tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67539732010-02-08T10:09:14.716-06:00the daily comings and goings of a teacher, an educator, who... just happens to be homelessryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comBlogger854125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-4787646004065122512010-02-08T07:00:00.000-06:002010-02-08T10:09:14.803-06:00

During one of our ever-important department meetings, one of the teachers made the comment, “I’m not here for the students. I’m here for the literature.” I have to admit that it was a bit awkward, given the fact that the topic of discussion was our colored paper supply. Like I said, it was quite a crucial meeting.Anyway, I consider myself as a guy who gripes about his students like no one has

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-22938694011709970592010-02-05T07:00:00.001-06:002010-02-05T07:00:07.071-06:00

This morning a teacher sent an e-mail saying nothing more than this:Is there anyone who would consider performing with me Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “Rapper's Delight”? I need a couple of people.I’m going to be honest with you everyone. I would be no less disturbed if she asked, “I need someone to wear a leather outfit during a donkey show.”Seriously, I can’t feel like a

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-66162056675373759102010-02-04T07:00:00.002-06:002010-02-04T07:00:05.420-06:00

You may not believe it, but I am all for students keeping their hands busy while class is going on. For some, they need to fiddle while learning. Somehow it helps them concentrate. I don’t understand the science behind it, but hey, I remember acing a Shakespeare class in college, while sketching out the most bitchin’ rollercoaster design on the back of a legal pad.And I wish I could let it happen

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-10562650510542036552010-02-03T07:00:00.002-06:002010-02-03T07:00:09.672-06:00

There’s a basketball pep rally this Friday. Like all pep rallies, we adjust to our “Pep Rally” bell schedule. That means taking a whole hour out of our day to get fired-up. If I thought forty-five minutes wasn’t enough to lead a sufficient lesson, then what the hell am I going to do with thirty-six minutes? Fortunately, if I’m going to stay positive, this also limits the amount of trouble a

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-73376638832313625122010-02-02T07:00:00.000-06:002010-02-02T07:00:06.572-06:00

This green movement has really caught on over the last few years. People are getting serious about reducing their carbon footprint. Even the jack-a-ninnies are doing their part.There’s this one kid of mine, in my first period, who turns his assignments in on half-sheets of paper. This includes a recently turned-in fifteen hundred word literary analysis on Huck Finn. Let me make this clear: his

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-81983081509039303232010-02-01T07:00:00.000-06:002010-02-01T10:30:38.903-06:00

This might be the only time I have felt relief when coming into school on a Monday at six thirty in the morning. I know it doesn’t seem possible, but I have. I have because I wasn't one of the thirty classrooms that flooded over the weekend. I also feel so sorry for those poor bastards who did get hit. That sucks.At first I thought that God was so displeased with public education, He had decided

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-42871421774083206112010-01-29T07:00:00.000-06:002010-01-29T07:00:08.024-06:00

Do you know what I am tired of doing? I am tired of preventive discipline. By “preventive discipline” I am talking about removing opportunity from my students to do something stupid. You see, everyday objects are the perfect props for my students’ shenanigans. Rulers and glue sticks become catapults. Pushpins adorn calluses. Nothing is off limits when it comes to incorporating stuff. For years I

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-15274884922857699232010-01-28T07:00:00.000-06:002010-01-28T07:00:06.449-06:00

One of the administrative assistants from the front office is leaving, and I am declaring to the world that I will not miss her. Has she been rude to me in the past? Did she do poor work? No. Those are not the reasons why I will not miss her. The real reason is the fact that I have no idea who this woman is. This isn’t a case of SLHS being such a large place that you can’t possibly interact with

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-9054373355861117502010-01-27T07:00:00.001-06:002010-01-27T07:00:03.609-06:00

Hammer felt the need to send all of the teachers a link to the school district’s on-line employee handbook. The link specifically sent you to the section concerning staff dress code. Sadly, Hammer is justified in sending this material for review. Yesterday, she had to send a teacher home because of how he was dressed. He keeps wearing this crocheted winter cap that covers his ears, and if that’s

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-16172229219237428102010-01-26T07:00:00.000-06:002010-01-26T07:00:02.081-06:00

One of the primary themes of this blog is that teachers are in survival mode. Due to the tremendous workload a life of living from lesson plan to lesson plan is the reality. From time to time we get a jolt of energy and inspiration to become even more involved in our careers.Take yesterday evening for example: I found myself with a slight cushion of “free time.” How that happened, I’m not

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-55550918232406863072010-01-25T07:00:00.000-06:002010-01-25T07:00:02.713-06:00

A fact about me is that I am pretty careful about planning my time away from school so that I isolate myself from my students and avoid any recreational encounters. The last thing I need is one of my kids seeing me buy medicated spray for my athlete’s foot. No, I don’t buy groceries near the school. I never get gas around the school. Heck, I don’t even live near the school so that the risk of a

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-47325660511849591772010-01-22T07:00:00.001-06:002010-01-22T07:00:05.366-06:00

The school nurse sent some tips out to teachers that they can pass along to the students. The first involves the advice of keeping hands away from their face, mouth, eyes or nose. Frankly, I’m never in favor of a practice that increases the chances of the option putting their hands on their junk, but okay. Oh, while we’re at it can we say something about no feet on faces either? I know that

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-33092337613446143212010-01-21T07:00:00.001-06:002010-01-21T07:00:06.307-06:00

So I was leaving work way too late again and found myself in the middle of a traumatic event. A truck jumped the property and almost hit me! I was walking out to my car and contemplating if I could get home with the amount of gas I had in my tank. I was so tired that I didn’t want to stop on the way home, but I knew I would pay for it in the morning if I had to get up five minutes early, to leave

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-85999737489363006282010-01-20T07:00:00.000-06:002010-01-20T07:00:03.776-06:00

Expectations for teachers are interesting. It is assumed that we are to reach each and every student. They’re there to be taught, so teach them already, right? In fact, to make things easier, researchers have even invested an enormous amount of resources and effort to define multiple learning styles that we can, in turn, use them to get the most out of kids. With all of the workshops this

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-33770850401795721842010-01-19T07:00:00.000-06:002010-01-19T07:00:08.649-06:00

Borrish sent out an e-mail to the rest of the English department with a suggestion on creating lesson plans. She thought it would be “neat” to supplement lessons with a new-fangled method of communicating, MySpace. She encouraged us to think of ways to present lessons like The Raven or The Catcher in the Rye through a “hip format.”Hmmm, well the school’s filtering system doesn’t allow access to

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-85532386614736878722010-01-15T07:00:00.000-06:002010-01-15T07:00:08.158-06:00

I love this message we got from our librarian. Her e-mail said:To those who have permission to print to the library printer, there’s no toner. To those who ignore the fact you don’t have permission to print to the library printer, I don’t care what you do. There’s no toner. Print your Weight Watchers calendars somewhere else.There’s a message in there, besides the obvious. I can’t quite put my

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-74374897677457327252010-01-14T07:00:00.000-06:002010-01-14T07:00:01.843-06:00

The beginning of a semester always brings a ton of e-mail announcements. It’s all the stuff that staff members want to share with others. There’s always one from the nurse about slow passes for students or a counselor revealing that new college brochures in her office. There are many different e-mails with many different messages.One thing that is similar between all of these e-mails is that they

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-41022962800841511512010-01-13T07:00:00.001-06:002010-01-13T07:00:05.827-06:00

We’ve started reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Josue, one of my students, has requested that he be addressed as Wetback Josue for the rest of the semester. It was obvious that he had met Nigger Jim in the story. With some more discussion on the elements of satire, he gave up his pursuit of the moniker.As a result of the whole incident, I find that I can’t look at one of my students

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-63290225552661184252010-01-12T07:00:00.000-06:002010-01-12T07:00:09.814-06:00

The mother of the student Jeffery Grant (don’t panic, not even close to his real name) returned my phone call to her yesterday. The problem was that I had no idea who Jeffery Grant was. Unfortunately, before I could suggest that she had the wrong number she tore into me.The mother was quite upset. She demanded an explanation as to why I was contacting her about her son if he wasn’t my student.

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-5834380469730294232010-01-11T07:00:00.000-06:002010-01-11T07:00:01.037-06:00

Oh technology, on one hand you are steadily killing off a world that I look fondly back on, like seeing how many times you can wrap the phone cord around your sister or making mixed tapes. On the other hand, you’ve preserved such precious packages from my youth. Where else, but Hulu can I get ALF induced pleasure?I’m speaking about technology today because it has yet infiltrated another

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-9837603190714224172010-01-08T07:00:00.001-06:002010-01-08T07:00:03.158-06:00

Teaching is a dog eat dog world; it’s killed or be killed. Why, it’s steal or be stolen from. Yesterday, for one history teacher, it was the latter. She had to disperse a school-wide e-mail pleading for any leads to the paper she had set on the couch in the faculty lounge and went missing. She tore the lounge apart, retraced her steps and found nothing. She would be grateful if the three reams

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-78531752064520359812010-01-07T07:00:00.000-06:002010-01-07T07:00:00.538-06:00

We’ve been asked to clear out the shared drive on the school’s network due to the fact that it is completely full. There is not even room for another single file to be placed on there. Getting my stuff out of the shared drive will not be a problem because I’ve never kept anything in there. I tried once, but after I looked at what else was in there I passed. The thing was the educational

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-24827117157497605452010-01-06T07:00:00.000-06:002010-01-06T07:00:09.116-06:00

Borrish e-mailed the rest of the English department asking who borrowed the wooden dowel used for the paper towel dispenser. Yes, I thought it was strange that she used the word, “borrow,” as well. Who borrows something like the wooden dowel from a paper towel dispenser? That’s like asking to borrow the spring out of a ballpoint pin. No, I’m going to guess that the dowel has, indeed, been

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-35646868224576797712010-01-05T07:00:00.001-06:002010-01-05T07:00:08.161-06:00

After dealing with the 50 Rule for some time now, we learned at our staff development yesterday that change is on the horizon. At first we couldn’t give a kid less than a 50 on an assignment no matter how they did on it. Sure they would have to at least make a run at completing the work, but that’s about it. For example, all of a student’s answers on a quiz could be Poop and that qualifies as

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6753973.post-62343760477885626652009-12-18T07:00:00.000-06:002009-12-18T07:00:06.531-06:00

I have to make this short. We just got an e-mail from one of the administration assistants that the Apperson machine was down and would not be available to teachers. At first I wasn’t too worried because I have no idea what an Apperson machine is. For all I knew it was that thing that makes the die-cuts. Why would I care if I can use that or not?But then, I decided to look the thing up and found

ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13574967229976511604noreply@blogger.com