What do teachers do....

When you google "what do teachers do," the search engine auto completes the question for you:

You'll notice that two of the top ten completions wonder about what teachers do in the summer. Thus, I surmised that you're sitting at home just DYING to know my summer plans. Before I reveal them, let me take you a little further down the Google rabbit hole where internet users answer the aforementioned query.

"buy more sweaters with prints on them and denim skirts and bad perfume."

"They drink a lot."

Note the teacher under her said, "Read yahoo answers saying what horrible people we are and how overpaid and underworked."

HILARIOUS, internet-ers.  On to my summer plans. I could do something definitively useful like enrolling in grad school classes or tutoring children. But, I'm going to fulfill a lifelong dream instead. I'm going to turn my converted garage into my own personal home library.

It's so Sherlock Holmes. So Virginia Woolf. So Jo March. So Ms. P. And I'm thrilled.

Right now my garage serves as a holding pen for the dogs when I'm at work. They have a doggie door that lets them out and dirt, gravel, and sticks in. 

It looks a lot like this, but with more dirt, which is why you aren't seeing the real thing:

But, I have a vision! It is going to be divine. 

MY MASTER PLAN:

1) All white surfaces....

....except for one chalkboard wall for recording memorable lines from favorite books:

2) Classic Persian rug

3) A black and white striped couch with good bones

4) A tweed chair - the professor's blazer of furniture

5) A side-table that looks like I chopped it down myself

6) Literary-themed throw pillows...in case I run out of reading material

7) A wall of letters - being careful not to situate the wrong ones together...yikes!

8) Floating shelves that look like an art-collector with full hands just happened by them - so casual.

9) On those shelves will be (and this is my favorite part) black and white photos of people reading framed in black frames with white mats.

10) And, of course, books. Tall books. Small books. Musty books. Fresh books. Dearly beloved books.

END OF MASTER PLAN. TAH DAHHH.

Basically what I'm saying is, I'll buy a Kindle just as soon as I can figure out how to design a room around it. Nothing inspires me like scores of lovely, bound stories. But don't worry, I'm not a total elitist. I'll let you lounge in my garage/library with your eReader. I'll even serve you eCoffee.

Watching Craigslist like a hawk,

Ms. P

QUESTION:

1) What is your dream room? A home gym? A chef's kitchen? A meth lab?

8 Snow Day Activities

What students don't realize is that teachers are just as excited about a snow day as they are. Students may think they've got the market cornered on night-before-the-possible-snow-day superstitions (inside out pajamas, ice cubes down the toilet, wooden spoon under pillow), but they would be wrong.

Similar thoughts run through our heads as teachers. If I finish those lesson plans, I bet we will have a snow day. If I'm not prepared, I just know we won't. I'm just not going to look out the window. I'll get ready as usual. If I bound out of the bed and run to the window, it surely won't be snowing. 


The moral of the story is that everybody likes a break, regardless of how much you love your job. However, when the snow day does come (like it did for me today), the magic wears off by about 2:00 in the afternoon. You've run through the laundry list of traditional activities. Snow ice cream. Snow man. Snow angels. Hot chocolate. Golden Girls re-runs. And now you're bored. You're stir crazy. Though you'd admit it to no one, you kind of miss those little cotton headed ninny muggins that you'd normally be teaching in 5th period.

Here are 8 non-traditional endeavors to fill your time (that don't involve that ubiquitous stack of ungraded papers):

1) Make animal masks for your eggs. Sure, it will be harder to scramble those boogers in the morning, but - darnit- they'll be the cutest protein-packed product in your fridge until then.

2) Name a math theorem after yourself.

3) Make Edward Scissorhands winter gloves with hot glue, plastic knives, and a little ingenuity.

4) Make an alien abduction lamp with dollar store supplies.

5) Send snow, frozen in dry ice, to a complete stranger.

6) Make a wager on how many oranges you can balance on your cat.

 

7) B-boy Abe Lincoln, anybody?

8) And finally, design a miniature replica of Stonehenge out of cereal. Rice Krispyhenge.

Perhaps you're more productive on your snow days? I certainly hope not. ;)

Wishing my dogs would stay still long enough for me to stack this last orange,

Ms. P

Erik Erikson Predicted the Myspace Duckface

If I was to write for the satirical news source The Onion, my first contribution would be entitled "New Study Reveals Middle Schoolers as Self-centered."  You see, the Onion specializes in playing the role of Captain Obvious - "revealing" true bits of information about our society.

And nothing is more obvious than the fact that my students just looove to talk about themselves. Any undergrad education or psych major can tell you Erik Erikson theorized that our world expands as we age, and by the time students reach my class, they are entering the Identity vs. Role Confusion stage. This means lots of outward self-boasting and lots of inward self-loathing. (When I was in this stage, my mother might have had to relocate my spot at the dinner table because I was so busy primping in the reflecting kitchen window.)

In addition to producing some particularly cringe-inducing, yet entertaining, Myspace profile pictures like these -

the ever-present duckface

the pose-with-a-friend duckface

the bathroom-self-portrait duckface

the white-girl-gangsta duckface

this stage can be used to a writing teacher's advantage.

Here's how:
Lucky for me, tomorrow as we return from Christmas Break (This is where you think, "Yay! More regular funny blog entries!" Amiright?), we will be starting a unit on the personal narrative. Tomorrow and Tuesday will be a reflective time, as is appropriate for this new year. My classes will respond to a variety of narrative prompts about....you guessed it....themselves!

Even reluctant adolescent writers chomp at the bit when they get this chance. Here's to hoping that this season of personal reflection will encourage them to move past that duckface phase.

Duckfacing ironically,

Ms. P



EXTRA EXTRA:
If you are a writer in search of a little inspiration, here are a few of the prompts my students will read tomorrow:

1) Read this excerpt from teacher and author Frank McCourt’s memoir Teacher Man:

"Joey is the mouth. There is one in every class along with the complainer, the clown, the goody-goody, the beauty queen, the volunteer for everything, the jock, the intellectual, the momma's boy, the mystic, the sissy, the lover, the critic, the jerk, the religious fanatic who sees sin everywhere, the brooding one who sits in the back staring at the desk, the happy one, the saint who finds good in all creatures. It's the job of the mouth to ask questions, anything to keep the teacher from the boring lesson."

Which of these roles do you play in your classes? The sissy? The mouth? The brooding one? Do you change roles as you change classes? Do you waver in between 2 or 3 of these personalities? Describe your classroom identity. Source

2) The antagonist of a story is the person who acts against the protagonist, the story’s principal character. In the story of your life, who is your antagonist? Write a description of this person, and describe the way in which he or she acts against you. Source

3)Write down a story that you tell people that didn’t really happen the way you usually tell it. So many times we have a good story we embellish with exaggerations, switch events for the sake of timing or humor, all kinds of things. Come on, it’s fun! But after you write down the story you tell everybody, think about the same story in its bare-bones, no-frills, true version. Think about the reasons why you twisted the facts around. Source

Eleven Wikis Leaking

Today was the last day of class before Christmas break. If you're not affiliated with the public school system, you might not be aware that schools must serve lunch every school day. So, although our only matter of business was taking the 4th period exam, we couldn't run the buses until 12:15, three hours after that was already over.


Most students are checked out, but there are a few who stay to ride the bus. It's been theorized by some teachers that many of these students are left behind intentionally by their mothers who just need three.more.hours.PLEASE of peace and quiet before the 2-week Christmas break. Regardless, downtime in a middle school classroom is simply unacceptable. It can and has led to all sorts of cockamamy high jinks that normally end in broken bones and threats of lawsuits...for the teacher.

Thus, I scrambled to find ways to fill the dead time. 

Eventually, we decided to write our own version of the 12 days of Christmas that reflected back over the main events of 2010.


First, we brainstormed all the possibilities, like any good class:

....which resulted in some interesting submissions, like:

After paring down our list to the bare necessities*, we settled on our top 12. I hope you enjoy!

On the 12th day of Christmas, 2010 gave to me...

12 Tigers cheating 

11 Wikis Leaking

10 Saints a' Leaping

9 Chileans Mining

8 Jobs a Losing

7 Earths a Quaking

6 Brakes a Failing

5 BODY SCANS!!!! (strip searches)

4 Ipad Apps

3 Bed Bugs

2 Rappers Jailed

And an oil spill caused by BP!

Don't let the bed bugs bite,
Ms. P


*Now you have The Jungle Book in your head.