Reruns

We have reached the part of the year where I've done it all before, and now I get to do it again. Last week I had a lot of repeat performances. 

(Besides the English class I talked about last week, I also revisited the Spanish class, English at the continuation high school, the middle school English class with Nash, and the computer class that I period subbed at least three different times.) 

I had just covered this English class the previous Thursday. (The English teachers were scoring a district writing thing all the students have to do. Ms. V teaches three different grade levels, so she's out three different days for this.) So, I knew what to expect. 

First period. English 11. They were doing a blackout poem. 

They were using an Amanda Gorman poem as a base. They were to black out many of the words, making a new poem out of the few words they chose. Then they create a picture that serves as the thing that hides the rest of the words they're not using. (Look for examples online. It's an interesting exercise.) 

I passed out the poem they were using, and then, as the teacher instructed, I warned them that they'd only get one copy, so they needed to be careful.

Jaliyah approached. 

(I've had Jaliyah in various classes many times over the years. She's a good kid.)

Jaliyah asked if she could go and make copies, because, "I know I'm going to mess it up," and she wanted to take out some insurance. 

Other students realized this was a good idea, so Jaliyah returned with multiple copies, distributing them around. She kept two for herself. 

And they all worked quietly for the rest of the period. (Seriously, this happens a lot. I don't write about these classes much as, "they worked quietly" doesn't make for an interesting blog post.)

A Recent Poem

In all, I spent three weeks covering the vacant English class at the middle school. Luckily, the seventh grade English teachers were all doing the same lesson plan each day. (So were the eighth grade English teachers.) This meant that I didn't have to come up with lessons from scratch. That was a big help.

(I still had to figure out how I was going to present said lessons. And I had to take care of roll and classroom control. I was on my own for grading. It was a lot of work, but figuring out what they were going to do each day at least was something I didn't have to worry about.)

We were discussing figurative language and looking at some poetry. And this was one of the poems we were discussing...

Gotta love seventh grade teachers picking something by Neil Gaiman. I approve of their taste. 

(Last year I caught them teaching The Hunger Games. Imagine that as the novel the whole class was reading.) 

Smoothly

Some days, finding a topic to post about is easy. Some days the kids try to bribe me. Other days every other student is paranoid about the Illuminati. And then there are the fights.  

Today was not one of those days.  

The English teacher left us three poems to read. (I Googled them and found them: "The Secret," "The Gift," and "Halley's Comet".) I even managed to get a discussion out of them.  

They called the poems boring. They didn't get the point. I tried to help the students make sense of them. I don't know if I succeeded. But somehow we managed to have a lucid discussion about the poems that didn't devolve into them talking amongst themselves while I talked at them.  

I call that a win.  

Unfortunately, that means that I don't have an interesting story to go with my day for today. Sorry.