Day 90- "I'll see ya when I see ya." Rounders and Ocean's 13

I love the curve balls life throws. I wasn't at school long today, well it was staff record day anyway and I had all my grades put in last night, but I was there even less than I thought I would be because I had to fix my hot water heater. We had our annual staff Christmas breakfast, received a pat on the back by admin for surviving the semester with all the changes we weathered, and saw the best retirement exit ever. Our media specialist retired at the semester, and she is very dear to everyone in the English department. Southport has a tradition of giving retirees a rocking chair and allowing them a farewell speech. There were four retirees at the semester, and MJ was the first to give her speech. At the end, she waved, and instead of going to sit on her rocker like everyone else does, she walked out the door and left. She is already sorely missed.

Day 89- "We're in trouble. I just checked with the guys at the Jewish house and they said that every one of our answers on the Psych test was wrong. " Animal House

Last student day of the year!I gave 3 finals and an rSkills test for my Read 180 students. Fairly easy day, but a little boring. Hard to believe this semester is already over. I have a staff holiday party to get to, but at some point over the break I will blog about this semester and my thoughts on what went well, what I need to improve on for next year, and other strategies I would like to try.

Day 88- "You know, a lot of people would think these questions are difficult... not me." The Perfect Score

Yeah, I could have not come to school today and as little or as much as I did or didn't do would have still be accomplished. My first period Read 180 class took an rSkills test, then my senior classes all "reviewed" for the final and attempted to decipher the Christmas carols that my other class deciphered on Monday. My second period class struggled with this, and I wasn't sure at times if they would be able to complete it, but they found their inner Christmas spirit and were able to create their own in-class Christmas miracle. My other two classes did the activity well, and my last class even wanted a harder challenge, so I reached into my files and pulled out a harder Christmas carol list for them to attempt. They did not disappoint and collectively deciphered every carol.

Day 87- "If God wanted him to graduate than God would have given him the right answers. "- Easy A

Finals start today! Yeah, it really isn't that big a deal for my classes. I have a hard time being forced to give a final to my composition class who have already written all their papers for the year, but I made a final nonetheless. If anyone fails it, they deserve to fail out of school and be doomed to making my fries at McD's for the rest of their lives. Enough said. I only gave one final today because the READ 180 class must follow Scholastic's curriculum to a T, and they do not deem a final necessary. So, today consisted of a Read 180 quiz, an English 12 final, iPass, prep, and Read 180 lab. Farewell black days. I can only hope next semester you are my same oasis.

Day 86- "The rest of those who have gone before us cannot steady the unrest of those to follow."- Finding Forrester

Ah, the start of the last week. My first period class has their final tomorrow, so we reviewed for the final, then I had them attempt a Christmas carol deciphering game as a class. They actually did better than I expected. The activity consisted of 20 Christmas carols reworded from the thesaurus from hell. The easiest one on the list to decipher was Bleached Yule, which since many of them didn't know what Yule meant, wasn't as easy as it could have been. Anyway, there were 19 more worded in this fashion.

The rest of my classes finished up Finding Forrester. A few weren't happy about the ending, but I believe they all enjoyed the movie. These classes won't meet again until Wednesday, where I will review for the final and have them do the Christmas carol deciphering. Just need to make it 3 more days.

Day 85- "The first key to writing is...to write, not to think."- Finding Forrester

Friday the 13th. Symbolism would make this a black day Friday, but alas, the literary gods missed the memo and today was a red day. With our finals starting on a black day (and if you have figured out our fubared schedule by now, I need to buy you a drink), this left a couple of days of flux since one class gets a day less of instruction. I decided earlier this week I would introduce my seniors to what a good movie actually looks like, so I showed the first part of Finding Forrester. This is one of my all-time favorite movies, and the fact that the main character is a writer just fits this class like a glove. Not a single one of my students had seen it before, and probably only a handful of them would ever watch it on their own, but they were completely engaged throughout. Every class was disappointed when the bell rang because they wanted to finish the movie. Even though this is a movie, it has some great quotes about writing and the struggle of what it means to write something truly great. I truly wish I could read some of William Forrester's writings, especially his two books.

Day 84- "If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Robert Frost

Mundane. That was today. Black days can be that way, but they are more than welcome in the chaos that can be my days. First period was rote Read 180, second was a repeat of the letters of recommendation letters with my lone senior class today, then iPass, prep, and Read 180 lab. I will say iPass and prep were very productive as I have everything in my grade book except the finals. I'm figuratively, and mentally literally done, no matter what the calendar says.

I had two highlights todays. First, I received an email from a fellow teacher who is a kindred spirit of mine. The subject was blank, and it only had one line, a line from a hilarious on-line video about a bad lip reading of A Game of Thrones. I read it and laughed so hard I had to sit down. Great way to break up the monotony of the day. My second highlight has to do with my club soccer team. (I coach an extremely highly competitive club soccer team that is one of the best in the region.) A friend of mine and fellow coach just recently signed to play with our local professional NASL team Indy Eleven. He contacted me today and wanted to train with my team tonight. Even though I've known him for a while and we have worked camps together, it was cool to have a professional train with my team, especially where I was providing the training.

Day 84- "This is business, not personal." The Godfather

This was probably the best Wednesday of the year, even with the fact it's a white Wednesday! No, my account has not been hacked, this is really me. I am capable of positive emotion on rare occasion.

In my English classes, we discussed letters of recommendation. I told them that a few of them, especially the ones who already have jobs, may have to write one of these in the very near future. We had a great discussion on what makes a letter of recommendation professional and not personal, and I inadvertently said the famous Godfather line in class, which brought a smile from a few of the students (first lesson only, after that, I planned it). I again gave them sample letters that I wrote so they could see the formatting and content this type of writing should contain. Being the nerd that I am, I made one letter about Jon Snow joining the Night's Watch in Game of Thrones, and the other letter about Will Hunting being recommended for a job by Lucious Fox of Stark Enterprises. Yes, I realize I just committed comic world blasphemy by mixing the Marvel and DC worlds, but I took it a step further and put Mr. Fox's contact number as working number that dials Santa Claus. I need to have some sort of fun with this job. I also received a recommendation letter from fellow Star Wars fan that recommended me for a position with the Mandalorian bounty hunters. Needless to say, this one is a keeper.

Cluster today was quite different. Last week when I was absent, a firestorm happened in cluster and revolt almost took place. Many of my colleagues said it probably was a good thing I wasn't there. So on Sunday, I wrote a lengthy email to our cluster leaders with a study attached the shows how writing across the curriculum is the best way to improve writing. In today's cluster, our leaders had a completely different tone and actually said teaching writing cannot solely fall on us. I may had said "It's about dang time" louder than I meant, but they didn't hear me. I am not naive enough to believe my email had anything to do with this, but at least we seem to be all on the same page, or heading there. I did get quite a bit of a vindication that English 12a is working. In part of our cluster, we looked at all the student data we had access to in a data warehouse called Pivot. I was curious to see my student's SAT scores. I was able to see a student of mine who took the SAT in June and then again in October. After 8 weeks of my class, her writing score went up 40 points on the SAT. What we are doing with our students in 12a is working. I wish we could start this sooner. I was very encouraged that we have hard data that in some form shows that what we are teaching and doing in 12a, with a curriculum myself and another teacher virtually created, is working. I was also encouraged that it appears some conversations will take place about writing and reading across the curriculum may start taking place.

Day 83- "Yeah, I know him. I know him! He's my boss! He's my unholy, disgusting pig of a boss!" Office Space

Today started the last teaching rotation of this semester for me. I have all my grading caught up, and the end is in sight. We discussed complaint letters today and times when an employee could and should file an official complaint against a boss or co-worker. We discussed the proper procedures for this along with the format of this letter and what is should and should not contain. Office Space clips may have been viewed as an educational tool of what not to do. We had a nice discussion of how business letters differ from academic writing and MLA format and the reason behind it. The students were then given a couple of scenarios of complaints they could write about, but many of them chose to write legitimate complaints they had from either their current job or a former job. I was happy they could see an immediate relevance for this type of activity.

Day 82- "Cause the house always wins. Play long enough, you never change the stakes. The house takes you." Ocean's Eleven

Black Monday, you almost making Monday bearable. Read 180 runs itself, so that was a nice start to the week. During my lone senior class, I handed back the rubrics to their papers, discussed them, went to a lab to have them review the comments I made, and had them fill out a self-evaluation. This class had a high number of plagiarisms in class, which was unusual for them. I had many students try to justify their plagiarism because of how much the score dropped their grade, but since the pre-Christmas Grinch and I lack a heart, I would not relent on their zeroes.  I found out later in the day that these students didn't even write their papers! They paid another student to write their papers, and he plagiarized on his and theirs. I took more than a little smug satisfaction out of that. You can't cheat the house silly kids. iPass and prep came and went, and my Read 180 lab class continued to work on their short stories after a pleasant trip to the IMC and silent reading.

Day 81- "Brace yourselves. Winter is coming." A Game of Thrones

Well, winter came today. I work in a district where typically a 2-hour delay is the equivalent of a unicorn having brunch with Nessie, but today I received a glorious 5:30 am phone call stating we had a delay. Not a bad way to come back after being gone for two days either I might add.

This day actually turned out to be rather easy, and the 30-minute reduced classes helped quite a bit. My first period seniors must have thought the 2-hour delay made school optional because 11 out of 23 showed up, even though they didn't have to arrive until 9:25. My 11 who actually came thought I was going to give them a free day. Ha! I told them we are going on with the lesson as they know it is the responsibility of anyone who is absent to come see me. (Also, the material is not that hard and finals are  a week away. Becuase of our schedule, white/black day students have one less day of instruction, so missing another day was not just an option.) I went over the acceptance and rejection letters with them and they were able to produce their own. I will put my VoiceThread lesson my My Big Campus for the ones who took the day off.

The rest of my classes were given back their persuasive paper rubrics and we went to the IMC so they could review the comments I made on the papers. I also had them fill out a self-evaluation for the paper and ripped them a little bit for being so lazy with their grammar. I have them submit their papers via Google Docs, and unlike Microsoft Word, Docs does not auto correct capitalization errors on the first word of a sentence and I", so a vast majority of them had these very basic errors. Their laziness cost them better grades, and they have no one to blame but themselves. I am looking forward to reading their feedback on their evaluations because I want to know what I can do better next time.

Day 80- Sick day with a twist- "Are you talking to me?" Taxi Driver

I had to take another sick day today, but I wanted my lesson to be taught. Today I was going to cover business letters, specifically acceptance and rejection letters. With a substitute, I never know if I'm going to competent person or a corpse who steals my Sharpie pens, so I trust very little to be done when I'm gone. In order to remedy this, I used a website called VoiceThread to teach my lesson. I uploaded the letters to this site, then I recorded what I would say if I were in the classroom. I typically do a discussion and inquiry with my students, drawing the answers I want from them, but obviously I couldn't do that with this. I was able to do an audio modeling of these letters for my class though, then they were given templates to follow to write their own. Hopefully this will be successful and something I can use for a planned absence in the future.

Edit note: I had a few students tell me they thought it was cool how I used the VoiceThread and it was better than having a sub try to explain things.

Day 79- Sick Day

I had to take a sick day today. It was a black day, so Read 180 ran itself while my lone senior class typed their resumes.

Day 78- "Why are you always giving me your resume?" A Few Good Men

My first period class was a repeat of the resume activity for yesterday, and the rest of my classes actually build their resumes on computers in the IMC. I had a template that they could follow according to what we discussed yesterday in class. Unfortunately, Google Docs doesn't have a resume template or format the Word template well, so the students had to use Word and print them off. This will be the first mass hard copy grading I will do all semester, so that will bring back memories of last year. I emphasized to them that I would be very strict on grammar, so they better pay attention to it. Based on their attention to detail in their compositions, my confidence is not high.

Day 77- "I have fired up my resume, as I suggested all of you do as well." Despicable Me

14 days with students, 15 days total. Not like I'm counting down or anything. With our schedule being what it is, and our black day students receiving one less day of instruction than the other days, this means I only have 8 class periods (7 for black days) before finals start. As a collective of senior teachers, we decided to spend these last couple of weeks instructing the students in some business and technical writing. This is completely different that composition writing, and some of our students may be doing some of these type of writing shortly after graduation. Today, we started with resumes. We went over dos and don'ts for resumes, proper formatting, what should be on a resume, and how important grammar and spelling are to show an employer that an applicant pays attention to detail. The classes did a good job with know what was supposed to be and not supposed to be on a resume and they were fairly engaged. I believe since most of them are looking for jobs or want to be working, this was very relevant to them and they wanted to do this so they could have a resume for their job search.

Day 76- "If all the animals on the equator were capable of flattery, then Thanksgiving and Hallowe'en would fall on the same date." Ocean's Twelve

Black Tuesday on a shortened schedule due to a pep session: best way to start a 5 day break. My lone senior class did our thankfulness activity (which they struggled with being the day before break), iPass and prep, then my Read 180 lab class did the thankfulness activity as well after our 20 minutes of SSR. They actually probably did the best job with this of any of my classes.

After school, many of us met at a local establishment for a much needed meeting. I love my department and the people who choose to associate with us at these outings. A good time was, as always, had by all.

Day 75- "We've got ANOTHER holiday to worry about. It seems Thanksgiving Day is upon us." Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

This is the start of a two day week, and of course, it has to start on a white day. Since the seniors papers are due tomorrow, we are doing a different writing activity for today. My first period class was a redux of Friday (creative writing), and my others classes all did a couple activities themed around Thanksgiving. First, I had them list 100 things they were thankful for. This was a task that proved very difficult for them. After a few minutes, I allowed them to work with partners to help jog their memories of other things or ideas that they are thankful for. After that, I had each of them choose a teacher or staff member in the school, and write a short thank you letter to that person indicating that they were thankful for them and what that adult means for them. I thought students would reject this, but they all had people in the building they were thankful for, so hopefully those teachers who received the letters will be encouraged. Also, writing a letter or note to someone stretches most people as it is not easy at times to show gratitude.