TAKS IS OVER

Today I'm having a sick day. :) I am worn out, needed the break and decided a week ago that I would take off today.

While I've been here I got called and told that my kids conned the sub into sitting in my room during lunch and were so loud that Officer M had to come and settle them down. I wish I could take off tomorrow too so I don't have to deal with it.

As for TAKS, the kids did really well i think. They all seem calm about it. I've only had about 3 tell me that they failed, which is pretty good cause that means that they at least did their best. That is all they can do. I hope that I have a good turnout. At least 3 of my kids failed because they decided to make them go home at 5 and they hadn't finished the essay yet. They can't pass the test without a 2 on the essay. If they didn't finish, they probably made 0's.

We have been discussing our academy plan for next year and it looks like I will be a supplementary staff person that isn't actually attached to an academy. That might change if my friend takes an AP job next year and they move me to her slot. She is in the Social Service academy so that would be great with me.

Hot Cheetos and Snickers

Just so you know the preferences of high school students...they like Hot Cheetos and Snickers. Another teacher mentioned today that they probably don't know that any other Cheetos exist. I've never seen any of them carry them around.

Why do I care you might say? TAKS

Last year the 11th grade English teacher made up goodie bags for each of her students to give them motivation and confidence the day of the test. She got them to tell her their favorite chips and candy bar and filled up the bags with random treats. I thought it was a great idea and decided to do it myself. I have been slammed with Writing Camps till yesterday so I am a bit behind. I have 120~ students plus the 10th grade Language Center kiddos that I don't actually teach but know pretty well so that adds up to 148 goodie bags.

So yesterday I put 15 extra credit points on the quiz (they needed it anyway) and asked them some fake off questions so nobody realized I really just wanted to know their favorite candy and chips. 48 kids wanted Hot Cheetos (have you ever had them? they are really not my thing. I don't like cheetos and don't like spicy chips so i sure hope I don't have any leftovers.) 31 wanted Doritos. 39 kids wanted Snickers and a bunch wanted random things like Carlos V (a Mexican candy bar). Dan and I headed off to Sam's and a basket full of junk food and $112 later I have enough to fill up 148 bags for the kids. I'll make address labels that say "Good Luck on TAKS" and then pray that they do their best.

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Learned a number of words in Spanish for someone who talks too much yesterday. 7th I had a girl who I had to ask to be quiet about 3 times. So I put another extra 3 points on the quiz for whoever could tell me what the word would be.

Here is what I got (all in feminine form since my offender was a girl):
chismosa - not really what i meant, more someone who tells secrets, a gossip
habladora - literally a person who talks a lot
perico - a parrot :) metaphor, they get extra points for that
parlanchina - a chatterbox - the best choice for my use, but a little hard for me to say cause the combo rolled r & l isn't easy for me to do...i can repeat it if someone says it but I can't say it from memory with the r done right.

thursday night pre-er viewing

This is what Dan and I watch pre-ER (pronounced Er at our house).

No idea how we happened upon it, but we watch it nearly every week now.

We have a soccer game tomorrow. Our school secretary got on the announcements this morning and told all the kids to wear coats. It may get canceled. We'll see.

Underground internet radio in D.F.

http://www.ugr.com.mx/

Here is a link to an underground station in Mexico City that my students listen to. It has a mix of Spanish and English songs. Right now it is playing Foo Fighters, before it was Ferdinand somebody.

Today we had senior writing camp. I had to tell one of my students that the essay he wrote would not pass the taks while still encouraging him in the fact that he wrote something! And in less than 30 minutes (not a week of class time). Wow, that sucks the energy out of you.

And another one of my students got embarrassed today. She had written on her brainstorming page as a story idea "when my mother died." Another, entirely well meaning kid, read off her paper, aloud, and she freaks out. Her mom only died last summer and she has been having a real hard time. I took the student out in the hall and told him that he can't do that and he needs to be more considerate of others. He said he only read it cause it was a good topic to use, he was thinking of using it himself. However, the poor girl shut down and did nothing the rest of the day. I didn't push her, but I think she was mad at me that I had let it happen.

soccer game groupie

My friend and I are officially soccer game groupies now. I drove to Keller to go to the game tonight, got lost 3 times cause i don't get texas roads. why is it that they have to give everything 3 different names AND THEN NOT POST A SINGLE SIGN WITH ANY OF THEM? yes that deserved yelling capital letters.

tomorrow begins the last two days of writing camp. I'm tired. the TAKS is tuesday, feb 21st. be nice to any 3-11 grade texas students you know. it is a hard test and very tiring.

10 things you may or may not know about me....

Idea courtesy of my sis :

1. I currently hold three masters' degrees. :) MA Theological Studies, MA Intercultural Studies, Union University, TN and MA Education, Teaching, UTA.

2. I always wished I could have played on a soccer team. My brother did, my sister even did for a year. I love soccer and I really think I could have done it. I've never even played in a pick-up game. Probably because I'm not much of an athelete.

3. I still consider myself a Mississippian, even though I haven't lived there in 5 1/2 years.

4. I had my belly button pierced in college. I never told my parents, though I think my mom knew. Guess she will now. :)

5. I am really naiive. I have to get stuff explained to me all the time. Today mijo was wearing a shirt (that I later made him change) that said "Dime vaquero" [Call me or Tell me Cowboy]. Two girls in my second period class had to explain it to me. We learned how to line dance to this song this summer at Billy Bob's so that is the only reason I think it clicked. I had to listen to it for about 20 minutes before I got what it was saying then.

6. I like languages, but am really bad at them. It is 'cause of the southern accent. I can never get the vowels right.

7. I have never had any sense about clothes. My sister had to approve my outfits in high school. It was such a joke among my friends that my roommate in college asked would she get the same priviledge when we moved in together.

8. I have never had a room to myself, always a roommate or a husband.

9. I am incredibly ticky about my computer and how things are set up. I don't like stuff to appear or disappear and I want everything just so. My computer is incredibly neat to contrast the room it sits in (both at home and school).

10. I listen to Casa 106.7. Started it because I wanted to know the same groups my kids do. Now I just really like it. I don't really have a "kind" of music, but I have always really liked hip-hop/rap/r&b. Music with some soul. However, I still can't dance.

blog additions

You can now translate my blog into six different languages! See the translate this site link on the side.

distractions

Wanna know what cracks my students up more than anything else? Sound effects. Yes, and honestly I make a lot of sound effects. Any time I tell a story (especially about cars), today going over the study guide for the test tomorrow. Do normal people not make sound effects? I mean other than 5 year old boys playing with trucks.

It is a lot of fun. I think more people should start.

how I learn spanish

My Spanish is generally learned by need. So I get a lot of holes in it. For instance I can say:

Why are you bothering her? - Estas fastidiando la?

Why are you flirting with her? - Estas coqueteando con ella?

This is not boring. - No esta aburrindo. (sp?)

I check all my spanish past three speakers. I make sure that it is "polite." "Can you say this to your grandmother?" I make sure that it is appropriate for an adult to say to a teenager.

Despite all this I *frequently* find out that I have missed something.

Today I learned that "chilango," which I thought was merely a nickname for those from Mexico City, is actually used for pickpocket...still a nickname for someone from Mexico City. I had been assured that it was polite and simply a nickname. I learned this when mijo snatched my nectarine off my desk at lunch and then asked me did I want a "peach." (I forgave him for not knowing the difference. Pretty impressed he knew the word for peach!) My teacher friend turned to him and said, "You little chilango!" When I inquired, really out of curiosity, why people always say that to the D.F. kids and tease them about taking stuff she filled me in that "chilango" has the connotation of pickpocket.

So there you go...why it is dangerous to learn languages by immersion. :)

google earth

Have you guys seen Google Earth? Dan used it a couple of semesters ago to show an archeological site in Israel. Today I was showing two students after school maps.google.com and they asked if I could look up their houses in Mexico City. So I bopped right over, downloaded Google Earth and showed them satellite photos of D.F. Now they spent 30 minutes and couldn't find their houses, but they did seem to think it was cool.

I went home to figure out the program and find out if there was a way to look up street addresses (not available internationally except in Canada and UK), but they do have user added waypoints. There is a whole community you can join to find stuff.

Gotta say this is incredibly cool.

bad luck

Ok, I've decided I've just been having bad luck lately. Maybe God is teaching me to accept things without stressing out, maybe I'm being tested, who knows.

This morning we go to get into the car to go to church and the back window of my car is broken out. Nothing is gone. For some reason, they didn't want my soccer blankets (choice of maroon or john deere pattern) or my stash of styrofoam cups or empty bags... They did leave dan's new xm radio (which I'm glad about).

So I guess tomorrow I'll be calling the glass repair people to see if they can put in a new windshield.

leftover phrases

Well, sorry I haven't posted in a while because I was only restored to a computer monitor (as opposed to the computer hooked up to the tv) today. My eyesight isn't really good enough to see the words on the TV screen so I was kinda avoiding using it much.

Yesterday I caught myself before saying something (I would like to point out how amazing that is, since I don't usually even realize what I said until much after it is actually said). My friend and I were standing around talking to our students. She asks if she was going to get her bag back from one of the students who had been carrying it around for her. He states that he had brought it to her from Mexico, so we come back by saying he can't just take things back.

I said, "Now, You don't want to be..." and stopped myself. Do you know what I was going to say?

I'm not entirely sure what the view of Indians is in Mexico, but I know that they talk about them and tease each other about being "indio" if they are dark-skinned. Regardless, it is a completely insensitive phrase that shouldn't be used. I *haven't* said it in who knows how long, but somehow that is what my brain pulled out at that moment to say.

My friend turns to me and smiles and says, "I know what you were going to say."

"yeah, but it is completely inappropriate. I stopped myself just in time."

"You're right. It is inappropriate."

Later we tried to figure out what the etomology of the phrase is, but we didn't come up with anything. So strike 1 for being culturally insensitive and 1 point for not letting more than one person hear me do it. :)

random conversations of the day

Conversations I had with students throughout the day:

-There were some men dressed in Mexican army uniforms caught smuggling drugs. The president of Mexico says the uniforms were stolen, my kids say they weren't.

-Why casinos are not good and why in MS they only have them (or used to have them) on water.

-How to pronounce the name of the state of Louisiana (correctly, in Mississippian and in Spanish)

-How to say "can I borrow an eraser" so that can no longer be an excuse to talk in class.

-I was called a "white girl" for needing multiple blankets to sit through tomorrow's soccer game.

-One of my students got a job...I thought he said he was a "foot runner" this was highly confusing, but I had to send him off to class. Actually he is a "food runner" at a restaurant. Still don't *really* know what that is, but it at least makes sense.

-Was I called chismosa today? No, I think that was last week.

-The system of nicknames and some new spanish curse words.

-About how my mom and I have the same sarcastic sense of humor. :) When she was teaching and her first graders would come whining about splinters and such, she would offer to amputate. She said when the lips started quivering she would back off. I say things like that to my kids, of course the humor is lost on them most of the time. They just think I'm strange.

Fairly exciting day. Nothing disappeared and no one said I was a bad teacher. In fact many of my students today told me I was a *good* teacher. That made me feel better.

Third happy thing for the day:

These are two of the sentences that I got when I was grading original sentences for our commonly misspelled words homework.

"H fell from the second floor window, but he was all right."

"When my sister sees Mr. Y, she breathes."

I find both of these interesting. First, what made you think of throwing your friend from a 2nd floor window? Secondly, I get this great mind picture of a girl sighing when she sees her science teacher. :)

Ok, off to the cocoa and ice cream.

Here's the snowman we produced. Pretty impressive for two Mississippi girls! 

I thought I needed happy pictures today. Here's Sher in our snow a few years ago.
 

bad day part II

Well, the good part about today is that I got all my grading done and all of my classes have even seen their grades with the exception of 7th period who couldn't be quiet unless I was sitting in my new red mushroom stool. They were, however, much better than usual.

The bad part is that my projector has gone missing and now I have to deal with that. I tend to want to avoid things that I dislike. I have interrogated every kid I know and no one has fessed up about it. I really hoped it would show back up before the end of the day, but maybe that was just me being hopeful. So today I was terribly stressed out and spent most of the day trying not to cry. Not because the projector is gone, but because I feel like I have some responsibility not to trust my students so absolutely anymore. But I want to trust them. They need people to trust them. I think it will make them worthy of that trust, even if they aren't...but they need to learn to be worthy of it, too.

I'm sad.

So now, since I couldn't find a Marble Slab friend, I'm going to make the biggest bowl of Girl Scout Cookie Thin Mint ice cream that I can and pair that with a mug of vanilla cocoa. How's that for avoidance? :)

Pride goeth before the fall...

I looked it up. That quote is in fact an actual biblical quote (Proverbs 16:18) . Instead one of the many sayings that gets attributed to the Bible.

That is my key verse for today...It was the worse day I have had in a long, long time. By the end of the day, I lost my temper and was so mad that my heart was beating and I could breathe. I had to go to Mr. Across-the-hall-neighbor to calm down. I *never* go across the hall to calm down.

2nd period - J, who I have been having some problems with, tells me when I accidently called out the wrong answer for the test question that I need to just stop and think about it because I am confusing him. Ok, that doesn't sound so bad now, it was the tone, but I tell him that he shouldn't criticize me, I never said I was perfect. He continues talking so I send him to the hall. Basically he tells me that he is bored in class because I am not prepared and he sits around a lot. I really want to tell him that there are 25 kids in class, all of whom need special attention and he needs to learn patience. What I do tell him is that he is 18 and I have a master's degree and he needs to just accept that I know more about teaching than he does and that I am not perfect, human, and I do make mistakes. I was furious. I am getting together the entirety of the work for the six weeks and letting him work on it himself. He can sit in the back and speed along at his own pace. After school when I mentioned that I had a bad day, mijo asked me to tell him who it was, "come on, just tell me. I want to know." from a kid who is not violent at all, it was kinda flattering that he would want to stand up for me.

6th & 7th we had an instructional meeting with head honcho from downtown. In these meetings there is sort of an unwritten code that we stand firm with each other and say what we have done to help the students. Last year the lady called us all down individually for our failure rates, told us all students should have a textbook (even though the curriculum doesn't even have a textbook in some cases. we would leave really feeling bad. well, I was incredibly nervous cause stuff like that always makes me nervous, but I got through my part and my friend from down the hall even threw my name in because she did a walk-through in my room this morning. it was going really, really well.

Then the new teacher's turn came round. She basically laid it out that the students didn't know anything and she was starting over from step one and since she had only been there 3 weeks, she didn't know what she could really do before the state standarized test. And since her kids are exit level, she is just doing the best she can. "they don't know metaphors or similes or even what dialogue is." Ok, not only did I teach LOTS of these kids last year, I also teach 85 of them this year...And they do know stuff. I can't believe she got up in a meeting with people from downtown and said that they didn't. Like we hadn't taught them anything the last 11 years they've been in school!

Now I've been told that I shouldn't take it personally, true, because she didn't know her audience and no one was sitting there thinking, "hey who taught those kids last year?"

Then I walk back up the stairs, steaming...to find my 7th period class trapsing out of my room two minutes before the bell. Apparently the sub that was covering my class that class period got tired of them and decided to let them go early rather than fight with them about it. Shame really, she seemed like a good sub. She definitely knew better. Well I start ranting at them to get themselves back into the classroom. Then I got every kid in the class back in their seats and tore them up and down about even thinking about leaving early. Then I kicked out the kid who had already been in my class 4th and decided to come again. After school another kid said they had thought about staying in my room too. I told him that he had better be glad he didn't.

By the time I got up there I was so angry that my heart was beating and I almost couldn't breathe. I made them stay a full minute after the bell to make up for the time they were going to cut out early. They will hear it from me tomorrow, too.

Linked in to the Post?

Somehow last night my blog was ranked. If you search for "Miss Mississippi pageant" on GoogleBlogSearch, I'm the number one link.

And I ended up on the Post's "who's blogging about this article?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2006011601489_Technorati.html

Kinda scary..kinda cool.

memories

Tonight we flipped through the channels and are currently watching the Miss America pageant.

When we were kids, Sheri and I watched Miss America every year, cheering for Miss Mississippi (who by the way has more Miss America titles than any other state). Then we would have our own pageant in the living room: changing to swimsuits for the swimsuit competition, putting blankets around our necks for capes and fabricating crowns so that we could both win. We would try to get Mom to pick a winner, which was always pointless because we would always both win. I think we tried to con Joey into judging one year. We would do talent even...although all our acting was during commercial breaks. We would have to stay up late to see the end. Hmmm...9:00 doesn't seem so late anymore.