Jargon of the Educated

It is spring break for me, so last week's stories will appear next week. For this week, I'm on my "summer schedule". However, finding a TV show that starts with J that I like that you may not have heard of turned out to be impossible, so I'm pulling a story from March that did not quite make the cut the week it happened. 

Thursday. Eleventh grade English.

"These words aren't real."

The students were doing a crossword puzzle. (Well, two actually, if I want to be precise.) It was prep for their "final" the next day. 

A sampling of the "fake" words on the crossword: permeate, elicit, wheedle, hiatus, umbrage, corpulent, nebulous, unwieldy, contrive, and vapid. 

While this was the first time I've subbed for Ms. J this school year, I've subbed for her many times in the past. So, I understood where these words had come from.

Every day, she gives them five new vocabulary words. She gives them the words and definitions. They then match the words to one of five sentences she has also given them. The words are good. The sentences are clever. 

Their "final" (for the last day of the third quarter) was just a vocabulary test on two weeks' worth of words. (They were being tested on 40 words.) 

To the boy who made the statement, I assured him that the words were real. I knew the words. I use some of the words on the regular. 

I asked him if he was planning to go to college. He said he was. I told him it was good to build his vocabulary for college, and he might find that some of those words were useful.

He saw my point, actually. (The classes were pretty good.) And then he went back to work.

It was a long assignment. But they had all the tools they needed to complete it. I hope they all did well on that test.

Today's A to Z Challenge post brought to you by the letter 

Turkey Day Vocab

I got to go to Turkey Day this year!

Turkey Day is an annual event at the continuation high school. The Thursday before Thanksgiving, the school hosts a turkey meal for the school and the district. (It's also a fundraiser for their scholarships.) 

Student volunteers serve the meal, but three teachers supervise, so subs are always needed. And bonus, we get to eat, too. I held off on accepting any sub gigs until the continuation high school gigs popped up.

It's been a couple years. Last year I was doing that long term assignment at the adult transition center, and the year before was 2020 (no in-person schooling, so no events like Turkey Day). 

While it had been a couple years since I attended, many of the students had never attended, so I explained how things were going to go, urging the students to go when it was their turn. (Many of them choose not to go and eat, and their reasons are spurious.)

I talked it up enough so that when it was Solomon's turn, he went. When he returned, he was asked how the food was. 

"It was okay." 

I think even if the food was spectacular, a teen would respond in this fashion. Okay is high praise, really. (His friend Malia asked if the turkey was "well seasoned". I think she was expecting a school to do gourmet.) 

Another friend wanted more information. "So, it was exceptional?"

Solomon chided his friend. "Exceptional is not the same as okay." 

Upon a bit of back and forth, Solomon realized what word his friend was looking for. "Acceptable." He agreed that the food was acceptable. 

It does my heart good when I hear them using words correctly, especially when the students are correcting each other. They do learn.

So Fire

ASB (read: student leadership). I was supposed to cover three days, but I got pulled for one of them.

They were "working in committees", which meant they were treating the time as free. (They were going to be graded on what they had accomplished when the teacher returned, so if they weren't done, they'll regret not doing anything then.)

Second period, talk turned to prom. They were debating the merits of a party bus over a limo. (Apparently driving oneself is not done.)

"The party bus was so fire," the girl said. Apparently her friend's family owns one (the company?).

Then the talk was on where to go eat before. Certain places were "fire" while others weren't.

Yup. Fire. That was the word they kept using. And through context, I was able to figure out that "fire" means good. Really good. Probably what my generation would have called "rad" or "awesome".

Consider yourself up on the current lingo 😉

Vocabulary Challenge

English class at the continuation high school. The kiddos were to read a very short excerpt from John Locke's Of the State of Nature.

The students at the continuation high school aren't the strongest students, so the passage was a challenge for them to decipher. (I did read it with them and I tried to break things down so they understood.) Part of the assignment was to circle any words they were unfamiliar with so they could look them up.

I bet you know what's coming. I was expecting it.

"I am familiar with all of those words."

I believed two or three students. But way more than two or three students claimed this. So I warned them.

"If you're going to tell me that you know all the words in the excerpt, I'm going to ask you to prove it."

I had a group of students turning in their work. None of them had defined any words. Considering the paragraphs I had in front of me, I could give each student a different word. Words like: reciprocal, promiscuously, subordination, dominion, promulgated, and absolved.

And so I did. I asked each student to define a different word. And they made good stabs at it (using the context a bit). But they weren't even close.

Eventually they took their papers back. They didn't then look for words. Of course not. But at least they couldn't claim they were done.

(Considering that I heard one student looking up "arbitrary" but pronouncing it "obituary", there were more words that would have tripped them up had I asked for definitions.)

A Forced Computer Restart

Friday was a weird day. I got what is called a "roving" assignment. It was a training day for the English teachers. But instead of having them out all day, they split the group in half so half were out for the first half of the day while the other half were out for the second. And since the teacher I was covering the first half of the day had a 1st period prep, I was sent elsewhere for that period.

Which is why when I walked into the class I was covering 2nd period, I was not surprised to find the computer set up with the class' assignment.

The class had vocabulary words to copy down. This is something they do every day. All I had to do was turn on the projector.

Well, ideally that's how it would have worked out.

When I got into the room, I found a countdown clock on the computer. I had less than ten minutes before it was going to shut down.

I know this drill. The computer uploads updates. Then it tells you it needs to shut down. But you can postpone that. So, that's what I did. I told the computer to postpone shutting down for four hours.

Only, that didn't stop the countdown clock. Nothing would stop the countdown clock. I tried the exit button. I tried CTRL-ALT-DEL. I tried the escape button. I clicked on everything I could. But the countdown clock kept ticking away.

The only other trick I know is to shut down the computer. Which is what it was going to do anyway.

Unfortunately, it was going to take the vocabulary words with it. And I didn't have the teacher's log in, so when the computer restarted, I would not be able to access the teacher's files.

Ah, technology...

In the end, I could not stop the forced shut down. The students had maybe five minutes of the eight to ten that they needed to copy down the words. And with no other choice, I then just started them on the assignment for the rest of the period.

It was a freshman class, so I had the usual freshman problems. The teacher's computer finished restarting. And then I could log in to the computer under my log in.

And it turned out that the teacher had a back up for me. She had printed out the words (as well as the words for the next class), and her document camera was connected. So, I set that up, and about halfway through the class, we were able to complete the vocabulary that should have been done at the start.

Better late than never.

With that technical difficulty out of the way, I had no issues with the computer for the next class.

These are the joys of subbing. Unexpected issues always seem to crop up.

Not a Real Word

Some classes I cover more than others. (I hear there are going to be a lot of English curriculum trainings this year...) So, this particular PLUS class and I are well-known to each other.

The day's lesson was about vocabulary. They were to take words like team, values, character, and role model and define them "through a PLUS lens". (That is, they were to give examples of those qualities in action.)

I had a list. The lesson plan said to assign a word to each student. So, I did. I went down the class roster and down the list of words. And they were okay with this. Well, everyone except one student.

He got assigned "paradigm".

"That's not a real word."

Since the assignment had them creating a Google slide for the word, the students had computers. And I had just spelled the word for the boy. (Never mind that the word was in the book that was open in front of him.)

He had typed the word into Google, and the definition was right there on the screen in front of him.

So, yeah, of course I just made the word up... *eye roll*

He eventually completed the assignment. I think. But not after he challenged me to use the word in a sentence. (Which I did. Not a great sentence, mind you, but passable.)

How about you? Want to try to use paradigm in a sentence?

Tabloid Fodder

Freshman English. They had a vocabulary assignment. Instead of the usual "use these 10 vocab words in sentences", their teacher had given them 10 prompts. Things like: "Describe a time when you would want a meeting to adjourn early." (Adjourn was their vocab word.)

"What's a tabloid?"

A quick perusal of the assignment led me to prompt #9: "Describe a celebrity who is always giving fodder to the tabloids." Fodder was their vocab word.

There seems to be one or two questions that every period has. For this day it was the tabloid question. So, by 6th period the explanation of the term tabloid became part of my opening remarks.

6th period was different than the other periods. First of all, I had their complete attention when I did my usual opening bit. Then, they worked silently. This was not one of those assignments where they were required to work silently. Even their teacher had said they could work together.

I should not have been surprised, but I was. A little more than halfway into the period, I got the tabloid question again.

Um... Didn't I go over that?

The girl sitting next to him did out loud what I only did in my head. "She explained at the beginning of the period." And then explained so that I wouldn't have to.

So, I came away with two thoughts. Even when I explain and think they're listening, not all of them are. And when did kids stop being aware of tabloids? Is it because it's all online? Does anyone know? (If you have a teen in the house, do they know what a tabloid is?)