Firsts

At a day and age where it feels like youth is corrupted with unlimited texting, Jersey Shore, and the internet, it's nice to know that there are still some firsts left to be discovered. Like the movie The Sixth Sense, which I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of students had never seen.

This is a fantastic movie to teach foreshadowing with, given that all the heart-stopping scenes (ie. ghastly pale Mischa Barton with vomit trickling down her chin) are removed. There are pivotal scenes that lends itself to giving a overarching synopsis of the plot.

I only had to show about 20 minutes of the movie, and I stayed quiet as they debated what had occurred at the end. I was watching one student clarify, in sheer annoyance of another student's confusion, explain the twist ending. And watching the listening student's jaw drop at the sheer novelty of the plot, made my day.

Parts of the Whole

A student who accidentally pronounced "cigar" as "cigger".

A male student who finds humor in every insignificant thing and twitters like a bird in the front. And yet, moments later, I find myself doing the very thing that annoyed me enormously at a faculty meeting.

An entire period who thought that the story was about the characters Bob and Dimmy because I have a tendency to write my capital J like a lowercase d. Forget that proper nouns always begin with a capital letter, no, this must be a story about dimmy. Their names should be dimmy.

These are the moments where the class erupts into laughter, and I have to pull back the reins, shushing them left and right, all the while rolling my eyes. But these are the moments that crack me up later in the solitude of my own home. These are the parts of the whole that I love.

Glass Half Full

"These two visiting teachers were the gold and silver sun-splash in the great muddy river of school days, days made up of dreary hours in which Teacher made her pupils sit rigid with their hands folded behind their back...if all the teachers had been like Miss Bernstone and Mr. Morton, Francie would have known plain what heaven was. But it was just as well. There had to be the dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background its flashing glory."

-Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Open Your Eyes

Open House, for me, follows a predictable routine. First come the jitters where I question my decorating, organizing, and teaching abilities. Then the elbow grease starts flowing as I scrub my room with a focus that parallels a marine’s. Finally the short but exhausting 2 hours of talking to parent after parent takes place.

Usually, it’s a much ado about nothing. That is, until a former student comes back to visit.

There’s just something about witnessing the former ghosts of a gawky, impossibly immature 7^th graders develop into near adults that overwhelms. From the way they carry themselves to the thoughts they express, I can’t believe the bloom that has occurred over the years

Tonight, I found out that one of the biggest troublemakers in my 6^th period is the younger brother of a student I had 4 years ago. She came to me and I remembered her instantly because of her eyes. She has a pair of deep, luminous, compassionate eyes. She was telling me how she worried about him, while he mimicked and cursed her, telling her to shut up. When their mom stepped him, he spat out words of anger till I intervened and told him to leave, because no one should treat their family like that.

She described how her mom can’t control him and how their family has a lot of things going on right now. He’s on his way to being expelled, and she just wants to find a part time job right now to help her mom out. It hit me that while I have to “deal” with this student for only three more months, he will be a part of that family forever.

Hearing that formerly forlorn, scrawny girl saying more than I ever heard her say in a year amazed me. Her eyes had told the story all along, but I never understood it. While my heart was filled to see her as a responsible, caring 11^th grader, it was broken at the same time.

Lost and Found

I recently attended an International School Recruitment fair in the hope of teaching abroad come 2011 fall. Submitting my resume to schools in Shanghai, Beirut, and Bahrain (kindly do not ask me where it is), left my knees wobbling and my head spinning from the thought of relocating to those prospective countries. In short, I felt completely lost.

Turns out that my students have the similar reaction to essay writing. I had just given them the prompt to their essay which was to prove that one real world problem was serious and to offer a solution. To prevent my students from wandering around aimlessly in their essay, I had them "map out" their writing.

If I told my students to map out their essay, they would look at me blankly, blinking like a startled mouse. So I first had them navigate their way to the principal's office and then used the same framework to navigate their essays-

Destination: From Ms. Won’s classroom to the principal’s office.	Destination: To prove that the use of Ugandan child soldiers is a serious problem, but that there is a solution.
Specific directions: 1. Make a right out of the classroom. 2. Make a left at the main hallway. 3. Go straight until you reach the library. 4. Make a left at the library. 5. Enter the main office. 6. Find the principal’s office door to your left.	Specific directions: 1. The child soldiers are being abused. 2. Even for those who escape still suffer from negative effects. 3. The use of children as soldiers is spreading to other countries. 4. One possible way to help is to go to Uganda myself for a summer through a teacher exchange program.

Starting them off literally then bridging it to the more abstract thought of mapping out the "destination" of their essay worked surprisingly well. After reading their papers, I was able to assist those who seemed lost with their writing through one-on-one conferences.

And it's small successes like these, the unsung glories of being a teacher, that makes me feel found again.

How do you like them apples?

Not too long ago, I promised myself that when I grow up, I'd become a real blogger.

Amazingly difficult, I know.

But with my non-committal tendencies and attention span of a squirrel, I knew that the road to becoming a diligent blogger wouldn't be an easy one.

Although I haven't always been consistent, but my lil' blog and I are quickly approaching our 2 year anniversary. Hurrah!

And I've been noticing that the pro-bloggers arrange contests for their readers, complete with prizes. So...who wants free stuff?!

What can it be?

Apple-themed candies of course!!! And I'll be throwing in some good ol' fashioned #2 pencils in as well.

So please humor me with stories about your favorite school-related memory. Whether it's tetherball, buying things off of monthly book orders, or torturing the teacher-comment away. One commenter will be selected randomly on the anniversary date, 2/9/11, and I promise to ship this goody box over to you. Happy story-telling!

Give me some shuga...

I really love sugar.

Ooooyeah. Now that's what I'm talkin' about.

When it comes to sweets, mozzarella-filled empanadas aren't the first things to pop into my mind, but my sweet tooth and I are always up for trying new desserts. But why am I randomly posting food porn?

Let me start from the very beginning-we came back from winter break. I didn't feel like teaching, and the kids didn't feel like learning. So we journaled about the food we ate over the holidays.

Then the journaling took on a life of its own as the students voted to create a class cookbook in which every single student agreed to contribute his/her holiday dish recipe.

When I saw the finished product that was 100% their own creation, my heart burst with pride. So in my enamored state, I promised them that they could bring in their dishes on Friday, and we'd have a party.

And party we did. Never had I seen anything as vicious as a group of 35 seventh graders attacking 2 groaning tables full of food. The empanadas were the first to go, and I couldn't even get a taste of it. That is until my adorable student made another batch, brought it to school, and sprinkled my Monday with sweetness.

Ghetto Fab

I internally cringe whenever I catch myself starting a sentence by purring, "Girl...".

I was confused about how to pronounce Tupac's name for the longest time.

I could never pull off a white T-shirt with my name emblazened on it in with spray paint.

So why is it that I love the show, Pimp My Ride?

From the theme song, to Xhibit's commentary, and the mad upgrades those cars come tricked out with, I just love it! Turns out that the show is actually going to help me teach because I could improve my students' revision process with my own activity dubbed Pimp My Write!

I stole this idea from Kelly Gallagher's book, Teaching Young Adolescents How to Write. You can teach students the different between surface and deep revision by using the show as a framework:

1. Discuss the surface-level vs. deep-level improvements as seen on Pimp My Ride:

Surface-Level Deep-Level

A new paint job Putting a more powerful engine

Replacing tires Outfitting the car with hydraulics

Reupholstering Inserting a movie projection system

2. Then introduce the concept of surface-level vs. deep-level revision.

Surface-Level Deep-Level

Changing a Changing the

-word -thesis

-phrase -purpose of the essay

-sentence -organization of paragraphs

Fusing car remodeling with writing revision is a fun way to make dorky old revision seem cooler and slightly ghetto. And let's face it, who doesn't want to be appear ghetto?

Authorship

I've been reading a great book called A Fresh Look at Writing by Donald Graves, when I stumbled upon a perfect explanation of what I've grown to understand teaching as,

"You may have noticed that you express yourself more easily in media not associated with school: you pick up a hammer, brush, pencil, or camera, or you turn on your computer or sewing machine. In a corner of your life, you maintain tools for your kind of expression. You savor your medium, whether it is clay, wood, food, flowers, a well-exercised body, paint, cloth, paper, or words, and the smell is sweet.

...

You want to teach. You want to help children create and take pride in their work, just as you have. You see teaching as another kind of authorship, which encourages students to express what they know. You observe them on the playground and overhear them talking. You sense the stories and ideas embedded in a single written line. You witness their expressive potential and help them realize their own intentions."

Green

Being back at junior high as a teacher sadly hasn't changed my desire to appear cool. Just as I had hoped as a homely little asian girl, I secretly wish to be part of the in crowd. Except now the cool kids aren't the ones wearing brown lipliner and oversized windbreakers, but the popular teachers. You know, the ones with the relaxed swagger, casually acknowledging the legions of students who desperately wave hi to them, and whose slingback messenger bag bounces lightly on their hips.

There is one particularly cool teacher I envy. He teaches history of course.

As one student put it, "Oh, you know Mr. D, he's like HI-larious".

I wish I was Mr. D.
...
Upon one student complaining that the soft classical musical in the background inhibits his reading, Mr. D quipped, "Oh really? What was your excuse for not reading the last 14 chapters?"


When 2 male students came in late into his class and merely gave a head nod to serve as an apology, he sent them out to get late passes. When they had returned, they found their desks pulled to the front of the class, placed next to each other so that when they sat their backs were touching. He explained that they had to copy a ten stanza discipline poem BUT the one who copied the slowest would have to rewrite the entire poem again. If the two tied, they would both have to rewrite it-thereby ensuring that they would be against, and not helping, one another. He had the whole class, including the 2 boys, in stitches as he made the boys write furiously, encouraged the class to put in their bets, and gave sporadic play-by-play commentary.

Then while studying the Incas, he digressed to spend the whole period talking about the history of his favorite lake, Lake Titicaca.

How am I supposed to compete?

And we're back!

Being on vacation can do some weird things to you:

You start drinking tea instead of coffee.

Exercise becomes spiritual as opposed to torturous.

And you develop a sense of entitlement about life-believing it to be yours to be enjoyed as well as lived.

Strange.

One lingering effect of winter break is my slower pace. I wasn’t given much choice upon seeing that 75 friggin percent of my students had failed their grammar test.

With first semester counting down and so much curriculum left to cover, it’s surprisingly hard to teach what needs to be taught. In my rush, I’d love to skate over concepts, but I must dive first and guide my 7^th graders through the murky waters they believe NOUNS, pronouns, and adjectives to be. How they end up in 7^th grade without fully understanding nouns is a topic for another entry.

THE BATTLE PLAN

1. Have them in groups of 4, taking notes on one grammar concept. Notes consisted of writing a definition in their own words, 5 examples, 3 sentences using the examples, and drawing 3 symbols or pics that relate to the grammar concept.

2. Then they had to form new groups of 4 and teach the other group members about their one grammar concept because by now I know how much effect my own teaching has upon them.

This activity became fun for me when I witnessed the 25% who passed the test, and the students who managed to understand the grammar concepts upon the review session, tutoring their classmates. Just as I was about to kick my feet up and really get back into vacation-mode I saw something that made me freeze in my tracks.

I asked this student, "Uh, what are you doing?"

He responded, "Isn't this number one?" pointing to the first noun he circled. When a student creates an imaginary problem, follows imaginary directions, and circles nonsensical answers, you know that vacation is definitely over.