Morning

It astounds me how much happens by noon.

At 5:30 am I awaken in the shower, though I emerged from my bed a little earlier than that. Dawn sleeps peacefully while I put on the shirt and tie for school. Today, I munched a bit of Raisin Bran before heading into work/school a bit early to collect the assignments from yesterday's substitute teacher. At a quarter to seven I discovered that the substitute failed to distribute one assignment to my Fifth period. Making a note to myself to change the due date of Fifth period's group presentation, I closed up my last-minute additions to the lesson plan, loaded up my metal cart with two sticky wheels and headed from the Social Studies office down the hall, down the elevators, and over to the Woodshop classroom.

Blue days (Periods 1-4 on the block schedule) are my favorite. I get my own classroom for the day, though my black loafers inevitably suffer from the yellow sawdust carried over from the shop. My classes are 1, 2, 3 with no break until lunch; during Fourth period I can work out with the wrestlers or use the time to prepare lesson plans for the next day. My kids in my first two classes work well once they wake up, so I typically lob them an easy pitch in the first ten minutes of class. That pitch (usually a free-write or visual exercise) usually gets their minds warm and sparks some discussion. Today, the topic was "Write about a time you had to defend yourself either physically or verbally." I got interesting responses from the kids with difficult pasts.

I move into the meat of the lesson right after the warmup. While "I Will Fight No More Forever" depressed everyone, it was short and easy to move away from after spending about 20 minutes on it. The next activity I had planned was a group assignment to start on Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat." Our focus has been on short stories, and after going through three stories together (with plenty of coaching on my part) I want them to teach this one to each other. I got this activity idea from Susan Cramblitt, another Junior teacher, who directed me to the Glencoe Literature Groups booklet. I selected groups of four and each group member got an assigned role. One role was to summarize, another was to explain words and phrases, the next role was to provide a nice visual, and the fourth was to connect it to the student's everyday lives. Though in groups, they will be graded for their individual efforts. I like the approach. It takes the power away from weak group members and gives strong group members the chance to shine.

After two periods of this (my second period always gets the better deal, since I have to make adjustments from my first period class) my tenth graders explode on the scene. They think everything sucks, they don't have any experiences to share, they are tired, and they are all hungry since it's right before lunch. It is one of my two most challenging classes (the other is eighth period on Gold days). Julius Caesar is our course of study right now. Today we read Act III while listening to an audio recording. Shakespeare is tough, but I have been encouraged that the kids seem to be picking up the broad application, even if the words are confusing. Again, it is taking quite a bit of coaching. Today I had the pleasure of teaching them the difference between writing casually (or often offensively) and writing in a professional, academic way. This lesson was developed in the five minutes it took to read some of their freewrite assignments. Lesson learned, I hope.

And thus ends my morning. The clock reads 12:08, just in time for lunch, and I push my sticky-wheeled cart to the elevator and stop thinking about the stack of papers and assignments to grade. Looks like Chief Joseph was wrong. Sometime's you've gotta keep fighting.