Uncle John’s Band

I want to start this post by saying “THANK YOU, JERRY! ~~~~~~{@”

Yesterday ended the first real slump I feel like I’ve EVER had!  Every.  Single.  Day last week was a unique struggle that left me feeling progressively more defeated and deflated, and socially isolated, day after day even kind of lasting over the weekend and then on through until Tuesday.  Each day I got up and told myself that it was going to be a good day, but I just never seemed to catch a foothold anywhere!  It felt like I was laboring and investing myself into these awesome lesson plans, and the students totally deny the learning opportunity.  They didn’t not work, but they definitely didn’t meet my expectations, and I feel like I let them bomb their essays-I knew they weren’t ready, but I was MAD.  And, hearking back from across the ages came a bumper sticker slogan: “Has anger solved any of your other problems?”

The only way I really found the courage to face the next day was the song Uncle John’s Band by the Grateful Dead, whose reminder “The worst days are the hardest days, don’t you worry anymore, because when life looks like easy street there is danger at your door.”  then they urge you to “think this through with me, let me know your mind, who- oa what I want to know is are you kind?”

Well Jerry, the answer is yes.  I am kind.

I’ve recently bonded with an older teacher at school who has this slogan: “Lesson plans are the ultimate work of fiction.”

I took that advice too, and have started to care less about the week’s plans and more about the day’s plans.  I have found that this helps me immensely!  I only really use the lesson plans as a guide now, and let each section of class take an appropriate amount of time based on the pace the students are moving–that is one thing that you really can’t change.  It’s not a matter of motivation at a point, I’ve just kind of begun to let them lead me a little.  I’ve been overzealous.  I need to allow them to work at a pace where they can keep up.  FOR GOD SAKES MAN!  THIS ISN’T COLLEGE!  Letting go of the weekly planning sheet has really helped me to relax, and thank GOD.  The only time i worry about them now is on sundays, so I can have the plans ready to turn into the office.

This weekend I got more candy for the stash, I get in moods where I love giving out candy, and my supplies dwindle quickly.  Plus I eat about as much candy as I give out, and after many trials, I have found that yes, you CAN have too much candy.  It had been a long time since I’d learned that lesson.  We kind of pigged out on starburst in my last hour speech class, and seriously lost at least 20 minutes to overwhelming giggles.  Then I had my sugar crash. Oh, Lord!  Rough.

I feel like I’m starting to get through to my students now, too.  I’ve nearly straightened out the class distractors, helped several kids get their grades out of the pits, and it feels like they’re listening – and that’s awesome!  I made sitting in the back row against the rules – isn’t that great?  The rule is you have to fill all the frontmost desks first, and only when the front row is full can you move to the next one.  The students actually SAID that they could see better in the front, and were shocked at the change in perspective!

I’ve started writing notebooks with the freshmen, loving it!  I got a lot of great sources from writingfix.com, we had great fun learning about subjects, predicates, and adverbs today with this great who/what/where/when random sentence generator!  then they practice moving the adverbs to different places in their sentences and saw how it changed the emphasis of their sentences, BINGO!  I’m definitely taking them through all six traits, just you watch me!

Sophomores are finishing up creating their own utopias as an end-of-unit assessment for The Giver, a book they all LOVED!  Seriously-a parent told me at conferences that her daughter said it was uninteresting, and the next time I saw her, she told me she had changed her mind and it was cool now!  We really latched onto the idea of “the pill” as a method of MIND CONTROL.  They were all appalled!  Next we’re going to do a class research project on the year 2012 (the year of their graduation).  There is a new movie coming out about one theory (starring John Cusack, I believe), and there are a lot of people making conjectures as to what the significance of that date actually is, so we’re going to have fun looking at that stuff starting next Tuesday!

The juniors just finished making their illustrated Pit and the Pendulum, we’re moving onto The Raven next, then Fall of the House of Usher (all in their lit books) as a part of a month-long unit on Edgar Allen Poe to coincide with the Wichita’s big read selection of Tales of Mystery and Horror.  Also a teacher offered to burn me a copy of the Alan Parsons Project.  I’m really getting excited for this!  I think I can do a unit on the Spanish Inquisition soon, they were really shocked to learn about how these people justified their torture.  And so eerily relevant…

Seniors are going to finally be through all the introductory material for Hamlet… They’re really getting excited for it!  The best part is that they and I both agree that the information in the introduction is boring, yet relevant.  I’m happy that I have all those generic Shakespeare resources from Julius Caesar… I made them that way, of course (ha ha).  This lesson is going to write itself!

The forensics kids are happy that I gave them more time to continue revising their oratorys, they were having so much trouble memorizing them, and they still needed a lot of work, and we WERE going to have to meet tomorrow, on our day off, to get them recorded.  This way we all win.

there’s more, but I’m gonna save it.  I’m HUNGRY!