Thursday, December 10, 2009
Doughballs
You take the fluffy center of a slice of bread, roll it into a ball between two fingers. As the oil from both the bread and your fingers turns the bread dense and shiny, you roll it into a flat disc. It's as if the bread has devolved into its earlier state. Doughy, oily, pliable, full of promise. You admire it between your fingers then take it into your mouth like a Communion wafer. Bread tastes better this way, all that flavor condensed into a tiny disc. This is why you don't eat fluffy things.
Substitute Teaching
My contributions to a high school literacy classroom today:
Substitute Teacher Observations:
1. There is nothing funnier to middle school boys than the word "balls".
2. Nobody ever reads classroom wall posters. What a waste of lamination.
3. Students get an inexplicable thrill from writing/drawing on the blackboard. They will write "Ms./Mr. ____ is the best teacher ever!" just so the teacher will allow it, no matter how much they hate said teacher.
4. There is exactly one attractive male teacher per high school.
4a. There are exactly zero attractive male teachers per elementary school.
4b. Research pending on middle school male teachers.
5. Public school lunch "food" is a travesty. Ranch dressing makes up about 40% of a student's meal, while processed starches and mystery meats make up the rest. Sometimes there's wilted greens and slimy canned fruit to round out the meal.
6. Math education in America is a travesty. Everything before geometry (and sometimes including it) is able to be grasped intuitively and explained concretely, but for some reason many kids think they're just "bad at math". Impossible.
7. High School Drama Students: lame sense of humor + lack of self-awareness + unearned sense of specialness = the most annoying kids in the world.
8. When I hear high school students say, "I hate to read", I cry for their younger selves who were enchanted by books, opened books easily and eagerly, and couldn't wait to become immersed in colorful fictional tales. What went wrong? Reading became a chore. No high school kid should be assigned The Iliad, only to sleep through it until the teacher shows Troy in class as a "literary supplement", i.e., "Let's ogle the glistening bodies of Brad Pitt and Eric Bana to make up for the fact that we got absolutely nothing out of this classic book because its language is too difficult and the story has no relevance to our lives." Shakespeare: good for youth. Homer: zzzzz.
9. Form matters. Presentation matters. Most teachers, like most people, are SLOBS. Clean up your dirty ass classroom. Other people have to use it too.
10. Homophobia and heteronormativity are the subtext of just about any dialogue between two high school students (of any gender).
11. In a quiet classroom, all it takes is for one student to start talking and then EVERYONE will think they have permission to speak. It will go from volume 1 to volume 10 in about two seconds.
Substitute Teacher Observations:
1. There is nothing funnier to middle school boys than the word "balls".
2. Nobody ever reads classroom wall posters. What a waste of lamination.
3. Students get an inexplicable thrill from writing/drawing on the blackboard. They will write "Ms./Mr. ____ is the best teacher ever!" just so the teacher will allow it, no matter how much they hate said teacher.
4. There is exactly one attractive male teacher per high school.
4a. There are exactly zero attractive male teachers per elementary school.
4b. Research pending on middle school male teachers.
5. Public school lunch "food" is a travesty. Ranch dressing makes up about 40% of a student's meal, while processed starches and mystery meats make up the rest. Sometimes there's wilted greens and slimy canned fruit to round out the meal.
6. Math education in America is a travesty. Everything before geometry (and sometimes including it) is able to be grasped intuitively and explained concretely, but for some reason many kids think they're just "bad at math". Impossible.
7. High School Drama Students: lame sense of humor + lack of self-awareness + unearned sense of specialness = the most annoying kids in the world.
8. When I hear high school students say, "I hate to read", I cry for their younger selves who were enchanted by books, opened books easily and eagerly, and couldn't wait to become immersed in colorful fictional tales. What went wrong? Reading became a chore. No high school kid should be assigned The Iliad, only to sleep through it until the teacher shows Troy in class as a "literary supplement", i.e., "Let's ogle the glistening bodies of Brad Pitt and Eric Bana to make up for the fact that we got absolutely nothing out of this classic book because its language is too difficult and the story has no relevance to our lives." Shakespeare: good for youth. Homer: zzzzz.
9. Form matters. Presentation matters. Most teachers, like most people, are SLOBS. Clean up your dirty ass classroom. Other people have to use it too.
10. Homophobia and heteronormativity are the subtext of just about any dialogue between two high school students (of any gender).
11. In a quiet classroom, all it takes is for one student to start talking and then EVERYONE will think they have permission to speak. It will go from volume 1 to volume 10 in about two seconds.
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