New beginnings

After finishing my first three years of teaching, I've decided that instead of posting all the fabulous insights I learn throughout the year on my online journal, I'll jump on the bandwagon and start a blog. I mean, everyone else and their cousin has one, so why not me? So I'll be chronicling all the things I learn from my kids this year, and I mean that both literally and with heavy sarcasm. I've had some really heartwarming moments in my 3 years in the classroom. I've also had the stupid pile up so thick that I would have been better off with a sturdy pair of waders than my cute little flip flops.

I make no promises to be funny, though with some of the material my students give me, it's hard not to be. Some of the writing they try to pass off as their own is just downright hilarious, since I'm pretty sure I haven't had any kids that were ready for publication yet. And the shit they *do* write on their own is even better. I mean, this past year one brilliant child, whose paper was in 16 point font and a whopping page and a half long when the assignment was for 3-5 pages in 12 point font, noted at the bottom of his paper that "i didn't use any other sources, just what i learned from reading the book and in U.S. history class." Well. That certainly makes sense. Why would you do research for a research paper? Pfft. Just use what you know, it saves me time. And red ink.

All brutal mocking aside, I love my job, and despite the headaches that are usually associated with all the non-teaching parts of it, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I attended a workshop this summer with a very cheesy title this summer: Capturing Kids Hearts. Despite the overly-Hallmark sentiment in the title, I learned a lot of good things I hope to use this year, and I hope they'll make a strong, positive difference in my classroom. There is one thing that I will ruthlessly ignore from that workshop, however. They told me not to use sarcasm. That...that just won't work for me. At all. I'd have to just stand there and point at things, which would probably be less than helpful in teaching my kids about the literature I'm pretty sure 90% of them won't actually read. I like sarcasm. It's my friend. Ok, not really, but we're more than just passing acquaintances.

So yeah, we'll see how well I keep up with this, but I'll do my best. Some posts about how great my kids are, some posts about how stupid their behavior can be. Probably a fair number of posts about how much No Child Left Behind really means Every Child Made Mediocre at Best, and some griping about the administration. I'll try to keep it entertaining. Hell, playing "find the logic in this new task" is often entertaining in the teaching world. It's a game we play often. We usually lose.

Teacher workdays start August 18th, and classes start the 25th. Any bets on when I'll get to know what classes I'll be teaching, or heaven forbid get a class roster?