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« December 2004 | Main | February 2005 »
Oh my god this is hilarious. If this doesn't turn you on to the Daily Show, I don't know what will. How does this Allan Jennings guy keep getting re-elected? The fact that Jon Stewart has made fun of him on the show before speaks volumes itself. This is off the charts, though.
I guess I can provide more video content now that I upped my hosting package...
Check out these pictures of Highway 18, a rode I drove up about 20 days ago on the way to my dad's house. This is due to the rainstorms that hit up California.
You can see here the road completely gone. Look in the background and you can see the sign that says "Welcome to San Bernardino National Forest!
I don't know why I've been doing a lot of Chronicles Of A First Year Teacher stuff lately, but hey, it's what I've got. Today I was looking at the list of the most frequently banned books, as compiled by the American Library Association. I'm happy to report that many of them are in my class or have been read in my class. Sadly, #2 Daddy's Roommate isn't in my room. I'm also posting this on the day that two Mississippi counties announced they are trying to ban America by Jon Stewart. Here's what I've got from ALA's list that I know of:
#1 Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
#4 The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#6 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#7 Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
#9 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#14 The Giver by Lois Lowry
#16 Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
#18 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
#21 The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
#43 The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
#70 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
This past week I stole a lesson plan from Mr. Murphy, my 6th grade English teacher at Palm Desert Middle School. One project we did in the class was write a business letter to a college requesting information about how to get into the college. It was a perfect thing for me to seize on, so I did, with a few modifications.
I put up a list of colleges on the board, ranging in degrees of prestige. I had everything from Delta State University to Harvard represented. I simply told the kids to pick two places and write a letter requesting information about how to get into them. We'll go through three drafts before we're done and they get their information. I knock out a state standard and I get the kids thinking about how to get into college now.
The interesting thing, to me, is that the kids picked colleges that were far away from the Delta. I very purposefully put up colleges like Delta State and Mississippi State, but they all opted for places farther away. This was odd, because of some things that we were told at institute. TFA corps members think intuitively that children will want to go far away to some place great, but that isn't quite often the case we were told. Children might want to be close to their families and communities, and thus not necessarily like the idea of going far away.
That was not the case in my class. I don't know that any of the kids are writing to a Mississippi college. Some are writing to Texas or Tennessee colleges, but that is because of the sports teams. The overwhelming majority of kids are writing to places far away, mostly in the northeast. About three fourths of the class is opting to write to Harvard as one of their choices. One girl said, "I'm goin' to Harvard or NYU. I'm getting as far away from Greenville as I can!"
I couldn't have been more happy inside.
Actual conversation that transpired in my classroom today today:
School Security Guard: You children need to recognize that getting an education is the most important thing in life. If you don't have an education, you can't do the things you want to in life.
Student: School's boring. I don't need no education.
School Security Guard: How you gonna live? How you gonna earn money?
Student: Sell drugs.
My head went into my hands, showing my students any kind of strong emotion for the first time in a while. Remember, I teach 6th graders. They're eleven and twelve years old.
When I began teaching I was really interested in the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. It's a test that's better than most out there measuring student growth. In fact, it returns what is called a 'grade equivalent' for each student in subject areas. In the beginning of the year I tried to use the ITBS approach myself, but the idea, while still good, just isn't very feasible.
But, I recently got back results from an Iowa test that my kids took in November and was somewhat pleased with the results:
I compared the grade levels of my students who took the test in April and in November. While there is little or no growth in some students, some of them are growing a lot. Some of the slow growth in some can be attributed to a bad testing day, but a few of these students I can honestly say that they haven't progressed because they haven't done anything. But, on the whole, I'm making average progress in reading, great progress in language, and above average progress in math. It's a breath of fresh air, especially after all the bad things I had to deal with last semester.
I suppose that 'bugs' cound be a verb or a noun, but in this case it was a noun. Look at what my house mate, Doreet, found in her room:
