Funny Teacher Story: Call Me Dan

 

This happened to me after I'd been teaching about 10 or 11 years, so I really should have known better. 

At the beginning of school each year, one of the things I always asked my students is what name they preferred to be called. Now, I refused any ridiculous nicknames like "Bowtie" and "Spaghetti-o," but there were often kids who went by shortened versions of their names (Bill instead of William) or their middle names, or even initials.

I was going around the room in my advanced 9th grade English class asking what name they wanted me to call them, and this one boy tells me to call him "Dan." Well, his name was Peter James, so I thought...that's weird. Just to check, I looked around the room. No one was smirking or grinning or laughing. I asked them, just to make sure. They nodded. "Yes, that's what we call him," one girl told me. "It's a family name." Okay. Not impossible. My brother's nickname is Jordy but his given name is Jonathan Reginald S. III.

All year, I called him Dan. He always answered. No one laughed. For the next three years, whenever I saw him in the hall, I called him Dan. He always responded politely. I did hear other teachers call him Peter occasionally, but that always happens when students go by nicknames or middle names. Some teachers just refuse to call them anything but their first name. Or they don't bother to ask. (I think you can see where this is going.)

A couple of years after he had graduated, I saw him in a local grocery store and walked up to him to speak. I greeted him as Dan. He grimaced, shook his head, and told me, "You know, that was just a joke for the first day of school. No one else ever calls me Dan."

No shit. 

New Year's Goals-for Students

 

Looking for a great way to ease your students back into the swing of things after Christmas break? Here is a quick and fun activity to help them start thinking about the new year and to set up some attainable goals (some educational, some not) so they can finish off strong. You can find it here as a freebie in my TPT store.

Favorite Books to Teach: Heroes, Gods, and Monsters of the Greek Myths by Bernard Evslin

When my advanced ninth grade students came to me, their knowledge of Greek mythology was sketchy. Some knew a lot. Some knew a little. Some knew nothing. I didn't have time to teach the entire pantheon, but I needed them to have background in Greek mythology for several reasons. So I decided to assign a mythology refresher book as part of their summer reading.

1. We were going to read The Odyssey later in the year.

2. We were going to read Shakespeare, which, as everyone knows, is full of mythological allusions.

3. We were going to read poetry (same as #2).

4. I knew that in future years students would need some familiarity with mythology in order to identify additional allusions. I mean, these are advanced students, for Pete's sake.

I searched around and discarded several possible books on Greek mythology: Hamilton's Mythology (too dense and hard to read for summer reading), Bulfinch's Mythology (same), etc. I finally stumbled across this little gem and knew it was just what I needed. 

It covers most of the important myths (except for Hercules). It's very readable. It's very short. 

Now, you might think this book is too basic for advanced ninth graders, but I would heartily disagree. I don't want my students to have to slog through some impossible book during the summer. I want them to read something that won't take all their time and turn them off of reading altogether. 

This book was a great success. It refreshed the memories of my students who were somewhat familiar with mythology and gave a great intro to students who were complete mythology virgins. lol!

This book is accessible for everyone from 6-12 grade. Even your struggling readers can get through it. 

EASY MEALS: Crockpot Teriyaki Chicken

 

1 ½ lbs chicken breasts

1 cup teriyaki sauce

1 cup water

2/3 cup brown sugar

3 cloves minced garlic

Sprinkle of ginger.

 

Freeze until needed.

DIRECTIONS FOR PREPARING: 

Thaw the night before.

Add everything to crockpot.

Cover and cook 4-6 hours.

Serve over rice. Add some steamed broccoli as a side. Yummy!

Getting Rid of Those Horrid White Walls

 

DID YOU SAY COLOR?

One of the things I always hated in my classroom were the white cinderblock walls. They were just so...blah! A lot of teachers did nothing to break up that "blah-ness." Oh, a few might slap up a post or two, but many many just could not be bothered. Honestly, I don't know how they could stand it. We teachers are the ones who have to put up with it all day long. At least the students are only stuck in there for a class period. Now some of you may be able to paint the walls in your classroom, and I say, "Hooray!" But if you're like me and cannot paint the walls, you do have some options.

As an ELA teacher, I had a lot of different types of information I could put on my walls. And believe me, I took advantage.

1. Posters With Quotes: Pretty easy to find, actually. Most are inspirational. Some are actually from famous authors. You can even find quotes about reading, writing, literature, etc. They come in all kinds of sizes. 

2. Posters From Movies: There are a lot of movies based on literature, and sometimes you can coax your local movie theater to give you one for free!! Or you can find them on line in places like ebay. I had a poster of Troy (yummy Brad Pitt), King Arthur (equally yummy Clive Owen), and Thor (yes--Chris Hemsworth). lol! 

3. Posters With Song Lyrics/Musicians: Some song lyrics are quite poetic and some songwriters are poets. I had a poster of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Bob Marley. Again, these can generally be found in music stores (if you can find one) or ebay. Or possibly in your teenager's bedroom. lol! I would print song lyrics that I especially loved and post them on bulletin boards, doors, etc. Things like "Sound of Silence," or "Stairway to Heaven," or even "The River" by Springsteen. 

4. Posters of Famous Authors: Most educational catalogs have a lot of posters with famous authors.

5. Maps: If you're like me, I always liked to have maps of parts of the world up, especially Great Britain, ancient Greece, and the U.S., because I would show students where the authors we were reading came from.

6. Student Art Work: I generally put art-type projects on the wall outside my classroom for display. But if there were some that were really great, I would move them into my classroom when it was time to put up something new. My students did things like coats of arms, book posters, body biographies, hero's journey posters, timelines, etc.

7. Grammar Rules Posters: Again, you can usually find lots of these in educational catalogs. Or you can make your own.

8. Writing Style Posters: Same as #7.

9. Posters of Literature Being Studied: Educational catalogs usually have some pictures to accompany various literary works, such as Shakespeare plays, short stories, novels, etc.

10. Anchor Charts: A lot of schools require you to put up anchor charts. Usually I've seen this in elementary and middle schools, but I think it's a great idea for high school as well. I would put up lists of dead verbs, great adverbs, word substitutions (like a mini thesaurus), tone words, etc. Just whatever my students worked on in the classroom and needed to reference.

There are many ways to mount posters on your walls. I had the most success with hot glue, mounting putty, clear packing tape (doubled over), and mounting tape (although your school may not allow this because it is a b*#%h to get off the walls). It really depends on the surface of your walls.

A FINAL NOTE:

With all of these ideas, if you have a really good materials center, you might be able to create your own posters and have the peeps at the materials center blow them up to whatever size you like. They can usually laminate them, too. Our materials center could take something we created in PowerPoint and blow it up to a full poster. If you laminate them, they will last you for YEARS. And you are only limited by your imagination and whatever images you can find online.

Just say no to boring, plain, white walls in the classroom. lol!

Below you will find links to some free mini-posters I offer in my TPT store. 

FAILURE

DIFFERENT MEANINGS

NEW BEGINNINGS

HANG IN THERE, BABY