imbarist

Last week I read a story with my 8th graders called "Fish Cheeks," by Amy Tan. It is a short memoir about her life as a Chinese American. The whole premise is that her family invites the white American minister's family for Christmas Eve dinner. She has a crush on the son and is embarrassed by her family's manners and non-American food. I used the story to teach my students how to write short summaries. I gave them a formula for the summary which they were just to plug in their own words. The last sentence of the summary was supposed to be the theme (or the lesson/message the author wants the reader to get from the story).

We discussed the story and decided on a theme. I taught the mini lesson and then let the students get to work on their summary, only to put one that was pre-written for them about 10 minutes later. We had all decided the theme of the story was not to be ashamed or embarrassed by your culture or heritage. Some kids finished the summary and others had to copy down the one I put on the overhead.

Today as I was grading this assignment, I was appaled at the many ways I saw the word "embarrassed" written on their paper. Mind you, the majority of the students who mispelled the word were those who had to copy mine (and I promise my "embarrassed" was spelled the right way!) Here are the versions of "embarrassed" that I saw (I wrote these all down on a post it note and brought it home):

-imbarist (hence the title of the post)
-embareist
-imbarrasit
-inbarrst
-embearist
-embarsd
-imbarsed
-emparased
-embursit

Anywho...I was imbarist/embareist/imbarrasit/inbarrst/embearist/embarsd/emparased/embursit, but mostly embarrassed by these tragic spellings and I have included a mini lesson on the word "embarrassed" tomorrow's lesson.

I found out today that for sure I will be a traveling teacher come mid-January. Yay. So excited for this! (Note the heavy sarcasm!) The principal and the librarian both came to give me the awesome news this morning. I suppose they felt they had to tag team me and both tried their hardest to make me feel OK about the situation.

My room has been invaded this week with the computer networking guys and along with them they brought loads of dust and random bits and pieces of wires that they just love to leave on my floor. They are only concentrating on the wiring part right now and when the tables are delivered, I will have tables for students to use until the computers come. When the computers come, I will get first dibs on signing up for the new computer lab for the rest of the year and then the rest of the teachers will sign up. When a teacher signs up for the computer lab for a day, I (along with my darlings) will occupy their room. Basically, we'll probably be in a different room each day. Sounds fun, eh?

I am trying to be flexible and remember that this will only be for the rest of this year; next year I'll get my own room again. However, that said, I know my students and I know how the structure of my classroom is. I know they'll freak out when we are constantly changing. It's going to be interesting to see how they handle it.

I chopped three inches off my hair on Sunday. I suppose I shouldn't say I because my friend Angel is the one who actually took the scissors to my hair. My hair looks great because she cut off all the damaged ends. Here's a picture I took of myself with my cell phone, which equals not very good quality:It may not look much different but it sure feels different!

Happy Tuesday!