Yeah, I got a call!\u00a0 Today I would be teaching English (again) at the High School — my third English teacher.\u00a0 The classes started great; later classes were less spectacular.\u00a0 Maybe it has something to do with the time of day and when these kids eat.\u00a0 I\u2019m seeing a trend where the later classes get more and more disruptive.\u00a0 This teacher’s first class was made up of my wife’s students from last year.\u00a0 I recognized many of them, and they sure knew me.\u00a0 Because they were freshmen, they were feral and squirrely.\u00a0 No wonder no one wants to teach freshmen.<\/p>\n
The most fun part of my day was all the stuff that happened in between.\u00a0 My dear friend Annie was also subbing that day and we had the same prep period.\u00a0 She talked my ear off about how to manage a disruptive class.\u00a0 I think some of the stuff she suggested might be frowned upon or illegal these days, but she\u2019s an old-school teacher, so no doubt, that\u2019s how they did things 30-40 years ago.<\/p>\n
She told me that she didn\u2019t like today’s lesson plan that her teacher had given her so she decided that today for class she would tell the kids about her march for civil rights with Martin Luther King in 1961 (Annie grew up in a segregated environment — she attended black only schools right through her college years).\u00a0 Actually, living history like that is very valuable!\u00a0 It\u2019s no wonder that both the teachers and students love her.<\/p>\n
The break and lunchtime conversations with the English department were also fun.\u00a0 They talked about students, both good and bad, and about topics like the recent legalization of marijuana in Colorado, and how it was going to cause trouble for that state\u2026 and yet they\u2019d also like to see pot legalized in our state because it would reduce the number of people currently in jail (and they would also then have more happy, mellow students!).\u00a0 At one point, a teacher was saying how a student had simply made her day by giving her three reams of paper just as she had run out.\u00a0 That student turned out to be my son!\u00a0 Once the teachers knew who I was (Father of Jeffrey), they all had wonderful things to say about him.\u00a0 They then asked if I had any other kids at the school, so I told them about my daughter.\u00a0 They asked who her English teacher was, but I only knew her as \u201cMo\u201d because that\u2019s what my daughter calls her.\u00a0 It turned out to be the gal sitting next to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yeah, I got a call!\u00a0 Today I would be teaching English (again) at the High School — my third English teacher.\u00a0 The classes started great; later classes were less spectacular.\u00a0 Maybe it has something to do with the time of … Continue reading