reality town

Today my 8th graders participated in Reality Town, an experience which, as the name implies, is supposed to show them how the real world is. Students received jobs based on Grade Point Average and their interests. If they had a high GPA, they were assigned the job of doctor; if their GPA was low, they were cashiers and fast food employees. Each student was given a break down of their life status--married with 1, 2, or 3 kids, single with 1 kid, divorced with 3 kids, etc. They also were told how much they'd make in a year. After receiving their check books, they had to walk around to 'businesses' set up in the gym and pay their bills. I had the opportunity to go down a few times during the day to take some pictures and supervise. I heard all sorts of complaints..."you mean I have to pay property taxes???"...and when the whole thing was over, many students told me that real life "sucked." They had two sessions of Reality Town, so half of the 8th grade was in the morning session and the other half was in the afternoon session. Because of this, my classes were all skiwampus, with 2nd period only having 8 students in attendance. It was great. If all my classes were 10-12 students big, life would be perfect!!

Today they finished writing their tongue twisters and with the time left over we played a game called "I'm going on a Trip," which in some classes went better than others. The idea was for all of us to sit in a circle and after we choose a letter (a) the person who is "it" has to start and say, "I'm going on the trip and I'm taking an apple." Then the next person says, "I'm going on a trip and I'm taking an apple, and an alligator," and so on. Each person had to remember the things everyone was packing, that started with a. It was quite fun and some students have great, sharp memories. Tomorrow they will technically finish the poetry unit by "writing" a headline poem. I say "writing" because they won't actually have to do any writing. A headline poem is something I learned about last year and loved the idea so I decided to include it in my rinky-dinky poetry unit the week right before Christmas (BAD IDEA!!! NOTE TO SELF: NEVER DO POETRY RIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS). The basic gist is that students look for words or phrases in newspapers, cut them out and then put them together to create a poem. This kind of goes along with my whole idea that poetry is everywhere (they are still trying to understand how their rap music constitutes as poetry) and since the school received an anonymous donation of 1,000 newspapers each day for the rest of the year, I figured it was a good way to help those papers not go to waste. We'll see how enthused they are tomorrow when I assign it.

Well, as you can see I've posted a few pictures, some teaching related, some mostly not. I'm kind of out of creativity for the night and also out of stories, though they are tucked up somewhere in my head....oh yes, I HAVE to write about this one...

Today in first period, I had about 6 students (Reality Town) and they were mostly the 'good' kids and generally I like them all. I have one student, however, who has some major issues. He's Hispanic (not the major issue) but he never listens, he shouts across the room while I'm teaching, AND yesterday (or the day before that, I forget when..) he was flicking his BOOGERS on all the girls in the class! Today he was in 1st period, not at Reality Town. Everyone was working, I was walking around helping them write tongue twisters and I look over to him and he has a little cup, a bit bigger than a sacrament cup, and it is full of yellow and red goo. I walk over to him, ask him to throw the candy away. He looks up at me and says, "No, Mrs. Hubert, this isn't candy. It's ketchup and mustard. Frozen." HUH?? Yeah, he's 'eating' frozen ketchup and mustard. I was completely baffled. I didn't know if it was his only meal of the day so I let him eat it...until he flicked some of it on a girl sitting next to him!!!! Some kids just make me want to swear!!!!!!!

Ok. Now that's really it. I think. Enjoy my pictures.