Post-Spring Break

Ah, spring break. Truly, I did nothing. I corrected a few poems every day this week and raced through the spelling assignments on Saturday. Other than that, my primary accomplishment (not that I believe you have to accomplish something over spring break...) was attending the job fair on Monday and filling out endless little job application boxes.

The job fair was somewhat of a let down. I didn't exactly expect to be handed a job right there on the spot, but the website seemed to suggest that some districts would be offering interviews. It certainly suggested that the districts that came out to the fair would know which openings they had for the fall. That wasn't exactly true. A few districts had vague ideas about what they would need, but most literally told person after person that they hadn't the slightest clue what they were looking for. The most common sentence I heard at the fair was "Hey, did you know about the internet? We have this website where you can apply online." Why come all the way down here for face-to-face communication if you just want to see our electronic selves anyway?

I'd say by and large, my poetry unit went very well. My cooperating teacher commented that he liked the activities I had the kids doing. It was probably a good unit to do pre-Spring Break, while the kids were all hopped up. The science classes were doing these boat races for their unit on buoyancy (literally kids in costumes paddling a boat around a course in the pool with theme music. Very reality show), so of course that took much of the student enthusiasm.

I was pleased by the poems I got, though, and I think the kids had fun reading them aloud and listening to each other. On final tally, I think sports poems were the most common (with baseball, basketball and hockey taking the lead, in that order). Summer/lake poems showed up a lot, too. So did dramatic love/relationship poems. All in all, some very good poems (and some very bad ones). Of course, I had students who not only turned in nothing but looked surprised when I came to speak to them about their missing assignment ("What? What did we have to do?") Ah, ninth graders.

This week: state writing test. Mr. Leisen taught today (I did spelling) to prep them for it, and we'll both have to stare at them while they work on it tomorrow. We'll be doing some drama activities to warm up for Romeo & Juliet starting Wednesday, which should be fun. We start the play next week. As I've said, I'll be following Mr. Leisen's lead during this unit. He'll teach first hour and I'll teach the other three hours based on what he does (though I might add some stuff).

If you're a follower of my other blog (Emily's Adventures in Popular Culture and Education) then you know that I'm trying to finish up that online class once and for all. I have one more post to do (I think I'm going to write about food just for Uncle Joe) and then my final project.

Shackleton!