Teaching Stuf

Ok, so in light of a recent invite to follow a teacher blog (thanks, A!) I was inspired to document my teaching experience as well. I can't commit to regular updates (at least I'm being honest!) 

We'll start this off with a post after a rare good day. My 6th/7th 90 minute period was strangely interested in my notes on semicolons. Despite coming into the room with Mr.M refusing to sit down and calling other students MFers, we got off to a fairly good start. I told one of my students who loves throwing insults at others to write down everything he wanted to say instead of saying it out loud...and...he did! Ummm...why didn't I think of that sooner?  They did the Do Now, I took attendance, and then I started talking about semicolons. And then listened. And students participated in the note-taking process by sharing what they already know about semicolons. They wanted to try their own examples of using semicolons on the board, so I let them. They didn't do so well, but their classmates were able to identify the errors and correct them, which was a good start. Then, I passed out a semicolons worksheet, and magic happened. While normally I have to threaten loss of points, loss of privileges, phone calls home, referrals, and throwing them out the window for the class to be quiet when working, today, as soon as the worksheet was distributed it was SILENT while they worked. They raised their hands. I got to help them individually and check over their work. Then, a student asked (in these words) "If I wanna make a compound sentence, how do I know if I should use a semicolon or a comma and a coordinating conjunction?" We then talked about how coordinating conjunctions and conjunctive adverbs alter the meaning of the sentence. It was awesome. I felt like a "real" teacher. 

During the next portion of class, we had an intelligent discussion on the importance of black history prompted by the comprehension questions for Equiano. Most of them didn't do the work (it was homework), but we went over the answers together, and they were interested. We connected it with Maraget Burroughs's death. They were engaged, asking really good questions and taking notes. 

Good day today :) I'll savor it...