swearing

I almost swore today during 6th period. I was this close to saying my favorite "D" word...you know which one. I am thinking that I might need to take what we teachers refer to as a "mental health day." I've kinda reached my limit with some of the behavior problems I've had this year (oh, and by the by, I just got "worst 8th grader #1" transfered into my 7th period, after 2nd worse 8th grader got put in 4th). I nearly swore today when a bunch of boys broke out into a full on rap session during my instruction. But, I caught myself and said it over and over in my head instead of out loud.

I've been continuing the multi-culture literature unit and have had some positive results. I've mainly been focusing on literature from the Hispanic culture and because that's my number one population of students, most have really enjoyed what we've been reading. I'll finish that culture tomorrow and move on to some Native American literature in the form of legends, approrpriate for the week before Thanksgiving.

Today we read a poem called "Ode to Pablo's Tennis Shoes" by one of my favorites, Gary Soto. I had them read the poem and then answer some questions. After the questions, they got into small groups and each group got a shoe or a boot to answer questions about. Then they had to write their own ode to that shoe. I brought some of my shoes and some of Ben's shoes. Some were really disgusted, even after I told them I had disinfected them. A lot of them thought it was kind of cool that I had Converse high tops. Others laughed at my girly cowboy boots. A few found pleasure in my old toe shoe from dance--I had to prove that, yes, I actually stood on my toes with those shoes. Overall it was a pretty successful lesson.

As I mentioned above I now have administration and counselor endorsed "worst 8th grader #1 and #2" in my classes now. I've only seen #2 in 4th period for probably a total of 5 minutes as he came the last 2 minutes of class on Friday, was absent Monday and left early today because he threw up. Yuck. #1 has proven to be truly the most annoying kid I've ever come across. He's a Caucasian student, just like me, but constantly tells me I'm racist because he's white. He pops his gum and when I make him throw it away, he pulls out another piece. I gave him his first referral in my class today. Apparently, he's just supposed to be in my class for one more week...some sort of special ed loophole we have to jump through...in order for him to be put permanently into a special ed class.

I've added some pressure to my 9th graders in both Journalism and Media Productions. I haven't been seeing the desired results with their work for the newspaper and yearbook (I assign them a work day on the computer and when a deadline hits, find that they have nothing to show for those work days). So I came up with an evil plan: I created this LOOOOONNNNNGGGG unit on media, which includes a daily 10 point assignment (which can not be late!) and a weekly 30-50 point assignment (also, not accepted late). There are no more "work days" until I absolutely have to give them one, i.e. a few days before a deadline. And even when there are work days, there are also extra assignments to be completed. Today when I introduced the unit they all freaked out, but I explained that they are in high school and high school isn't easy. We had a good discussion about media and I gave them a quiz. I also gave them the assignment of a Media Free Day, which means a day without any form of media. I explained that it might be impossible to give up certain types of media (for example, I can't give up my computer at work because my job depends on it) and said that if they could at least eliminate a few types of media from their life for one day, that would be acceptable. Next Monday is my Media Free Day and I will be giving up TV, Radio/Music, and the computer at home...and I might as well throw in my cell phone because I never use it anyway. Some thought this assignment sounded entirely impossible and basically gave up before even trying. So irritating.

Just an FYI for those who care--my Primary program went extremely well. I was very proud of all the kids, especially the tiny Sunbeam who had two parts memorized! We got lots of compliments from ward members about the performance. Our next big to-do is a big teacher appreciation dinner in December.

Ben and I took some pictures a few weeks ago at Murray Park. We thought we could just pose ourselves and use his remote, but as you'll notice, it doesn't quite look right (we needed our photographer friend, Tammy, to help us!) Here are some of the better poses:

Tonight I'm off to meet my mom at a local boutique to retrieve my cell phone which I left at her house last night. I have loads of papers to grade, but that might be put off until Thursday. Happy Tuesday, all.