Need a Fairy Godmother!

Last Dance at Homecoming

I approve.

November, Here We Come…

I’ve gotten approval and a small working budget to run the NaNoWriMo Young Writers’ Program at my new school. I’m excited to see how it all turns out. I know it will be different than it was at the middle school – older teens are more cynical, more skeptical, more busy than middle school kids. I decided to try to get a headcount of interested students ahead of time, and was surprised to get numbers in excess of a hundred students…

So I’m having a signup/informative meeting next Thursday, in the choir room, because there’s no other place I can use after school this month. I’m hoping to get a good idea of numbers then. I’m going to have a kick-off party on November 2 (yes, a little late, but I can’t do it on the weekend) and would like to have a really nice, dress-up, parents-invited TGIO party early in December. Part of that will depend on how many students actually take part. A really nice graduation-type party seems kind of silly with only a half dozen kids.

I’m going to do once-weekly write-ins, if I can get computer lab access after school.

This year, I’m not going to promise POD published novels. They were just too much work. CreateSpace is apparently offering to do a free copy for all NaNo winners; I’ll tell the kids about that. If I have a manageable number of winners, I might do a raffle or something for publication.

I’m also not going to put their names on the chart until they’ve recorded at least 10% of their goal. I only have three charts – enough for 105 students – and I don’t want to waste any of them like I did last year.

I’m trying to recruit teachers to participate, too. So far, one has bitten…

I’m putting up posters tomorrow and Friday – three plain, B&W-on-colored-paper ones, and three FTW awesome ones:

 

Hopefully that will recruit some more people!

Epic Fail

I’m teaching about setting, and how – as students analyzing setting – we have to be specific and look for details. As an example, I’m talking about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I figure it’s a well-read enough book on its own, and that students who haven’t read it will have likely seen the movie.

I ask them what the setting of the story is and, predictably, get “Narnia.” When I press about the chronological setting of the story, I get mumbled responses about “WWII,” “WWI,” “the 1900s,” and “the 19th century.” I’ve expected this, and when I move to the next slide on PowerPoint the answers pop up, prewritten: Narnia, a long time ago.

Next I ask them if that’s enough detail. We pin down “a long time ago” – which is, after all, an awfully big place – using what some of the history buffs in the room know about the World Wars. Then I point out that if there is someone who has never heard of this book, and all we tell them is that it takes place in Narnia, he won’t know if Narnia is a distant planet, a magical kingdom, or a small town in eastern Idaho. (And wouldn’t the books be interesting if they did take place in eastern Idaho? There’s a creative writing exercise for you!) We begin spelling out some of the details of Narnia – the terrian, the climate, the political atmosphere.

Suddenly, a light bulb flickers dimly above one student’s head. Before he was just bored; now, he’s confused.

“Wait a second,” he says, after another student finishes explaining how the evil witch wants to seize all power in Narnia. “Aren’t we… isn’t this Epic Movie?”

Ladies and germs, my work here is done.

The Following Events Are Only Dramatized a Little Bit

As you may recall, I volunteered as a contestant in a Singing Bee.

The closer I got to to the day of the pep assembly, the more freaked out I became. I mean, let’s be clear: I am not a singer. I like to delude myself into thinking that I am a good singer; I sound pretty good to myself when I sing along to the radio. But when I ask Mr. Bees if I’m a good singer, he’s very careful about how he answers, and hon, this Bee didn’t join the hive yesterday.

But it’s not like inability would necessarily stop me. After all, I finished off last year by disco dancing in front of the school, and goodness knows I am DEFINITELY not a dancer. (I know this because my MIL and SIL will take any possible opportunity to remind me of this. They should know, I suppose; they are dancers, and they had the misfortune of watching Mr. Bees and me sway back and forth at our wedding. And anyone who knows child psychology and the power of self-fulfilling prophecies knows that the more they say I’m not a good dancer, the worse at dancing I become.)

Big differences there, though. It was the end of the year, and my audience consisted of twelve-year-olds. And there were five of us on the stage dancing at the same time. This is the second week of school, I’m all by myself, and I’m being stared down by 1,400 cynical young adults. And I’m holding (insert nauseated feeling here) a microphone.

So I was getting freaked out, and trying to come up with escape plans.

I figured I’d just be sure to be hoarse, maybe completely lose my voice. Then I’d have an excuse. Unfortunately, I got hoarse enough to drop my voice an octave and cut my range into about a third, but not hoarse enough to beg off.

Long story shorter, at 10 AM on Friday I was handed a microphone and shoved unceremoniously into the middle of a wide-open gym floor. As the music started, a six-foot-tall bipedal wildcat-of-indeterminate-species entered the gym and started advancing, menacingly. Or maybe it was just dancing. Regardless, I now have a whole new appreciation for the experience of the early Christians dumped into the Colosseum to face the lions.

Here’s where things get funny.

The ASB kids who had organized this had been so amused by the little hints they’d shared. Apparently the first few rounds were going to be “super easy,” because they were all “super familiar oldies” – Michael Jackson, etc. Then the finale was going to be “awesome,” because it was a song that would be “really funny for teachers to sing,” and it was “hard rap,” and the sort of song they’d play at a school dance.

I tried to guess it, I really did. Using my powers of deductive reasoning, and realizing early on that my sweet, conservative kids’ definition of “hard rap” might differ from, y’know, everyone else’s, I decided it was probably going to be a Black Eyed Peas song. I trusted that the early rounds would be easy, since they’d be wanting a good lead-up to the finale, and just hoped that the MJ song was “Billie Jean” and not “Thriller,” because really, does “Thriller” even have any words outside of Vincent Price?

The contest started. There were three of us out there, one of whom was a last-minute substitution with deer-in-headlights syndrome. I was the third contestant, which meant that I had two songs to prep for the fact that there were two unforeseen challenges facing me:

1. The speakers were all screwed up, so we could barely hear the song we were supposed to be singing.
2. Apparently “really familiar oldies” were songs that were familiar to, say, people born in the 1940s or 50s.

My first song came up, and in the stress of the moment I failed to remember what it was for this blog entry, but let’s just say that not a lot of singing occurred. I “knew” the song, in that I had heard it before, but I couldn’t have told you any of the lyrics under the best of circumstances.

Ultimately, the first half of the contest was a total bust. None of us could sing anything. Either we couldn’t hear the music, it was a song we’d never heard of, or they cut it in such an awkward place that it just fell apart. The highlight was when one of the other contestants got “Billie Jean” – she didn’t have the lyrics ready, but she danced, and that was pretty funny.

Then, up come the ASB kids, grinning ear to ear. Everything has sucked, but this is going to be funny, they think. The other two contestants – who, I suppose I should mention, are somewhat older than I am – and I look at the microphone with trepidation. This is the finale, the song that no teacher will ever know, the song that they carefully picked out to point out how unhip teachers are.

“Okay, for the finale, you’re all going to sing together,” the MC says, and hands me the microphone.

She pulls out an index card. “Your artist is…”

(dramatic pause)

“…Flo Rida.”

And I have to start laughing. This teacher may not know the words to a Billy Ocean song, but Flo Rida? Flo Rida, I can do.

The opening notes of the song echoed across the gym. (For these, they got the audio right.) The crowd erupts into giggles. So do I.

“I’ve got this,” I mouth to the other contestants.

“You know this?”

“I know this.”

It’s the Flo Rida/T-Pain song, “Apple Bottom Jeans.” Of course I’ve got this. During my internship, one of my students jokingly tried to pass off the lyrics as a poem he’d written and got  the shock of his young life when I sang the whole song right back at him. Yeah, I know this song.

As the crowd giggles, I grab the microphone cord and swing it out of my way. Someone cheers. If I had a baseball cap on, I would have spun it around backward. Even though my mike isn’t on yet, I start singing along, and the kids go nuts. The contestant who danced to “Billie Jean” knows part of the dance, once she hears the song, and “hits the floor” enthusiastically. I do the low-low-low-etc. part of the dance and just barely escape falling on my old-fart backside. The kids are loving it.

Here’s a video – not of me, and not the original music video, but one that probably captures the skill level of my dancing:

Then the music cuts out, and it’s my turn, and I start singing. Only the shock of the dead silence in the room confuses me, and I repeat the last verse instead of going onto the next. They applaud anyway. I acknowledge my screw up and tell them that I meant to have Reeboks with straps instead of boots with fur, and they seem to like that, too.

“She turned around and gave that big booty a slap.” Yeah, I can see why the ASB kids thought it would be hilarious for a teacher to sing that… or to slap their own big booties…

I laughed so hard.

For the rest of the day, kids were complimenting me on my singing (for which I thanked them for flattering me by calling it “singing” – I was so hoarse it sounded more like frog noises) and expressing their delight that I would know “that song.”

But seriously? Hello, I’m not even thirty. I listen to the radio – in fact, I listen to the same radio stations they do. And none of the contestants were old enough to remember most of the other songs! Just because we’re teachers doesn’t mean we’re 80.

Anyway, I guess I made my splash. The other teachers all know I’m a first-class idiot. Some think I’m brave, others probably think I’m annoying. The way I see it, I’m mostly just a sucker… who happens to know how to go low low low low low low low low.

SRSLY OMG

There’s a big push in the school to work toward creating this community of teachers who clearly care about the kids and – accordingly – are happy to make dorks of themselves in public, if it helps build that community. It’s pretty awesome. Very much my sort of environment.

(This brings me to a whole different subject, which would be that I am a failure at this whole BEING AN INTROVERT thing, but that’s probably a post for another time.)
 
Somehow or the other, I’ve managed to get myself roped into two rather unnerving events this month. Wondering if I’m really quite as brave as I thought when I agreed to it!
 
Friday there’s going to be a pep assembly, and I got asked to round out the female talent for a game of The Singing Bee. Apparently I’ll be standing up in front of the school, and they’ll play part of a familiar song, and then stop the music, and I have to keep singing and hopefully get the lyrics right. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

(For those of you new to the show, I’m not a singer. Really.)
 
Then, later this month, they’re having the First Annual Teacher Talent Show. And – again, mysteriously – I appear to be on the list as a piano soloist. SERIOUSLY, ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

:Shrug: If I can dress up like a superhero and disco in front of 700 middle schoolers, I can stand in front of 1,500 high schoolers and forget the lyrics to Michael Jackson songs.

Two Online Games for Word Power

If you’re teaching spelling, you’ll probably find something useful at the attractively designed Spelling City.

Plug in your spelling words, and then practice using a wide variety of Flash games (word search, match-it, hangman, an alphabetizing game, word-scrambles, sentence completion, missing letters, crosswords). The website will also create an audio Flash spelling test that says the word and a sentence so that you can type the correct spelling into a form. A fun way to practice spelling!

*  *  *

Boost your verbal-linguistic intelligence with Must Pop Words, the game that you’d get if your Scrabble board drank way too much Red Bull.

Letter bubbles fall from the top of the screen; you type words as quickly as you see them, and the used-up letters disappear. You get points for the words, with opportunities for bonus points. As in Tetris, you’re trying to keep the screen from filling up. Addictive, infuriating, and awesome.

Classroom!

Houston, we have classroom!

• 30′ x 29′, if I can trust my clumsy use of a flimsy 10-foot tape measure
• three i-shaped windows overlooking the front courtyard
• relatively fresh, pleasant yellow-neutral paint
• 32 shiny new desks (one of which has a very broken chair, boo)
• ceiling-mount projector
• overhead projector
• lockable cabinet with coat rack and mirror (oooOOOooo!)
• computer, printer, speakers, flat-screen monitor – all on its own computer desk next to a full-size teacher desk
• file cabinet
• two metal bookcases
• clunky stereo left by previous inhabitant
• wall-mounted American flag
• television with DVD/VCR player

No keys yet, but I can access it whenever someone is in the office, and I should be able to get keys as early as next week! Hooray! I’m terrifically excited. Oh, and it’s on the second floor, which makes me quite delighted, and two of the windows open for fresh air.

Classroom?

I signed my contract with the district yesterday. After a brief moment of panic when my car wouldn’t start and I thought I’d be spending my day in the district’s parking lot, I drove past my new place of employment to see if anyone was home. I managed to drive up at the exact moment that the CEO arrived, and  he let me in. He isn’t in charge of room assignments, but he was able to make an educated guess and show me the room that he thought I’d have. (The school is new enough that the rooms are pretty uniform, so it gave me a good idea of what I’m working with even if it isn’t my actual room.)

It’s huge. When I’d walked down the hall and peeked in windows, they hadn’t seen so large. But it’s easily twice the size of my last classroom, made psychologically larger by the addition of three tall windows overlooking the front courtyard.

It’s on the second floor. That’s tough for moving in, but I prefer it. For one thing, I like getting the exercise of regular stair climbing, and I miss it since living in a one-story house for the past decade. I love the feeling of elevation.

There are 33 desks in there, and there’s plenty of room for more. It doesn’t feel cramped in the slightest. Then there’s a teacher’s desk, plus a computer half-desk. At the front of the room is a little podium cabinet, like you’d see in a college lecture hall.

A-n-d there’s a ceiling-mounted LCD projector!

There’s a sterile feel to the room, but then again, it’s a basically-empty classroom. I’m imagining my bookcases, and need to really get to work on making some new posters.

This morning I got a phone call from the CEO’s assistant. She said I could come in Thursday morning, find out what my exact room assignment is, and go over a few things. She won’t be able to give me keys yet, but she’ll be able to let me in whenever I call.

It’s good to feel excited. The inactivity of waiting breeds moments of terror, where I wonder whether I’ve made the right choice, whether I’ll be able to keep up with the older kids. I know that I’ve made the right choice, and that I’ll do fine with high school, but that doesn’t stop the occasional flashes of horrified doubt. Having concrete details in place shoos away the crazy.

Its vs. It’s – Two Helpful Graphics

And if you think you fall within the red category, you might want to sit down for a chat with Bob the Angry Flower: