It's Almost Over!

As a student, I remember thinking that the last few weeks/days of school were a waste. We watched movies and played and learned very little. As a kindergarten teacher, that was not the case in my class. Oh, we had fun, but I was assessing and teaching right up until the end. The last two days were cleaning and packing things, but even then we did some learning activities!

4th grade is a bird of a different color. All of the testing is scheduled to be done by the end of the day Monday.....which gives me 9 days where I have covered every required objective and have no set goals we have to meet. The kids know this! There really is no reason for them to want to do work after next week....its not going to affect them if they are lazy. I can't really give graded work the last week because the information has to be entered into the computer in time for report cards to be printed. So I'm faced with a FORCED week of fluff. Movies, games, extra recess and crowd control are my job for the last week of school. I will try to squeeze academics in where I can, but seriously....they are checking out on me at an alarming rate.

And just to make things more entertaining for us all.....throw in 150 fourth graders, one week of school remaining, lack of attention span, and summer fever.....mix it all together with FAMILY LIFE class for 2 days and what do you call that??? CRAZY! I have to talk about puberty and body changes with 4th graders at THIS point in the year? Who's dumb idea was that? I wish I could video tape it for your viewing pleasure. Just saying the words "family life" made the kids giggle and make crack comments.....what are they going to do when we split all the girls and boys and actually TALK about these things? Eish!

Lesson in Frustration

So, there's this guy....
Hahahaha Friends from college will truly get the humor behind that famous phrase.
But semi-seriously, there's this guy.....or should I say "these guys." Note the plural!
Are any of them serious in any way? Heck NO! But the possibilities seem to be growing.
So 1 guy at church. One guy I went to high school with (that is to say, we had classes in the same building, but never crossed paths enough to speak to each other until recently), and one guy my best friend is trying to set me up with.

Of these, guy 2 has my number and assures me he will use it soon. The other 2 are minor possibilities in a who-is-she-kidding, plot-of-a-bad-feel-good-romantic-comedy sort of way. But seriously, in my life the possibilities have often been few and far between. So to have several to day dream over has been fun. Is any one of them "THE ONE?" I doubt it seriously. But cute guys on the horizon are fun to think about.

I blame it on the 4th grade drama-seeking influence in my life. But honestly, a little drama in life is fun. That's why the 4th graders create it when life gets too boring! Life has been a little boring, so I'm hoping for a little drama. It's bad when the students have this big of an influence on their teacher!

English Canon

So I read an article online that discussed the "Canon" of books commonly used in high school English classes. The article was trying to say that it is a good idea to update the list. Add more modern great novels in and subtract some older, harder to understand, BORING novels. I agree that it is important to update and add more relevant books. I also think its important to keep some old favs. Wm. Shakespeare should exist in High Schools in poetry and play forms.

However, my disagreement with the article happened when they stated that Twilight and Harry Potter were BAD books. They are purportedly "immature" and have characters and audiences that do not seek to ever grow up. I disagree. I think that if we really want our teens to be life long readers we need to teach them to read....for the fun of it! Think about the novels read by the average adult. They are not usually "American Modern Masterpieces." The novels on the Top 150 lists tend to be novels for entertainment purposes. John Grisham, Daniel Steele, J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, Dean Koontz and Nora Roberts just to name a few off the top of my head. If we want kids to read for life, we need to teach them to enjoy it. Don't get me wrong. I think the teens need to see the flaws in Twilight. Analyze the story separate from the flawed writing style. Learn to appreciate how/why books would hit the Top 150 and weed out the ones that are full of fluff. But let's be honest. Fluff is good in its place and time.

So its not horrible to approach teaching from a "if you can't beat them, join them" perspective. Compare Twilight to Romeo and Juliet...aren't both star crossed couples from the outside? Aren't both couples dead at the end of the story? Compare Harry Potter to Oliver....Orphans who end up in better places. I wish I'd had more fun stuff in High School. I would have LOVED to write a paper on a book of my choice. I would have worked harder on it and known more about the plot. I wouldn't have had Cliff Notes (or the newly popular Spark Notes) to help me with a non "canon" book. Keep the canon, but allow room for popular fiction too.

And for Pete's sake, where is the non-fiction? Other than a text book, I don't remember reading biographies or non-fiction of any sort. Don't we have room for something other than fiction novels, short stories or poems?

Ok, the English major/Teacher in me is done. I've said my piece.

Proof Read!

I don't know if it's the English major in me or the teacher in me, but I am EXTREMELY bothered by the grammar and punctuation errors commonly found on the Internet. It seems every article or website I visit has glaring errors within its pages. I know that the Internet has become a casual, user-friendly, socially-oriented community that links many different social, cultural and economic groups. The Internet offers a plethora of knowledge for anyone willing to dig for it. But lets face it, the Internet is full of fluff and junk. It has become a place where there are no real guidelines, rules or overseers. Although this allows for enormous creativity and self expression, it also has created the WORST writing, spelling and punctuation know in the history of man!

OK, so the English Major in me is rearing her head and reminds me that throughout history, spelling has been fluid and open to frequent change and modification. Perhaps with the volume of things written in this technology-saturated age, we should expect a surge of new spelling, grammar and style of recording of information.

But the teacher in me is appalled at the laziness of people. How hard it it to use spell check? And if you write an article and expect it to be considered valid and worthy of note, how difficult is it to have a buddy proof read it for major grammatical mistakes?

I wish there was a business that paid people to proofread and check websites for errors. I like reading random articles online. I like telling people they are wrong. Let me combine the two and make some money at it! But alas, I fear our society has turned a new page. Not many people care about grammar/spelling errors. Many more than that do not even recognize the errors. Do we need to go back to to the days when hours were spent in class torturing children with the horrors of diagramming sentences? I will be the first to tell you that teaching parts of speech is frustrating and seems useless. But when a sentence is a fragment, run on, or makes NO SENSE at all, writers need to be able to recognize what is missing and FIX IT.

I'm willing to let a fragment, run on or misplaced modifier remain for the sake of the art of writing. But to commit these worst of writing errors unknowingly and without care is a bit cavalier. We need some order and structure to writing and spelling or else we will all become dumber and less articulate for it!!

My conclusion: I suggest you read material that is edited as often as possible. Save your brain!

Side Note: I checked for spelling and grammar twice before publishing this. I came back an hour later and found ANOTHER mistake. It seems that even the lowly English major makes mistakes....but at least I FIX them.

Good Hair Day

So I left school at 4:00 (HAVE to stay til 3:45, I'm usually there until 5:30). I'm happy cause I'm out the door early. I'm headed to an initial evaluation from a chiropractor. On the way, I reach over to grab a bottle of water. I stick it between my legs to hold it still as I drive, and I twist off the top. Only its one of those NEW 50% less plastic bottles. So as soon as the top is loose, water comes gushing out of the top! Now my jeans are wet....on the top and the bottom! WET SEAT! EWWW. So I use some McD's napkins to mop up some of the water as I dodge oncoming school buses. The McD napkins start to ball up and leave little white papers splotches on my dark colored jeans. So I then brush at the napkin wads to remove them. THEN I look at my hands and realize there was a reason these jeans were on sale at Wal-mart for $5!! THEY LEAK DYE! So I have wet pants with napkin balls and blue hands. AIN'T NO WAY this chic is going to a doctors appointment looking like this. So I go to call the Dr Office....and the number/business card is AT HOME! Great. Now I am a no-show-with-wet-pants-napkin-balls-and-blue-hands girl!

BUT, it was raining ALL day, so its a good hair day for me. Lots of curl! I embrace the good hair, shed the nasty jeans and joyfully type as I have unexpected quiet time at home with no papers to grade! God is good...even when my hands are stained blue!

Loving Trouble

Are teachers supposed to be happy about a student being suspended? Cause I am!!
Here is the deal....I have a student who walks the line of acceptable. He frequently falls on the wrong side of the line. Not typical "kid making mistakes" kind of falling. Its a "let me see what I can get by with this time" kind of step on the wrong side....ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. And his grandmother who is raising him sees him as angelic. I've "labeled" him. All the students are making up things to get him in trouble. She believes every lie he tells to get out of trouble!!

For weeks, months, perhaps the whole year, the students have told me that this kid cusses and calls me horrible names behind my back. Having multiple witnesses and multiple offenses was never enough for Grandma to believe it was actually happening. So I learned to ignore it and told the students to just tell him to be quiet and ignore him.

Today he made a nasty comment when he was supposed to be sitting quietly. When I asked him to keep his negative comments to himself he replied loudly with "WHATEVER!" and then as I began to turn around he mumbled "B-----" under his breath. I almost danced and shouted with glee!! CAUGHT!!! Red-handed, no getting out of this one, I was a witness!!! I promptly wrote a referral and nearly skipped down the hall in joy!

Is it bad to be happy that I caught a kid calling me a cuss word?

WOLVERINE

So I have always been a fan of the X-Men. The Carter boys were obsessed with them from a young age. Between X-men cartoons, trading cards and comic books, I think I am better informed on the X-men than most women of my age. The character of Wolverine has always been attractive to me....the strong, silent, loner with a big heart.

We went to see the new Wolverine movie. It was pretty darn steamy. I like Hugh Jackman to begin with. He is attractive and always has an air of confidence. But Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is AMAZING! He is so darn hot I could drool.

He is a man! A manly-man. You dont look at him and wonder if he is gay. You don't have to wonder if he has an ass under his baggy pants. You don't look at him and wonder if he is good in bed. You look at a man like him and KNOW that he is straight, has a great ass and is great in bed. Its just something you KNOW about a man like him. That's what I want. A real man. A man who has confidence, a nice butt and knows his way out of a fight.....even if it is all a lot of acting, I'd take it any day.

I think the whole manly man, take care of myself, tough guy thing is what draws me to Jacob in the Twilight books. A little bit of rough and tough goes a LONG way. A little bit of wild in a man makes you want to hold on to him even more....as if you could tame some part of him.

So as I left the theater I wiped the drool and committed to a trip to Texas with my friend Paige....on one condition...we HAVE to go to a rodeo while we are there. A rodeo in Texas is sure to have hot, jeans-filling, manly men who are a little closer eye candy than a man on a screen. ;-)