I had a stare down Friday with a girl who was as usual not reading during sustained silent reading time. I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t outlast me, but when her eyes flickered away for a split second, I knew her time was almost up, and she soon rolled her eyes and looked away for good (but not to read).

She’s the same girl who a while back commented on one of my band’s YouTube videos, “You guys actually sound good” (was the “actually” really necessary?) and who the other day asked me, “So what’s it like having a job where nobody likes what you do?”

I told her it’s great: “Where else could I be paid to make people miserable?”

In the end, things with my student teacher worked out pretty great: she left and I got my classroom back.

But before she left, things also worked out well. See, I took a week off for paternity leave, and had to make no sub plans or grade work from while I was out–she did it all. That was super sweet. And then the week when I came back was her last four days, but we had a big snowstorm so we only had school on her last day and she brought donuts.

She was still very excited about her cool ideas and told me as much, there on our last day leading up to her last minutes: playing meditative music during silent reading time keeps the students so focused; she wasn’t comfortable with my discipline plan but doesn’t yet have one of her own; she still has in her mind a daily rotation of activities starting with freewriting, with Fridays being a writing workshop day.

I smiled and nodded and gave her the enthusiastic letter of recommendation I’d written for her and she left and I felt much better.

Later she emailed me this: “It was a pleasure to get to work in your classroom this semester. Thank you so much for accommodating me and some of my crazier suggestions. Your feedback and support throughout the process were extremely helpful, and I’m pretty sure your paternity leave gave me the most authentic teaching experience I will have while student teaching….”

My initial response when I saw the bag of sunflower seeds out and under consumption was to snatch the whole bag, seal it closed, toss it in the trash can, and tell KM, whose hand had been in the bag, not to eat the seeds.

She did anyway, made a number of comments like, “You didn’t just throw those in the trash can,” scowled at me for the rest of the period, and asked several times to go see the guidance counselor, presumably to be switched out of my class. (I didn’t send her.)

“Are they your seeds?” I asked her.

“No.”

“Who’s are they?”

“I’m not telling.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I smiled. “I was just wondering.”

In fact, I already knew whose seeds they were. I talked to that student a bit later:

“Sorry I threw your seeds in the trash can. I should have just put them on my desk. Did KM give them back to you? She took them out of the trash can.”

“That’s okay. I don’t want them now. I told her she can keep them. I didn’t mean to cause trouble. I won’t do it again.”

A colleague and I developed a writing test schedule that affected seventh grade only. As it broke no tradition with previous years, he took the initiative to broadcast it school wide.

At the team leaders’ meeting later that day, however, the principal made it clear that the plan should have been run by him first, so I sent my colleague a note suggesting he do that. He came and talked to me.

“I’m going to go down and talk to [the principal],” he said dourly, “even if it does mean a slap on the wrist.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ve been slapped for lesser crimes. Once I got scolded for singing during a test.”

He left my room grinning.

Hosting a student teacher, like going to work, is something I do for the money even if it is only an $80 token of gratitude, although I appreciate the recertification points, too.

Those recertification points are, I suppose, the state’s way of recognizing that young whippersnappers still in college will bring the latest best practices into old fogies’ classrooms and rejuvenate faded passions for opening students’ eyes to the world of wonderful knowledge. For the most part, however, I just find myself annoyed at the upstart’s intrusion, inhibited by his or her presence, and affirmed in my emphasis on reading and writing at the expense of professorial theoretics.

Now, let me be clear that this student teacher is actually very good. She has a sense of humor and a calm, respectful demeanor that students receive well, she is very intelligent and hard working, she’s more punctual than I am, she’s dedicated to improving and knows she has a lot to learn, if my new baby comes in the next few weeks, I don’t think my classroom will fall apart since she’s there, and so on and so forth.

Really, I have few complaints other than having a student teacher; I prefer to run my own show, not share it. But since it’s often more fun to complain than praise, let me point out a few specific things that are making me eager for March 6 to roll around.

MJ, who impressed me early on as seeming to think she is my co- rather than student teacher, rarely fails to insert her insights and suggestions into conversations with my colleagues and has the exceedingly annoying habit of mentioning whenever possible her supervisory job as a university residence hall director and “my staff” and “my [dormitory] students.” Her literary analyses often include phrases such as “We see that Shakespeare’s beloved…” spoken in crisp ivory tower tones when, um, dearie, you’re addressing twelve-year-olds who just need to know what “To glean the broken ears after the man” literally means rather than hear a feminist interpretation of cross dressing in Shakespeare’s woods. (That’s a conglomeration of horribly mixed examples.)

Next year she wants to teach in Korea where, she says, teachers and knights make up the most esteemed level of society, with the educators definitely bearing more respect than warriors, and from day one she talked about “taking over” my classroom.

This week she began teaching a five-day unit that she designed previously and adapted for seventh grade. As she developed the lessons, I sidestepped my distrust of student group work (otherwise known as “goof-off time”) by stressing the need for individual accountability and letting her do as she wished. This week would be a lesson in itself…for her. Which is, after all, what student teaching is all about.

First block went terribly. The pair-up-and-think-way-high-up-on-Bloom’s Taxonomy-while-doing-a-meaningful-word sort-with-a-partner activity didn’t accomplish much of anything more than–can you guess?–goofing off, so in our planning period she reworked how she presented the assignment. It still didn’t work in the next class, so for the last class of the day she totally scrapped the partner work and everything went much better.

I’ve begun to enjoy being bluntly honest with an affirming smile: “You are speaking at an intellectual level much higher than these kids need. Just help them understand and enjoy the metaphors.” Or, “You’re not enforcing your expectations of quiet when you are speaking” (she’d preferred not to administer discipline; she’s getting over the fact that she can’t always be the nicest person in the world). Or, “When you assigned five minutes of quiet writing time, I think you kept talking.”

And she’s graciously receptive of constructive criticism. One day after a lesson she asked for my thoughts, and I commented that she seemed to be relaxed and comfortable up front.

“I mean,” she said, “actually, I’m looking for some constructive criticism here.”

In my book, that makes her a winner.

This is the second year that a significant component of teacher evaluation involves the testing success of students. Under that umbrella is the requirement that each teacher write and (hopefully) meet a specific goal for his or her students.

Here are the goals I wrote for myself this year, which includes some ideas from colleague’s ideas, too, and which were approved by my administration:

While the university position I’ve applied for might be a great career change for me, recent events have made remaining a middle school teacher actually appealing:

1. Students overall have been better behaved, and I’ve actually enjoyed them. There were even a few days that were much more fun and practically not at all stressful. This was when the 10% of my students who cause 90% of my stress were suspended.

2. Last week we had three two-hour delays (cold weather, etc.), one full day of work, and no school on Friday (freezing rain). The week before also included a snow day plus just one full day, since we were just ending the winter holidays. And my nearing paternity leave possibilities are rather marvelous: 60 days, paid, taken as a chunk or spaced out or pretty much whatever. (The downside, of course, is that missing school is often more difficult than being there.)

3. I like what I get to teach. Right now we’re reading As You Like It in preparation to watch the play at the nearby Shakespeare center. It’s tough, but I think students like it: One day when I ended a substantial piece of time reading the script, one student complained, “But I was just getting into it!” And there’s nothing like a room full of students reading silently to themselves. And there’s nothing like making them laugh.

4. The schedule for next year just might be really interesting. But let me explain the back story:

My instructional team has a lot of gripes about the current (new this year) remediation system. Basically, a set-in-stone dozen of our students, instead of on every other day going to an elective during our planning period, come to “CorePLUS” where they receive additional reading and math instruction. We liked last year’s model, which was a short period for remediation and/or doing homework during which teachers could pull changeable groups of students for targeted remediation.

In December I emailed the principal:

On Thursday after I’d given my students a chance to write letters of appreciation to anyone of their choosing (graded for participation only; I promised I wouldn’t read them), one student gave me her letter and said, “Don’t read this until Christmas.” Ever the responsible mandatory reporter, I comfortably lied that I wouldn’t.

I recently got the ridiculous idea to have students write an entire essay based on an analogy about their lives.

I got this idea because I knew there was a question on the then-upcoming first-quarter benchmark test about analogies, even though (I learned this week) analogies aren’t even included in our seventh grade curriculum. In other words, aside from their innate value, analogies are worthless. The bottom line? analogies : end-of-year test :: really cold ice : sun

Yup. Not there.

So anyway, as I guided students through writing this essay (“guided” : drove with a whip :: “ouchie” : spinal tap) I realized that I hadn’t actually explained to students how to write an expository essay. I seemed to have forgotten about teaching them that. And while I have been working with them on writing paragraphs, they seem not to have gotten that, either, even though I didn’t forget about teaching that.

Basically, paragraph construction instruction : no-better paragraphs :: no essay-writing instruction : no-better essays

Yup. Pretty consistent, there.

As a side note, here is a great video about paragraph unity. I promote it to my students as the most boring video in the world, and after we watch it some of them often agree that it is in fact so boring it’s great.

As another side note, I didn’t really teach them about connotations, either, so I’ve sort of been trying to explain them as we go. As in, abecedarian : juvenile :: teacher : inflictor


Today I finally highlighted the topic and a few other key sentences in my sample essay and said that they must have these exact sentences in their essays, which then greatly improved.

Here is my off-the-cuff sample essay–which pretty much no one laughed at when I read it aloud–complete with highlights:

At the end of a long day of teaching, I hurry home to play my guitar. For me, playing guitar is fun just like teaching pays the bills. This analogy is true and has both positive and negative connotations. However, this analogy isn’t all true.


This analogy about my life is true in many ways. When I want to have fun, I play guitar and sing. The highlight of my week is often band practice (I like to say–it’s true–that I perform music mainly because I like to practice with my band). When I want to earn money, I go to school and teach. My salary helps pay for my guitars, and keeps me from being homeless.


The analogy has a number of connotations, both positive and negative. On the bright side, the word “fun” makes most people (including me) feel positive. Life is worth living when it’s “fun”! However, saying that the purpose of being a teacher is the money suggests the negative connotation that I teach only for the money. This could mean that I hate my job, which gives a negative feeling.


However, this analogy isn’t completely accurate. Playing guitar isn’t always fun. It can be painful and expensive, and it takes a lot of time away from other activities like being a nice dad. On the other hand, I have more reasons than just money for teaching. I enjoy students almost always, some days, and I find a lot of satisfaction in assigning essays that no one likes to write.


In conclusion, playing guitar is like teaching: each has its own purpose. While it may be a mostly true analogy, it doesn’t prove completely true, and gives mixed connotations. That said, after I put in my time teaching today, I’m going home–to play guitar.

I assign one third of my six-teacher team’s discipline consequences, and recently asked my most veteran colleague how she gets away with doling out so few.

Two things, she said. First, every night at seven o’clock she starts calling parents; she can sometimes call twenty in an hour. “But it’s hard to do that when you have young children,” she said. Second, she changes activities every seven minutes.

I’ve decided to neglect both strategies, as my evening priorities are not school related and meaningfully creative writing and reading, unlike social studies, cannot take place in seven-minute increments.

More often–this week, anyway–my ninety-minute class periods look like this: read for twenty minutes, work on group projects for half an hour, and then work on the essay assignment for another half hour. (The other ten minutes–as well as some of each segment’s time–get swallowed up by transitions.)

It’s pretty hard core, I’d say, in comparison to short-and-sweet activities–and I’ve seen it work beautifully. Often kids who struggle with focusing take a long time to center themselves, but when they get focused, they can have some staying power.

When that has happened and I announce that it’s time to pack up for dismissal, I love hearing “Already?”

I took a sick day Wednesday and requested and got my first-choice sub, an extremely nit-picky, no-nonsense, better-cross-your-t’s retired teacher, the kind of person no student likes but I trust to maintain order.

Overall the day went great, and she left negative feedback about just four students. One was a girl, BK, who unsurprisingly had piped up during quiet work time to ask a disruptive question: “Do penguins fart?” (Or was it pigeons?)

On Thursday, BK told me, “I asked Mrs. S if penguins fart, and she got mad.”

I ignored her.

On Friday, BK asked me, “Do penguins fart?”

And I ignored her.

I just woke up from lovely dream in which I was setting up a new classroom I’d inherited from another teacher, complete with pews, tables, bookshelves, comfy chairs, you name it. I organized it to be homey and fun yet focused, and I was excited when my … high school students started to come to class.