I'm alive!!!
Well, here it is, the official last day of school for teachers. We're having a "Togetherness" day after we've cleaned up our rooms. Well, paranoid that we'd have meetings all the times the schedule said we would (which is a distinct possibility) I opted to use some of my curriculum planning time to do some room cleaning. So now I'm done and have some time to kill.
It's been a pretty good year overall. I've certainly learned a lot and hopefully the kids did too. Next year it appears that I'll be teaching more English and less Religion. I'm fine with that, I think I've gotten the hang of it now and besides, there's a lot more curriculum in place in the English department, which makes my job easier. (It was not fun as a first year teacher to create curriculum for five drama classes and two religion classes.)
I have not blogged for a very long time and I feel bad about that. The problem was, since our laptop broke, it's often difficult for me to steal away to a computer to write for any large chunk of time. Erin's a much better writer, so she can whip these puppies out pretty fast. It usually takes me close to an hour. Anyhow, way back in April I started an entry that I never got a chance to finish. It's a fairly entertaining anecdote from one of my classes, so I decided I'll finish it up and post it today.
Here it is:
April: Fools & Showers
April Fools Day, it seems, is in fact an international "holiday." I unwittingly learned this first hand this year. This quarter, I've been teaching my 8th grade English students a poetry unit. During the last week of March, we had been discussing metaphors and on that Friday, they had a metaphor poem due. This was explained to them on Tuesday, with reminders and time to work on Wednesday and Thursday. When Friday (the first of April) rolled around, I asked the students at the beginning of the period to take out their poems and hand them in, no one had theirs. A plethora of excuses began to roll in. "Oh, I left it at home." "I couldn't print it, my printer was broken." "It's not finished yet." "I forgot." Needless to say, this made me a bit crabby, especially since I specifically told them that the poems didn't need to be typed and therefore excuses about printers and such were not acceptable. This irritated me greatly that no one had their poems, so the class was told to take out a piece of paper and spend the first 15 minutes of class writing. The getting out of the paper turned into a major production, lasting nearly five minutes. I informed the kids they'd wasted their own time and now only had 10 to get writing. For some reason, no alarms went off in my head that every single kid didn't have theirs finished. (In retrospect, surely it should have been suspicious when the smartest and most responsible kids in class suddenly left theirs at home or in their car. I guess is says something that my best English students were also my best Drama students.) About 10 minutes in, a student got up saying he was done and wanted to hand his in. He got up and started collecting all the kid's poems; apparently suddenly everyone was done at the same time. (This raised some flags as I have extreme degrees of English ability in one class, ranging from kids with very limited abilities who've only spoken for a couple of years, to kids who were fluent and had lived in the states for a while.) When the papers were given to me, face down, I took a look at them to see what the kids had suddenly produced in less than five minutes. The first one was succinct, "April Fools!"
The rest said the same.
I had been thoroughly duped and the kids loved it.
-----
All in all, it's been a pretty good year. I got to teach a great bunch of kids, many of which I'll teach again next year. My one disappointment was this: I wasn't able to get enough kids signed up to take an IB Drama class. I had 5, I needed 10. I was really looking forward to maybe getting a chance to work with some older kids, but it just couldn't happen. Because of how IB classes are set up, Drama conflicted with computer, chemistry and business management classes. Obviously, kids thinking about their future realized that taking one of those classes was better for their education than drama. I can totally understand that. I just know that me and the five kids I had are all bummed because we were really looking forward to doing more advanced stuff and producing a play or two, which is part of the IB Drama curriculum.
As it stands, I'm still considering producing a play or two next year; we'll see how things work out. Actually, I'd love to do a musical; there are tons of talented singers here who could really shine. So if anyone has any suggestions for plays or musicals appropriate for high school, let me know. Of course, the next issue is being able to get scripts here, it can be quite difficult to ship here sometimes as customs generally judges the amount of "tax" needed to get and item from customs greatly depends on how important it is for the recipient. (For example, Kale had to pay close to $400 to get his digital camera; this is just this "tax," so that's on top of all other shipping costs.)
Anyhow, enough rambling from me for now. Erin & I are very excited, tomorrow Kim, Mark & Kristin arrive and we'll be off to show them around. In July Erin & I are going to Thailand, and then when we come back, we'll be welcoming the new expats, so we've got a good break lined up. I hope everyone at home is well. Drop me a line from time to time and I'll make every attempt to respond in an expedient fashion, however it doesn't always happen.
It's been a pretty good year overall. I've certainly learned a lot and hopefully the kids did too. Next year it appears that I'll be teaching more English and less Religion. I'm fine with that, I think I've gotten the hang of it now and besides, there's a lot more curriculum in place in the English department, which makes my job easier. (It was not fun as a first year teacher to create curriculum for five drama classes and two religion classes.)
I have not blogged for a very long time and I feel bad about that. The problem was, since our laptop broke, it's often difficult for me to steal away to a computer to write for any large chunk of time. Erin's a much better writer, so she can whip these puppies out pretty fast. It usually takes me close to an hour. Anyhow, way back in April I started an entry that I never got a chance to finish. It's a fairly entertaining anecdote from one of my classes, so I decided I'll finish it up and post it today.
Here it is:
April: Fools & Showers
April Fools Day, it seems, is in fact an international "holiday." I unwittingly learned this first hand this year. This quarter, I've been teaching my 8th grade English students a poetry unit. During the last week of March, we had been discussing metaphors and on that Friday, they had a metaphor poem due. This was explained to them on Tuesday, with reminders and time to work on Wednesday and Thursday. When Friday (the first of April) rolled around, I asked the students at the beginning of the period to take out their poems and hand them in, no one had theirs. A plethora of excuses began to roll in. "Oh, I left it at home." "I couldn't print it, my printer was broken." "It's not finished yet." "I forgot." Needless to say, this made me a bit crabby, especially since I specifically told them that the poems didn't need to be typed and therefore excuses about printers and such were not acceptable. This irritated me greatly that no one had their poems, so the class was told to take out a piece of paper and spend the first 15 minutes of class writing. The getting out of the paper turned into a major production, lasting nearly five minutes. I informed the kids they'd wasted their own time and now only had 10 to get writing. For some reason, no alarms went off in my head that every single kid didn't have theirs finished. (In retrospect, surely it should have been suspicious when the smartest and most responsible kids in class suddenly left theirs at home or in their car. I guess is says something that my best English students were also my best Drama students.) About 10 minutes in, a student got up saying he was done and wanted to hand his in. He got up and started collecting all the kid's poems; apparently suddenly everyone was done at the same time. (This raised some flags as I have extreme degrees of English ability in one class, ranging from kids with very limited abilities who've only spoken for a couple of years, to kids who were fluent and had lived in the states for a while.) When the papers were given to me, face down, I took a look at them to see what the kids had suddenly produced in less than five minutes. The first one was succinct, "April Fools!"
The rest said the same.
I had been thoroughly duped and the kids loved it.
-----
All in all, it's been a pretty good year. I got to teach a great bunch of kids, many of which I'll teach again next year. My one disappointment was this: I wasn't able to get enough kids signed up to take an IB Drama class. I had 5, I needed 10. I was really looking forward to maybe getting a chance to work with some older kids, but it just couldn't happen. Because of how IB classes are set up, Drama conflicted with computer, chemistry and business management classes. Obviously, kids thinking about their future realized that taking one of those classes was better for their education than drama. I can totally understand that. I just know that me and the five kids I had are all bummed because we were really looking forward to doing more advanced stuff and producing a play or two, which is part of the IB Drama curriculum.
As it stands, I'm still considering producing a play or two next year; we'll see how things work out. Actually, I'd love to do a musical; there are tons of talented singers here who could really shine. So if anyone has any suggestions for plays or musicals appropriate for high school, let me know. Of course, the next issue is being able to get scripts here, it can be quite difficult to ship here sometimes as customs generally judges the amount of "tax" needed to get and item from customs greatly depends on how important it is for the recipient. (For example, Kale had to pay close to $400 to get his digital camera; this is just this "tax," so that's on top of all other shipping costs.)
Anyhow, enough rambling from me for now. Erin & I are very excited, tomorrow Kim, Mark & Kristin arrive and we'll be off to show them around. In July Erin & I are going to Thailand, and then when we come back, we'll be welcoming the new expats, so we've got a good break lined up. I hope everyone at home is well. Drop me a line from time to time and I'll make every attempt to respond in an expedient fashion, however it doesn't always happen.
posted by Travis @ 9:08 PM
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