A letter to my students

I wrote this yesterday after my students performed poems they had memorized. Yeah, it's sappy, but as George Washington once said, "Sappy's aiight every once in a while, y'all."

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Dear students from March 26, 2014,

Sometimes being a teacher is hard.

It's been particularly hard lately because we're in the middle of standardized testing season, which, as you know, turns us all into crazy people.  You guys take 6 tests a week to see if you're ready for the battery of standardized tests coming up, while I have to "drill and kill" you as administrators breathe down my neck, because their bosses are breathing down their necks, because the state is breathing down the districts' necks, and so on.  (There is a lot of neck-breathing going on.) 

Anyway, all of my colleagues thought I was crazy for scheduling a poetry memorization project in the middle of testing season, and with good reason.  You guys said I was crazy, too. Making you memorize poetry when you've got mountains of packets of test review? That's flirting with an Eighth Amendment violation, right there.

I explained to you why were doing this.  I said that when we memorize poetry, we internalize it; we have a new relationship with it. When we learn a poem by memory, inexplicably, it becomes a part of us. We learn about fluency, pausing, shifts, tone, and sound devices, yes, but we also learn about study skills, about determination, and about going outside our comfort zone. Then I gave you the guidelines and rubric. (You responded by booing.)

Today was the performance day, so I got to school extra early to decorate our room.  As I stood on wobbly desks to hang Christmas lights from the ceiling tiles, it finally dawned on me that I was crazy, and not because of the multiple fire/work safety rules I was violating. I realized that I had asked too much of you.  You are in 7th grade, after all.  You probably wouldn't be able to even appreciate the poem you'd chosen to memorize-- many of you chose poets like Longfellow, Keats, and Byron, poets you don't usually read about until high school. Plus, many of you come from homes where there might not be anyone willing to help you memorize it or listen to you practice. Or maybe you do have people at home who want to see you do your best, but just don't know how to help you.

And maybe the whole idea of this poetry project was just me being selfish.  Part of me thought it would be fun because I did a poetry memorization project in fifth grade that I remember being fun.  Was I just unfairly projecting my nostalgia onto you? Maybe it was only fun for me because memorizing was easy for me and I was relatively outgoing as a child-- what about for the kids who are painfully shy or for whom memorization is extremely difficult? I got down from the desk I was standing on and began to panic.

I had visions of almost whole classes standing up to perform with hardly anything memorized, of anxious criers, of students falling asleep as their classmates performed right in front of them.

I thought, "What have I done?"

I thought, "This will be a disaster."

I thought, "I will let the first few kids go and see if I need to call the whole thing off."

I thought, "Maybe I'll just take it as an extra credit grade."

I thought wrong. You blew me away.

There was the student who memorized a nearly 400-word spoken word poem that included a singing part. Our jaws dropped.

There was the student, a recent immigrant, who performed Langston Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again” in a way that left us all breathless.

There was the girl who is painfully shy in class; who will barely speak above a whisper to me, and doesn’t speak at all to her classmates. In a clear, loud voice, she performed every single word of  Amy Gerstler’s “Touring the Doll Hospital” flawlessly, her words easily reaching the back row. You guys gave her a standing ovation. I don't know if you saw her while you were clapping, but she wasn't just smiling. She was laughing triumphantly.

Then there was  the boy who performed "First Love" in such a way that I'm sure if John Clare were in the room with us, he would have said, "Yes! You captured that perfectly.”

There were the girls who wrote and memorized original poems about self-harm, bullying, and other deeply personal subjects, and their words moved the audience to tears. Some of you wrote and performed poems about hamburgers or monkeys with mustaches, and we laughed, because good poetry makes you laugh, too.

Being a teacher is hard sometimes. But other times you remind me how lucky I am to be here; that knowing you and learning with you is my greatest privilege.

Thank you. 

Love,

Your teacher

Cardigans: A Love Story

Hello. My name is Ms. Teach and I am addicted to cardigans.


Why cardigans?

Because cardigans are everything, you fool. Here's why:

1) They can be worn all school year.

That time Sybil wore a cardigan on Downton Abbey.

Over sleeveless shirts and blouses, over long-sleeved shirts in autumn, in winter under your coat, with your Easter bonnet.  ALL THE TIME. Forever.

2) They protect from the sub-arctic blasts of the air conditioner, yet aren't so bulky that you start marinating in your own juices.

Here is Kate Middleton, not looking sweaty.

That's the last time I talk about my juices. Promise.

3) They are versatile.

May I be you, cardi lady?

They can be worn unbuttoned, buttoned, halfway buttoned, dressed up with chunky necklaces or belts or brooches. Or you can step inside the arms and wear them as pants if you'd like.

Hahaha. I made myself laugh.

4) They keep you from looking like a hussy, as my grandmother would say.

Emma Pillsbury from Glee looking anti-hussy.

No sleeves? Put on a cardigan! Florescent lighting turning your white shirt see-through? Put on a cardigan! Low-cut anything? Put on a cardigan! Boyfriend won't respect you? Put on a cardigan! (Just kidding. Dump him.)

5) They are universally flattering.

Roz, looking fetching in a burgundy button-up

Maybe I am making this up, but I feel like they make my arms look awesome. Anyone else have this delusion?

6) They are comfortable.

Love, Teach does not condone anyone over the age of 19 wearing a skirt this short.

It's like wearing a blanket, but without the weird looks that a Snuggie would/will get you.


My Cardigans

I just counted. I have 15 cardigans in the following colors:

Navy (2)
Black (2)
Red
Red-orange
Gray
Gold
Forest green
Turquoise
Mustard
Oatmeal
Fuchsia
Coral and white striped
Army green

This discovery has led me to my next question,


How much is too much?

Impossible.


What's in a good cardigan?

So I used to get my cardigans from Target or Old Navy or somewhere around that price range. Every once in a while I would get one that held up well, but for the most part, those would fade super fast in the wash or get pilly. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Now I usually get mine from J.Crew (teacher discount!), or I try to find ones on sale at places that are generally out of my price range.  The cardigans from these places are definitely more expensive, but they last upwards of three years, where my Target ones barely last a school year without looking ratty and feeling like a washcloth.

Cardigans I want right this instant

I am currently saving up for a trip this summer (and am incurring thousands of dollars in debt already with grad school, yay!), but if I weren't, I might be putting money towards one of these bad boys on my Cardigans board on Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/loveteachblog/cardigans/

 

Except for the Oscar de la Renta one. That's not happening unless I win the lottery or find a treasure chest full of gold on my next afternoon walk.

Tell me about your cardi obsession. Your car-devotion, if you will. Your cardig-amity.

Love,

Teach

16 Things You Can Do While Actively Monitoring during Standardized Testing (or the next time you’re crazy bored)

I know I use a lot of superlatives, but administering standardized tests is pretty close to the worst.

Let’s stop for a second. I know what you’re thinking. “What’s so hard about handing out papers and watching students take a test? That sounds pretty cush to me. I would love to do nothing for six hours!”

Wrong-o, my friend.

The type of “nothing” that you are thinking of probably involves a lot of things—reading a magazine or a book, checking your phone, looking around idly—but this is not the “doing nothing” of standardized test administration. While administering a standardized test, the only two things you can do are 1) walk around the room, and 2) watch students take a test.

No computer/phone/technology of any kind.

No writing, drawing, doing crossword puzzles, or Sudoku.

No lunges, jumping jacks, or anything that would distract students.

No grading papers or getting caught up on work.

No sitting for more than a few minutes.

No standing in one place.

No zoning out.

The State would call this "actively monitoring." It's not that actively monitoring in itself is terrible, but, much like Chinese water torture, hours of it (and for several days at a time) will turn anyone into a crazy person. 

 Because of this, I've become somewhat of an expert in creating mental and physical activities that can be done while actively monitoring that won't distract children or get you in trouble.  WIN-WIN!  (If you're not a teacher, you can use any of these the next time you're getting an CT scan!)

16 Things You Can Do While Actively Monitoring During Standardized Testing:

1.       First of all, wear a pedometer. Set up a contest with other teachers to see who can get the highest step count during the day.  Whoever wins gets, I don’t know, a bottle of 100 year-old single malt scotch. Hahaha. Just kidding (or am I?) But make it something good.

2. Do a few laps around the room pretending to be an Olympic speed skater during a slow-motion replay.

3. Walk down the rows imagining you’re:

• walking down the aisle to marry your favorite celebrity and all the students are wedding guests
• on the red carpet in the most awesome dress/tux of your LIFE and all the students are paparazzi
• walking the plank on a ship and all of the students are pirates
• walking in a cemetery and all the students are ghosts
• scuba-walking on the bottom of the ocean floor and all your students are sea creatures
• a flight attendant and the students are passengers on the "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" Twilight Zone episode

4. The Active Monitoring Workout

• Abs: I read somewhere that one of the most effective ab workouts is simply exhaling all of your air, then tensing up your ab muscles as hard as you can.
• Legs: Put ankle weights on during a break of at the beginning of the day, and do calf-raises when you get to the back of the room (students might get distracted and/or you might earn the nickname Twinkle Toes if they see you doing them)
• Arms: Flex your bicep as hard as you can for various increments of time 

5. Imagine what animal each student would be. Not personality-wise, but strictly based on facial appearance.  For example, the Mythbusters guy looks like a walrus.

6. Imagine who you would be friends with if you were that age in school right now.

7. If your group of students somehow got stranded on a desert island, which job would each student have? (Ex: firewood collector, hunter, shelter builder, resident artist, town fool, etc.)

8. Dream up your Best Day Ever.  Best Day Ever means that you have 24 hours do whatever you want, whenever you want, and with whomever you want.  Try to plan out every detail. What would you eat for meals? You would stay in one place the whole day or jump around to different places in a teleport? Who all would you see—friends and family, celebrities, or a combination? Your imagination is the limit!*

9. Think about what kind of unrealistic things would make the world a better place.  For example:

If streetlamps were also bubble machines

If hallways were trampolines

If instead of receipts we were handed chocolate chip cookies

If we got paychecks for laughing instead of working

10. Think about your answers to these compelling “Would you rather…?” questions:

• Would you rather get pooped on by a bird every time you go outside, or never get pooped on but be allowed outside for 5 hours on Saturdays only?
• Would you rather change gender every time you sneezed, or not be able to tell the difference between a muffin and a baby?
• Would you rather have to smell a fart all the time or have super bad breath?

11. Think about how happy it would make you if a parade of your favorite animals and/or people just randomly burst into the room. Also think about what song would be playing during the parade.

12. Look at the items in the room and think about how you would use them for survival if there was a zombie apocalypse

13. Think about where on your campus you would hide if there was a school-wide Hide-and-Seek with a $1,000,0000 prize

14. Use some Crest White Strips or other teeth whitening agent

15. Buy three different kinds of gum and time all three of them to see which one loses flavor the fastest

16. Take your pulse before and after thinking about the most annoying person you know and see if it changes

Now I would like to know your answer for your Best Day Ever and at least one of the Would You Rather questions. 

Wishing you a happy and healthy testing season,

Love,

Teach

  

*dorkiest thing I’ve said all month. Not apologizing.

Five Ways To Spice Up Your Teaching With Almost Zero Effort!

Today's Question of the Day comes from Mildred Plotkins, an imaginary teacher from Waynesboro, Virginia.  Mildred asks:

Dear Teach, 

I am midway through my first year of teaching, and my students are all bored and throw things at me.  At first it was just paper, but now they've moved to firecrackers and other explosives. What can I do to make my teaching more interesting and stop me from getting my head blown off? Also I'm poor so I can't buy anything and I have no free time.

First of all, Mildred, I'm sorry to hear about your situation.  Although none of my students have thrown anything at my head, a few years ago one of mine did say he was so bored he was going to set me on fire. 

I have compiled a list for Mildred and others going through a similar mid-year situation of ways to revamp your teaching game without breaking the bank or turning you into a person who stays at school until 9:00 PM.

I give you:

Five Ways To Spice Up Your Teaching With Almost Zero Effort!

1) Teach a five-minute segment in a British accent, or whatever accent in which you are even reasonably proficient besides your own

When I’m teaching and see a big percentage of my class slowly lower their heads down to their desk, I often rev up my English accent and they all pop up again.  What is it about accents that are so fun?  Make sure that you use this for short segments only or for relatively unimportant directions, because some kids get so excited about your accent that they’ll stop listening altogether.

 Also, this next part isn’t important but I’m going to tell you anyway. I’ve always been proud of my British accent, and when I lived in England (which was for about ten seconds), I once read a paragraph out of a book in my best accent to my English friends.  When I looked up from reading, they were all doubled over in their chairs with silent laughter. 

“What?” I said. “I don’t sound English?”

“You do,” one of them replied. “But maybe an English person who has brain damage, or has half their face paralyzed.”

So there’s that. But my students think my accent is flawless, and that’s all that matters.

If you're not good at accents you can talk like a robot or a whale.

2) Trick your students into thinking they have power with the “Raise the Roof” game

Here’s the rules for Raise the Roof.

Rule #1: Everyone does the “raise the roof” motion without smiling. (Click here  for an extremely helpful instructional video on raising the roof from Howcast.)

Rule #2: Anyone who smiles sits down.

Rule #3: The last person not smiling wins.

I do this when we’re about to do something I know they hate, like a timed write.  Let’s say I really want them to have 10 minutes to do it.  But I don't tell that to the kids.

Instead, I tell them that we're about to play Raise the Roof, and if I win, they only have five minutes to write; if they win, they have 10 minutes.  Then I always lose because I can never raise the roof with a straight face.

I get my ten-minute timed write.

They get the illusion of having defeated me.

Win-win.

3) Trashketball

This game I stole from a teacher I had in high school. Thanks, NR!

Divide the class into two teams. Have each team send a representative to the front of the room.  You ask a review question.  The first team representative to ding a bell (or, if your students are like mine and have broken three of your bells, a Post-It note that one student can be in charge of making go “ERRRR!!” when buzzed) gets to answer the question for their team for three points.  If the answer is incorrect, the other team gets a chance to answer for three points.

Then, whichever representative answers correctly gets a chance to shoot the trashketball (i.e. a special ball of trash) across the room into a trash can for an additional two points. I make the question worth more than the trash so that nobody gets harassed if they miss. Also, be sure to check the trash can ahead of time for things like used Kleenex or the cheese from your Lean Pocket.

My teacher’s trashketball in high school was a foam human head decorated to look like him.  I used to have one but it was destroyed very quickly, so this is a picture of my current trashketball.

Also, there’s this weird phenomenon that happens in Trashketball.  The kids who are the star athletes and talk a huge game usually miss when they throw it, and the quietest, least athletic kids are often the ones who make the insane, across-the-room shots for 50 kazillion points.  Just play it; you’ll see what I mean.

4) Play a short, random YouTube video at the beginning of class that relates to your lesson plan minimally or not at all

Even if you can’t find a way to relate them to your lesson, they might make your students like you more and thus make them pay attention. Here is a list of my favorites. 

Cat Sail. Just thinking about this video makes me giggle. 

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.  There’s nothing I can really say about this one.  But your kids will be quoting it for the rest of the year.

Zombie kid likes turtles. I used this one to introduce a lesson on staying on topic. 

How Animals Eat Their Food. I'm pretty sure this video would work for kindergartners all the way up to high school seniors.

Goats yelling likehumans.  The second clip destroys me every time.

I just realized that all these videos are about animals. Huh.

5) Review Musical Chairs

Okay, this is seriously the best.  The only thing you really have to prepare is moving all desks out of the way and creating a review.  Chances are you had to create a review anyway, so really the only thing to do is move desks which you can make your students do.

Basically, it’s like regular musical chairs, except the person who is “out” at the end gets to challenge someone who is sitting for their seat. The two students, the challenger and the challengee "face off" with a review question. When I play, I make all my students answer the question (even if they’re not one of the two students in the showdown for a chair) and turn in their review at the end of class.

Warning: this can get violent. And really, really hilarious. I’ve laughed myself to tears/stomach cramps/near death on multiple occasions.

Wishing Mildred and anyone else who is hating February the best,

Love,

Teach

6 easy steps to keep yourself from lighting the world on fire

I was in a meeting today that upset me, and by that I mean that it made me want to hire a rickshaw to run me around the whole world while I sit in the back with a giant blowtorch, setting everything that comes in my path ablaze. 

I have noticed that on Bad Meeting Morning days, I tend to be really grouchy with my students.  This is unfair because I believe that no one should see my wrath unless they’ve really earned it.  So, I have created a routine for myself to transition back to normalcy after I am frustrated, and I would like to share that routine with you now.  

1) Cover your eyes and take 15 deep breaths.

This makes me think I’m back in the womb, where I had time to take deep breaths and it was dark.

2) Listen to nature sounds.  

How can you be mad at anything when you’re hiking* through a rainforest or near a babbling brook?  If you are a teacher, put nature sounds on while your students are doing anything. If you’re not a teacher, just put a pair of noise cancelling headphones on and tell people you’re sorry, you can’t remove them because you’re having your ears dilated.

Here is a link to my nature playlist.  I used it today with my students and it was like they'd been drugged.

3) Look at my Pinterest board for baby animals.  

If this joyful baby donkey doesn't make you smile, you should probably gather your things and call it a day.

4) Eat some peanut butter filled pretzel nuggets.

 Imagine them as the heads of the people who are annoying you.  Tip: ration yourself so that you don’t accidentally eat half of a family-sized large plastic barrel in one sitting. 

5) Think about the adults who are annoying you as mermaids (or mermen) who have been banished to an aquarium at a local restaurant and must perform for their food. If this is too weird for you, think of them as taxidermy, mounted to the wall of a place you never visit.  If this is too weird for you, think of them as baby versions of themselves.

6) Smell something nice.  

If I was rich I would keep a bottle of lavender essential oil in my desk, but since I am poor I spray some purple Febreze, which is also lovely. Side note: once I saw an episode of a show where a woman was addicted to smelling the head of a baby doll. You may do this if it pleases you.

I hope that you remember this the next time you have a Bad Morning Meeting, or whatever in your career or life makes you want to go on an international blowtorching rickshaw excursion.

Love,

Teach

*I almost spelling this "haiking"!  What a day.