4th Hour, Day Six

During 4th hour, the 11th graders were working on the Grad Standard paper again, but weren't being very productive, which surprised me because these students usually impress me more than the 1st hour group. I'm thinking that this has to be because they are working with little laptops, where they can hide their little distractions better than they can in the computer lab. The girl sitting in front of me has written one of the best/worst sentences I have ever seen: "Both American Literatures have amazing adultery scenes."

3rd Hour, Day Six

I stayed with Schultz during Prep to start work on the the plan for my discussion thing. But before that I asked her a bunch of questions about teaching and tenure and stuff. I got a lot of info about teacher evaluations and how a person goes about voicing one's opinions about a teacher that one thinks sucks.

When I was working on the discussion, I had a lot of trouble because I didn't feel like I was an authority on Death of a Salesman. I mean, I've only read it the one time, and I wasn't even very careful about it. I thought that if I was to teach something, it should be completely original thoughts that I came up with myself.

Apparently teaching is a lot like creative writing, where it's all about choosing the right sources to steal from, and adjusting them to make them your own.

2nd Hour, Day Six

Apparently the 9th Graders read an act and a half of Romeo & Juliet yesterday, so today Schultz led a discussion to recap and make sure the children absorbed everything.

I wish that my college Shakespeare course was like this. Schultz walks the kiddos through the act line by line, page by page. I wonder how much this lecture repeats itself year to year. It's hilarious though. I wish Schultz had done my awful Shakespeare class.

1st Hour, Day 6

I've been noticing/remembering that High School teachers are a lot more forgiving than their college counterparts. Today the 11th graders took vocab quiz number two, a quiz that is on the same piece of paper as quizzes one and three. There are a bunch of students that either hadn't taken quiz one or didn't get the vocab words on Monday; instead of being s.o.l. like you would be in a college class, the students just push themselves further back and back.

Schultz gave the students the compare/contrast essay that Jamie gave her students yesterday, and we spent most of the day in the computer lab. I tried to help as much as possible, because I can probably write a paper better than most people in this class.

Snobbery aside, I am impressed by how quickly they all write. The paper is due Friday at midnight and many of them had a half to a full page at the end of the day. I don't think I would be able to jump so quickly into a writing assignment, even one so easy. I think that's either the low expectations of high school or the high expectations and pressure of college.