educator

This week at school we are taking a practice TAKS test. For those of you who don’t know, this is the state required test in Texas.I have had two kids just flat out refuse to do it. One of them was suspended, and the other turned it in blank. This is a practice test, but it is still reflective on me. I only pray that on the real thing the kids try a bit more because if they don’t, my test scores are going to look awful. I teach high school, and these kids are too old to control. If they don’t want to do it, they are not going to do it. They don’t care. As an educator, what am I suppossed to do with this? I worry about these students. I don’t know where they are headed in life. Wish me luck, Serena

The new semester has begun. So, I have a new year and a new attitude, but unfortunately the same old studens and the same old !!**@@#%&&*!!! tests that my wonderful, gag, choke , gag, former governor and thankfully now former president requires all the students to pass. Can’t wait to get started back teaching that lovely test! Oh well, I will get my kids through it, I alwasy do, I just miss teaching old style. My first test is in February so it will be nothing but the TEST for the rest of the year.YUCK!!!! Serena

I did a neat little activity in class today that got the kids’ attention that I would like to share with any educators. I did this with a junior level class, but it would work for any secondary level. I gave them a list of various types of businesses such as a pet store, beauty salon, day care, coffee shop, video store… They worked with partners to come up with creative names and ads for the businesses. One group came up with Headlines for the salon, and their ad was: Make your style newsworthy by coming to Headlines!! Another group had Pause for Paws for their pet store and their ad was: Take time for your pet at Pause for Paws. Lots of fun. They were really thinking. I hope it carries over to tomorrow on their essays! Thanks, Sarena

As I mentioned in the past I teach English and Social Studies to high schoolers. I have tried several projects in the past with success that might help my fellow educators out there. This one covers both of my subject areas and the children seem to enjoy it. We start with a copy of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the FIre”. Most of them are familiar with it surprisingly. It is a two fold lesson. We research all the lyrics and their historical relevance, and then we write our own modern day version. A few of them even try to sing it for the class. We post both sets of lyrics in the classroom. It is amazing how creative the kids can be. We read magazines and newspapers forcurrent ideas when they run short. Some of them eve begin to watch the news for ideas. I give them about a week to complete the assignment. It is a lot of fun. Try it and see how it works in your class room. I reccommend it for 11th. grade American history, but it would work for governemnt also.
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I am out of school right now, and I really shouldn’t be thinking of work, but I have decided to start posts on teaching ideas that I have used with success in the past. I teach secondary English and Social Studies. For English I started a Wall Of Fame for some of the exceptional writing that I received in class. The kids really started striving to see who could make the wall, and other classes would come in and get a kick out of trying to guess who wrote what. I also did an assignment where I brought a rock to class and told the class to write about it. After about 10 minutes, I had them stop, and I asked them to raise their hands if they used typical words like, rough, hard, jagged, dirty… to describe the rock. Most raised their hands and wanted to know immediately how I knew this. I told them it was easy as they were all writing about this rock and these would be very normal words to use. I then told them not to write a bout rocks, but to write about a particular rock. They then continued to write very creative stories about their own personal rock. I have alo done this with a coffee cup. Any ordinary object will do. It really got them going. More next time…