Wish I could tell you something good about my classroom. Final grades are not due until the sixteenth but my final ESL fail list was due on Friday due to how long it takes to reprogam the kids' schedules for the next semester - most classes are year-long, but ESL classes last one semester, two periods per day. So last week I mostly gave and graded assessments and writing projects and agonized over both my sweet, hardworking students who are not ready to move on, and my Damienesque students who are passing with flying colors. As of the new year I inherit other peoples' failing sweethearts and howling demons, mix them in with my passing ones, and start this whole thing over again. With better, clearer expectations this time, and some kind of paper-grading system that does not go "Collect it when I remember, put it in a pile, never look at it again." Also, with a fresh data collection sheet, a much better idea of the curriculum, and SigGains on the brain.
In my ongoing effort to read every book in my classroom library, I read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants in its entirety today. It was much better than White Oleander - sapfests being more appropriate for adolescents than the middle-aged - and the kind of thing I might have really enjoyed when it was at my reading level. I am really looking forward to when Jarhead and Killing Pablo come back into the room so I can grab them for a change. My ESL students have been taking books off the shelf a lot lately, which is really awesome. When they are done with their work, I have a mixed group of girls and boys who sit and read Neruda aloud to each other. They always look at me guiltily, like I am going to make them stop. I only have one or two more books of English/Spanish side-by-side poetry, but I'm bringing them in as of Monday (or Tuesday, if my head does not clear up) and am officially keeping an eye out for more.
I had planned to knit all afternoon but with the fever, I would probably just have screwed it up.
Random photo time!
Behold the mighty cabinets o' grammar!
The day I wore these shoes, my low-level ESL students searched furiously for the right word to express their reaction. They came up with "clown."
I forgot to mention it, but Aaron was tragically crushed by the weight of our unwashed laundry.
I do not understand this town. Not even a little.
3 comments:
I know what this picture means. It is a plug for consumers to use McCormick black pepper on their fried eggs for seasoning.
those shoes are really, really awesome.
I second Klinton on the shoes, the pepper thing is strange too, mostly because I don't put it on fried eggs, in fact I can't even remember the last egg I had that wasn't from fish.
Post a Comment