4-27-2014

Well, the year is winding down. With less than 4 weeks of school left, I start to reflect on what we’ve accomplished in the classroom this year. I think about how much the students have advanced in their knowledge. I see how much they have physically grown over the past 9 months. I also reflect on the scars and physical damage they’ve inflicted on me. The loss of hair and memory, the graying of my beard, and the twitching I’ve developed in my left eye. I’m no spring chicken, but holy cats, they can beat a man down. 

Nine months is a long time to spend with a group of kids whose central plan is plotting my demise. But we have had a successful academic year. During this year, I have implemented my School House Rock learning plan for the class. I want them to learn grammar the same way I did; by watching cartoons. So, during free time in the classroom, I turn on the School House Rock DVD. If I can get my adverbs from Lolly’s, then by god so can they. When the kids are learning their adjectives, they look up at me when the “he was a hairy bear, he was a scary bear” part comes on. Not just because I’m large and hairy, but because I ate one of my students my first year here. I was new, inexperienced, and I just lost control one day. Do I regret eating a student? Sure, but he kind of had it coming and looking back I can justify it to myself. Maybe not to the parents, but to myself. 

Our math didn’t go quite as well as our language arts. I noticed some problems from our last assessment and it taught me 2 important things:

1. Borrowing from zero is a difficult concept in subtraction.
2. Understanding the differences between area and perimeter can be difficult.
3. We’re not learning the basic concepts of math.

Now, that’s not to say that the whole year was a waste when it comes to math. We did spend a lot of time working with perimeter and using Call Of Duty to explain what it means to check the perimeter. We learned fractions from pizza and probability by my angry outbursts. (Is it more likely that Mr. Clay will explode if 2 of us are making farting noises or 10 of us are making farting noises? They like to perform their own experiments.) 

A science fair experiment. It was a new torture devise they
made for me.

We had actual experiments for our science fair and we learned why people want to live near water. We’ve had kids spinning and revolving around one another pretending to be planets. We’ve had arguments over who got to be the sun. The sun seems to be a popular role since everyone else has to move around them while the stand there and gloat. We learned why people came to Ellis Island and why island has a stupid ‘s’ in it. (Because we’re pigheaded and don’t want to change things, even though we know it would be easier.) I don’t want to get sidetracked on a rant here, but if the Internet word Nazis really wanted to make a difference, I wish they would focus their efforts on fixing our problems instead of condescendingly pointing out when people mess up these complicated and convoluted grammar rules and spelling. We also farted. A lot. Everyday. Everywhere. 

We were picking up trash around the school last week.
Nobody was injured.

Now that we’re almost done, I start thinking about next year. I’ll have most of the kids again next year, so it’s not like I can just pass them off to the next teacher. I am the next teacher. I get to see my teaching mistakes next year, so it pays to keep working till the last day. But they will soon have 3 months free from me. They are already in their summer mode. I’ll look outside and the kids will still be out at the playground at 10:00pm. They’ve had a head start since it is much warmer this spring than normal; we have very little snow left. Now, I’ll leave you to continue humming your favorite School House Rock song. Your welcome. (See what I did there?)