Use This Word at Least Three Times Today

My students learned the word "anecdote" this week. This blog entry is going to be anecdotal. Way to put your vocabulary words into practice, Ms. Griner!

So we (my senior class and I) read "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" this week and as I learned from the anecdote (#2!) in the margin of the good ole Arkansas Teachers Edition of the textbook, the clock as we know it today was invented around the time this poem was written. Hence the references to making the most of our "time" and "Old Time flying" all over the poem. If you'd never been really aware of what time of day it was based on anything more than the angle of the sun in the sky (which you couldn't calculate if you weren't rich enough to have taken math), and all of a sudden clocks were tick-tock-ing all over the place everywhere you turned, I can understand a little bit of obsession with it slipping away.

I digress. So the kids were working in groups going through questions about the poem and the last one asked them to guess, based on the content of the poem, what might have been invented around this time. One of the most entertaining students in the class, we'll call him Elvin, had the most brilliant guess. "Ms. Griner, I was wondering if since the poem is about needing to get married quickly, if maybe the invention was the discotheque." Well, Elvin, since my grades have to be based on accuracy and facts and not my own personal entertainment, I can't give you the bonus points for this one. But oh, how I wish I could, because sometimes my personal entertainment is quite valuable...

I must also thank this student for providing me the opportunity to relate the first amusing classroom anecdote (#3! Yes!) on my blog.

How Responsible Am I...

...for student conversations that take place in my room before the bell rings or during independent work-time?

I should preface with the following statement: I'm pretty sure high-schoolers have issues that are too big for me to know how to handle.

So I guess for the last couple of days a student in my class has been being threatened (in the way that high-school girls can do so well, but also is deeply concerning) by another of my students. The conversations took place before the bell one day while I was in the hall talking to students/another teacher and another day while I was taking roll/getting ready to start class. It left the threatened student very disturbed and has since been reported to a principal (whose diligence I'm not sure whether to feel secure about), so I am certainly not the primarily responsible party any longer.

In my generally powerful logical mind, I know that there is no way I can know what every student is talking about for each moment he or she is in my room. However, in light of a fellow intern's recent experience in the classroom, I am left very curious as to how much responsibility I have to each student in my room during the 48 minutes they are mine. When there are 30 warm bodies and desks smooshed into a space smaller than my living room, it is unlikely that I will make personal contact with each student or even get in many of their general vicinities.

Yet, as we strive to care for each student in our classes, we will automatically feel a certain level of responsibility for each of them. As teachers, we want our rooms to be a place where students feel comfortable and safe and when other students get in the way of that, what in the world are we to do?

I'm back!

So the Adolescent Lit blog didn't really pan out. I'm not abandoning it, but I have been too selfish for it this year. I have actually read more than I ever dreamed I would, but I've been pretty stingy with it.

So I'm going to work on keeping up with this one to track those funny stories I wish I remembered all of from the first semester, post some lesson plans, and ponder questions and issues that I will probably try to pass off as semi-philosophical in an effort to appear smarter than I am.