big plans

Sydney and I went on a school-supply quest this morning. We need all these things for our students to learn to write. Except for the pretzels. The pretzels are for eating.



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"Oh! We could use one of those big containers like the ones they sell cheesy poofs in!"
"Yes!"
"That's a lot of cheesy poofs. Do you eat cheesy poofs? I do not eat cheesy poofs."
"I eat cheesy poofs."

half a sick-day

I took the morning off to try to get over this bear of a cold. I woke up to this in my inbox from Sydney. Which was very nice.



This makes me think of Cassie. And I hope on our summer roadtrip we can make something like this happen. Yes?

on performance anxiety

Molly, Sydney, and I went to the girls' basketball game last night, and as we were watching and chatting, the subject of teaching as performance came up.

Because it totally is.

At new teacher orientation, our superintendent told us, and I'm paraphrasing, "Seek help when you need it, because it's too important not to. You have the power to inspire, but you also have the power to destroy a child's dream." Um, can you say pressure?

So there's that fundamental weight hanging above us, and then there's the day-to-day need for standing in front of twenty-ish people and finding something important enough to say that they'll all listen. I mean, you can have a kick-ass lesson planned, but if you can't orally deliver instructions well, it's likely it will bomb. Sometimes, I still get nervous when the bell rings and the kids start coming in.

I think that's why I'm so exhausted all the time. It's performance anxiety.

I feel kinda silly writing this, because after every sentence, every paragraph, I can hear my college-student-self saying, "Um, duh. Get over it." And in no way do I mean this post as some kind of complaint. I LOVE my job.

It's just scary sometimes.

but back to the no-cell phone rule

I posted about this when I was student-teaching, too, but I'm wondering how long it's going to be until cell phones are allowed in schools. Like, seriously.

Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher published an article in the July 2008 edition of English Journal called "Do the Right Thing with Technology." I like them. They gave an overview of their school's technolgy policy, one that focuses on "courtesy" and not "prohibition." They write:

"We asked our students, 60 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and every one of them had at least one of these devices ["cell phones, iPods, cameras and the like"] on their person every day. Our colleagues were frustrated with the amount of time they spent asking students to put cell phones and MP3 players away. The administrators were frustrated at the increased time they had to spend disciplining repeat offenders. And some parents weren't happy when their children had these expensive devices taken away from them in school. We realized that prohibition alone wasn't working and that we weren't teaching students appropriate uses of technology. We also realized that were missing out on an excellent opportunity to integrate technology into our school curriculum." (38)

My Mom always says, "Choose your battles." And honestly, part of the reason I'm anti-cell-phone-prohibition is that I just really don't feel like fighting that battle with my students. Another major part of why I'm A-C-P-P is that I think that there might be some tappable educational value in allowing students to have their cells in school. Some anecdotal evidence: One of my favorite students (yeah, I for sure have favorites) from when I student-taught here is in Sydney's class. We were subbed out of our morning classes today for instructional sharing time with other members of the English department, and while we were gone, said favorite student texted to Sydney's email:

Omg.we don't know what to do the sub aint making what we doing
understanding........

I mean, this is a kid who I practically had to beg to keep his head off the desk for the first few weeks of my student-teaching placement. And this is not the first, but the second time he's texted her about class. Trust me, there's no way in hell this student is going to ever say, "You know, Ms. Azzi, I had a question about that essay were supposed to be drafting. Any chance you can stay after school so we can talk about it?" But if he sees her as easily accessible via his phone, he can still ask those questions.


All I'm saying is, why not capitalize on that shit!? They're going to being their cells anyway. So I hear by call for the 21st admendment of the UHS student handbook.