12 Times It's Been Worse

The saddest toddler in the world.

I am in my fifth year of teaching middle school English at a Title I school, and, for the most part, the skies are sunny. I have classroom management in the bag. Lesson planning is almost second nature. I can write a test in 30 minutes that is better and harder than the one that the state gives. It's the 7th week of school and I haven't had to refill my pencil cup yet. Things are pretty boss.

That being said, I still have days that make me want to sit under my desk and weep and never come out (it's usually during DEVOLSON).

When those days happen, I usually resort to thumbing through my Happy Binder where I keep old letters/drawings from students, putting "Chocolate" by The 1975 on Pandora, or getting a s'mores cupcake from a local bakery on my way home from work and eating it in about 2.43 bites.

But when that doesn't work, I think about the 12 Times It's Been Worse.

12 Times It's Been Worse

1) The time I was talking to my appraiser and a huge, flaky booger floated out of my nose like an autumn leaf and landed on my shoulder. I was wearing a dark turtleneck. He definitely noticed and stared at it for the rest of our conversation.

2) The time I had a student vomit in the doorway right before my students were dismissed for a pep rally. I had to spot thirty middle schoolers as they long-jumped over a pile of barf.

3) The time I bought a new shirt, wore it to school on Monday, dripped pizza sauce on it at lunch, then applied a Tide To-Go pen to it. Except it wasn't a Tide To-Go pen. It was White Out. And it never came out.

4)  The time my former principal made me write her essays for her to get into an Ivy League principal's institute and I did it because I was too afraid to tell her no. (She got in.)

5) The time during my first year when I took two students in the hall to talk about respect and they laughed at me, so I cried RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. (They kept laughing.)

6) The time I thought I had just had a breakthrough with a student just before he flipped over his desk and stormed out of the room.

7) The time I was teaching and hundreds of termites started flying out of a hole in the wall.

8) The times (plural) I had a substitute show up who was clearly hung over.

9) The time my students duct-taped each other to chairs when my substitute didn't show up.

10) The time a hot, boiled roach floated to the top of my cup of coffee from my school Keurig. (I noticed this before taking a sip, ergo, God exists and He loves me.)

11) The time my phone went off during an observation from my supervisor while I was student teaching. It was my mom calling. And I'd set her ringtone to "99 Problems." Because there was/is something wrong with my head.

12) 95% of my first year. And 75% of my second.

But you know something? As bad as my bad days have been, I've still never had a kid poop on my desk. That happened to someone I know in Washington D.C.

He teaches high school.

Bye now.

Love,

Teach

Blackout Poetry for the Win!

Okay, so I hardly ever post lesson plans/resources. There is a cornucopia of reasons for why I don't, including:

1) Writing about lesson plans/resources is not fun for me. Maybe this makes me a bad teacher? Oops.
2) I often come up with my lesson plans the week (and sometimes even the morning) that I'm doing them.  Again, maybe this makes me a bad teacher. But because of the disparities in ability level of the population that I teach and the fact that I have close to forty 8th graders in my classes, it's hard for me to plan ahead when I don't know until I teach something whether or not they will be able to master it one day or whether it'll take a week.
3) My lesson plans are very rarely phenomenal. 
4) There's just way too many other things I'd write about, like students long-jumping over piles of barf or the bizarre things I catch myself saying out loud on a daily basis.

But once in a blue moon, there's something we do in class that makes me want to bust through the doors of the teachers' lounge, saloon-style, and shout at the top of my lungs, "ALL OF YOU MUST DO THIS!!!"

Thursday was one of those days.

We had some leftover time on Thursday, and earlier in the week I had discovered some class library books that had been ruined in my move across campus this summer. Some had been torn in half, others had a huge chunk of the middle missing. Obviously, I couldn't throw them away (that's breaking one of the 10 Commandments of Reading), so I decided to tear out all the pages and assign my students some blackout poetry.

The idea comes from this website, Newspaper Blackout, recommended to me by a Love, Teach reader. Basically this guy takes a permanent marker and redacts newspaper articles to create poetry.  So we did, too! I showed my students from examples, talked them through how to not get Sharpie on their desks/heads/faces/tongues, and let them loose with the pages I'd torn out.

IT WAS THE COOLEST. Take a gander.

Doesn't this remind you of that famous line in Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater? No? Just me? Oh, well. Still cool.

"She took a deep breath and felt all the love whisper to her." Excuse me while I cry ALL THE TEARS

"Less than pleased is all you are."

This is just a handful of the amazing stuff my kids made. It is really cool to see what they turn out, and you'll find yourself in really neat conversations with students about their work. Do it this week, ELA teachers! You'll be surprazed (that's my portmanteau for "surprised" and "amazed." You're welcome.)

Love,

Teach

14 Reasons Why I Will Die Alone

Most of the time, I love being a single gal teaching in a big city.

But sometimes, like this week, I take a look at my life and realize that I will probably die alone and that my body will be eaten by coyotes.

Because it's Tuesday and everyone knows that Tuesdays are for whining, I give you:

14 Reasons Why I Will Die Alone

1) I don't go out anymore because I'm tired all the time. If I do happen to be persuaded to venture out beyond the confines of my apartment, car, and classroom, I'm usually:

• With a pack of other teachers 
• Wearing my faculty shirt that has a giant paw print on it
• Sporting stray pen marks and dry erase marker ruboff on my arms because I erase my white board with my forearms now, like a Neanderthal
• Yawning at 8:00 and telling anyone who will listen how I'd rather be in my pajamas

Line up, fellas.

2) I for sure won't meet anyone at school. The male teachers at my school are either:

• Married
• Have caught me whispering to my clothing
• Have said the following words to me, "Did you forget your comb today? Haha. Relax, I'm just kidding. I actually think your hair looks nice like that."
• Also crazy and our offspring would be genetically forced into a disturbing brand of weird
• Maybe too normal, which says a lot about how weird I've become

3) I basically have been controlling my own life for the past several years now, and I'm not sure I could handle not being in control anymore. Isn't that an attractive quality?

4) I bought these plastic mystical ponies at Target tonight.

What? Why? I have no answers to these questions.

5) See my fingernails in the above picture.

6) Because I live in a large city, I've learned to walk with a sense of purpose so that strange men don't approach me to say gross things. However, I am now so good at this that NOBODY approaches me.

7) These are my recently used emojis:

8) I have limited interaction with the male species due to my schedule, so when I am around a guy that is even marginally attractive or nice to me, my body betrays me and I can't stop giggling, sweating, or saying super weird things like facts about dolphins that I learned from a podcast P.S. it's this one and it's amazing.

9) Looking cute is time-consuming, expensive, and I give up. My student teacher has offered to help me, so that's hopeful. I told her I may have time next March.

10) I am too afraid to have kids anymore. I used to want to crank out so many kids it would require some kind of commune to raise them all, but teaching has made me realize that kids, while lovely, are mostly just fragile and dangerous creatures. They're basically walking Ziploc bags full of organs that sass you sometimes. Also, I blame my lack of interest on my pregnant coworkers and their absolutely horrifying daily updates on what pregnancy does to your body. Thanks for nothing, pregnant coworkers!

11) My standards are warped because of my literature man crushes, which may be the dorkiest thing ever typed in human history.

12) I'm looking into taking a quilting class at the suggestion of my pen pal.

13) I just believe that the above sentence should probably count twice in my list of reasons I will die alone.

14) Someone has been lingering outside my window listening to the radio on speakerphone for the past several minutes. So I may actually die alone tonight.

I know that I won't really die alone-- I'm just being dramatic. I'll die surrounded by my books, my lifelong companions.

 Love,

Teach

My First Day of School Questionnaire

Is it just me, or is there something about this school year that makes this back-to-school season particularly exhausting? I'm so tired and slept so hard last night that I woke up and thought my nightstand was a Viking and threw a pillow at it.

Anyway, school starts this week for me, so yesterday I found myself needing to make a first day of school questionnaire. You know, something to keep the kids busy on those first few minutes while you're out in the hall wrangling lost 6th graders and unworking lockers.

In past years, I've made them more "real" get-to-know-you questions, like "Tell me about your family," and "What are your interests?", but this year:

a) I am moving up with same kids from last year
b) Even if I didn't know them already, I think there's something inorganic and maybe even intrusive about asking kids, especially from the population I teach, to talk about their home life or answer personal questions with someone they've just met
c) I like finding out about them in conversation better anyway
d) I think you can find out a lot about people by asking them disarmingly weird questions

So, thus was born this first-day-of-school questionnaire:

1. What is your name?
2. What do you wish people had to call you? 
3. Which do you feel have a better chance of taking over the world: zombies or pirates? Justify your answer.
4. Would you rather find yourself in the world of Harry Potter (during the last two books) or The Hunger Games? Justify your answer.
5. If you could only have one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? (You get an entree, side, drink, and dessert.)
6. Would you rather be attacked by one horse-sized duck, or one hundred duck-sized horses? Justify your answer.
7. Draw a visual representation of your answer to number 6 in the space below to the best of your ability.
8. Would you rather have the ability to fly or read minds?
9. What is your spirit animal?
10. On the back of this paper, write a list of everything that makes you happy. If you do not want to write a list of everything that makes you happy, write a list of everything you can think of that is the color orange.


Here's to the weirdest year ever.

What would you add to this questionnaire? Can you even get on my weird level?

Love,

Teach

P.S. Please feel free to steal/share/tweak/add and use for your first day!

10 Teaching Inventions I Wish Existed

Summer means I have lots of time to do important thinking, which this morning has meant coming up with this list of teaching inventions I wish existed. 

1) Grading machine

You'll notice that it looks remarkably like a fax machine. It can even grade essays! Oh, also it can create make-up exams. I just decided.

2) Silent spray

Extra strength: for grades 6-8

I’ve seen cute versions of this on Pinterest for pre-school age kiddos, but mine would be very serious. Sort of like Febreze except instead of working with smells it will work with sounds. A quick spray across the room and a hush just falls over everyone. Ahhhh.

Also, my roommate held up a placemat just behind our coffee table for this picture to happen. Thanks, Esther!

3) A special telephone that has a direct hotline for answers to everything

Preferably the hotline attendant would be Morgan Freeman. He would have the answers to my most plaguing questions, which, last year, were things like:

“Yeah, it’s October and our school ran out of paper and toner for the rest of the year. What do I do?”

“Who wrote ‘Charlie = bae’ in this copy of Flowers for Algernon?”

“Where did I put my Easy Grader?”

“Why is there a staple in my hair?”

4) A life-sized hamster wheel

For that one angel we all have.

5) A light-up PMS necklace

The heart of the ocean.

I love life most of the time. But exactly five days before my period, I love nothing and nobody. If I had a necklace that lit up and played a song (preferably, a happy, twinkly tune) when I was PMSing, it would help me to recognize that my irritability and tears were coming from a place of hormonal chaos rather than the real world, and I would be able to cope accordingly.

6) A clock that sings the perfect song at the beginning of the day, during every passing period, and at the end of the day

This isn’t like an iPod alarm or something where I choose the song; it just knows what to play. IT KNOWS!

7) Food-multiplying wand

If I’m starving during class and take out a granola bar during class, everyone wants one. It would be nice to turn one into 35 with a simple wave of my wand. Also, I could easily promise my classes cookies or mini quiches or whatever I felt like because I would only have to make one instead of a hundred and twenty.  

The wand would also come in handy when your coworker brings amazing leftovers from last night’s dinner at that new steakhouse in town and you accidentally packed yourself a bell pepper because you thought it was an apple in your early morning lunch-packing stupor.

8) A zipline that goes from my room to my parking space

Because why not?

9) A remote-control robot teacher for active monitoring during testing

Just program it to go up and down the aisles, sit back at your desk, and Sudoku your little heart out. Also I emailed my mom and asked her to draw a robot teacher with a Sharpie in under 30 seconds and this is what she sent back. I cackled.

10) An arm belt

Basically I just want another set of hands.

Excuse me while I go have a nightmare about that arm belt.

What teaching inventions do you wish existed? I'm almost worried about your creativity.

 Love,

Teach

A Letter to Myself On My First Day of Teaching

Pictured: my rare mahogany shoe rack that I use as a coffee table (oops), a fake letter I didn't finish writing, and the world's best writing instrument, a Uni-Ball Vision Elite Micro.

A few months ago, I saw this article on Edutopia asking teachers to write letters to their first-day-of-teaching selves. And I did it! And now I'm sharing mine with you.

Dear First-Year Teach,

First of all, you look so cute! What an adorable cardigan. (Lay it flat to dry like the cleaning instructions say, or in a couple of years it'll look and feel like a washcloth and you will be a sad girl.)

Wow. Your first day. Your FIRST first day. I know how you're feeling. Nervous. Excited. Hopeful. Diarrhea-ish. It's like how you felt about that piano recital, except instead of five minutes in front of people it's fifty minutes times six periods times five days times four weeks times nine months, and instead of everyone listening to you quietly NOBODY will listen to you quietly unless you train them, and instead of memorizing something and delivering it your job is to improvise while convincing everyone in the audience that it's something worth playing; that they want to play it, too.

You have every right to feel diarrhea-ish.

I wish I could tell you that you'll have more good days than bad days this year. That you'll get a hang of this teaching thing after a few weeks and after that it's smooth sailing. That, like babysitting and being a camp counselor and volunteering, if you can just get the kids to like you, that means they'll do whatever you say.

But it won't.

It's not like that.

This will be the most difficult, challenging thing you will ever do. It will push you to your limits as a person. It will almost break you. There are times when it will feel like life has sucker-punched you, then offered you crutches, then taken the crutches and is beating you over the back with them while laughing hysterically.

Teaching will also be the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to you.

Weird, huh?

There will be a whole month where it feels like you don't go a day without crying. But guess what? In a couple of years, most of the crying you will do at school will be because of stuff like how awesome Poetry Day is, or from when you will read that darn chapter at the end of Wonder about standing ovations (it's this book coming out soon--trust me, it's the best), or from the time your choir students will sing "Gentle Annie" on a day just a liiiiittle too close to your period.

You know all those cute bins and folders that you think will keep you and your students organized? They won't. Part of teaching is learning how inept all your systems are and adjusting them to work for you. But you are about to embark on a journey that will leave you as THE MOST ORGANIZED PERSON IN THE ENTIRE WORLD! Or at least out of the people you know who are non-teachers.

Other perks:

• You know those super annoying kiosk salespeople in the mall who accost you with flatirons and phones and perfumes? After you have a few years in this gig, THEY WON'T BOTHER YOU ANYMORE! Teaching has made you more confident; taught you to walk with your shoulders tall and with a purpose. Or maybe you just walk around with Teacher Face now.
• TEACHER DISCOUNTS!
• You will be the master of time management. (This doesn't necessarily mean you choose to employ these skills all the time, but you can when needed.)
• Summer, my friend. Just wait. It's glorious.

But the real perk--the thing that is going to keep you coming back--is something that's hard for me to explain. It's not because of what you're thinking right now on your first day: that you will be the hero in this story, or that you are about to change lives/the world by bestowing your benevolence and your knowledge upon them.

This isn't about you.

You are a vessel. You are at your most important when you make yourself the least important. You are here not to be in front of everyone, but to stand beside them. You are here not to impress others, but to encourage and lift up the kids in your classroom and the people around you. You are here not to be recognized, but to help other people figure out what is recognizable about them and how to use that for good.

I'll let you figure out what that means (I still am).

Good luck out there, kid.

Oh, and go ahead and put that Keurig in your classroom now. You'll need it.

Love,

Future Teach

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some summering to do. 

Love,

Teach

5 Motivational Posters You Can Make for Your Home or Classroom, All While Consuming Hours of Your Favorite Guilty Pleasure TV Show Whose Name You’re Too Ashamed to Admit

Well, I think the title of this post is sufficient as an explanation not only for the post itself, but for why my life is one giant contradiction.

I’m housesitting right now for my parents right now, and since they have a) lots of space in their home, b) art supplies, c) cable TV, I’ve been cranking out some posters for my classroom next year.  You should do the same! You will need:

Kiddie watercolors, brushes, watercolor paper (optional), a little plate for mixing, and a white crayon (optional). And a little test paper. Oh, and a pencil (not pictured).

THIS IS SO EASY, Y'ALL. I can't stress that enough. All you need to do is:

1) Pick a quote you want to use. 

2) Sketch out the quote on a piece of watercolor paper in pencil.

3) Paint over it in watercolor.

4) Erase the pencil.

What?! So easy. Here are some of the ones I've made recently:

Man, Amy Poehler is a total powerhouse. I love this quote, especially for my middle schoolers who try to act like they're allergic to silliness.

One of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes I was reminded of recently.  I think the mark of a good classroom quote is something that you AND the kids benefit from reading.  The Lady fancied this version floating around on Pinterest, so she copied it.

This was so fun to make even though it took the longest!  I was inspired by Kid President, circus fonts, and Pinterest typography.

Oh, sweet, sweet Charlie. Excuse me while I go bawl my eyes out. 

This one's a little hard to read, but it says, "And above all, watch with glittering eyes the world around you." Roald Dahl wins again.  For this one, I wrote the quote first in white crayon (which is a little scary because you can't see it at ALL), then just painted over with watercolor. 

I'm telling you. So easy.

In other news, during my painting I saw a back-to-school shoe commercial.  IT'S JULY 17TH.  Just another thing that won't happen when I'm president.

What are some of your favorite quotes?

Love,

Teach