Year 10, Day 2

Day 2 was alright. Most of the first period was spent in the auditorium, listening to the principal's address. It was easily the best principal's address I had heard in my career -- succinct but clear, and full of high expectations for the students. I loved hearing about strict adherence to school policy, but also emphasis placed on such things as the use of Standard English and forbidden use of electronics, even for parents calling during the school day. Lots of stuff about honor, which I definitely dug. I loved it.

The rest of the day went well, as I got my students more and more used to the routines and systems I will be using in class. A few of my 9th graders are developing personalities and I've learned about a quarter of their names. Six of them walked in late today to 8th period; much lateness this early can be attributed to getting lost, but I still laid the disappointment on thick. One kid who thinks he will play baseball this year even said, "Sorry, coach."

The heat is unbearable, though. It hit 93 in my classroom today, and that, coupled with the humidity and a room chock full of kids, just doesn't make for a good learning environment. I do my best, but it's hard not think it's pretty inhumane not to offer a/c in every school when it gets this hot. At noon, I was feeling okay (I didn't wear a shirt/tie today), but, by 2pm, I could barely move. Kids were ornery and/or sluggish. I really wish there a way to get more humane conditions in all of our schools. I'll be on my 3rd sweat towel tomorrow.

E-mailed introduction

Instead of having my students fill out an information card this year, I'm having them e-mail me information. They're to send me a little introduction with information about where they went to middle school, what they liked about English class last year, and what their academic, social, and academic goals are for the year.

I'm making them make their own academic e-mail address. No more 9th graders with e-mail addresses like "sexykitten69@yahoo.com" or "sk8brdr4life@gmail.com", but, rathe,r e-mail addresses that area variation on their names and that show up as their government names in my inbox.

You should read the ones I'm already getting. Very cute.

A Hot First Day

Great first day, except for the heat. The sweat started as I carried a new fan (bought at Target yesterday for $24.99, my 3rd classroom fan I've purchased for my room... ironically, I hate fans while teaching) and didn't stop until I left the school. Felt like I was going to pass out at times. This is probably the most intensive day for teachers -- all focus is on you, and you're talking all the time -- and I earned that sweat.

Seems like a lot of great kids.

We brought the post-first day happy hour (& pizza) to Ledo's Pizza, the location of the former favorite Rocky Run. Love the new place. The serves are great.

Putting finishing touches on summer reading quizzes now... hope tomorrow it gets a little cooler.

It's going to be a great year!

Tomorrow I begin my 10th year of teaching. I'm so excited! And nervous! If ever it does not feel this way, I guess it's time to retire.

The forecast is 97 degrees and humid, and I am not looking forward to that. Traditionally I wear a lot of polos and, during baseball season, our baseball uniform jersey. But in the first semester, I try to dress nicer. The first day, always a shirt and tie. Tomorrow I'm worried about that. I will definitely maintain my crowd as the Sweatiest Teacher in the School!

Curriculum draft

I'm ready to divulge what I'm thinking about for the IB Seniors this year:

First Semester (chosen from a pretty restrictive IB list of authors):
Richard III: A returning text from last year. It's a great teach (Richard is quite the gangster), funny and morbid, and the Al Pacino film Looking for Richard makes it even better.

Much Ado About Nothing: Another returner. I'm someone who's never really liked Shakespeare comedies but I liked this one. The kids seemed to like it last year, too. It's light and funny and there's plenty to analyze in passages.

Essays by James Baldwin: After the lightness of Much Ado, we'll read the bleak but beautiful essays of James Baldwin. Once again I'll have them get the Library of Congress collection, which covers his entire career. I'll probably lighten the load of essays this year, but still get enough to get a picture of his career.

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton: A new text this year. It's a beautiful and amazing novel, and something that I think will push the kids out of their comfort zones a bit. I'm excited for the challenge.

Second Semester (chosen from a less-restrictive list of authors):

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga: Bar none the favorite book of my students last year, a funny and inventive read that sets up the semester theme of class struggle.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison: One of my top-5 favorite novels of all time, and a book that has been a consistently good teach over the last 5 years or so.

July's People by Nadine Gordimer: I don't love this book, but it fits the theme well and is short. Gordimer does some interesting things with style here. I found it labored and overly mannered, but I like the idea of the plot and think some kids will like it. Plus it's short.

Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid: The least sure thing, mostly because I haven't finished it yet (read the first couple of chapters online and waiting for it to arrive in the mail). But the plot fits well and Kincaid's language is rather beautiful. I think it will work well.

The weekend before year 10

On this weekend before the start of my 10th year of teaching, I'm excited. I sort of wish I had another couple of weeks to get everything done (I'm only on page 150 of Wild Swans, which is reading like required reading, which it is for my senior students in a text we chose in conjunction with History class), but my room is pretty much set up and the year is about to begin.

We've done some re-vamping to our 9th grade curriculum, and I'm rather excited about. In the first quarter, while the 9th graders are learning about Psychology in Humanities class down the hall, we will be studying two texts that look at the psychology of how people end up how they are, specifically how trauma and conflict make us into the people we are today. We'll be linking Persepolis and Fences, and I'm so excited; students will write their Psychology essay at the end of the unit about one of the two characters, and turn in the essay to both teachers.

Our second unit will be about the Journey, and we'll be linking Catcher in the Rye and The Odyssey. I haven't taught Catcher in the Rye since I was student teaching in Lansing ten years ago, and I'm excited to pick it up again to teach. I obviously like the book a lot, as my dog's name is Holden! We unfortunately don't have enough textbooks to send home The Odyssey, so I'm less excited about that.

Third quarter will see students reading a Literary Circles novel, with choices from such authors as Yann Martel, Julia Alvarez, and Shyam Selvadurai. Fourth quarter will see us return to the staple of Romeo and Juliet.

I feel like I was so concentrated on the new course of the seniors, along with National Board, that my freshmen last year didn't get as good of an experience as I would have liked. I want to re-focus on them a bit more this year.

That being said, the seniors will be a huge part of my year as well. I'm still tinkering with the curriculum -- I'm teaching Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing, James Baldwin essays, Song of Solomon, and The White Tiger, all for sure, and considering adding Tim Winton's Cloudstreet and Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy. Those two are close to being definites, and the last choice will either be a repeat of Oryx and Crake from last year, or a novel by Roddy Doyle or V.S. Naipaull. I have about a week to decide for sure.

In all, though, I'm very excited for the year, and hoping it's one of my best yet.

Man escapes dog by jumping on my car while in the school parking lot

Recent events have made me more excited than ever about the upcoming school year, and I saw myself visiting my classroom to set things up every day so far this week. Sadly, I'm not nearly actually ready for the year to begin (I'm only about a third of the way through my summer reading book, the one the History department and I chose together for our students to share, and still need to read more and finalize my second semester) but am still excited for it to begin. My classroom is looking good (I never have the same room arrangement for consecutive years) and I'm going to swap out some posters by the end of the week.

On Monday, a pit bull was running around our school and a father picking up his son from football practice jumped on the hood of my car to escape an attack. It dented. Thankfully he left a note and will be paying the deductible. I spent much of the day today getting estimates. I feel kind of bad about having him pay the entire $250 deductible and might split it with him (it wasn't his fault a pit bull was attacking people at my school, after all). Anyhow, that was an exciting start to the school year, I guess.

Defeating Jessamy

I feel like the crime has gotten more and more sickening in Baltimore this summer. If it's not a star basketball player gunned down right near my school, it's a Hopkins researcher stabbed to death while walking home from Penn Station in Baltimore. Sickening and scary.

It's time for a change and Bernstein must be voted in and Jessamy defeated. The primary election for the State's Attorney is September 14th; please cast your vote for Gregg Bernstein.

A well-written summary of why you should vote Bernstein is here: http://pallas-athena2.livejournal.com/15595.html.

The 6 Best Food Items in Baltimore

It's been a while, so I thought I would re-post. I believe I have remained somewhat consistent with these choices but recently added a #6.

1) Crab Hash at The Waterfront Hotel's Brunch (Fells Point)

2) Hriby Dip at Ze Mean Bean Cafe (Fells Point)

3) Hearts Afire salad at The Dog Pub (Federal Hill)

4) Rosemary Garlic Fries at The Brewers Hart (Mt. Vernon)

5) Mushroom Reuben* at Joe Squared (midtown)

6) Veggie Burger at Hamilton Tavern (Hamilton)


These are all pretty inexpensive, too.

It's my 33rd birthday this weekend, and I hope to enjoy several of the above items, and maybe discover a new one, plus maybe a beer or two. Happy Hour Friday, a Bar Trivia Race and Scavenger Hunt on Saturday, and Brunch on Sunday, followed by a visit with my personal trainer (as I do every Sunday) and a shift waiting tables Sunday night. I could have gotten out of waiting tables on my birthday, certainly, but I enjoy it and could really use the money after the "Great Wallet Loss/Theft of 2010" that I'm sure you've read about. What, you haven't? Yup. Lost my wallet, probably at the BP on Greenmount/33rd after a particularly tough workout. Had to get everything replaced and had quite a bit of $$ in it. Ugh. It will be a good weekend, though.

* Note: This is not on the menu, though it should be.

The Curious Incident of the First Day of Summer Bridge

Social Studies chose The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time as its 9th grade summer reading book (their first quarter's unit is dealing with Psychology) and our English department hopped on board. We have another book as well (a choice of three), but Curious Incident is the book that all students read, so it's the one we probably will spend the most time on in the opening days of school.

I love the book, and as I re-read it this summer, I got very excited about how I thought 9th grade students would respond. It's kind of an easy read, making it a good summer read, but its concepts and tangents are difficult, though, so I was a little nervous with how the students would respond. How would they deal with the inferences they would have to make, in order to figure out what exactly happened with the marriage of Christopher's parents. We're hearing it all from Christopher's perspective, of course, and he doesn't quite get it. Would the students "get" that? What would their experience reading the book be like?

The first day of Summer Bridge was today and I finally got to satisfy my curiosity with how the students responded to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I created an 8-page handout about all the summer reading, including a couple of passages from the novel for which students had to text-mark for the IB Learner Profile. We're doing the activity, though, and finally I needed to say it: "Can I ask you guys something? What was reading this book like? I tried to put myself in your spot as I was reading it... you had to read the book without a teacher around, and you probably understood that Christopher had some sort of condition, but how well did you 'get' what that was? Can you share what your experience was?"

Hands shot up. They wanted to talk about it.

"At first I was confused by this boy, but when he started explaining his behavorial problems I got it more."

"I liked it but got confused when he went off and started talking about things that didn't seem to fit, like ice cream."

"Christopher was such a visual learner and drew stuff out but I didn't like that and it confused me. I liked the book overall though."

"My uncle has Asperger's and he kind of flips out when he's around a lot of people or is touched so I understood what Christopher was talking about."

And on and on. It was a great conversation and I could tell that the students were meaningfully engaged in the text as they read it. Is there anything else I can really ask for regarding summer reading?

I continued the lesson. From The Autism Society of America and as website about Asperger's, I provided a list of characteristics of both autism and Asperger's (and I realize that the latter is just a high-functioning type of the former) and the students discussed a diagnosis for Christopher. Websites identify him as both, and we decided that his autism is probably functional and specialized enough to be Asperger's. Students identified elements of each diagnosis and provided evidence from the book that Christopher exhibits. We went on to discussion questions in small groups and tips on how to succeed in the first days of class.

I loved it. What a great day. They're into the book and these kids are excited for the year to start. What a great read.

Dan Bern - Black Tornado

There's a black tornado, a black tornado spinning around in my body sometimes.

God, I love this song.

Summer Bridge lesson

Next week, in the sadly shortened (was that a BCPSS decision? or a school-based one?) High School Prep, I am charged with teaching a 55-minute session on high school reading to every one of our school's incoming 9th graders. I'll be focusing on Summer Reading, which involves the reading of the curious incident of the dog in the night time (Hadden) and their choice of The Book Thief (Zusak), Does My Head Look Big in This? (Abdel-Fatteh), or A Long Way Gone (Baeh).

I'm going to focus primarily on the Hadden text because (a) all the kids are reading it; and (b) it's the text that I think they'll need the most help with. It will be challenging because I know about half the kids will have already read the book and completed the assignment, and probably the other half haven't even gotten the book yet.

I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to come up with a bang-up lesson because (a) I feel that since High School Prep is shortened this year, I have to cram a lot more learning/preparation into one session than I normally would have; (b) I really want to have a great year with these 9th graders and that starts with summer reading; and (c) I have to teach the same lesson 15 times, so if it's not a great lesson, I'll be bored to tears.

Wish me luck. It's been marinating for a few weeks, and, this weekend, I'll have to put it together. Monday at 8:30 a.m., I'll be back at it.