Baby Steps

I found this written in a student’s notebook today: “Lil’ Boosie jewelry be gleaming hard.” (The assignment was to use the word gleam in a sentence.) I could not bring myself to make a red mark on it. It made me laugh. Also, it is a contextually correct use of the word. The sound of the sentence has a kind of brilliance in it, despite the lack of an apostrophe-S, the poor conjugation of the auxiliary verb, and the awkward choice of adverb. It just lit up my world for a good three minutes. I’ll address the grammar and usage problems later.

What is happening to me?

Grading

There are few things as satisfying as throwing away ungraded papers that you told your students you would grade.

No Class Left Behind

One of my better insights came to me today as I edged my way through to success: no two classes are the same. Before today, I had been treating each of my classes the same. I was ignoring the dynamic, the peculiar character of each class as a whole, created by the members of that class. To have the same expectations for each is fine, but the methods for discipline and management do not need to be homogeneous. This came to me all at once, as I noticed that some of my chronically sleepy students were awake and attentive for the whole period because of an adjustment to the beginning of class. If, within the first twenty minutes of a 104-minute block, I “open the floor” (my procedure for allowing them to chat quietly while they work), it may look a lot different from my other classes, but it takes advantage of a certain dynamic. I would rather have a chatty classroom than a sleeping classroom.

Today, I have the distinct sense that I am learning from some of my mistakes. Finally. Now, when’ll the next catastrophic bundle of stress hit me?

My Classroom Again

I have yet to put the “finishing touches” on my classroom. These would include

• a poster for Rules,
• a poster for Penalties,
• a poster for Rewards,
• posters for various procedures,
• Glade® PlugIns® (vanilla),
• random panels of bright paper, especially on the corkboards, and
• kids.

This is my super-secret, off-limits, who-knows-what-he-does-back-there area:

The television above my desk is useless. And while we’re on the topic of unnecessary expenditures, I should mention that I have been given a “SMART Board,” which you will be able to pick out in some of the following photographs.  It’s leaning against the chalkboard. Yes, it will be mounted directly on to the chalkboard….





Looking over my class are Thurgood, Jesse, Ella, Marty, and Rosa, whom I found hanging out in my teacher-cabinet a few days ago:


And the following poster I find hilarious, likely because the word nothingness (as opposed to nothing) reminds me of what an eighteenth century Frenchman might say. I will try to work this one into a lesson someday.

And I thought an SJC advertisement would be a nice touch. Maybe one of my kids will go there. Here’s to keeping “high expectations.” I wonder if we have ever had a Mississippian at the College. I mean someone other than Faulkner, and Twain doesn’t count because he was from Missouri.

My Classroom

I’ve been cleaning out the cabinets and storage places in my classroom this week.  It’s exciting, but I wouldn’t call it “a good time.” It’s a quirky room.

Here are some shots from each corner.

Do you notice anything odd about the room?

Summer Gone

I haven’t posted much recently on this blog, but I do intend to use it more frequently once I start teaching for the academic year.  My summer school obligations were very stressful, and I was crushed in more than one way.  But I am ready to go back to the basics of my faith, pray, do some planning, and launch myself into my new career.

My reading plans for the summer didn’t turn out so well.  I was going to read Fear and Trembling quickly, and then move on to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.  Turns out I haven’t finished the former.  Oh well.  I will finish it this week, and likely put the latter on hold indefinitely—unless I can do an insane amount of planning before Day 1 at my high school.

In other news, I started translating Leibniz’s Monadology for fun.  Leibniz is the best of all possible rationalists. I’m not keen on rationalism, to put it gently, but he seems to be a bit more familiar with the Bible than many of the others who worked on the Enlightenment project of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  He may even have had a genuine faith in Christ, though it’s not immediately clear in the works of his with which I’m familiar. All the same, the translation has been fun, and challenging.  I’ll post it once I’m done with the first draft.