ColoRAD
My favorite photo of Mr. Klein. We won’t see him again until August—yesterday was the last day of school!
On the first day of class, back in September, I asked students to write a paragraph about their favorite food. Samantha’s entry appears here. Nine months later, I tried it out and sent the now-graduated Samantha a photo of the experience.
Her response: “So glad you liked it:D! I need a job cause my life is BORING without school!” She’s got freshman orientation in June. What a stud(ent)!
Definitely the best note confiscation of the year.
And don’t mess up, either!
The gym was quadruple-booked.
Gainful employment leads to gains.
Middle school smack down.
Boss.
Wordplay—always allowed in my classroom.
The high school senior who has gone from 5 of 5 failing grades to 4 of 5 passing grades in 2 months, and whose mother was just diagnosed with breast cancer, made a hot-head telephone threat to a teacher last week. Suspended for 5 days with the possibility of expulsion, he’s arrived at his final chance.
I meet with him tomorrow night at his dad’s apartment (his parents recently got divorced) to catch him up on the week of schoolwork he missed, but also to help him assemble, perhaps, the most important words he’ll ever write: his don’t-expel-me speech, to be delivered on Wednesday morning to our principal.
You can’t train for this shit in Phoenix.
One of my students, a senior, has gone from my lowest-performing student (he was hovering in the 25% area) to my highest-performing one (he’s got an A- now) in 3 months. He is working harder than he ever has before and his mom and I talk every week or two. He called me tonight to tell me his mom has breast cancer. Teaching is hard; life is harder.
- I have small class sizes
- Our school has no violence
- I get to teach 12-year-olds half the day and 17-year-olds half the day
- My administration is extremely receptive
- The school is relatively small and everyone knows each other
- We don’t teach on Friday afternoons
- The coaching I receive is great
- The nurse likes food and we can talk about it
- The secretary is an amazing baker
- My morning commute is 6 minutes, my afternoon 12
- The school is firmly in the black
- My classroom is in an old music room that is separated from the rest of the school
- I have a boom box in my room from 1990 that only plays the radio, loudly
- There is a non-profit bookstore 2 minutes away that gives teachers unlimited free books
- I get $250 in discretionary spending per year for my classroom
- I work for a person who hired me and was not assigned me
- I get to completely make my own curriculum as long as I teach standards in some way
Teacher miscellanea.
