation we had this afternoon. K left Bunny, her favorite stuffed animal, at school, so C called me and asked me to pick it up on my way out and drop it off, as she lives half a mile from me. So I dropped Bunny off and stayed for a bit to chat. K was playing with Legos in her room, and C and I were sitting on the floor with her. I made a comment that I wanted to drink all the beer in the world (which is true), and that led to this conversation...

K: Beer is for grownups, M.
Me: I'm aware of that. Aren't I a grownup?
K, thinking for a moment: You're short.
Me: Does that preclude me from being a grownup? What kind of logic is this?
K: I don't know. Mommy, I'm hungry.

My favorite thing about K is that I can talk to her like she's a big kid and she just goes with it.

Tomorrow will be better.

It's that time again...

This time tomorrow I'll be talking to a new batch of kids. Maybe I'm in denial, but it doesn't feel real yet. I still haven't made a final decision on an outfit, which is really the most important part of the first day. I bought a few dresses at Old Navy last week, so I'm trying to decide between them. Yes, my life is hard.

We had three teacher days last week in which to get stuff done and whatnot. There was a new attendance/grading program to navigate, so I spent a lot of time attempting to figure that out.

My favorite part of the teacher days was Wednesday when I stopped by a friend's classroom. He is in a different department, but his classroom is in the English hallway. We chatted for a while and then he noted, "You know, you're kind of the odd man out in your department now, since you're not married and you don't have a baby". Wow, thanks. Want to talk about how I turned 30 this year too? And how my longest relationship is with my 6 year old cat? Just because 5 of my coworkers had babies last year doesn't mean I have to. Jeez.

Now I'm just going to relax for the day and pretend that summer isn't ending. My day will consist of lounging on the couch, lattes, the scones I made last night, and season four of Dexter (which I'm totally addicted to, thanks to one of my co-workers). All you teachers who don't go back until the end of the month, party extra hard for me over the next few weeks!

Some good stuff before the madness begins.

Years ago, in the 2005-2006 school year to be exact, back when I was a little bitty 24 year old, I had an awesome student. In fact, let's call him Awesome. Awesome was, and remains still, one of my favorite students. He was just a nice kid who tried reasonably hard, but wasn't super nerdy. He was in a myriad of bands, one which he left at the end of high school and then they became pretty big. Sometimes I see them on MTV and it's sort of surreal that that could have been him. I was the first person to get their first demo CD, as Awesome gave it to me the day after they made it, for my birthday. Yeah, I'm sort of being a hipster here, deal with it.

Anyway, at the end of his junior year, Awesome had a good grade, a 94.6% in fact. To exempt the final though, students need at 95%. As I liked him a lot, I look his 94.6% under consideration. I gave him a sheet of paper with "Give me 5 reasons why I should let you exempt the final with a 94.6%" written at the top. He did me one better and gave me 6 reasons. Today I found that paper in my desk drawer, because I sometimes I need to remember that there are good kids out there who deserve a break sometimes.

"Give me 5 reasons why I should let you exempt the final with a 94.6%"

1. Because I LOVELOVELOVELOVELOVE you! You are the first teacher that has actually cared or taken an interest in me or the band enough to come to a show AND buy merch. [I bought a shirt.]

2. because I've done pretty well in this class for that you and I know that if I had to take the final I'm confident I still could do well.

3. I stay focused in class, even when it gets rowdy I still work very hard and do my best to maintain the best grades I possible can.

4. I never sleep during movies that you give us the chance to watch in class. [Wow, that was well phrased. I like that is wasn't "the shitty movies you make us watch".]

5. I try not to get you frustrated, I can tell when you're having a rough day and I know how it feels. i know you don't want to have to control nearly 80 kids and keep them in line.

6. Because this has been one of my favorite classes in high school and you and Mrs.- have been royally awesome to me and I respect both of you a lot.

Finding this made my day. I'm trying to get ready because we start on Monday. My first class starts at 7:18. Say a little prayer for me.

I'm writing this to avoid summer house cleaning.

This morning I had lunch with some former students, including Feste, this guy, this guy, and this girl (those last two are also known this couple). They are all hilarious and I had a wonderful time. I'm going to miss them a whole lot when I go back to school next week. Yeah, NEXT WEEK. I report on Wednesday for three teacher days and then classes start Monday. Can I even handle that?

On a completely different note, I think I need these stamps. Nerdy and awesome, right?