Rereading my appreciation letters for end-of-school lolz. (Taken with Instagram)
“Yo, Mister – It’s Friday!”
Yesterday, I forgot about Jesus for about 6 hours straight. Why? I got defensive.
While I’m not proud of my forgetfulness, or the defensive fury I can muster when my integrity, work ethic, or good looks are challenged, frustration can often produce something valuable. Which is what I’m sharing with all my fellow teachers today.
Isn’t grading the worst part of our job? It’s certainly the most thankless part of it. You slave for hours over pages and pages of copied, sloppy, incomplete busywork only to watch them trash the papers, leave them on their desks, or stuff them into nooks behind computers or into crannies within the computers themselves. You hunch over essays and pulverize your vertebrae and wreak havoc on your carpal-tunneled hands, only to watch them hate you because you care enough not to placate them. I hate grading.
Well, one of my students today claimed that I needed to “step it up” with my essay grading. I apologized for the tardiness of getting his work back and promised to keep plugging away on the stack of essays that his was inside of. The blessed angel refused to let up, insisting that I grade his work first and I grade it now.
I haven’t graded his essay yet. Instead, I created a treat for you, my dear followers and readers. Behold: “The Application for Accelerated Grading.” They want it back now? They want it back before everyone else? No problem. Just fill out an application, kiddo. Then I’ll be happy to grade that sucker immediately.
Enjoy. I will.
Want to download the Application? Just click on the Application or on the link below to head to the “Yo, Mister” facebook page!
I love this.
So true.
This is one of my students’ quiz. (Taken with instagram)
Missing the point
Oh my heart. Ouch.
This reflects how my kids felt when I taught it.
I made it through my first 4/20 as a high school teacher.
I feel like this sometimes.
I love it when students say “YOLO” at the best possible moment.
Teacher work day! (Taken with instagram)
Given all the support in the world, even the best teacher can’t force his students to learn. Students aren’t simply passive vessels, waiting to absorb information from their teachers and regurgitate it through high-stakes assessments. They make choices about what they will and won’t learn. I know I did.
My best teachers, the ones I still think about today, exposed me to new and exciting ideas. They created classroom environments that welcomed discussion and intellectual risk-taking. Sometimes, these teachers’ lessons didn’t sink in until years after I’d left their classrooms. I’m thinking about Ms. Leonard, the English teacher who repeatedly instructed me to “write what you know,” a lesson I’ve only recently begun to understand. She wasn’t just teaching me about writing, by the way, but about being attentive to the details of my daily existence.
It wasn’t Ms. Leonard’s fault that 15-year-old me couldn’t process this lesson completely. She was planting seeds that wouldn’t bear fruit in the short term. That’s an important part of what we teachers do, and it’s the sort of thing that doesn’t show up on high-stakes tests.
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I’m so sad.
