Student Interruptions

I have a student who is tardy for my first hour about a third of the time. We’re talking one or two minutes, not very serious, but annoying. I’ve let her father know, but it hasn’t improved.
Today I’m reading the answers from the previous night’s homework for the kids to check their work. In the [...]

Some Kids are Truly 3σ → Left

The teacher across the hall comes over yesterday and could barely contain his laughter. In the previous period, there was an autistic kid sitting in his seat which is near a filing cabinet while the teacher was at the front of the room doing his lesson. The kid is singing/humming/babbling to himself while facing the [...]

If Schools Were Run Like Businesses

A kid comes into my room after school to talk to one of the kids I was helping with her work. She’s swearing up a storm about something that I’m not quite getting. After telling her that her cursing has made my ears bleed, she apologizes and calms down a bit.
Turns out that her uncle [...]

Students Asking Students to Homecoming

In my school, I suppose lots of kids ask others to go to the Homecoming dance in some sort of “standard” way. But we have quite a few who don’t.
On Friday, a kid that I don’t know came to me during the day and asked if he could ask a girl in my last class [...]

Two Meetings

I’ve been requested at two meetings this week. Only two of them!
Monday, September 28th special ed meeting.Tuesday, September 24th district inservice meeting.
Makes it difficult to say whether or not I will attend.

Cell Phones

Our cell phone policy:
1st offense: Teacher takes the phone for the period2nd offense: Teacher takes the phone to the principal. Student can get it back after a “consultation”3rd offense: Teacher takes the phone to the principal. Parent must come in to get it.
Today I took two cell phones from kids. One was the second offense, [...]

Emails

Here are three emails that I received late last week. On two of them, my very simple to spell last name was spelled incorrectly.
The first one wasn’t for me, but was sent to me by a parent trying to get a hold of another teacher in order for him to tell her that his daughter [...]

Most Common English Words

According to The Reading Teachers Book of Lists, Third Edition; by Edward Bernard Fry, Ph.D, Jacqueline E. Kress, Ed.D & Dona Lee Fountoukidis, Ed.D.
I’m helping my four-year old learn some sight words. She knows about 60 or so now, but I thought that I could print something like this out to give me a guide. [...]

Tale of Two Americas in Two Dot Plots

I’ve just finished grading. Lots of grading. Today I gave my three classes of honors geometry exams on chapter one in our textbook. Definitions, Theorems, drawing polygons and solids with correct “markings”, word problems (of course), and some true/false questions with general theorems that try to mess them up such as “Two lines that are [...]

More Testing Issues in Minnesota

From the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune:
Test retake has errors, so students can re-retake it
A mistake on Minnesota’s most recent Basic Standards Test for reading has prompted state and local officials to allow students to retake the test Sept. 19 and 20. What officials don’t know is whether the mistake altered test results and, if so, how [...]