March 19: I'm curious to see whether videos will work on this blog, so I'm going to try to upload one or two. I recently did some videos in class. Tomorrow, during one of our bi-weekly Professional Learning Community meetings, we're supposed to bring evidence of applying Marzano's non-linguistic representations. I thought I'd be a little different and bring a video instead of posters or baseball cards everyone else will contribute. My assignment required students to write a script of Oedipus, his wife/mother and the Priest appearing on Dr. Phil. They had to incorporate at least 8 of the week's vocabulary words. Then they had to act it out. I filmed it with my handy digital camera which I always keep with me. Let's see if these videos will run on a blog. Unfortunately, one of the videos captures a student who had the flu and wasn't feeling well. . . WITH HER HEAD DOWN!! So I'm not going to show that one at the meeting. Sometimes I do feel that I am really a teacher at heart but that my mojo has been crippled by the administration's dislike of me.
Speaking of weary high school teachers, P. recently introduced me to a new show called Breaking Bad. If you're not familiar, it's about a 50-year-old man, a high school chemistry teacher, who works a second job to make ends meet, has a teenage son with cerebral palsy and a pregnant wife. Then he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Facing his mortality, he decides to be b-a-a-ad for the first time in his life. Tired of being Mr. Nice Guy High School Teacher who doesn't make a viable salary, he partners up with a former student, now a meth dealer, to make crystal meth in a mobile lab and sell it. He feels alive for the first time in years. This reminds me of the plot of Blue Castle, by L.M.Montgomery. An old maid young woman (the timeline is in the early 1900's) decides to enjoy the last year of her pathetic life, and marries the local bad boy, and is happier than she's ever been. A year later, she learns it was a mistaken diagnosis and she isn't going to die after all, but meanwhile has learned to live. That's a good lesson, which speaks to me very powerfully these days.
On another note, to my surprise and relief, the yearbook is almost finished and looks better than I could have imagined. Not like the prize-winning ones we saw during the Florida workshop last summer, but okay. This year, all my attention has been diverted from the yearbook to the senior English classes because of the constant observations (guess what, I had another one Tuesday; what's the point at this point?). In addition, having to babysit the two journalism/yearbook classes and try to keep them "engaged" with something, anything, for 90 minutes has actually kept me from working on the yearbook. Isn't that ironic? Fortunately, the three carryover students from last year have essentially pulled it together, although I've certainly spent many hours scanning photos, calling the photographer, setting up photo days, etc. I've already told the dept. chair and principal that IF they want me to do this next year, and I'm not assuming they do, though I assure you, no one else in the school is jumping up and down wanting the job, I want it to be an after school club of five serious students, but NO JOURNALISM CLASSES! At least I've learned InDesign somewhat. I'd like to take some courses this summer to advance my learning and become a page or web designer as my next career! Okay, I've tried but can't get the videos to appear. That does not bode well for my next career, does it?
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