…and I love it.

I’m taking my I/II kids on a field trip on Monday (I may write more on that later, but for now, suffice to say that it was not a trip I would have planned).  That means that my III/IV kids are going to be essentially on their own on Monday.

Since we started reading A Christmas Carol, the III/IV kids have been campaigning to have me let them watch A Muppet Christmas Carol.

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Today, I decided that I WOULD, in fact, have them watch it – on the Monday that they’ll have a sub.  Here is the handout that’s going to go with the film:

English III/IV Muppet Christmas Carol essay test

(You didn’t think that I was going to let you watch this film without making you EARN it, did you…?)

Film, while it may be influenced by written work, should be considered an entirely different piece of art for the purposes of critique and analysis.  Keep this in mind as you consider the following questions.  Please answer ALL of the questions as thoroughly and in as much detail as you can; use specific references to the film or the text in supporting your answers.  These are due, printed and in proper class format, at the BEGINNING of class on Tuesday morning.

•  Clearly, the audience for A Muppet Christmas Carol is primarily – though not exclusively – young people.  Consider the ways in which Dickens’ original story was modified to make the themes more accessible to a child, and in what ways the adults who are watching the film with their children are addressed, as well.  How does the film engage its intended audience in ways that perhaps the written work would not?  What ideas from the novel are very effectively carried over into the film (and remember that the plot or narrative doesn’t have to be “faithful” to the book – just that the themes are effectively conveyed).  Where do you feel that the film falls short in getting its message across?

•  Think about the story’s narrator and about the way Dickens chooses to tell his tale. What role does humor play in the novel? How do the comic aspects of A Christmas Carol interact with and support the moral and ghost-story aspects? How does Dickens blend comedy and horror?  Consider these same questions in terms of the Muppet retelling, then discuss the ways in which each work uses both humor and horror, and to what effect.

•  An allegory is is a form of extended metaphor in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy.  Thus, an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.  Consider not only the role of characters in A Christmas Carol itself as allegory, but consider, as well, the “characters” from the Muppet ensemble that play those characters in the film version.  Why are human characters part of the film; what effect does that have on the audience?  Why are particular Muppets given particular roles, and what effect does this have on the way we’re supposed to understand their larger significance as allegories?

Their heads are going to explode…

I’m not boasting, but I really am awesome at my job….

I just hit “submit” on the final grades for my Local U. class!  WOOT!  Another semester in the can.

I’m so relieved.

“DUMBNESS!!”

That was my word for today.

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(Chili’s note; I wanted to call them “dumbasses,”  to their faces, but the term “dumbness” applied as a general observation rather than an individual label was far more appropriate for the classroom setting.)

So here’s another one in the category of “I can’t MAKE this shit up.”

Today was the day that I handed out new books to my students; we begin discussing A Christmas Carol next week, and I wanted to get them started on the reading this weekend.  Before classes began, I took all the copies of the story, tipped them on their sides, and wrote “CHS” and a number on each one.  Then, I got a new book sign-out sheet, put “A Christmas Carol” across the top, and listed the books 1-20.

Still with me here?  I know it seems fussy to go over the details, but trust me; they’re important to my story.

So, the end of my first class rolls around and I ask the kids who among them needs a copy of the book (many of them already have one, so they don’t need a school copy).  Seven hands go up, so I pass out the books and hand the sign out sheet to the first kid.  “Sign out the book you have and pass it on to the next person.  Please make sure the last person gets the list to me when you’re done, please!” I say as I head out of the room.

The “last person” brings me the sign out sheet.  She’s signed out book seven.  Books four and six are blank.

Here I’m thinking, “Are you fucking kidding me?!  WHO’S got books four and six?!”

I lost my shit in a way that was, to be honest, pretty funny (I had to mask it in humor because I was so astounded at this newest level of idiocy that I was afraid I’d really hurt someone’s feelings).  I marched into my colleague’s classroom, asked him if I could have his class for a moment (he said “sure!”  I think he knew from the look in my eye that this was the only acceptable response) and I played out the following scene.

ALL RIGHT!  Everyone in Mrs. Chili’s English class, stand up!  Everyone NOT in Mrs. Chili’s class, sit the heck down, because this doesn’t concern you and believe me, you don’t want it to!

(five kids stand up).

JENNA!  What book number do you have, Honey?

Jenna: Three!

(I consult the list) GREAT!  Good girl!  Sit down, please.

DANIEL!  What book number do you have?

Daniel: Huh?

Book number, Sweet; what number is on the book I gave you?

Daniel: Huh?

Daniel, DARLING; would you please bring me your book?

Daniel comes to the front of the class with his book.  I remove it from his hands, show him the number (he had 6) and bop him on the forehead with it.

DANIEL!  Sign out your stinking book!  GAH!  DUMBNESS!!

I did this with FIVE other kids in two separate classrooms (I’ve got great colleagues; have I mentioned that lately?)  In fact; Daniel and Melody failed to sign out their books at all; Peter (my boy genius), Bobby, and Serena just put their names in random spots without regard to what book number they had, so I had to straighten THAT out.

DUMBNESS!

Needless to say, I was pretty worked up by the time I started my III/IV class, and it was a good thing I’d set the day aside as a workshop day for their papers, because I was in no condition to be leading a class (of course, they’re all laughing at me by this point, even the kids who were the recipients of head-boppings and cries of “DUMBNESS!”).

I did make the mistake, however, of asking the big kids to sign back IN some of their books (“what the hell?” I figured; I already had the book log out).  One of my geniuses went to his locker and retrieved his book, then stood there next to me in front of the log that was open next to my computer.

No, I mean it; he just stood there……

For a really long time….

MIKE!  What are you doing, Honey?

Mike: Huh?

No, really; what are you doing?

Mike: I don’t know what you want me to do.

Mike, are you KIDDING me right now?  Give me your book, please.

He hands me his book, and I bop him on the forehead with it.  He starts to laugh (good thing, because I did, too).

MIKE!  HONEY!  See this number right here? (I angle the book on its side so he can see the number written on the top.)

Mike: Yeah.

See THIS number right HERE? (I point to the book number next to his name on the log.)

Mike: Yeah.

Are they the SAME number?

Mike: Yeah.

GREAT!  Put today’s date in “date returned,” then go sit the heck down before I whack you again!

Oy.

Yesterday was our first snow day here in my neighborhood.

The city’s public school system has a spiffy new phone message alert program that calls all the families and lets them know that school has been canceled.  I hate it.  My phone rang at frickin’ FIVE THIRTY in the morning.  My alarm rings at ten to six.  I NEED those twenty minutes, y’all!  Besides, I much prefer my method of nudging my husband and having him open his laptop to the school closing page on the news station’s website – it’s MUCH quieter.  Of course, I REALLY preferred touching an icon on my iPhone and checking the closings, but the damned news station changed its website (ironically, to make it work for iPhones, but now it doesn’t work for mobile devises at all.  Whatever).

ANYWAY, I didn’t start this post to complain about the how we find out that we have no school.  I started this post to brag about what CHS is doing to make sure that we get credit hours during snow days so we don’t have to go to school in July!

The tech guy (LOVE HIM!) at CHS decided that, as part of his Master’s project, he would implement a system by which CHS students could attend virtual classes on days when the building was closed, whether for snow or lack of heat or insect infestation (I guess that was a problem last spring.  Ewww…).  He researched a bunch of online class platforms, decided on one, and got the whole school up and running.

We had a trial run a few weeks ago – that class made up for a day we missed in October because there was no heat in the building – and it went pretty well.  Yesterday was the first spur-of-the-moment class, though; school was canceled at 5:30 in the morning and the kids were expected to show up for online classes according to the schedule we’d handed them when we implemented the program.

Overall, it went pretty well.  The biggest problem I ran into was that I gave the kids MY log in address by mistake, so whenever someone new came to the class using the link I gave them, the system kicked ME out because the kids were coming in on my address and the class wouldn’t let “me” in more than once.  We fell back on a plan B that had us all meet on our website, though, so it all worked out in the end.

I am proud of my school for being on the leading edge of this wave; we’re the only high school in the state (so far) that is making use of this technology, and it’s pretty cool to not only be able to save ourselves having to make up the snow days in the pretty weather of spring, but also to be able to teach class in my pajamas!

Ten components of my teaching repertoire

1.  Reading, reading, reading! I try to always have something going in the classroom – a novel, a speech, a short story – something.  I really do think that reading much is the key to learning how to write well.

2.  Writing, writing, writing! Though I have fallen a bit behind on this with my CHS kids, I do try to keep my kids writing all the time.  Most days, my kids come to class and find a writing prompt on the board (usually having to do with the reading we’re doing – imagine that!).  I also try to keep them working on extended writing pieces, as well.

5.  Talking, talking, talking! I am not at all fond of lecture – either being the recipient or the giver.  I find that MY learning style is much more attuned to the give-and-take of conversation, and that many of my most thrilling “Ah-HA!” moments (both as a learner and a teacher) have come when someone else said something that led to something else that led to my making a connection that really, really worked.

4.  Vocabulary. I’ve never been a proponent of random vocabulary lists – even as a kid I thought they were the wrong way to go – so all of my vocabulary instruction comes from the things we’re reading.  I find that I have minimum success with vocabulary lists – the kids don’t quite ‘get’ the exercise of finding and defining the words (or, at least, defining them in a way that they can understand) – but I keep working at it.

5.  Critical thinking questions. I’m not a huge fan of the “tell me what happened” school of education; anyone who’s even minimally aware can tell you the plot of a story (though, come to think of it, I’ve got a couple of kids who don’t even meet that standard).  No; what I’m interested in is the answer kids give to “tell me WHY this happened.”  I have been delighted to the point of giddiness by some of the answers a couple of my students have offered to some of my more complex questions, and I continue to ask the tough questions because I want my kids to leave my class knowing how to THINK.

6.  My websites. Oh, how I LOVE my websites!  I spent quite a bit of time getting them off the proverbial runway, but now that they are (proverbially) airborne, I find them to be fantastic CYA mechanisms.  No longer do I have to deal with “…but Mrs. Chili, I was absent / I lost the assignment sheet / I forgot what you said in class…” excuses.  They don’t even get to do the “I don’t have internet” excuse, either, because there are computers available for the students to use on campus.  I also love being able to pull up ANY assignment at ANY time so that when a student complains about a grade, I can show them the exact requirements I asked for so they can see the (often myriad) ways what they handed in just didn’t cut it.

7.  PDF documents. I am often horrified (HORRIFIED, I tell you!) at the amount of paper I go through – I am, after all, an English teacher in a school with no books (well, not NO books, but precious few good ones, at any rate).  I love being able to create a document as a PDF and give it to my kids online.  Let THEM print them out if they want to!

8.  Movies! I am one of those English teachers; I incorporate movies into my curriculum wherever I can (though, strangely, I’ve not shown a movie in either of my classes in months.  Huh).  I find that kids take very well to watching films in class, and because I don’t ask lame plot questions, they have to REALLY pay attention to what’s going on because they KNOW that I’m going to make them think when the credits roll.  (next up, A Christmas Carol!)

9.  Contact-ability. I make a big deal about being available to my students.  While I haven’t gone after them as friends on Facebook or given them my phone numbers, I am pretty much always available via email.  They have two of my addresses, and both of them go directly to both my home computer AND my cell phone.  I’m in regular contact with several parents, and I stay at school on more days and for WAY longer than is strictly required in my (very part time) contract.  I tell my kids that I will not chase them down, but I also make sure that I’m very, very easy to find.

10.  Colleagues, professional development, and study. A huge – HUGE, I tell you! – part of my teaching practice is the part that I share with my coworkers, colleagues, and friends (that means you, you know!).  I make a point of never thinking I’ve got it all figured out; I’m ALWAYS learning.  Since I know that I’m a collaborative learner (see #3), I make a point to participate in as many opportunities for discussion and cooperation as I can, and this blog is a major component of that strategy.  Thank you for your part in it!

Happy Tuesday, Everyone!

There are two “grading periods” per semester at CHS; the kids get a progress report in October, another one in December, and grades close for the semester at the end of January.  I finished writing their December narratives this afternoon.

Man, but it’s hard to write an academic death sentence in a polite way!

I’ve got this kid.  You’ve met him before, in fact, and he is nothing if not consistent.  The boy still refuses to do any work at all (charmingly and without malice, I’ll grant you, but still…).  The child has been booted out of my room no fewer than five times in the last several weeks because he’s come to class without having read the assignment for the day (and, consequently, he can’t participate in the class discussion; he just sits there and stares vacantly into space).  He spent today in the director’s office, as a matter of fact, because he not only admitted to not having read the assignment, but he didn’t even bring the book to class.  The boy has a 33.6 average in my class (and I know for sure that he’s running right around there in at least one of his other classes, too).  Truly; his proverbial ship has sailed.

How on earth do I write a narrative that doesn’t tell the kid to just give up, already?

He’s one of the (surprisingly many) kids who’s in line to be booted back to their sending schools for non-performance at CHS (we’re in the process of reevaluating the admission standards; they’ll be in place for the next batch of admissions that begins in January), and there’s nothing I can do to save him.

CHS doesn’t just rely on numerical grades; factors such as work ethic and participation are considered in the final grades, as well.  Nothing this kid is doing, though, will make these considerations enough to get his grade up to anything even approaching acceptable.

There are some kids, however, who are on the borderline – some on the wrong side, some on the right side.  For those kids, considerations such as participation and work ethic WILL matter – some kids will rise with them, and others will sink.

I like this grading policy better than straight numbers, though; I don’t think it’s right to judge a student’s performance solely on the work they produce, especially when so much of my classes are discussion-based.  A lot of how I understand my students’ progress is tied to how they interact with me and each other in the classroom.  I want to give credit to the students who strive for those Helen Keller moments, and I want to ding the kids who sit there and pass notes or, as our dear Peter is so fond of doing, stare vacantly into space for an hour and a half every morning.

The truth of the matter is that I have always adjusted my grades according to how my students function in the classroom, even when such things weren’t built into the grading scheme.  Now that I work in a place that does honor more than the raw numbers, though, I’m feeling more confident than ever that the grades I record for my students more closely represent the whole of the work they do.

I keep web pages for each of my CHS classes.  On them is a space for notes, and I use that space for “the quote of the week.”  Only a few kids have noticed that I actually DO change the quote every week, but I do it anyway.

This week, I’m sending a pointy message.  I wonder how many of them will get it.

“Those who are unwilling to invest in the future haven’t earned one.” ~H.W. Lewis

Here’s the quiz I gave to my I/II kids on Friday.

Only 5 of my 13 kids answered both questions – and one of them didn’t answer any (and don’t even ASK about the vocabulary, because I’m too pissed off to give you a coherent answer).  I’m on the fence about what to do about it, though.  I’m leaning toward letting them take part of tomorrow’s class to write the second essay for partial credit (and giving the kids who did the work the first time either an opportunity to revise their essays or giving them that part of the period off), but I’m not sure that I want to start that kind of precedent.  Any advice you care to toss my way would be appreciated.

To Kill a Mockingbird Quiz

Choose TWO questions.  Outline then compose a five-paragraph essay for each in which you address the question as completely as you can; use evidence from the book (be sure to cite chapter and page numbers) to support your claims.

• Analyze chapter 11, in which Jem is compelled to read to Mrs. Dubose.  What happens in that scene, and why is it important enough to the larger story that Harper Lee spends an entire chapter on it?  What does Atticus want Jem and Scout to learn from the experience, and how does that lesson relate to what he wants them to know before the trial begins?

• In chapter 16, Scout learns that Atticus was assigned the job of defending Tom Robinson.  She says that “this was news, news that put a different light on things: Atticus had to, whether he wanted to or not.  I thought it odd that he hadn’t said anything to us about it – we could have used it many times in defending him and ourselves.”  Discuss why Atticus never mentioned that he was compelled to defend Tom Robinson, and consider why that information didn’t seem to change the town’s attitude about the matter.

• In chapters 17 and 18, Bob and Mayella Ewell testify in court.  What do we learn about them from the things they say and the way they behave on the stand.  Consider the way people’s worth is measured in Maycomb, and how different people are classified and considered?  Do you think that the Ewells fit the idea that people have of them?

• Analyze chapter 24, in which the Ladies’ Club comes to the Finch household for their luncheon.  What does the talk of the different ladies reveal about their attitude concerning “the other,”” people whom they consider to be different from themselves.  Why is it so significant that the women think the way they do?  What does Miss Maudie’s behavior at the luncheon tell us?  What about the women and their talk reveal how stereotypes and discrimination are perpetuated?  How does this fit with Scout’s assertion that there’s only one kind of “folks”?

• As the trial progresses, the children’s attention is focused away from Boo Radley, but at the end of chapter 24, Jem begins to consider that perhaps Boo’s reclusive behavior isn’t so strange after all.  Consider how the children’s perspective changes over the course of that summer, and how they begin to see their father, their community, and themselves differently.

Vocabulary:  define each word, identify the part of speech (noun, verb, etc.) then use it in a sentence.

* adamant        * sordid        *apoplectic

* auspicious        *succinct        *brevity

I’m telling you – despite all the bitching that I do (and believe me, I’ve got just cause…) – I really DO have some fantastic kids that make getting up in the morning SO worth it.

I’ve been decidedly down on my I/II kids lately. Most of them are just not doing the work – they’re not reading the chapters I assign, they’re not answering the questions I ask, they’re not participating in the class conversations I lead – they’re just not showing up, even if their little butts are in the seat.

Notice I said “most of them.”

I’ve got this kid. We’ll call her Shawna. Shawna is a joy. She’s supposed to be in the eighth grade this year, but it was decided that she’d skip a year so she could be a freshman at CHS this September. I was nervous when I first heard that little tidbit of information about her; I was afraid that I’d have an immature little girl in my class, and that she’d be left behind as we forged ahead with complex ideas and a heavy dose of critical thinking.

Man, was I wrong. Shawna is leaving her older peers in the proverbial dust. She’s smart, she’s articulate, she’s funny. She’s observant and insightful. She does the work, she pays attention, and she participates. She spends a fair bit of her class time helping her classmates to see beyond what’s plainly in front of their faces. In short, the kid thrills me on a fairly regular basis.

I got to send home this letter on Friday. It helped to salvage what was left of a pretty tough week. Thanks, Shawna!

Dear Shawna’s Mom and Dad:

So many of the emails I send home are of a decidedly negative nature; I am delighted to be writing to you today to tell you that Shawna is absolutely nailing English class.

We’ve been reading To Kill a Mockingbird in Shawna’s English I/II class, and I’ve been trying to encourage the students to see beyond the story on the page; to consider the implications of a character’s gesture or to take into account the time and place in which the story is set as they think about why characters behave the way they do. Throughout our investigation of this text, Shawna has been – as always – a careful, thoughtful reader and an energetic and valuable contributor to our class conversations.

This morning, I gave the students a quiz on the book in which I asked them questions that required some pretty heavy-duty critical thinking on their part. Shawna’s answers to my difficult questions were nuanced and insightful; she was able to look beyond the obvious to discern the subtleties of the situations I asked about. She answered the essay prompts with clear, mature answers that, quite frankly, delighted me, and I made a point of finding her this morning to tell her so.

Shawna is the kind of student that I love to have in my reading and critical analysis classes. She’s a thinker, a keen observer of her world, and she continually strives to find a way to put her thinking and observations into words so she can share them with others. She is excelling in English class, and I’m truly delighted to have had a chance to work with her.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Warmly,

Mrs. Chili