Today is the second to last day of state testing. My group of kids is done, but because of our strange schedule, I have my kids for over an hour with nothing to do. That means movie time!

There is a certain charm to my job that is hard to quantify. No, not really. Let me try.

Granted there are negatives, but the positives far outway them. I heard a kid call up Larry Elder yesterday and complained that his mom, a teacher, didn’t get paid enough. Elder pointed out that if teachers aren’t fairly compensated, then they’d have a hard time filling positions, but they don’t.

If I was working in the private sector I would be working longer hours, get two weeks of vacation, and there is no way I could pursue writing a book. Regardless of all the hoops I have to jump through and the occasional bad apple, this is my dream job.

I feel like posting, but I’ve used up my allotment of words for the day. I think that was around third period actually. Regardless, I will think of something.

Peaches. Millions of peaches. Peaches for me.
No, scratch that.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is in “trouble” for firing 8 or something district attorneys, and Democrats are having a field day. It wasn’t a big deal when Janet Reno fired ALL 93 when Clinton took office. They serve at the pleasure of the President. There’s nothing illegal about getting rid of them. See, elections do matter!

No, scratch that. Nobody comments on my political posts, as evidenced by “Blarg Stats.” According to that, teaching and television garner the greatest amount of responses. Let’s give that a go.

Have you seen that new TV show about TEACHING. Oh man, the comments are going to roll in now! I’ll try them separate now.

Teaching is going well. State testing is coming up. I might have time to chew through some more of the Dark Tower series. I’m stuck on book 5. Oops, that’s about books, not teaching. I cut up a soda can today to explain that the lateral side of a cylinder is a rectangle. It was cool!

Oh look, this paragraph is about television. Heroes resumed last night. WOW. Oh, and last week’s survivor was downright awesome. It was possibly the greatest episode ever. Trent knows what I’m talking about.

I cleaned the laptop yesterday because it was really gross looking. The I key on the laptop is completely without the letter I. The letters O, L, N, S, and E are also rubbing off. Good thing I know how to touch type. I guess I should stop going around typing “E LIONS” all the time. That’s all I could spell using those letters.

The only movie I’m super excited about right now is TRANSFORMERS. Holy cow that looks sweet.

Super cool band called All Time Low.

THE END

Is everyone…

…good enough to be a professional baseball player?
…smart enough to be a rocket scientist?
…talented enough to be a famous painter?
…skilled enough to be a musician?
…kind enough to serve others?
…articulate enough to be a writer?
…strong enough to be a soldier?

If not, then why do we expect all students to be successful at school?

In this article, Charles Murray says the following about a student with a below average IQ:

"We can hope to raise his grade. But teaching him more vocabulary words or drilling him on the parts of speech will not open up new vistas for him. It is not within his power to learn to follow an exposition written beyond a limited level of complexity, any more than it is within my power to follow a proof in the American Journal of Mathematics. In both cases, the problem is not that we have not been taught enough, but that we are not smart enough."

This reinforces something I see in the classroom everyday. There are some students that no matter how hard I teach it, or how hard they try and learn it, they just won’t get it. They could try as hard as they want, but they’re just not intelligent enough. Why are we so afraid to say that in America?

I’m getting to the point where I really enjoy my job. I feel I’ve become much more efficient than I used to be. I’m able to finish lesson plans during the week and can enjoy my weekends, and my class is run in a way that it’s actually pretty fun. It’s amazing how much you learn about teaching in just a year, and starting a fresh year with some experience under your belt really helps.

This is the first job that I can go to work and actually enjoy the day. I remember working shifts at my part-time jobs and just watching the clock tick for four hours on end. I don’t know if it was the content of the job or my mindset, but it’s a lot different now. Yes I still enjoy my weekends, but I’ve been able to take that feeling and spread it out all week long. This might come down to the mindset I’ve adopted.

I often tell myself that vacation isn’t over…yes I have to go back to work, but it’s different. I can’t stand going to work on a Monday and thinking I’ll dread the next 5 days straight until the weekend. What a waste of time! Instead I will enjoy those 5 days (albeit not as much as the weekend or Summer), but for the 7.5 hours that I’m at work I will enjoy my time almost as much as vacation. Not only does the time go by faster, but it’s truly enjoyable.

Whether you have a "real" job or not, I hope everyone can find a career that they enjoy almost as much as the weekend.

I will be in bed by 10:30 pm and back to work tomorrow. I might even throw on a tie to scare the little boogers. The tie demands respect! Good luck to everyone else going back to school for the educational value.

Update: I pulled out all the stops and wore the tie! I need to buy some new Dockers because the ones I have are only a 30 waist which is kinda tight. Even if I dress nice I still need to be comfortable. I have a problem with dress shirts though because I’m so lanky. They all tend to be really baggy and puffy on me, and I don’t like that. Enough about my wardrobe.

First day went fine and I’m sure this year will be just as good as the last, but I’m going for better. I’m putting a strong emphasis on being organized this year, and especially up front. I think that putting in the extra effort to implement procedures the first 2-3 weeks can make the rest of your year way easier. It might take more work to begin with, but come May it will be nice to not have kids ask if they can throw away their trash. The answer is no by the way. Kids love to crumple up papers in the middle of a lesson for no apparent reason and then think they should be able to get up and throw it away.

Hope everyone else had a good first day back, crazy High Schoolers included.

As I face my denial that summer is quickly fading away, I’ve decided I want to become a "smarter" teacher. While yes, I want to know my subject matter well, I really want to be an efficient teacher. I figure the more tricks and cool ideas I can come up with, the easier my job will be.

First thing I did today that made me feel smart was a little contraption I rigged up in Stacie’s classroom. Her ceilings are very high (probably 15 ft) and in order to hang anything you need a ladder. This means that every year myself or her dad has to get a ladder, climb up it 20 times, and hang something (not to mention cutting 20 pieces of yarn, and looping each end). This year I came up with a better plan.

Because the ceiling is so high, I knew we had to somehow bring it lower so a ladder wasn’t needed. To do this I bought some fishing wire from Big 5, tied it to hooks at the ceiling, and then tied it again to clothespins about 8 feet off the ground. Now she can hang things from the ceiling with ease! I even learned how to tie a clinch knot (a square knot wouldn’t cut it with fishing wire). Learning how to tie a new knot was actually a lot of fun. I don’t know if this was the best knot for the situation, but it sure did work.

The second "smarter" thing I worked on deals with pencils in my classroom. Why students come to school without a pencil I will never understand, but they do. Part of me wants to say "no pencil for you," but then the next five minutes consists of that student asking everyone around them for a pencil. To prevent this scenario I’ve decided to have community pencils available to whoever needs them.

Another teacher I know sort of does this, but to make sure the pencils come back, she puts a flag on all of them. This way she can see who has them, and it’s a reminder to the student not to take it home. So how can you make a colorful pencil flag with ease? Electrical tape. For $3 you can get a 60 ft. roll of blue, green, yellow, red, orange, black, or white electrical tape. Something this simple could save me 5-10 minutes everyday, and never again do I want to hear a student ask me for a pencil. All-American also had "plastic tape," but it cost more and you only got about 10 ft. in a roll. Now I just have to figure out what to do when they don’t have paper.

That’s my boring teacher talk for today. I think when I come across puzzling situations I will pose them here for all your bright minds to tackle.