Day 120- Cry havoc said he who fought chaos with chaos and let slip the dogs of war." House of Cards (with a little Julius Caesar)

From a teaching standpoint, today was a very non-stressful day. Read 180 and the lab were solid, and the students are really, for the most part, finally understanding how to write an engaging introduction. We will keep working on this as I know they haven't written much in their entire lives.

My blended class met today, and we discussed all of chapter 6, and I gave them a "you need to work harder and turn your stuff in or you won't graduate" talk. They are starting to get lazy, which means I need to light a fire under them. F's tend to do that, so a pop quiz may be coming soon. They are all ready for spring break, which is 3 weeks away. This group will be tough to keep going after break, but I'm hoping the fear of failure will spur them on since wanting to be successful is not.

Today, hell froze over and I led cluster. Yes, I actually led cluster. I'm not kidding! I presented how I attack a prompt and help my students learn to how break it down and answer it. I started the presentation by discussing how I teach writing and I don't use gimmicks like a 5 paragraph essay or anything like that. I teach writing using 4 questions: who am I writing to, what am I writing, why am I writing, how am I going to write. I feel by answering these 4 questions, a person can write for anything, whether it be a test, ECA, creative writing, or composition. I told the group why I believe this and gave examples, then applied this philosophy to writing to a prompt. I modeled how I teach my kids to do this through asking these questions, then we discussed in groups. The feedback I received was all extremely positive, and one teacher even told me they felt cluster should be like that every week. The cluster leader wants to collaborate with me for the rest of the writing unit because he told me he learned more from two conversations with me that he did in all his weeks of research. It was really hard for me to not say "I told you so", but I somehow accomplished this feat. I think I deserve a medal. Its also possible I may have raised my professionalism score to a "1", which is allegedly the lowest a person can receive, but I'm pretty sure I broke new ground and hit "0" a few months ago. I guess I can only go up!