No words

http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/photography/2007/bottomline/

100 Farmers has croaked her last today

I have four days left to wrap up Latin America. We need some serious discussion over Immigration, NAFTA, and Deforestation. I have interactive, tell what you've heard and speak your mind group activities to finish out this semester before we slink back to DEAD week and finals. The problem. I HAVE NO VOICE!!!!!! Every croaking sound that escapes my lips ends up closing my throat even tighter into a narrow straw of pain. Do we have any witch doctors or magic workers out there? I have tried everything today. Help, Help, help, croak!

It's Wunderbar

We did a Unit over North America a couple of weeks ago and I played a lovely little video to illustrate Globalization and Americanization. After initially accusing me of making up the word Americanization, my classes now praise me as a supercool teacher who is one with Rammstein. I can also dangle the video like a prize at the end of class if we are completed with work. Unfortunately my daughter keeps walking around the house howling, "We all live in Amerika, it's Wunderbar!" in a large gruff voice over and over and over again. It is driving us crazy. I personally think it's wunderbar .
Amerika

Can you hear me now?

I have been feeling the need to clarify something with myself. I realized that my biggest issue this year is that I am so disappointed in quite a few of my kids. You know those kids who just don't try? Who might show up on time if at all two or three times a week. Who walk in the door empty handed and spend most of the class time avoiding any type of educational experience. Who laugh like loons at everything and make fun of everyone. Who jump up and want to fight at every imagined slight. I have a lot of those and I mean a lot. I am just not sure how to balance "the concerned, try to save these kids" teacher that I have been with "the get on with it and focus on those that want to be saved teacher" I probably need to be right now. I want so much for these kids to be successful and to GET IT. To walk out my door with some instance of "AH-ha or OH, I get it". Unfortunately, I have walked out the door too many days feeling like I was carrying the weight of the world from trying to solve too many issues that existed way before I got there. I am trying to focus on teaching creatively right now but maintaining professional sanity with the class that makes my stomach hurt. I haven't given up on those kids but I'm writing the referrals to save those that don't deserve that kind of behavior in the middle of their education. I feel like I am compromising something in myself a little but I am enjoying my kids more and I am hearing voices I haven't heard from much. No, not the funny ones in my head. The quiet voices trapped in the rabble of my classroom.

For those of us who never seem to learn

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=9644

Beam me up

Have decided since I can't quit right now and haven't won the Texas Lottery yet, then my only logical solution to escaping this wretch of a school year is alien abduction. Have gotten five new students this week. Not a single one is coming in with a passing grade in Geography. One got into a screaming match with a boy across the room on day two and another didn't bother to go to school in October or the last two days. My seating chart is now theoretical. Theoretically I have these students but have not actually seen some of them enough to recognize them. In an ironic twist, I am actually proud of my lesson plans and teaching this week. I am whipped however. I am sure that I can handle an alien abduction though. I already certainly feeling probed.

Motivate this

You know your class is really too large and loud when you don't even notice a big bearded man standing in your room. Subconsciously I probably assumed it was my next new student relocating from Juvie. Anyway, I politely asked him if I could help him and he said that he was checking safety details. Unlike Mister Teacher, I have my room highlighted on my fire escape plan so I was feeling pretty good. Wonder if the guy noticed that it's accidentally inverted and has my kids heading to the custodial closet? Guess not. After perusing my various escape plans taped to my door, he then asked me if I had any motivational posters to instruct students on how to act appropriately towards each other. WHAT? Huh? How does that tie into safety details? Oh darn, I forgot to put up the hanging kitty poster that says, "Be nice, don't call your neighbor a fat cow when she doesn't let you borrow a pencil for the 2,000th time." Luckily the security guy hadn't been in the room to hear that exchange earlier in the day. I looked around my room at the various word wall displays, maps, time lines, giant statue of liberty, calendars, student work and posted TEKS objective and then pointed at my class rules. I'm afraid my expectations of human behavior in the classroom are just going to have to suffice. I just haven't seen that classroom poster that says "Shut up and be nice" yet.

Heaven in a bag

On my way home today I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Standing at the corner near my house was a man holding a 5-foot longish pole completely covered in packages of multicolored cotton candy. There had to have been at least twenty bags on that stick. Don't know where he was going or why in the world he was walking through my neighborhood with so much sugar goodness but it sure made me happy. How can a world with cotton candy be bad? Forget all the guys pushing their ice cream carts with bags of chicharrones. I'll be supporting the cotton candy dude from now on.