I’m working on a new site design because…
I sense people who pop onto this site (who don’t know me in real life) might have a hard time figuring out what this blog is about.
One day there’s a story about teaching in an alternative school in Prison City. (This is my life.)
One day there’s a reflection [...]
Keep in mind, I come to you from Prison City, where I’m up to my neck in urban teens and the things they say.
Shoes are “crispy”.
Causing a disruption is “going ham”.
Making fun of someone is “roasting” them.
Calling someone out is “ho-ing” them.
And anything and everything you agree with is punctuated with “believe dat”.
Enter the situation at hand. [...]
You may have seen Jimmy Fallon do his thank you card bit. That is, if you’re ever up that late with nothing better to do than watch Jimmy Fallon.
Here are mine (and then my REAL, honest-to-God appreciative ones):
Thank you cottage cheese container (that I wisely tucked into my purse for the 2 mile drive home) [...]
Yesterday I heard that one of my former students took his own life.
Its a dull, achy, surreal sort of feeling.
One that jars you out of normalcy–the way we sometimes tend to sleepwalk through life–and reminds you of just how bad things can get.
Of the emptiness that a human being can leave behind.
The school where I [...]
In my Creative Writing class, form poetry often goes over well.
And by “goes over well” I mean it scrapes by.
That the kids–well, most of them–do it.
And that when they’re done, the pieces they’ve written show a little piece of them. A little piece of their lives.
Assignments aren’t always easy to read because their lives haven’t been [...]
Showing a movie in class is supposed to be “low-key” for the teacher. A chance to kick back, relax, check a few emails.
Someone should tell my students that.
I show mine on the big screen with the lights off. Movie theater style. I’d even be willing to overlook a few smuggled snacks. (New dietary codes prohibit teachers from providing junkfood [...]
You would think that working a block away from an award winning, family-owned bakery would be a good thing. But you would only think that because your job isn’t keeping 300 at-risk students from skipping school to pick up a donut.
Welcome to my 9 to 5.
Kids routinely sprint into class five minutes after the bell, toting [...]
If you’re ever substitute teaching, as a last resort you could always just duct tape kids to the chairs.
Although, as it turns out, that might also get you fired.
It sounds like a sitcom. Or maybe an episode of punk’d.
But every once in a while, a little bizarr-ity breaks through to the real world…and of [...]
People sometimes ask me if I am afraid to teach at my school. They say it with wide concerned eyes, like they imagine me dodging sniper fire in the hallways. (This has yet to be the case.)
I’d be foolish not to recognize that a classroom situation can turn dangerous. But I also keep in mind that all [...]
Many of us sit around and make comments about how the government is run.
They could do more of this or less of that, we say off-handedly, as if the solution is as simple as ripping off a few pieces of scotch tape to hold a house of cards together.
These moms, though, decided to get down [...]
