Three More Days

I can do anything for three more days, right? Well, make that 1 more full day and 2 more half days. The end of the year is always very bitter sweet. I can not wait to be done with the year and get a nice break, but I actually really liked all of my kids this year - even if they weren't all that impressed with me. I just found out that one of my freshmen (in his final project for another class no less) wrote a reflection on his freshman year and decided that he was really unimpressed with most of his freshmen teachers this year because he really didn't learn anything. Too bad that on an open book test he made a 69. Guess he's right. He didn't learn much. Maybe if he'd tried......

In other freshmen musings, I overheard the following comments made by freshmen during our discussion of Romeo & Juliet, our last unit of the year:

1. A little context - Romeo & Juliet takes place over the course of 6 days; they meet, fall in love, marry and die for each other in 6 days. Upon explaining the timeline to students, one student raised his hand and said "Wow. Six days? They must have had longer days back then."

2. If you remember, Juliet is following Friar Lawrence's plan to play dead until Romeo comes back. A messenger was sent to Romeo who had been banished to another town. The messenger was to tell Romeo that Juliet is not really dead. Alas, Romeo never gets the message and comes to her tomb and kills himself. Of course, as he is talking about killing himself, Juliet begins to stir. All of the kids always yell out "She's awake! She's awake!" and things like that. During one viewing of the movie, a kid yells out something like that and another responds with "Why doesn't he check her pulse!" To which another responds with "What?!? They didn't have pulses back then!"

I thought a few things when I heard this -
- She's lying in a tomb. Who would question that?
- I wasn't aware that pulses in a living body were recent discoveries.
- I have got to write this down!

3. And of course one student pointed out the painfully obvious - "If they'd had cell phones back then, none of this would have happened." Something tells me that Shakespeare's point wasn't to point out to a bunch of freshmen the advances in technologies and communications over the years.

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

I love a good survey! My sweet blogging friend LuvRedandWhite tagged me in a post on her blog! So here are my responses!

8 TV Shows I Like to Watch

1. Days of Our Lives
2. The Hills (though I haven't seen it this season)
3. Dateline NBC
4. The Today Show
5. Survivor
6. The Bachelor/ette (looking forward to Ali!!)
7. What Not To Wear
8. Extreme Makeover Home Edition


8 Favorite Places to Eat and Drink
1. Inakaya (sushi)
2. Taco Bell
3. San Jose (mexican)
4. the Publix deli!
5. Taco Bell (ha!)
6. Legal Seafood in Boston (though I've only been twice!! I want to go back!)
7. Miyos
8. The Alehouse

8 Things I Look Forward To
1. Summer!
2. Visiting my sister in Hawaii once she moves there
3. Planning a wedding with the Admin
4. Going to Edisto with my friends for Memorial Day
5. Finishing my PhD
6. my sister's wedding
7. winning the lottery
8. selling my house and being able to save a ton of money


8 Things that Happened to me Yesterday
1. had a great workout with the trainer at the gym
2. got mad because my gym partner beat me there
3. ate a great dinner with the Admin and his two kids
4. went to bed too late
5. attempted to convince students that Romeo and Juliet is fun!
6. made a great lesson plan for today (hence the going to bed too late)
7. opted to not iron my clothes for school (because I was going to bed too late!)
8. had a wonderful night of sleep


8 Thinks I Like About Winter
1. Christmas
2. snow skiing
3. wood burning fires
4. sleeping with the windows open and needing an extra blanket in the middle of the night!
5. Scarves!
6. Christmas break
7. cold weather (for a little while)
8. my dad's chili


8 Things I am Passionate About
1. keeping my word
2. family and friends
3. my students
4. literacy
5. my education
6. my career (being the best I can be at it)
7. spending quality time with people I care about
8. living a full life


Words or Phrases I Use Often
1. Dang or Dang, y'all
2. Holy Cow
3. What do you think? (said in response to a freshman when they ask a crazy question)
4. You've got to be kidding me (same thing as #3!)
5. the bomb
6. my friend
7. dear or honey or babe (also used with my sweet freshmen)
8. I love you


8 Things I Have Learned From the Past
1. Don't hold grudges.
2. Never do anything that would lead people to believe that you acted like a jerk.
3. Good things really do happen to those who wait!
4. Don't sweat the small stuff.
5. Call your mom every day!
6. Never settle.
7. Be proud of yourself or work hard so you can be proud of yourself.
8. Always remember that there is much more to a person (or a freshman) than meets the eye.


8 Places I Would Like to Visit/See
1. Seattle
2. Greece
3. Hawaii
4. Japan
5. Africa
6. Belize
7. St. Lucia
8. Fiji

8 Things I Currently Want/Need
1. get skinny
2. 100% pass rate on the End of Course Exams
3. $1,000,000 (or more!)
4. my house to sell, or rent!
5. a maid
6. someone to grade my papers
7. a vacation!
8. summer to hurry up and get here and then slow down!

8 Bloggers I'm Taggin
1. The Boys and Me
2. Maters and Melons
3. So Happily Us!
4. Stand By Me
5. More Fun Than One Family Should Have
6. Pink, Green, and Southern
7. Anne Says So
8. Blogging From Guam

Whew!

So sorry for the hiatus these past few weeks. The end of the semester in graduate school packs a punch. I had one 27 page paper, one project, one take home exam, and one final exam all due on a Tuesday and a Thursday of the same week. It was quite hectic. But I did it, and got an A in one class. Just awaiting the grade for the statistics class and really keeping my fingers crossed for a B. Stats is not really my strong suit so we shall see!
I am currently very jealous/proud of the Admin who just finished his Masters in Administration! So he is done! Unfortunately, it is back to the grind for me again tomorrow. Not much of a break for me. Tomorrow my summer class meets for the first time.

BUT - 23 more days of school! Yay! What will I write about this summer when I don't have freshmen all day every day!?

It's Hard To Keep A Straight Face When....

1. Freshman Begin Giving Excuses

Last week, we had extremely warm weather. My last class comes to me straight from gym. They are always falling all over the place hot and sweaty and complaining that they are dying. Occasionally, I'll open a window to let in a breeze if it's nice outside. We had great weather last week, and I agreed to open one. Well, I have no problem with keeping the window open as long as it doesn't cause a disruption. But everything to a freshman is a disruption. I decided it was time to close the window, so I walked over and asked the student who was virtually leaning out of the window to return to his desk and close the window.
"No. NO! Please Ms. L! It helps with my anemia!"
It was difficult to keep a straight face while I explained that broccoli, not a breeze, would help with anemia.

2. Freshmen Talk
One student somehow managed to scrape her hand on the rug as she caught herself from falling out of her desk. 1)freshman are always falling off of furniture and 2) they need Band Aids for the smallest scratches. Naturally, she asked if she could go to the nurse. Naturally, I told her no. I did allow her to dampen a paper towel and wipe off the tiny scratch. She wiped her finger off, then launched the wet paper towel at a kid who'd made a comment. Of course, I told her to get up and throw it away properly. In the time it took her to get up and walk over to the napkin, another kid was trying to pick it up using his feet. The student adamantly refused to pick up the napkin claiming that she had no idea where his feet had been. "Man! For all I know he coulda been out there walking around in dog species!"
Species. I am fairly certain she meant to say feces. And, no, that time I did not keep a straight face.

3. Freshmen Provide Unquestionable Logic
Another student requested to go to the nurse (probably to get a Band Aid for some minuscule scratch). I told him that he could go but he'd need to wait on my to write him a pass.
"Ah nah. It's cool. I don't need a pass. I've got my Air Maxs on" and he pointed to his shoes. Dead serious. He truly didn't think he needed a pass because he could run down and back fast enough to avoid any administrators in the hallways. So I wrote a pass for him and his shoes.

4. The Admin Sings
I was sitting at the Admin's kitchen table not long ago. We'd just finished eating dinner and were both working on homework. He looked at me and said "You know the song they play at the beginning of our morning announcements at school?"
"Yeah. What about it?"
"Have you noticed that it's got the same beat as that new Black Eyed Peas song?"
"Oh yeah. I guess it does."
"Well, I can't get it out of my head. I've been singing that song all day!"
And he begins to sing....
"I'm a pea, I'm a pea, I'm a I'm a I'm a pea..."
He told me later that he could tell by the look on my face that he'd gotten the words completely wrong. He thought they meant "I'm a pea" like a Black Eyed Pea!
Now, when I hear that song on the radio, it's hard not to sing "I'm a pea" instead of "Imma be."

Thank you, Freshmen!

Some exciting new around here! I laugh about my crazy freshmen and their antics, but they've really helped me out! I found out today that TWO of my presentation proposals were accepted at the national English teachers conference in Orlando in November! TWO! Out of 1200! One is a group presentation and each one of us is leading a little mini-discussion on a unit that we teach. My unit, of course, was designed for freshmen.

But, the really cool presentation is designed from my technology magnet freshmen (Remember the scanned hand? That's them!). My advisor, another doc student, and I wrote an article and submitted it for publication. The article is about my freshmen and the technology I use in my classroom. It's really cool, but too detailed for a blog post. Well, in addition to submitting the article for publication, we also submitted a presentation proposal! I am most exciting about this one because I get to present about my school, my students, and my ideas! All at a national conference! I'm very excited. I do not know how long it will take to hear whether or not the article will be published. The journal we submitted it to has a 4% acceptance rate! But, it's put out by the same organization that is responsible for the conference! We shall see!

So, thank you, Freshmen! I love y'all!

Thank You!!!

A huge THANK YOU to Leelou and Caroline who created my new blog design for me! I am thrilled with the new look and all of the changes going on at A Can Of Mixed Nuts!

I hope you found me easily! I am working on getting my domain name, www.ACanOfMixedNuts.com, connected to my blog. I'll let you know when that is up and running.

But, for the time being, and for the future, make a note of the new address!

And PLEASE follow the link on my blog and go check out Leelou. She's the BOMB!

Bones of Contention

1.Why isn’t South Carolina’s public school system considered “too big to fail” by the federal government?

I find it extremely unfair that Wall Street is able to receive billions of dollars to prevent banks from going bankrupt. Worse yet, it’s not just Wall Street receiving the money and then dividing it up among the banks. It’s individual banks receiving what they need specifically. Yet when the stimulus money is handed out to states, it’s handed out to the state, not to individual school districts. It seems to me that the future of our country, the next generation, is what should really be viewed as to big to fail. The investments should be made in public education.

2. How are teachers supposed to combat the vicious cycle that is culture?

One of the most frustrating things is when I am unable to reach a student. Many of my lower level students have a sense of failure ingrained in their minds. They have been beaten down by the system over and over again. As one teacher, in one classroom, with exposure to only a handful of students, how am I to really make a difference in their lives when often times their homes convey the opposite message?

3. Why is it that my name was called over the loud speaker at school today to report to my lunch duty post when I don’t even have lunch duty today!?

I had agreed to fill in for someone who couldn’t make it to duty, but I’d said before lunch that I couldn’t cover because I had kids coming in to serve lunch detention. Never mind that the teacher had not been to duty all week long and they’d never called her name over the loud speaker!

4. Why does lunch fly by every day except on the days that I have lunch duty, or agree to cover someone else’s duty, miss the first five minutes of it, and get my name called over the loud speaker? Then it takes forever.

5. Why is it that I’ve been working out at the gym incredibly hard for the past two weeks and eating very healthy, but still am not satisfied that any progress has been made??