Settling into the Long Term 13

Now that I've kind of settled into this long-term English assignment, I find that I have a lot of things I want to mention, but none have really risen to being the point of a whole blog post. So, I believe it's time for a Thursday 13, Ms. A's English class long-term sub edition. 

One

I mentioned that I have a lot of familiar faces in these classes. A few of them have made the blog before. Considering how things are going, I don't expect they'll do anything blog-worthy before this assignment ends, so I wanted to mention them. 

First off, I've got Lou again. Remember Lou? They (not sure what pronoun they're using at the moment) are in eighth period and they're still, well, like freshman year. But they seem to still like me, so they're not making things hard for me. 

Xerxes is in seventh period, but he's been absent a whole lot. (My naming convention is their blog alias starts with the same letter, usually. So, you know what his name actually is. Unless it's that other X boys name.) 

And Marta, although she's been very under the radar for me now.

There are several others who weren't given blog aliases, but I'm pretty sure I mentioned them. Tracking down those posts, however... 

Two

Last week we started state testing. Or, I should say, "they". They don't let subs proctor the tests. We're "supervision" for students who don't need to show up early, but do. I've had lots of time to get caught up on things. (See tomorrow's post.) 

Three

The eleventh graders (who have to do the state tests) have been reading The Great Gatsby. Which I have taught twice before. Once for this teacher and once for another eleventh grade teacher at the same school (so they use the same assignments). It makes prepping really easy as I don't have to do anything much but make sure things are ready to go. 

Four

Alas, when I go to discuss various aspects of the text, I get lots of blank stares. Sigh. One thing I am terrible at is selecting a student to answer my questions. I don't want to pick on anyone (as no one is behaving in such a way that I need to call them out), but I do want someone to answer. This is why teachers have pull cards. 

Five

As Ms. A doesn't have pull cards, I thought I'd make some. Just to randomize who I call on. But, lazy. So, it occurred to me that there has to be a computerized way (much like a random number generator) to do this. And, it turns out, there is. I searched online, and I found a couple different ways it could work. But then...

It turns out that Google Classroom has a randomizer built in. And... OMG! I love this thing. Two weeks ago I had no idea this existed, and now I'm absolutely obsessed. I can pull it up on my phone. I open it up, and a student's name appears. I can then hit "next" and I can call on another student. Best. Thing. Ever.

Six

I decided that I wasn't going to do any work over spring break. And then I broke that vow. I did some "lesson planning". Not really, though. I went looking for a back up assignment in case Ms. A didn't fill in what short stories she wanted the tenth graders to read. And then I wanted to "pretty up" the slides I was using with the eleventh graders for The Great Gatsby. (I put links to the audio from YouTube in one place so I didn't have to search it out every day.) I even found some video clips of the 2013 movie for a couple parts of the book. 

Seven

And then I didn't need any of it. Not a bit. Ms. A came through with lesson plans for the tenth graders. The co-teacher, Ms. K found a digital copy of the movie. And all the time during testing time gave me enough time to "pretty up" The Great Gatsby slides. (What I had done over the break looked terrible. I redid them, and they came out better.) 

Eight

Remember when my school bag broke? I finally purchased a replacement. 

Nine

Ms. A actually stopped by campus. To pick up boxes. Not only does she have a newborn (who she brought with her), but now she's moving. At least she's still on leave...

Ten

My co-teacher, Ms. K, used to work at a different high school (for LAUSD). That my father worked at. Turns out, her father worked at the same high school at the time my father worked there. Teaching can be a small world. 

Eleven

I can't keep the periods straight. I blame this on having the first block as conference period. I keep thinking third period is first and fourth period is second. And then I can't keep track of whether fifth period or sixth period is the ninth graders. I keep saying wrong period numbers and mixing up my days. Somehow, I haven't started teaching the wrong thing, but it's a close thing. 

Twelve

The above being said, I don't like third period very much. But seventh period I enjoy. And the even day is a little weird, but in a good way. I think part of this is me making all my mistakes in third period (the first time I'm teaching the lesson). And just having it down for the second day. (Block schedules mean it takes two days to get through all the classes.)

Thirteen

Reading chapter two of Gatsby, period three was all blank stares. Then period seven actually seemed to get it. It was quite funny to listen to them discuss what we had read (while they were doing the assigned work after we finished reading for the day). It's classes like that that make the whole thing worthwhile. (I haven't gotten to the even classes for this lesson yet. Odd classes were on Friday, so the even classes have the same lesson on Monday. Block schedule means some weeks start on an even day, some weeks start odd.)