No manner of luck at all...

You know how sometimes you have a week where absolutely nothing seems to be going your way? I'm going on a month of that feeling.

My mom passed away in late August and everything seemed to be going alright immediately after that. I took a day off from my internship before discovering that I was going to go stir crazy if I just sat in my room letting myself be sad the entire time. So I went back to interning and the first week was fine.

Then I started getting sick. At first it was bronchitis. Then it was some sort of cold that manifested into congestion so bad that I couldn't hear because my head was so stuffed up.

Just as I was getting over the sick part, I ended up in the hospital emergency room with extreme stomach pain caused by my accidentally aggravating an ulcer by eating spicy food. I was in enough pain that I thought the problem was my appendix. Turns out, I'm just too stressed. Quelle surprise.

And because that wasn't enough, my boyfriend broke up with me. That I'm getting over rather well thanks to the sagely words of Miranda Lambert. I have simply fixed my make up and moved on.

But just because the universe can't leave well enough alone, I was just informed (late yesterday evening) that I have to re-take a course that is required for my teaching certification because I had to pass with a B- or better. I'd like you to note that my professor gave me a C+. On top of that course, I was told this morning that I must also retake ANOTHER course where my final grade was not satisfactory for certification. Of course, nobody at UNH bothered to mention this requirement to me while I was an undergraduate.

Ah, well. C'est la vie, non?

As far as my class is concerned, things are going well. We've finished with King Arthur (but boy, I could spend AGES on that topic) and are moving on to The Canterbury Tales. I'm mixing up this unit in that I'll also be providing essay-writing instruction because they've finally been assigned an actual essay to write. I plan on modeling Penny Kittle's conference techniques because, having seen those in the past, I think that with the group I've got (two very high performing students, two low performing students, and four average students) this method would be the most beneficial.

I gave them a handout on MLA style and one with advice on how to make an essay truly readable. I got both from the UNH Connors Writing Center for free off their website. Definitely an awesome resource for any teacher who may be trying to teach the dreaded formal essay to their students. I've got rough drafts from most of them right now that I'm going to look over and see what I can use to teach a few mini-lessons on grammar and style. Today, I'll be putting all of the drafts up on the projector screen (with names missing, of course) to do a group conference and critique.

Now, that critique shouldn't take our entire class period (today is an odd block day so the kids have all their odd period classes for 100 minutes instead of the standard 50 and tomorrow they'll have only their even period classes). Toward the end of the class, I'm going to introduce them to The Canterbury Tales via "The Prologue" and give them each their assigned character. Each student will have one character from the tales and, in addition to the class readings of "The Prologue" and "The Wife of Bath's Tale", will have to read their character's tale. After they've done this, they'll do a short project (it should only take a couple of days) where they'll create a "Fakebook" profile of the character they've been assigned using information they've gathered through the readings.

I'm slightly worried about assigning the essay (a long-term project) and the profile (much shorter term) at the same time, but I think they can handle it.

PM

Here's a few of my favorite students...

I've met quite a few students who are... well... interesting. Nearly all of them just serve to make me smile and liven up a class that might otherwise struggle to be interesting. I've changed the names of students because I obviously can't tell you who they actually are.

Anna-Maria. She's the ultimate Celebrity Buzz/Gawker/TMZ/Perez-style girl. The class she's in is writing Anglo-Saxon boasts using a celebrity (or a teacher) as a subject. She's writing from Kanye West's perspective and her effort is turning out to be rather hilarious, if a bit tacky. In a discussion today about death, she announced that she wanted to be buried with all of her money--actual physical bills and coins--like a "true G". She wants her family and friends to cry at the "pure swag" she'll be a display of in her casket. Particularly, she wants to be holding a bouquet made of $20. And, to top it all off, she wants her kids to dig her up after she's been buried in order to claim their inheritance.

Marilyn. She dresses like a pop-goth 1950s pin-up and wants to be a housewife. Tattoos, piercings, and a love of children's stories. She's a character and she makes every class interesting.

Seth. He reminds me a little bit of a wanna-be Jonah Hill/Michael Cera combo. He tries too hard to get the girls to like him and to get the boys to think he's an OK guy. He's constantly inviting the kids in his class to movie parties complete with "bacon tacos". I don't know if these are actually tacos with bacon on them or if it's something else entirely, but the rest of the class seems to love them. He had to have his picture taken the other day for the vo-tech school IDs and came into his class back here at the regular school wearing nothing but his jeans, shoes, a red vest, and a polka-dot bow tie. One of the girls he's always trying to impress asked him what prompted the outfit and he explained that it was for the picture he had to take. She asked him why he chose the outfit he did and his answer was--direct quote--"because literally yolo".

Liz. She's in the same class as Seth and she LOVES Charlie Chaplin. She's a pretty big film enthusiast and she's always popping into the conversation to offer a comment on the films they're discussing in class. She doesn't do much that's really out of the ordinary, but her enthusiasm for movies reminds me so much of a good friend I had in high school who is studying film production in college now. They've even got similar hair cuts.

I've got two kids in my class that always make me smile when they start talking with each other. Thomas and Tom. An anglophile and a jock. They should have nothing in common, but they have some great conversations and debates in class. Not always on topic, but they're amusing and tangentially related to what they're supposed to be talking about. The class wouldn't be the same without one or the other.

In other news, the sun just came out. I haven't seen it in a couple of days so this is really nice. I had to wade through the street to get from my boyfriend's dorm to my own last night.

Struggle

I got my first call from a parent the other day. I didn't take the call, my CT did because I haven't given my number out to students. Here's the background:

I was not in school on Monday because I was fighting off the worst day of my Crud (which appears to be some form of bronchitis) and to get by I pretty much had to put myself in a cough syrup coma or I'm pretty sure I would have started coughing up blood. My CT filled in for me in class. Monday afternoon was when the call came in. The parent said the student described me as rude and abrupt and that the student was confused about some of my grading policies.

Now, as my CT explained it to me, "rude and abrupt" probably means I'm just moving through the material too fast and I should slow it down. And she's right. I did Beowulf in two weeks. Which for college prep-level kids is a bit too fast. I should have taken three, maybe four. But I can't take it back now. I can only learn from my mistake and do it differently in the future. Which I did immediately. I re-did my lesson plan for yesterday's class throughout the day and made it more of a review of the text and discussion instead of reading the next Arthur story like I had planned. And from the looks of it, it went well. I'm hoping that these changes (which I will continue to make to my existing lessons) solve the problems this student is facing.

I also really hope that my CT is right and that "rude and abrupt" means I'm moving too fast and not that this student thinks I'm rude to the class. I don't think I am, but I will admit that I am a bit more informal as a teacher than many of the teachers they're probably used to having. The vernacular that we traditionally teach kids with is so far from the vernacular they use in every day life that sometimes they have difficulty understanding it. So I tend to try and break things down into a more understandable phrasing for the students. Maybe my candor could be perceived as rude? I'm not sure.

As for today, I'm doing what could be the most fun lesson I have planned for the entire Anglo-Saxon unit. We've read three of the Arthurian stories--"How Arthur Got His Sword", "The Death of Arthur", and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"--and now we're going to watch some pop culture adaptations of these legends: pieces of Disney's "The Sword in the Stone" and Monty Python's "The Holy Grail" and then the entirety of the first episode of the BBC's "Merlin". The students are going to be comparing and contrasting what they observe about the characters, relationships, settings, and themes in the pop culture adaptations to what they've read in Sir Thomas Mallory's texts.

At the same time, they're learning about the Medieval Romance as a genre which will lead into their first paper: analyzing the three pieces we've read in the early canon of BritLit using the Medieval Romance traits. Students will have to make an argument for either Beowulf, the Arthurian Legends, or "The Wife of Bath's Tale" (which we haven't gotten to yet).

Oh, and we need to work on our vocabulary.

Back to School Crud

If you've ever known anybody who attended any sort of convention, you've probably heard about ConCrud. Well, I've found something that's worse: Back-to-School Crud. I started not feeling well on Tuesday or Wednesday. Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time coughing. Today it's coughing and nausea. Whatever I've got is some sort of mixture of the common cold and a minor flu. I didn't have a class to teach yesterday which was probably a good thing since I probably would have coughed my way through it and been completely incomprehensible. Today will be my first experience teaching while under the weather.

I can see the Crud in the students, too. There's a few walking around with those little packets of tissues and some with bags of cough drops at the ready. I'm seeing more travel size bottles of hand sanitizer than ever before as kids desperately try to keep the germs away. I think I'm getting it twice as bad because I moved back into University housing so my Crud is a mixture of high school Crud and dorm Crud. I have rarely looked forward to a weekend more than these past two weeks.

Teaching just wipes you out. There's a tremendous amount of strain put on teachers (and students!) when it comes to meeting educational responsibilities and that's definitely a part of why the Crud comes back year after year. Most high school teachers are up before the sun (my alarm goes off at 5:30 which is later than most of the other teachers here) in order to get to school before the students so they can be available for before-school meetings, conferences, etc; Then there's the 7-hour school day. And the time where teachers have to stay after school so that they can be available for after-school meetings, conferences, etc; By the time a teacher gets home at night, they've pretty much got the energy to eat a small dinner and then go to bed. Forget the gym. Forget relaxing with a TV show or two. That's out of the question if you want a full night's sleep. Don't forget--many teachers grade at home. So instead of cracking open a book to unwind, they're still mentally in a school environment.

Being a student is trying, too. But there's a higher stress level involved with teachers. We don't get to hang out with our friends all the time because we're confined to one room with a rotating set of pupils. We can't just go next door and chill with Ms. Smith on our off-periods because we've got to make sure we're prepared for the next class. And high stress jobs mean the worker is more likely to get sick.

Teaching is hugely rewarding. Once you get past the Crud.

PM

Heat Index

I don't know what it is about schools, but it seems that none of them can get the whole "temperature regulation" thing down. Yesterday, it was comfortably warm in my classroom and today as I sit here to write this all I can think is "man, I can't wait until I get back to UNH and can curl up in a blanket and make my boyfriend thaw my feet out". Tomorrow, according to my CT, could easily be a sauna. The problem being that the intern building temperature does not change in relation to the external temperature. So today was a bit chilly, overcast, and glum (there's a bit of sun now, though) and the building couldn't warm up naturally. Yet, the air conditioning unit right next to my desk is still dumping out cold air. It seems to me that it would be simple enough to design a system where the thermostat for the building was reliant on not only an internal thermometer, but an external one as well. That way, the heat wouldn't still be on when it was 80 degrees and the air conditioner would stay off on chiller days. UNH has this same problem, but that's mostly because their buildings are pretty darn old and can't go from no heat to heat to back again as quickly as a more modern system.

On that note, only 6 more hours until I can go be truly warm again.

The Plague of the Helicopter Parent

One of the biggest obstacles that educators face in today's world is the Helicopter Parent (HP). You know exactly what I'm talking about: the parent(s) who just cannot let their child have any individual experience or make their own choices We've all known an HP (or the child of one) at one point or another in our own educational journeys. It may seem like HPs are just doing what they think is right to make sure that their child has the best they can get as they grow up, but HPs are actually extremely detrimental to their children's ability to act and think independently AND they create massive headaches for the teachers, coaches, and bosses of their children.

Take, for example, the 53 year old mom who posed as her middle-school-aged daughter in order to take a test for her. What is that teaching the daughter? That it's OK to cheat on a test as long as mom does it? That you could get anybody to take a test for you? That it isn't her responsibility to learn the material and take the test for herself? It's hard enough to get students to pay attention and do schoolwork to begin with. Are you so concerned that your child is going to be bad at something that you're willing to do the work for them so they don't feel that failure?

I have news for you, there. HPs who do work for their children are only setting their kids up for failure later on in life. Sure, you can do their homework (and even try to sneak into pre-scheduled tests and exams for them), but you won't be there to help them on that pop quiz or when they're randomly selected to lead the class discussion. Then you're setting them up to flounder in front of the entire class. This is why more and more teachers are sacrificing valuable in-class teaching time in order to do menial assignments which used to be done at home. If they have the student do the work in-class, then they know the student was the one who did the work. In addition, depending on how strict the plagiarism policy at any particular school is, doing your child's work for them can get them slapped with a plagiarism violation which can result in automatic complete failure of a course AND it looks horrible on a transcript, so you can probably kiss Harvard goodbye.

Here's another thing that HPs do which can be extremely detrimental: they try and control their child's schedule. I'm sure that Susie would love to have lunch and algebra and American history with her best friends Jill and Betty, but maybe that isn't the best thing for her. If she's struggling in a class, maybe she needs to be away from the people who are constantly distracting her by asking if she wants to go to the movies after school or if she thinks that new boy Ricky is cute. I can understand wanting your child to eat lunch with people they're already friends with, but have you considered that it might be a way for them to make new friends? So much of life after school relies on networking and the best way to prepare for that is to have a solid network of friends when you leave school. Jill and Betty will still be there after school (and maybe during third period Spanish because one class with friends is OK, but too many leads to problems). Kids need to learn how to make friends out of a situation where they feel they have none. Otherwise they're going to have a really bad time when they go off to college.

I was fortunate enough to never experience helicopter parenting. My parents made sure I was a responsible student who knew that my work was my job. As a result, I had a strong amount of confidence in my intellectual abilities going into college and consider myself pretty smart (having a boyfriend who continually tells me I'm one of the smartest people he knows helps, too). Because I'm so confident in the skills I've built up over the years, I don't fear any new challenge and instead I face it head-on. I was intimidated by the year-long internship I'm a part of when I was first informed that I would need to complete it, but I know I can do this. That's how I was raised.

PM

The Start of a New Week

I get to spend a fair amount of time observing my cooperating teacher's classes throughout the day. Often, watching her teach will give me an idea or two about something I would want to do in my own class. More often than not, though, I find myself caught up in just watching the students. I was out of touch with cool long before I chose the teacher path and it's hard for me to believe that half of what kids think is cool these days is actually cool. I don't understand "swag" or this recent obsession with My Little Pony. I guess these are just things I'm going to have to learn to understand and tolerate.

As far as my class goes, we've been having a good time together. A least, I think so. I taught them one of the few pieces of Ancient Greek that I remember on Friday. They seemed to find that pretty cool. We're still on Beowulf, but I'm getting more and more excited for our units on the Arthurian legends and the Canterbury Tales. For the Arthurian unit, we're going to do some reading aloud and we're going to attempt to piece together a family tree of sorts for some of the more important knights. Fr The Canterbury Tales, they're each going to create a Facebook style profile for a character by going off what is said about that character in the prologue. I think we might also watch at least part of A Knight's Tale just because I love Paul Bettany's portrayal of Chaucer. I think it would be amusing for them to see and hear him speak as Chaucer and to see if they can pick out any similarities between the two.

Until next time,

PM.