you're invited

I already wish it were Friday.

Monday's, no matter how lovely the weekend, are always bad days for me. Despite the fact that I attended a fabulous workshop on Saturday about having a positive attitude, today it just wasn't happening.

Let me tell you a bit about my workshop. We have Title 1 money at our school which helps pay for certain programs, teacher aids, etc. and twice a year, Title 1 pays for our staff to attend a workshop on whatever topic. The workshop on Saturday (yes, we all complained about our one day weekend) was presented by a man by the name of Mark McLoud. He was super. He spoke to us about motivating not only our students, but our teaching style. We talked about the "Emotional Bank Account," making positive deposits rather than negative withdrawals. I won a great white board calendar and got over 57 new ideas of teaching and activities to use in my classroom. If I had to spend my Saturday at any workshop, I was glad it was that one.

Just two weeks until "Winter Break." We have to call it "winter break" for those who don't celebrate Christmas. I am fine saying "Winter Break." I even assigned one of the Mustang Roundup staffers to write a survey story on saying "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays." The story itself kind of reeks of plagiarism, but I'm working with the students on how to actually write something of their own instead of copying it.

Tomorrow I will be starting a short poetry unit. I say short because it will last this week and next. I plan on encorporating poetry through out the year, but these two weeks will be a more concentrated focus on this genre that seems to trip teenagers up. I had another momen of brilliance this afternoon (well, I think it is brilliant; the real test will be what happens tomorrow in class). I love poetry, though I know I used to hate it, just like my students.) So, I decided to put a different spin on it. I am calling the unit "Poetry Party," and each day plan to have some sort of "party" related activity (which will really have something to do with poetry--like pin the metaphor on the poem :)). For example, after school today, after the brilliant idea popped into my head, I made a gigantic party invitation and tapped it to my white board. It said: You're Invited...To a Poetry Party! When: December 12-21. Where: B-27. Why: For Totally Fun Poetry! My hope is that my enthusiasm, even if I have to force it big time tomorrow, for the "Poetry Party" will help them be more excited.

After I make them excited for a party, I am going to hand out a worksheet that I actually made and used for Student Teaching. It has about 15 selections from songs, poems, newspaper headlines, riddles, etc. I had the students tell me if it was a poem or not (generally, they tend to think poetry has to rhyme and talks about love and stuff). Then I will go through and tell them that even the crappy rap music they listen to is POETRY!! AND my hope is that they will all have a light bulb moment and say, "Wow, that Mrs. Hubert sure is cool. She told me that my rap crap is poetry! Now I LOVE poetry! YaY! Thanks Mrs. Hubert!"

I also found this great poem that I'm going to give them tomorrow. Each student will get a copy of this poem and each student's poem has one of five symbols up on the top. For example, some of the poems have a heart at the top. I will use these symbols to put the students in "Poetry Party Circles." All the students with the hearts will be one circle, and so on. I thought they'd get a kick out of this point of view of poetry.

Gotta eat some dinner and pretend to do some grades. I'm a week behind because that's the part I hate the most--not the grading part as much as the putting the grades in the computer program part!