The Caste System in School

As much as I complain about my students, they really surprise me, and today we took that Marxism discussion even further as we compared the characters in three textx by talking about how their class levels influence their actions.
The first story is Born Worker, by Gary Soto, where we meet young Jose and his cousin [...]

a little explanation

About that last haiku… there are a couple of meanings for me; I wonder if it means anything to you.
Today was a collaboration day for us, and whereas we usually use those days to attend an outlandish number of meetings, or to sit in our classrooms grading papers with other teachers, today’s collaboration day was [...]

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 [...]

What do you do at the end of the year?

Add to that: What do you do for the coming year?
Now that we’re at the end of the year, I’ve been giving my students a lot of computer lab time — time to finish writing and printing their short stories, as well as time to help me build the final. I’m looking to the [...]

Winding Down

The year is coming to a quick close, and I’ve really nothing left to share. Many of the kids are getting out of control, and it seems as though some are trying to get kicked out of school. (One told us as much and has since been suspended for bringing weed to class.)
My [...]

Why (sometimes) you’ve gotta love the way kids think

After showing off my exmple of creating a story from a list of characters, names, traits, storylines, and settings, one student came to me with just three things.
Character: A warrior
Name: Eshlyn
Trait: Conceited
And then we had the following conversation.
“I’m stuck after that.”
Why?
“I don’t know what to write.”
Ok, so…you’ve got this warrior, Eshlyn. What’s he fighting [...]

How to Create Your Own Story in the Oral Tradition

As we’ve been reading through this series of stories from the oral tradition, we’ve also been able to categorize the stories into distinct types. There’s the Hyperbole story, the Origin or Creation Myths, the Moral Stories, and the Urban Legends. Some of the stories only fit into one or two categories, and many [...]

My favorite statement of the year

This is exactly why I love teaching 8th grade — you never know what kids will say. They say inappropriate things, they say caustic things, they say funny things, and they say sad things. They talk all the time and I try to share what I can when I get the chance, but [...]

Sworn to secrecy

It’s state testing time again, and today was my first foray into the new production. By that I mean that our state has relied on the same test and test format for at least a decade. Eons ago, our students took the state tests on paper, filling in those little bubbles — even [...]