Well, well, well. Week 8, we meet at last. What’s that? You thought I would succumb to some sort of teen-induced coma before the end of the summer? Negative, ghost rider. Eight weeks of teaching 8:30-5:30 (let’s be real, 7:00pm) and I not only survived, but I also maintained sanity despite inundations with teenie pop, “that’s what she said” jokes and a slowly deteriorating desire to do any sort of writing (hellooo, it is a writing class, duh). I may be writing make-believe dialogue with the concept of summer school, but I did survive. That’s all that matters.

My sophomores finished up grammar usage to assess cumulative understanding of what we learned this summer and my 8th graders finished up their Sherlock Holmes book, The Hound of Baskervilles.

Sophomores

Nothing extremely notable happened in class during week 8 for the sophomores, but I certainly had many memorable little moments with them.

I know I’ve said this so many times before, but honestly, it is so cool to see concepts click in students’ minds. We did a summation activity revising a paragraph with 36 grammar mistakes. Kids were not thrilled about this. WHYYYYYYY?!? (I am such a terrible person, making them actually do work and all..)

BUT!

They were really excited as we went along and they could shout out what was wrong with certain punctuation or sentence structure, etc. They got so absorbed in it that the whole lesson flew by. It was neat to see them get passionate about an ambiguous pronoun reference or a misused modifier. Nerdy and awesome.

We also played grammar games and wrote an in-class essay chain, which was an interesting concept. Each person was given a separate prompt to respond to and had to complete the first step of making a “claim” about the essay. For example, one student would get a prompt about whether or not telling the truth is always beneficial and he or she would need to make a claim: a) yes, it is always essential to tell the truth, otherwise we will deceive when we should really be truthful or b) no, it is not always essential to be truthful; sometimes telling the truth hurts those around us. Then, after so many minutes, that person would pass his or her prompt/claim to the next person to address the second claim, then the next would write a thesis, then an intro paragraph, etc. It was somewhat disconcerting to see how disconnected the essays were, but in the short amount of time that the students had, they got some interesting ideas on paper.

I also had my kids anonymously write me end-of-the-summer letters to reflect on how the summer intensive program went for them. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

1. “I learned a lot in your writing class this summer! :) I really liked the way you taught and you definitely kept me entertained!” (Thank you very much. *Elvis voice*)

2. “I LOVE YOU!!! YOU MADE ME LEARN WRITING MUCH BETTER.” (Cute)

3. “I loved your energy and your ‘burnin for learnin’ even though we looked tired and dead.” (Ahaha! This HAD to be from 1st period..)

4. “J’adore madame?! Ms. Katie!” :) (This is one of my English language learners. Sweet girl.)

5. “I liked your teaching style, especially the exaggeration part.” (Hmm.. not sure what he means here, but I’ll take it!)

6. “I learned a lot this summer. I struggled in the starting but I picked it up very well. Thank you very much. I will miss having you as my writing teacher.” *sigh*

7. “If I could keep you as my writing teacher, I would. Thank you for all the effort you put into teaching my class and me. We are definitely going to miss you!!”

I love this one: “You really help me improve this summer. I thought your teaching style was real good and that means a lot coming from me since I really don’t like writing. Ok.”

I will keep them forever! PS: We played Bananagrams and celebrated with food on the last day. I’ll miss these kids!

Here are a few of my writing students from my 3rd period class:

Lovely boys in the back! Of course! I will miss you guys!!

8th Graders

We finished up our fourth and final book, a Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of Baskervilles. We did sequencing activities, in-class portfolio entries and vocabulary games, as usual! I also had the pleasure of hearing my students read aloud from their portfolio projects in the Author’s Chair. (Seriously, all credit for this project goes to Ms. Clare LePell. I could not have survived this summer without your amazing guidance!!)

I had my kids write anonymous reflection letters to me for this class, too. These are cute:

1. “I was happy to be lectured by you. The working conditions were fair and stable! … At first I was pessimistic about taking this class and predicting I would fail. But after the first book, I feltl ike I could prosper in this class.” Cute. Spock (prosperrr)

2. “You were nice, making funny faces, and we always had fun in this class.” (Quite possibly my favorite commentary!)

3. “Coming into this class, I expected to lose my summer doing education, but now I will miss this class.” (Love it.)

For their final, I told them I would test them on how much fun they could have. I pulled out Bananagrams & Clue, two awesome games. Most kids were excited, but some were confused on how one could be tested on fun-ness. I had them raise their right hands and repeat after me:

“I, (insert name here), promise to have fun, eat snacks, play fair, and not put anyone down.”

We played Clue because it is a murder mystery game and it fit well with our Sherlock Holmes story!

These are some of my middle schoolers playing Bananagrams for their “Vocabulary Final.” ;)

Needless to say, aside from a few kids who apparently woke up on the wrong side of the bed that week (aka they are middle schoolers and feel the need to be “cool”), everyone got 100%. Lovely.

I updated our Star Work Wall with individual notes to my students. As much as they made me repeat everything I said 40 times and tested my patience regularly, I absolutely adore these kids:

And of course our PAGES WE READ poster!

Loving it! Oh what a book can do for an imagination!! :)

Well, this summer was absolutely incredible, exhausting, humbling, challenging, inspiring, intellectually stimulating, eye-opening and unexplainable! I certainly could not have asked for a better first classroom. I am so grateful to have been given the opportunity to teach these kids. I look forward to teaching middle school reading, one-on-one writing tutoring sessions and college application essay workshops this fall.

Until next time, over and out!

Week 7!

My sophomores worked on grammatical comparisons & my 8th graders started The Hound of Baskervilles, a Sherlock Holmes detective story. It was a week of extra essays, progress reports, independent work packets and candy bribes (I mean, are you even surprised at this point? The candy of choice this week were mini chocolate bars & gummy bears).

Sophomores

This was our second to last week of the summer program, so, as you can imagine, my classroom was a delightful blend of cabin fever with a tiny dash of actual focus. Yet somehow, they pulled themselves together to get their work done. Ugh, I love them to bits.

Loving it:

It’s a beautiful thing to walk into class and see your kids juiced to learn. Well, either they are juiced or they are delirious and dyslexically mixed up our class motto. Whatevs.

We kept playing Grammar HORSE this week and of course it got intensely competitive. Prettttty standard.

We also have thematic discussions on Fridays to help spark ideas to write essays. This Friday, we got to talk about education & knowledge. That was pretty cool because we started thinking about education outside the bounds of academia & the classroom walls. We also discussed how certain schools have access to great resources and how that provides their students with a suitable academic learning environment. Then we talked about how not all schools have access to those same resources & how much an education can vary from school to school, county to county. One of my kids said something along the lines of, “My school didn’t even have a football stadium last year! So annoying.” You can imagine I had plenty to enlighten him about after that. It was an interesting discussion.

Our kids got to pick essay prompts out of a hat & practice writing essays in class. It was a nice break to have some substantial silence (what? that exists?!) to get grading done in class.. Score! Um.. extra gummy bears, anyone? Double score.

One of my sophomores fell asleep in class so I threw a squishy soccer ball at him and he woke up. When he fell asleep again I blasted Justin Bieber Pandora in his ear. Hey, it worked. Thanks, Biebs.

8th Graders

My kids started reading The Hound of Baskervilles this week and they seem to be really into it! They do have a hard time with the language considering older English syntax & vocabulary is typically different than what we read today. But, we’re slowly working through the book and developing our reading comprehension together. I’ve had them read aloud as different characters & next week I’m going to make them dress up like Sherlock & Watson. I’ve already got the coat & “pipe” ready!

To help them keep track of all the characters and the clues in our mystery, we’ve been doing chapter maps and making a Detective Book page for every chapter. They have to keep track of the setting, the characters we’re introduced to, important quotes, plot points, and clues we’ve found. After that, they have to work with classmates to make a Detective Book page to list clues, ask questions/make predictions, and draw important symbols. Here’s the cover of our book!

Do you remember my student who struggled with our first book but got super into The Hobbit? He struggles a lot with the writing in this book, but he is so cute! He’ll come up to me at the beginning of class and try to tell me who the murderer is based on his predictions. These predictions usually last a good couple of minutes and he always mispronounces something. Sometimes he gets so excited I think that he forgets to breathe. Under no other circumstance would I support not breathing in my classroom, but pure literary excitement is my one exception! :)

One of our students had to leave the program early for a family vacation. Now, keep in mind that this kid is the most quiet, polite, sweet kid in the world, and when he does speak, everyone listens for something profound. For example, he rarely spoke up in class discussions, but once he shared how much he loved cars and the whole class applauded at the end! They all loved him. Needless to say, we were all sad to see him go! So, I figured I’d tie him into subsequent lesson plans. I wanted the kids to write their own mysteries. I thought it would be perfect to have our little car man be the subject of students’ “create-your-own” mysteries. Was he really “going camping?” What was he really doing? I had the kids attempt to “stump the teacher” by providing clues, red herrings and details for me to guess what he was really doing this last week of school. It was actually a lot of fun! They plotted these super extravagant alternative lives for our little man and did well in detailing reasons as to why he really is an “Italian spy with a Lamborghini and 5 girlfriends,” for example. Awesome.

To help learn some of our vocabulary words, I asked the kids to do a story chain. Basically, each student starts a story choosing any word from our list, then they pass the story on to the next student. Each student must use a new word & continue the story. I’m loving this one:

There was once a unicorn who always had a diabolical plan to destroy the world. She shrewdly destroyed all the governments in the world with her rainbow horn. When caught, she was sent into seclusion. But no one really knew that she had always tried to reconcile her unicorn thoughts. Everyone hated her! People went into a vestry. (Hmm.. not sure how this fits, but I like it!) They all profaned against god. (Again, nice attempt!) The reason why she was hated was because of her acrid smell of kimchi. (There’s a passionate debate in our class as to whether or not kimchi is good; clearly this came from one of the girls who hates it!) Then a mutual friend came and ate all the kimchi in the world. (…And this is from one who loves it..) The unicorn had become inconceivable though. Later they all died of acute horn pain.

Amidst crazy stacks of papers, things like this always make me laugh..

Week 7 was grand. Next week is our last full week of the summer program. This summer went by so fast and yet so much has happened. What a whirlwind! I look forward to my last week with these kids. I certainly am ready for a break, but I know I will miss them so much! Week 8, bring it on!!

Hello, blog. We meet again!

Three weeks have flown by since you all got a glimpse into my classroom. If you’ve been craving some adolescent hilarity/insanity, I’ve got a healthy dose right here!

Three weeks of ridiculousness. Ready, go!

Week 4

My sophomores worked on some form of grammar (Aw, hell. It’s been three weeks.) and my 8th graders finished up The Hobbit. My 8th graders love, love, loved the book and couldn’t wait to get their hands on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Awesome.

Apparently, my kids think Bilbo is morbidly obese. 

This is our classroom after our Hobbit unit. They did character/theme development projects and our Star Work Wall is full of dwarf poems and dragon diary entries.

Also, I showed a film blog documenting the making of the movie, The Hobbit, and their faces LIT UP. They can’t wait to go see the movie next year. My inner nerd did somersaults in my tummy! :)

Speaking of fantasy movies, I lost many a good student to the Harry Potter 12am showing. If they even came to class the next day, they certainly weren’t really there. All I know is that I came to my third period writing class and one student had decorated the whole board with things like:

I LOVE EMMA WATSON.

EMMA + JASON = LOVE

EMMA, WILL YOU MARRY ME??

Some of my kids decided it would be fun to get a little hyphy in class this week. Some were talking back and getting sassy. I’ve certainly learned I have little tolerance for any of those shenanigans. I’ve had to get sassy before, but I had to pull a couple kids outside to talk to them about their behavior. Being the bad cop is no fun.

On the upside, I did use Emma Watson as an incentive for good behavior. I said, “What would Emma Watson say if she knew you were acting like this?” Funny.

Week 5

My sophomores worked on sentence parallelism and my 8th graders started Kira-Kira.

We lost a writing teacher for our sophomores, so the rest of the teachers kind of picked up extra students/essays/hours. It was a little hectic (aka days were like 12-14 hours long). I think I graded something like 60 essays in two days. The funny thing was seeing the wide range (aka the same exact essay, sarcasm alert) written on the same prompt. The prompt had something to do with fear and its affect on our ability to make decisions.

One essay started like this. “Many people have fears. People fear spiders, diseases, war and teachers.” Teachers and war are apparently on the same plane of fear. Oh, perspective..

Another started like this. “Before humans even existed, homosapiens exhibited signs of fear…” Logic fail.

Needless to say, it was a little crazy that week. The backseat of my car kind of got destroyed with essays and curriculum..

I have had full range to develop my own curriculum for my 8th graders! They started reading Kira-Kira, a novel on Japanese-Americans in the 1950s. The kids are super interested in the material and comically seem to lack any former experience with 1950s America.

Every day, I ask them to respond to a “Starter Question” to encourage them to write and get thinking about our text for the day. I asked them to write down everything they associated with America during the 1950s. I essentially got three “facts” from the class:

1. Elvis

2. Hitler

3. Sonic Burger

I kid you not!

I tried to break down the timeline of big events in the 1940s and how World War II and Japanese Internment affected the development of the early 50s culture. Some kids stared rather blankly at me when I told them about Japanese Internment & WWII; some asked questions/made factual(?) statements:

1. Did Hitler run the Internment Camps? (Yikes..)

2. A sock hop was when people wore skirts with poodles on them and hopped around in their socks.. 

3. I thought World War II happened before the Civil War.. (Double YIKES)

Well, needless to say, I set aside a chunk of time to do historical context projects that week. I’m hoping they have a better grasp on American history now..

And of course, I took full advantage of the opportunity to show kids what 1950s fashion looked like:

Fun!

One of the characters in Kira-Kira starts getting sick. The sickness eventually develops into lymphoma, but the doctors initially think it is anemia, or low iron levels. Anyway, one of my reading comprehension quiz questions was, “What sickness does Lynn have? Why does Lynn’s mother want Katie to stay away from Lynn?” This is the gem I got from one of my English language learners:

“Lynn has amnesia. Amnesia is contagious.” Hilarious on so many levels..

Week 6

My sophomores worked on grammatical modifiers and my 8th graders finished up Kira-Kira.

Switching it up this week, I played grammar HORSE with my sophomores instead of grammar baseball. It is amazing what a little competition can do to kids who “hate grammar.” (Totally not surprised. Give kids team names and a challenge and you can turn tanbark into a passionate topic..)

Random funny moment. One of my kids was reading a grammar example sentence and it just happened to be about the dog breed, “dachshund.” When he got to the word he called it “douche hound.” NOW. There are bound to be moments in teaching where it is inappropriate to laugh. Whether that was one of them, I don’t know, but I almost cried laughing so hard.. Douche hound!!

My 8th graders have been working on their debate unit. Labor unions are a huge topic in Kira-Kira so I figured it would be cool for them to learn about the topic and practice good public speaking skills simultaneously. They did so well with it! They were passionate in their speeches and couldn’t contain themselves during cross-examination. Awesome!

I let them listen to jazz during their group work time. Some of my kids protested and said they wanted to listen to k-pop (Korean pop..) But my student of the week quietly approached me and asked if I had all my music on my iTunes. I told him no, that I was playing it off of Pandora. He politely kept working. I asked him what kind of music he liked and he said, “mainly jazz.” (He is the cutest thing ever.) I asked him who he listens to most and he said, “Kenny G.” God, I love my students.

Somehow, my kids found out it was my birthday on Tuesday. I walked into a completely dark classroom and they flashed the lights on and screamed “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!” This was written on the board:

I teared up a little but pretended I had allergies.

Then, one of my English language learners gave me a fruit tart (my FAVORITE dessert)! Note the spelling of my name. He called me Mrs. Dwarf during our Hobbit unit and I can’t figure out whether or not he actually thinks my name is Miss Dwarfler or not..

Another kid brought me a stick of gum and another admitted that he completely forgot. Really, middle schoolers are awesome.

I had an amazing three weeks. Teaching is insane. I come home with dry erase pen marks all over my face and flaming hot cheetos embedded in my work clothes. I use hand sanitizer more often than an infectious disease nurse and I am so darn pooped by the end of the day that I can’t imagine how parents raise children. I went on my lunch break this week and someone mentioned my dry erase mark on my forehead. I politely told the cashier I was teaching, not sporting a Gandhi dot. He said, “Man, teaching is a passion. You have to love it to do it.” So true.

Oh hey, week three. My writing kids worked on pronouns & introductory paragraphs (funny story about that) and my little ‘uns started The Hobbit! Twas a good week.

Monday was a little crazy because students were re-grouped according to skill-level. This is a really interesting strategy; students were put into classes according to their academic results up until this past week. It is a controversial way of grouping students, but I see both pros & cons to the whole situation.

Pros: I can focus my instruction to specific levels of curriculum comprehension and I can cater my review to specific problem areas. I am also still, essentially, in control of how high of expectations I set.

Cons: Students may internalize their placement to think they are not as capable of achieving as highly. Or, students could settle into comfort without a variety of skill sets in the classroom.

Quite frankly, I don’t have a good way of solving the issue of academic variation in a classroom. Public schools do require teachers to individualize instruction according to different students’ learning levels, so I think this re-grouping process intends to streamline education for each student’s benefit. I haven’t been in the teaching profession long enough to argue for or against this grouping. I would just hate to see one of my classes internalize their label and essentially not reach their full potential because they think they aren’t as “smart” as another class. This is all a long way of saying: kids got shuffled around and I got some new students, but most of them are the same.

Cute moment: One of my girls, who was transferred to a different skill-level class, popped her head in during writing class on Wednesday. She said, “Miss Darfler, I miss you. I wish you were still my teacher.” I said “thank you” and smiled as I wrote the next sentence on the board.

There’s always a funny dynamic when you start teaching new kids. They are trying to gauge you and what you’re about and whether or not you are going to teach them anything. It took them a bit to start actually saying, “I’m burnin’ for learnin’” - I think they thought we were a freakish cult - but I had them smiling by Friday. They’re all good kids, and to be honest, they have every right to size me up. Who is this chick and why should I listen to her?

We were working on introductory paragraphs last Friday and we were talking about their importance by comparing them to first impressions. I said, “You can tell a lot about a person from the first time you meet them, right?” They all agreed. After I talked about this with my third period, I had a light bulb go off in my brain. I smiled and said, “You probably all came in here and looked me up and down and thought, “White… lanky… Crap! I’m not going to learn anything!” Apparently this was really funny because it was… well, really true to them. I was kind of shocked at how loud they laughed at that; I was expecting it to fall flat on the ground as an awkward joke.

“But Miss D, it’s the exact opposite! You make learning cool.”

That was a cool moment. Not for narcissistic reasons, but for the self-aware moment of our class to take a second and laugh at something that can tie back to writing. There are some things you can control when you first introduce yourself while other things are set. I can’t change certain things about myself. However, in writing, you have complete control over the impression your reader has on your essay. How will you transform your writing to set the best impression possible? We had a sweet learning moment simply by being candidly honest about the power of presence. I love that I’ve proved them wrong, but I love more that they are aware of the power of writing.

Classes are going really well. My sophomores did much better on their writing quizzes this week and they felt much more empowered by their mistakes (as opposed to deflated). They would say, “Uhhh! That was such a dumb mistake!” THAT is much easier to hear than “God, I can’t do this.” They are aware of their power as thinkers and as learners. I love that. I’ve worked really hard to show that learning is a process of mistakes and hard work. I want my kids to know they are capable. If they think they are incapable, they will resort to, “God, I’m stupid” or “I can’t do this.” If they think they are capable, they will instead say, “I knew that; I need to work harder next time.”

My 8th graders started The Hobbit on Monday and they are DIGGING IT! I love, love, love teaching it to them. They are all obsessed with dwarfs and elves and goblins and hobbits. I came into class on Monday and they couldn’t stop talking to me before we started instruction.

“How tall are Hobbits?”

“Does Gandalf look like Dumbledore?”

“Why does Gandalf tell the dwarfs that Bliblo is a burglar?”

It’s really cute. Plus, they call Bilbo all sorts of things that aren’t Bilbo. Blibo, Biblo and Barnabus (YEAH. Barnabus!) are a few of the things that Tolkein named his hobbit, apparently. I can’t help but giggle when I ask students to tell me, in their own words what happened in the previous night’s reading and someone says something like this:

Well, Blibo and the dwarfs are in a cave and the goblins come and Gadlaf, wait, what’s his name? He saves himself and then the dwarfs are taken to the king of the goblins, but Galdaf flashes and then Blibo hits his head and finds a ring…

They’re super into it. One of my kids is super obsessed with Lord of the Rings and knows everything. He knows the histories of the different creatures and all their characteristics and their allies with other “races.” One kid asked about Gollum (he thought Gollum was pronounced “glum”) and whether or not he was a fish. Our LOTR expert described that he was not a fish, but was once a hobbit and was fishing with his brother when his brother fell in the water and Gollum now obsesses over weird stuff, etc. It’s pretty awesome.

HANDS DOWN, the highlight of my week was when one of my 8th graders came to class and led our discussion on The Hobbit. Keep in mind, this is the kid who failed most of his quizzes and told me he “didn’t understand what was happening” in our previous book, Lizzie Bright. I tried to work with him and tried to get him to read with adults at home to help aid in his comprehension, but he just didn’t seem interested. THIS WEEK, though, he said he got in trouble for reading at the dinner table because he couldn’t wait to find out what happened next!!!! I was so proud I wanted to cry. He felt like the smart kid and he was super confident with his reading comprehension. During the quiz, he would ask me to make a super specific distinction in details for the question. I think he was really proud that he knew all the information and he was super excited to tackle a quiz from a prepared standpoint.

There is no better feeling than seeing a kid succeed in something he or she thought previously unattainable. No better feeling. He made my week.

I love the passion these kids bring to the book. They are so imaginative and creative and they adore the whole world of the book. While I don’t encourage reading at the dinner table… Okay, who am I kidding? I absolutely encourage reading at the dinner table! ;)

Instead of analytical essays, they get to write me original short stories for this unit. I’m pumped to read them.

Last thing about my 8th graders. We seem to have a ghost farter. He is always silent but always deadly. We don’t have windows in our class, so the fart usually only takes about 10 seconds to completely permeate everyone’s personal space. I try to ignore it, but when five or six kids slowly pull a tee-shirt over their noses and still try to write with pained eyes, I can’t help but laugh. I tell them to open the door and keep working. By the way, that whole, “Whoever smelt it dealt it” thing is totally still relevant. Some things don’t change.

Tangential thought alert:

Some of my sophomores were talking about Hooters in my 2nd period and I wanted to die inside. Not because Hooters is a terrible establishment (okay, arguable) but because my boys were talking extra loud just to have other guys hear them. “Dude! LETS GO TO HOOTERS TONIGHT Hahahahaha! Yeah, dude!”

Okay. God. First of all, they certainly did not meet a smiling Miss Darfler when they looked up from their lovely conversation. Truth be told, they are perfectly entitled to eat wherever their pubescent hearts desire. My irritation stems not from their weak argument that they “go for the wings” (BS) but from the infiltration of “beauty” standards for these young men, and simultaneously, for these young women.

Sidenote: I don’t hate Hooters. I hate that girls internalize that they are not beautiful unless they are booby and domicile.

My issue is this: people fulfill the roles they are expected to fulfill. As George Bernard Shaw argues in Pygmalion, a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated. If we look at this social moment of Hooterage through the pygmallion lens, we can see that boys have been told that they should look for women who look/act a certain way. Although boys are told that beauty is found in Double Ds and tight orange booty shorts, and while I do see that it has somewhat internalized, I can’t help but think that they are merely fulfilling what has been expected of them. Why must they talk so loudly about Hooters if they truly believe in that conception of beauty? Because they think that’s the cool thing to talk about. That’s what they’re supposed to talk about.

I truly wasn’t irritated with them. Boys can like boobs all they want, whatever. I was irritated by the fact that adolescents are under so much pressure to find out what “beautiful” is and fit themselves to that standard. If I could automatically teach anyone anything, I would teach young people how to love themselves exactly as they are. I hated when the boys spoke that loudly because I hate that we market beauty to fit one standard. People are bombarded with boobs, make up, blondes, diets and flawless skin every day. I see my kids as beautiful and I hate to hear that a beauty industry has changed a male or a female’s own potential for defining beauty. I wish I could have set aside writing for that day and just talked about media influence and the sheer pressures teenagers face. It was one of those moments. Amazing what Hooters can do to a teacher’s brain.

Here’s an adorable picture of Smaug the dragon that one of my boys drew:

And apparently, this is “Katie” in Korean:

Rad.

Week four is all about constructing solid arguments for essays and effectively using verbs in writing. My 8th graders continue with The Hobbit. Looking forward to it already! :)

Ahh, week two: my sophomores worked on subject-verb agreement/introductory paragraphs & my 8th-graders finished up their first book. I can’t believe it has already been two weeks!

These kids simultaneously absorb and refill every ounce of my energy on a daily basis. Strange phenomenon, indeed! It’s not always easy to talk about grammar, writing & reading with kids who are perfectly aware of life outside of the classroom’s walls. Thought bubble to a teenage dream world (bloop bloop bloop!): ahh, emo music & teen angst, electronic contraptions, Korean pop (k-pop as they call it), & Yugi-oh! (Yeah, apparently Yugi-Oh! is still in.. weird.) I just know I need to put everything I have into teaching to get kids engaged & thinking about learning. And yet, the more I put into my classroom, the more I feel like I’m refilled. It is somewhat difficult to explain.

Earlier this week, one of my lower level writing classes got their quiz scores back & many of them failed. The whole energy in the room changed. They are normally my most lively sophomore-level class. But when they got their quizzes back, I could almost hear their hearts sink in their chests. I felt lousy too. I had put everything I had into my classes & my teaching & I got down on myself for a bit. Had I done everything I could to help them understand the information? Had I helped the kids who weren’t as skilled in English? Then, I realized I was making a rookie mistake. Yes, a teacher needs to be self-aware and yes, a teacher needs to make improvements to reach more students, but test scores are about more than just good teaching. Results vary depending on a multitude of factors: the student’s study & test-taking skills, the student’s previous encounter(s) with the material, the student’s comfort with the English language, etc. I checked myself, quickly!, and tried to pump up the class. It was, after all, only the second week and we had six more weeks to improve. I told them we all have to make mistakes to learn as a class - the more we realize what we need help in, the better students we will be. A few of the frowns turned upward into mini-smiles & a few of the kids started nodding along. I really do believe in their ability to succeed. I know that the more we all put into the classroom, the better we will all be.

So, I thought about it. What more could I do to make the world inside the classroom a place of success, as opposed to one of confinement or pressure? I am a firm believer in positive reinforcement, high expectations and the idea of “personal bests.” If I had a dollar for every time I said “do your best,” I could probably bail out Ireland and buy a Guiness for every thirsty Irishman. [Dear Ireland, I’m sorry; but I don’t get paid in “do your bests.” I’m still working on getting over to you. I’ll visit soon. Love, Katie.] I decided to make “ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST” a classroom rule so I can just point to the wall when someone asks me something like this:

a) But Ms. Darfler, what if I’m not a good writer?

b) But Ms. Darfler, I don’t think I can finish in time!

c) Ms. Katie, I’m not good at English.

It seems to be working. My 8th-graders are already starting to self-regulate. We were taking a test on Friday and one of the kids said, “Agh, what if I don’t finish in time?!” and another classmate said, “Refer to rule #11!” I chuckled.

My kids are still “burnin’ for learnin’” and it still continues to inspire me! While they could be off in their own teenage world, they are in class talking about thematic content or the required elements of an introductory paragraph. Speaking of which, on Friday, my sophomores did some edits on essays ranging from highly-skilled to severely lacking. I think it really helped them see what good writing truly looked like and what was expected of them. I admired the air of humility most of them brought to the process. I heard “Oh man, I made that mistake too!” or “Wow, this thesis is really solid…” and that made me respect them even more. I think humility is less valued than it should be in American culture. I certainly have been humbled as a teacher & I’m grateful for that.

I am still rewarding my kids for working hard. After keeping track of those who were most willing to admit their mistakes or those who worked hard to improve their skills for the week, I always make a candy run. These were the goods from this past week:

Admittedly, I felt slightly ashamed at the grocery store check-out. The cashier started swiping the candy across and I could just feel her judgment oozing out in between scanner beeps. Considering the fact that this was literally all I bought, I almost said some lame small talk like, “Nutritionist’s orders!” or “My dentist only found two cavities yesterday.. I figured I’d up the anty for the next check-up!” But the excessively hairsprayed & overly lip-sticked cashier beat me to the punch.

“I know this aint all for you. You’re too skinny,” she said as she popped her gum.

Strangely, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. I was suddenly tempted to tell her how I could have easily eaten all that on my own, but I decided that was an irrelevant conversation. I politely paid for my motherload of sugar & scuffed along the alarmingly shiny tile that every grocery store in all of history can’t seem to avoid installing.

We played grammar baseball in class on Thursday! I figured if I was missing day ball games, I might as well:

a) incorporate baseball into class &

b) make grammar seem like it’s as bad-ass as a sport (it’s a stretch, but whatevs)

The kids totally dug it! I divided them up into teams & each team came up with a name. See above: Flaming Turtles of Destiny & Team Bobsled - “We Slide Our Way To Victory.” Each player came up to “bat” while the other team “pitched” a grammatically incorrect sentence. The “batter” had to fix the grammatically incorrect portion of the sentence & explain his/her reasoning to get a base hit. One of my boys who always thinks I can’t see him texting/words-with-friends-ing was so engaged that he was up literally jumping up and down. That’s the most rewarding thing ever: seeing a kid who isn’t juiced about learning start squirming in his seat over it. Remember that whole thing about pouring your heart into your classroom & having it refilled by seeing the look in a student’s eyes? Bam!

We (the teachers) got evaluated by our students this week. These were some of my favorite comments:

1. “very good and she burnin’ for learnin’” (yes, totally grammatically lacking, but sweet, nonetheless)

2. “very nice and perky!” (perky… hilarious.)

3. “she uses active participation. if you are not paying attention, she’ll call you out.” (yet again, hilarious. I ALMOST threw a squishy soccer ball at a kid for sleeping in my class, but one of his classmates politely tapped him awake instead… womp womp. I’m guessing this was him..)

4. “makes writing really fun. keeps class alive.” (this one is sweet & also kind of funny if you think about it. didn’t realize so many of my kids were on the verge of death..)

5. “my favorite teacher, she is really positive and she brightens the day more. her teaching style is excellent and I learn a lot better. I feel more alive in her class.” (happy heart.)

So, work is great & my kids are better. Yes, working full time usually entails commute traffic, but check out my view coming home. I mean.. life is rough! ;) [Don’t worry, mom.. I was stopped when I took this picture!]

I can happily say that I accomplished the following things this week:

1. I forced my kids to throw down a beat as I rapped singular & plural verb conjugations

2. I got laughed at for being super white & awkward (see above)

3. I saw ultimate nose-picking action on my commute home (seriously, people?! windows.are.transparent.)

4. I got paid.. “Cause it’s Friday night and I just just just just JUSSSST.. GOT PAID!!” What up N*Sync!

5. I was described as “perky” (dream come true)

Until next week! Over and out.

Helloooooo world! After just a week with my little ones, I’ve had way too many moments I’ve wanted to share with my friends & family. I’m going to keep a blog to share the light these kids bring to my life.

Sidenote: Some of you may be wondering why I didn’t move to Tennessee. Long story short, Teach for America wasn’t the right program for me. I admire and respect all corps members and what the program accomplishes, but after long consideration, I realized that I was not meant to work in Tennessee. I know it was the right decision & I appreciate all of the support from my amazing family & friends.

Downside of not doing TFA: I don’t have a public teaching credential yet. So, I was pretty bummed to think I couldn’t continue working in education this summer & year. After an incredible year volunteering with Clare LePell (the goddess… no, seriously) in two Sophomore English classes, two American Literature classes & one Honors American Literature class, I felt ready to tackle my own classroom. But, I didn’t have the opportunity to do so.

Upside: I got hired to work this summer! AND I have my own classroom. So awesome! (Oh, and I get to stay in California. No big deal.)

SO. I teach three sections of writing to sophomores and one long block of 8th-grade reading & writing. I get to help my sophomores write outlines, brainstorm, edit, revise and work on their grammar skills. My 8th graders get to read four novels and learn vocabulary, grammar, writing and comprehension skills. It’s honestly amazing.

First of all, these kids are super sweet & motivated to do well in school. They are literally dedicating 8 weeks of their summers (& lives) to improve their academic skills. Most of them have been signed up by their parents - lets be real, what 8th grade kid, or sophomore for that matter, begs to go to summer school? okay, well I did, but that’s beside the point - and are solely there to improve their SAT scores. Now, since most of them are there because their parents make them attend, I knew I had some work to do to get the kids engaged. So, what did I do? I shamelessly bribed them with candy. True story. Did it work? Yep. Always does! Just sayin’.

I also throw a squishy soccer ball at them to answer questions and pretend to die when I hear super bad grammar mistakes. They have to use their grammar super powers to revive me. We’ve had a few good laughs over semi-colons. (How many times have you been able to say you can laugh over a semi-colon? Probably not many! First time for everything, I guess.. Or, if you’re a nerd, you can laugh about grammar on the daily. Case in point.)

SO! I’ve also been getting them fired up (pun intended!) for improving their writing & reading skills by forcing them to scream “I’M BURNIN’ FOR LEARNIN’” every time I say “Good morning, class!” or “Have a great rest of your day!” If you think high school sophomores won’t yell “I’M BURNIN’ FOR LEARNIN,’” you’re completely wrong. I knew I was going out on a limb trying to get secondary students to say that to me every morning & afternoon, but those kids are LOVING IT. I came into class on Thursday and some of my students got there early to decorate the board with a campfire & our class motto. One girl even told me she put it as her Facebook status because she liked writing class so much. I almost hugged her.

My 8th graders, on the other hand, BEG me to let them scream it. They are an entirely different breed of human being. I get them from 2:30-5:30 in the afternoon. If you teach, you know exactly what I mean. They come into class like they just had 10 energy drinks. On the first day they were super loud, giggly and obsessed with their ethnicity. Yeah. Pretty much all my kids are Korean-American, Chinese-American, Japanese-American or Indian-American. They were so proud to say “I’m Korean!” or “I’m Chinese!” that I felt a little left out. But, it got a little old when they started (OBVIOUSLY) saying swear words in their language of origin and then giggling because I didn’t know what they were saying. (PS: If anyone wants to fill me in on how to say “Watch your language!” in any of the aforementioned languages, that would make me gain so much street cred. Hook a lanky white girl up!)

They figured out pretty quickly that I had high expectations for them and that I wasn’t going to let them go bananas for 3 hours every day. I think I’ve found a really good balance between high expectations and letting them be kids. I love that they can loosen up, but they also work really hard for me and know that I want them to be better English students by the end of the summer. It’s cool to have mutual respect with your students. It’s also cool to see how AWESOME an 8th grade brain is.

We’ve been reading Lizzie Bright & The Buckminster Boy, a pretty sweet novel about a kid who moves to Maine with his father, the new minister for the town. Turner feels super stifled and confined playing the role of “minister’s son” and dreams of freedom and adventure. He meets a young black girl, keep in mind this is during the 20s, and he clicks with her instantly. They adventure and explore and, I don’t want to ruin it for you :), but the town is NOT happy about the blending of races. My students are fired up about it! We’ve been working on projects on theme and character development and we’ve been talking through elements of fiction with them. They are super engaged and have thoughtful questions for class discussion and generally are knocking my socks off.

One day we got to discuss prejudice and the kids simply didn’t grasp the concept of segregation. I wish all people didn’t see the logic behind segregation, but that’s another point. The kids are required to write questions about the book we’re reading. I didn’t get to address all the questions in our class period, but I was looking through them after class & found a post it that said:

One of my highly-skilled fifth graders wrote this question. He had a hard time saying or spelling the word prejudice, but still knew that it was not a respectful thing. He did slip up and say the word “colored” and “negro” in a way that would make anyone uncomfortable, but he only did it because he didn’t understand the words’ implications. We had a cool class discussion on how the kids feel like they are stereotyped to be perfect in school just because they are Asian. I was super proud of them. Can you tell I already love them all? Aw, hell.

We made class rules and we’ve already done several projects so our classroom is our own. We’re keeping track of all the pages we’ve read & words we’ve learned. The kids are super excited to come up and update our posters on how much we’ve accomplished as a class.

Yesterday, I put up a “STAR WORK WALL” & all the kids were crowding around it congratulating their friends for being on the wall. One of my shy kids saw his work on the wall, he’s like three feet tall and whispers to me, and had the biggest smile on his face. It’s true; kids want to feel smart and appreciated. High expectations and positive reinforcement are super powerful classroom community builders.

We had a writing assignment on how Turner, our “minister’s son,” feels super stifled with all the pressures from the town. The kids got to write on the own pressures they felt. Every single one said their parents put a ton of pressure on them to get straight A’s in school. It was simultaneously sad and hopeful to read these responses. On the one hand, I feel really bad that they are so young and are forced to work so hard. On the other hand, they already value education and know that they want to succeed in life. I said thank you to all of them for being so honest with me. One of my kids always looks overwhelmed in class. He gets worried about details and will ask me a question about something I just explained. He bows his head when he talks to me and struggles with feeling like he can let up. I offered him gummy worms one day and he wouldn’t even take them from me because he had to wash his hands. These kids are so conditioned to abide by the rules and do what their parents say that I feel like I want to just feed them pudding and let them play tag outside. So, I do what I can to help them feel smart and rewarded and like learning is fun. I honestly think they’re having fun learning, and some of them feel shocked that education could be fun. It’s kind of cool to see that look of realization in their eyes. I don’t mean to discount their focus on school. I think it is amazing. They are brilliant and I know they will do great things. I think I just mean to say that I want to make class a happy balance of kid-friendly education.

It has been a week. A lot has happened and I wish I could share every minute with you all. I’m excited for this summer and I’m so happy to get to teach (AND LEARN) from my kids every day. I know I’ll see them bright and early on Monday and they’ll tell me that they’re BURNIN’ FOR LEARNIN!