4th Hour, Day Three

11th Grade English is the same as first hour again, reading Death of a Salesman. There is a student teacher here from Augustana named Kristin. While the students read and take notes from the same eleven pages of the textbook (how can this be taking them so long?) Kristin and I talked school stuff. She's an ed major and had some insights on things that I wouldn't have thought of and let me look at her teaching papers and stuff.

The kids that are reading the play today are actually pretty good. I'm impressed and surprised!

3rd Hour, Day Three

At lunch I got to overhear some interesting discussion about book acquisition and I talked with some of the teachers about the venting they do when they talk crap about students. They seemed pretty defensive when I pointed it out, but I really wasn't accusing them of anything. Making fun of the children seems like a perfectly natural thing to do. They piss you off and you can't take your frustrations out on them, so you make fun of them when they aren't around. I just want to know what my teachers said about me.

After lunch I sat in with Art, a man who has been teaching 9th grade English for the last 30 or 40 years. He did lots of grammar work with them, which is something that I don't think anyone can do enough of. Art makes a big deal about his students retaining the information they learn in this class. He has an infectious, but subtle enthusiasm that think is the reason his students seem (on average) more engaged than Schultz's 9th graders do. Maybe age has something to do with that too.

I hope that these kids remember their grammar and that they keep learning it throughout high school. It may not be the most important life skill, but it seems like most of my English major friends know any grammar at all, myself included. I do know what direct and indirect objects are though.

2nd Hour, Day Three

I spotted an Emo Child playing Pokemans and all of the nerdy kids gathered around. If only I had known it was so easy to be popular.

I followed the 9th graders to the auditorium to watch one of the Honors 12th grade class attempt to hold a trial for the characters of Lord of the Flies. It was really bad. It was obvious that most of them hadn't read the book. Schultz said that it was the worst one of these she'd seen since she'd come to Jefferson. The 12th graders weren't the only thing that stunk. There were probably 60 kids in the room altogether and wow did it smell. It was like being in a zoo. Yeesh.

1st Hour, Day Three

The children are reading Death of a Salesman again. I got to look at the assignment sheet for the grad standard. It seems really easy.

Day Three

Before classes started today I got to see how Grad Standards can screw things up. Jamie, one of the other teachers had apparently forgotten about a compare/contrast essay that her students needed to do before the term was over. It was a struggle that took three teachers to figure things out.

I guess part of that is because Jamie is only 2 or 3 years into teaching. It's good to see that people are so willing to help each other out around here.