Dress: Downeast Outfitters (They are out of the all black, but I love this striped version.)
Scarf: London, yo! Shoes: Walmart. Lipstick: Red
My "What we did in class this week" posts tend to be my lowest viewed posts, and if I were a real smart blogger I would take that as a sign that ya'll don't love these posts as much as others and I would stop doing them. I can almost hear you saying, "Geez, Bon, I already sat through high school English- for the love of everything good and holy in this world, don't make me do it again!" And for a brief second there I thought about scrapping this blog series and instead just slapping up a picture of my feet in leaves, because we all know bloggers can't get enough of that shiz.
But I couldn't do that. These "What we did in class" posts are my guilty pleasure and if nothing else I write these post solely for myself- because I love to teach and I love to write, and boy do I love to write about teaching. So humor me, will you? (Also how boring does it make me if my guilty pleasure is writing about teaching?!? Wow.)
SENIORS: If I'm being totally honest with you, the seniors have been doing a whole lot of nothing lately. The counselling department needed to take a whole day with them to make sure they're all on track for graduation and then we had two colleges come in to present to them the next two class days. Then I had to go to another training which meant I left them with a sub and a worksheet and that's how we went four class periods without teaching any real content. On a block schedule, that means two weeks.
Funniest moment: Today I was explaining logos, (persuasion via logic) ethos, (persuasion via credibility) and pathos (persuasion via emotions) to my students and I told them that Greg complains I always win our arguments. I told my students it is because I have great logos to which one kid yelled out, "Maybe it's just because you're always right!" AMEN, brother, amen! I asked him if he would like to come home with me and tell that to my husband and he said he would for ten bucks.
AP LITERATURE: I'm still struggling trying to figure out a good balance with this class. I feel like I'm not pushing them enough, and then in the same breath I feel like the class isn't too fun because it's all reading and test prep. How do you make a class fun that is supposed to be incredibly rigorous and demanding? I'm excited to go to my AP training on Saturday to really learn what/how I should be teaching the poor kiddos.
We are about a quarter of the way through Hamlet. This is my first time teaching it so I'm struggling a bit finding fun activities to do with it, but the good thing is with AP students you don't need to put on a horse and pony show for them to read, understand, and enjoy the literature. The text is enough. Thank you, young geniuses.
I continue to struggle with the small class size as talked about here. I did take the advice of Hannah and took them outside the past two class periods. Heck, we were just reading Hamlet. It's just as easy to read at a desk as it is outside on the lawn, right? We sat in a circle, just the nine of us, and read Hamlet in the grass and it was very ethereal and a little bit emo and all the things that reading Hamlet should be. It was a great change of pace and the students LOVED it. The weather was 70 and beautiful like Utah is on a fall afternoon and one student asked me on our way back, "Why don't more teachers let us do this?" That's a win, my friends. I'm also trying to take Kimberly's suggestion to spend more time getting to know them and developing rapport. Keep the suggestions coming!
JUNIORS: I feel like my senior class is a circus with all the graduation and college info from the school and my AP class is a droll with me still trying to figure out my way. But my one junior class? That's where the teaching magic is. This is my fourth time teaching the class (fifth if you count student teaching). I know the material, I love the material, and a lot of my creative ideas are already in place, just need to be tweaked and added to.
Last week we finished The Crucible so to send it off all students accused someone of being a witch. It could be a celebrity, a famous athlete, a brother, a teacher, ANYONE. Then they had to persuade the class using logos, ethos and pathos why that person was a witch. We put six witches "on trial" and "hung" four of them. Each student had a role in the trials- some were prosecutors, others defenders, others jury members, while some represented the people being accused. Oh, and of course we had a priest and a judge. (Because all trials have to have a Catholic priest present??? ) We used bananas to symbolize each person being accused and if the jury voted that they should hang we put the banana through the guillotine. It was a hit!
Representing Miley Cyrus. ^^^
The priest costume is amazing. The evil clown costume, terrifying. ^^
(All pictures are used with written permission from both parent and student.)
Cross examination. ^^The students really took the court trials and ran with it. I was so impressed with how smart the questions were that they came up with and how involved they got, especially for a first period class. Mainly I was disappointed that the jury didn't find the U.S. government guilty of witchcraft since we all know that's obviously what's going on with the shut down.
Juniors, I love you forever.
Next up: Hamlet for the seniors and The Scarlet Letter for the juniors. Boom baby.
