I made a confession to my students this week. I’m hooked on the Twilight stuff. I had never read any of the books or seen any of the movies. I was wondering what all the fuss was about, so I put Twilight on my Netflix queue. Over Thanksgiving weekend, I popped it in the DVD player. I was expecting to just be rolling my eyes at the whole thing. Vampires? C’mon. Let’s get real.

So I watched the movie.

I completely understand why teenagers are hooked. It’s got the good vs evil with the lines sort of blurred. There’s a typically forbidden romance. The characters are high school students and have to sit through boring classes just like they do. The characters are ones that they can relate to (minus the vampire qualities).

Once I understood the draw, I went further. I saw New Moon. Then I got the first book. I read almost the whole thing on Sunday. Monday, I started book two. I finished that one Thursday night. They are complete fluff reading. Escapism. Entertainment. For a long time I’ve been on a non-fiction kick. So I haven’t read any fluff in ages. Honestly, it’s nice to just escape into a book and not think about other stuff.

When I made my confession I had a variety of reactions. Mostly disbelief. How could their teacher be reading something they read? And like it. We joked around quite a bit throughout the week. I had one girl ask me if I’m “Team Jacob” or “Team Edward.” I confessed… Edward.

I’m almost kind of embarrassed to admit that I’m enjoying reading the fluff. But in telling my students, I became more human to them. Ms. B likes to read the same books I do. We have something in common. How could that be?

I have one boy who is asking if he can borrow the first book. It’s close to 500 pages. I’d bet that Herman has never read a book that long. We all know the statistics about how people who read for pleasure have higher test scores, etc. I’ll be loaning the book to Herman. I’m just amazed that he wants to read it. Did you hear that? He wants to read. I guess I’m promoting literacy to top it off!

A while back I wrote (here) about entering a photo contest with photos from my Tanzania trip. Guess what? I tied for 1st place!

There were 244 entries and the sorted them into three categories: people, places and animals.  123 of the entries were in the people category.   The rest were pretty evenly split between the other two. It was pretty cool to find out that I won. 

(I cropped out the head in the lower right corner for the contest.)

I haven’t had a fight in my room in years. My streak ended on Thursday.

I have a class that is fairly small, has nice kids, is relaxed and fun. We joke around a lot and end our day on a nice note. I would never expect a fight in this class. I guess I have to expect the unexpected.

I was helping another student make sure she knew how to graph a parabola. When I looked up, two boys were locked in a fight. It wasn’t a wild swinging punching kind of thing. As far as fights go, it wasn’t a bad one.

My first reaction is to call the emergency number to the office. Problem #1, they’re blocking the phone. Problem #2, one boy is at least 250 pounds and the other is a lanky 6 footer. What do I do?

“Help!”

A couple of my math colleagues had heard the scuffle from the office and had already called for back up. At my plea for help, a couple of the boys in the class came over and helped me pull them apart. We got them separated and by then the assistant principals had made it to my room. The boys escorted to the office and consequently suspended.

This whole incident took place in a span of only about two or three minutes. But now I had 35 minutes left of class where I had to calm down my class and myself and try to teach them something. So we all took a few deep breaths and learned how to find the axis of symmetry and vertex of a parabola in standard form.

Breaking up fights is not something that I signed up for when I decided to become a teacher. It’s just one of many elements of the job that most people never even think of when they decide to be a teacher. Or worse, when someone thinks that they know what it’s like to be a teacher. But like every other teacher I know, we accept it as just another responsibility we have, move on and try to get some knowledge into their heads. This is just one aspect of why this is such a stressful job. When is the last time you broke up a fight at work?

PS.  I forgot to tell the funny part…  One problem with the baggy pants is that they fall down in a fight.  It makes it hard to do much when your pants around your ankles!

If you leave your iPhone on your desk, unattended, it’s your own damn fault if it gets stolen.

1.  Electronic devices like that aren’t allowed in school.

2.  Since you’re not supposed to have it in school, I don’t care if someone took it!

3.  If you get it back, you should be smart enough to learn the lesson that you should have never had it out in the first place!

Did the lesson get learned today?  I’m not sure.  Who was the thief?

Me.

Sometimes I just can’t resist a little joking with the kids to teach them a lesson.  Larry had left his iPhone on his desk and was trying to win a CD for New Tunes Tuesday on our morning announcements.  That involves being the 3rd caller to the room that does the tv production stuff.  So Larry had gone to the phone to call.  The iPhone is just sitting there.  I couldn’t just leave it.  It was too enticing to pass up!  So I casually walk by and grab it.  I was just going to shut the thing off, but honestly, I couldn’t figure out how.  I did see that he was on Facebook…  So I decided to just put it in my drawer under my overhead projector for the time being.

Larry comes back to his desk and realizes that the iPhone has disappeared.  He starts asking his friends and they all play along and say they don’t have it.  I innocently ask, “Larry, what’s going on?”

“Nothin’.” – he’s obviously starting to worry.

I let him squirm for a few minutes.  Timing is everything here.  You don’t want them to work themselves into a tizzy.  Once they’ve gone off the deep end with worry about losing their expensive gadget you never know if you can get them back.  Plus, his friends were going to cave.

“Larry, is this what you’re looking for?” – iPhone in my hand, twinkle in my eye.

Relief comes across his face.  He’s darn lucky that it’s me who has his toy.  But for now, it’s mine.  So it gets locked in the closet for the remainder of the period.  A small price to pay for leaving your iPhone unattended.

This was my food adventure for the day. There’s a local restaurant that posted their Chicken Salsa Chili recipe on their website and I decided to try it. It was a success! But there’s one problem… I should have not planned to eat it all myself.

Usually, leftovers aren’t a big deal. I like to have them. But this was a bigger recipe than I realized. I’m going to be eating chili all week AND I froze quite a bit. It’s a good thing that I like it. Hopefully I’ll be saying the same thing by Thursday.

I recently saw an editorial cartoon that summed up a problem in education that no one wants to touch with a ten foot pole.  The artist is Signe Wilkinson of the Philadelphia Daily News.  Because of copyright stuff, I’m just going to point you in the right direction to find it yourself.  The cartoon I’m referring to was originally published on September 29th, 2009.  It showed a teacher in a classroom with educational drive-by experts asking her “What are you doing wrong?”

Another one that caught my eye a while back is by Hilary Price of “Rhymes with Orange.”  Teacher Jedi Move #6.  It was published on September 19th, 2009.

I get the local paper each day, but in the mornings I mainly read “Rhymes with Orange” and my horoscope.  On Thursdays I read as much of the “EAT” section as I can before I have to run out the door.  Last week, another teacher had seen the editorial cartoon by Signe and told me about it.  When I looked more carefully at the paper in the evening is when I found it.

The thing that is so cool about these cartoons, is that old adage, a picture is worth a thousand words.  In these cases, it’s definitely true.  I feel like I’m the teacher in the cartoons.  And I’d bet that most of my teacher friends feel the same way.

These are talented artists that with the strokes of their pen say what the rest of us want to say.  Thank you for your creativity!

I hate waking up to the phone ringing.  It’s never anything good.  On Friday, my phone rang at 6:19 am.  I was still in bed.  My alarm was not going off for another 8 minutes.  The caller ID registered as my school.  There’s only one reason I’d be getting a call this early, and it wasn’t a snow day.  My sub canceled.  F&@%!

I was supposed to be bargaining our teacher contract with my union pals that day.  But because my absence was listed as “Staff Development” I was called into the building.

There’s not much of an option of what to do.  I now know that I can shower and be ready in a half hour.  I’m lucky that I only live 11 minutes from school.  I still got there before several of my colleagues…  So what do I do?  I line up coverage for the rest of the day.  I get my first hour class up and running.  Another math teacher arrives at 8:15 to cover the rest of my class.  I head to the union office and try to calm myself down and get my head into bargaining.

Of course I have to re-tell my story of the morning.  It actually served as a pretty good reminder of how efficient and task oriented teachers are on the fly.  I’ll admit that I completely enjoyed the jaw-dropping reactions from the other side of the bargaining table as I described my morning thus far.  Then I asked the HR people who were there, “So, do I get paid for covering for my own sub?”

Surprise, surprise.  They didn’t know.

I found out today that a sub did come in part way through 2nd hour.  So only 2 of the 5 colleagues of mine had to cover for me.  I’m lucky that I work with people who are willing to help out each other in a pinch.

According to Webster, a scar is a mark left after a wound, burn, etc. has healed.

This is my scar.  I’m only about a month into the healing process.  Will it always look like this?  Will it fade in time?  Should I do anything to help it fade?  Do I want to?

I have some interesting thoughts running through my head.  In a way, I don’t want to erase it.  It’s a reminder of my melanoma scare.  Hmm…  maybe there’s a reason why scar is just scare without the e…

My scar is a constant reminder that sun exposure, for me, is dangerous.  It’s part of my story.  But my cancer story is extremely mild compared to so many others.  Mine is so mild that I hesitate to even use the word cancer.

But the fact that I now have this scar got me thinking about the kind of scars that you can’t see.  I’d much rather have this one.

I think about the students that I’ve had.  Some are homeless.  Some are victims of abuse.  Some are even taken out of their homes and brought to shelters.  Many suffer emotional abuse that we haven’t yet figured out how to identify and help them.  It’s much more obvious when a child is physically abused.  But how do you really know if emotional abuse is happening?  How do you even verify it?  The sad reality is that many more of our students probably fall into this category.

So what do I do as an educator?  I provide a safe environment.  I try to make a personal connection with each of them.  I find out something special about each student.  I compliment.  I encourage.  I offer help when I can.  I listen.

I may have this 2 inch scar on my back.  But it’s a physical scar.  It will heal with time.  Given the choice between this physical scar and an emotional one, I’ll pick the physical one.  Hands down.

If anyone were to ask me what my dream job would be, I’d say that I’d love to be a travel photographer.  I started traveling internationally when I was 17 years old.  Every since, I’ve been hooked on travel.  I love to explore other cultures, see how others live and just learn, learn, learn.

I usually try to flee the country every summer for someplace new and interesting.  Several years ago, I used to do it with students and I got to travel for “free.”  Free is a relative term in this case…  It’s one helluva lot of work to travel with teenagers!  My travels have brought me to every continent except Antarctica.  Antarctica is not making it onto my list of places to go, but I wouldn’t turn it down if someone else wanted to pay for it. 

This past summer I went to Tanzania.  In November there is a Fall event and there is a photo contest.  It’s only $15 to enter the contest and I know it’s going toward a good cause.  So here are my five photos…

I saw these two off in the distance while we were at the main church in Irindi. (I had uploaded this to flickr a while back, I did crop out the head in the lower right for the contest.)

This is a Masai woman. I have no idea of her age. I just think she’s beautiful.

Whenever we would come or go, we were always greeted with song and cheerful waves hello or goodbye. These are many of the children of Irindi who sang and danced and played with us.

We had a wonderful interpreter. He is a retired pastor. He is the interpreter for many groups from my area, so even though the picture isn’t the best I’ve taken, the subject is the reason for the entry. This is the “Kiponda look.”

There were five of us traveling together. Three were in the same family. This is one of my favorite photos that I took of them in Zanzibar.

The contest isn’t until November 7th. It would be cool if I won or placed. But what I really want to do was share these wonderful images from Tanzania.

I’m perplexed.  I’m sitting here, trying to think of a title for this post and I can’t come up with the right word.  As I think about this situation, I have a furrowed brow and tension in my forehead.  Since I just got home from yoga, I can tell that thinking about this doesn’t relax me…

We started homeroom this week.  We call it “advisory” and it is between first and second hour.   In order to make an effort to increase our reading scores, we use 2 of the 3 days for silent reading time.  Some of the kids get a little confused on which class to go to, etc.  If they walk into the right room, but the wrong time, they usually figure it out quickly and head to the correct location.

I have this girl in my first hour.  I don’t know if she’s new to the school or not.  I do know that she was recently dreaming about ghosts and when she awoke, some of her things were in a different location than she recalled.  Hey- I’m just making conversation when they come in…  She’s not the kind of kid that would kill a fly, let alone skip a class.

On Tuesday, she was gone.  I wasn’t alarmed or anything.  But then after first hour she showed up to see me.  Guess what?  She went to advisory instead of first hour.  This isn’t uncommon.  But she didn’t get up and leave when she figured out she was in the wrong place!  She stayed for the entire class period!

Head shake.

Do I mark her absent or not?

So later on in the day, I talked to the teacher whose class she had attended.  When he saw her in the morning, he asked, “Pa, are you in this class now?”  She responds, “I’ve always been in this class.”  He didn’t think much of it.  We’re still at the point where they’ve made some schedule changes.  So Pa sits there, for the entire class, paying attention and learning…  Get this…  she even did the assignment.

When kids figure out they’re in the wrong place, most of them get up, laugh at themselves, give a little explanation and out the door they go.  What would possess a kid to stay in the wrong class?  I don’t know if it’s extreme shyness, not wanting to make any kind of a scene or what?  I hope she learned that she should get up and leave in that situation.  There are all sorts of spins I could put on this.  But a kid needs to have the courage to get themselves out of situation where they know they don’t belong.  For her sake, I really hope she learned that lesson this week.