Sorry kids, I just made this too difficult. Let’s fix that.

It happens every once in a while — that monster you spring on the classroom is more frightening than you expected it to be. You planned on turning that monster into a cute, cuddly stuffed animal, and instead you accidentally added another set of fangs, a tail made of glass shards, and chainsaws for [...]

Worn Out Workshop — worries and wonders.

These past two weeks have definitely kept me busy, and I owe that to my favorite (and yet, least favorite) class activity — the workshop. The workshop is meant to keep the kids busy, keep them working, keep them learning new materials, and to get them to turn out a quality product on a [...]

On the road again…

It’s the beginning of week three of school and I’m beginning to feel like myself again. During the last two years I’ve really been on my own through this whole teaching thing — alone in figuring out what to do, what to teach, how to assess, and how to manage all the muck and [...]

the Fives

While most students really grasped the concept behind the Keys Assignment yesterday, there was a pretty large group that found it difficult to connect with a metaphorical key, or to choose for themselves a representative key. I tried to just throw out the “Key to life” or the “Key to your heart” aspect, but [...]

I am not a service to my students

because I am spending more and more classtime dealing with behaviors between the students. If it’s not the constant bickering between two students (who go so far as to continuously call each other names in class, even in the middle of a lecture, even as the class lets out, and whose relationship has turned [...]

The Great Check Out

If there’s anything I’ve learned through keeping this blog it’s that I’m not alone. There are minutes and hours and days and weeks that we sit in our classrooms thinking no other students across the country perform the same ways our students do, or that no other teachers have the same problems we see. [...]

The burn of failure

A while back I mentioned that I signed up for a few other positions at work. In addition to teaching, I also lead a youth group, run Saturday school every few weeks, and attend a thrice-weekly after school homework club for students who need a little extra time or help (though it really seems [...]