Friday, November the End

Today my students presented projects on a class novel we finished recently. It went—well, "well." This semester has been odd for a number of reasons and while I'm pleased with a majority of my students, today was a perfect example of how a small number of students can suck the life out of the most fun lesson plan.

I teach on a block schedule and should be able to cover significant material during each class period. (Backing up a hair, Language Arts classes are taught on block schedule—the rest of the classes students take each day are 45 minutes long. So, I have half the 8th graders everyday for 90 minutes.) So, I should be able to read aloud with my students and finish a novel in a week or two, right? Wrong.

I honestly believe that a vast majority of my students enjoyed the novel. I saw students reading ahead on numerous occasions. But there were just enough party poopers that we spend a good month reading and discussing this book. The discussions were like pulling teeth from an unwilling patient, and I gave up on calling on kids to read because it was somehow uncool to be seen reading and having fun doing it.

Thank god for the students who either don't care or more likely don't have a clue that they are being "looked at" by the cool kids when they read and read with emotion.

I have had several successes with students during the past month—students who don't own a single book, students who are proud of bein' dumb-jocks, students who when told that real men have brains and brawn step up and really perform. The frustrating thing is that these successes are too few and too short lived to make a dent in the overall behavior of the rest of the 8th grade lemmings.

8th graders are wonderfully refreshing in that they are sooo moldable, but for the first time since my first year of teaching I feel like this is a curse. Usually I am able to shape the personality of my classroom. I can lead academically disinterested students towards self-motivated learning, but this group is killing me because they are bending to the will of a few knuckle-heads that hate school.


Anyway, the really cool final projects were performance based. Small groups were given 4 options ranging from readers' theatre to talk shows, and they fiddled around and stalled and produced a bunch of 60 second crappy presentations that didn't show that they were intelligent human beings at all. What a downer Friday. I am looking forward to a fresh start on Monday.

You know it was a rough week when you are looking forward to Monday.

This is the virgin run

I am a new blogger. Have patience.

I teach MS Language Arts in Kansas, and was recently turned on to a blog called Ms. M's Apples. Funny stuff—honest, inciteful, grand stuff.

I was inspired to try it myself. So, here it goes. Wish me luck.