Missed a Step

Friday. Sixth period. 

This is the ninth grade ELD class (English language development), and they're reading Of Mice and Men. Friday, it was chapter five. 

In case you are unfamiliar, chapter five is where Lennie does a bad, bad thing... 

I mean, perhaps I could have warned them. But nah. More of an impact if they don't see it coming. 

After we finished reading the chapter, they had questions to answer. Like a prepared teacher, I had set up the assignment before class. I added it to their Google Classroom. I didn't release the assignment until after we finished doing the reading, as I had done for chapters one through four. 

They got to work. But then, a hand... 

"I can't type on the assignment..." 

And I instantly knew what had happened. 

When one uploads an assignment, one "attaches" it to the specific assignment. Then, one has a choice of selections. Either the uploaded doc can be "viewed", "edited", or "make a copy for each student". The correct answer is "make a copy for each student". That way, each student gets their very own digital copy that they can modify in any way, like by adding their answers to the questions. 

Sure enough, I had not chosen "make a copy for each student". 

There are like a dozen choices one must make when uploading an assignment. Points. Due date. Title. Instructions. Attach the assignment. And others. I try to be very careful when doing this as to not miss a step. But sometimes... 

The worst part? I can't go in and edit it to make a copy. The only thing I can do is delete the assignment and reupload a new one. (Yes, I found this out the hard way.) 

Well, it wasn't like anyone had started the assignment, anyway. They couldn't. They couldn't type on it. 

Now, do I forewarn them about chapter six? Of course not. Better if they don't see it coming... 

The Giggles

Wednesday. Eighth period. 

We were reading chapter three of The Great Gatsby. Or, rather, I had put on audio of the book while they followed along with the narrator. And every so often I'd pause the reading to comment on something that I thought they'd miss otherwise. 

Some things I know they didn't know, like when a character mentions that the pages of some books weren't cut. I didn't know that people would cut open pages while reading books back in the day, so I knew they didn't know that. 

And then there was the car accident scene. 

It's pretty clear on the page what is happening. A very drunk driver hit a wall and his car was so badly damaged a wheel was sheared from the car. No longer drivable. But the driver was so drunk that no one could get him to understand this. 

I mean, terrible scene and all, but the way it's written I find extremely funny. I assume that was the intent. 

But, the way it was written, one has to be paying attention, and one has to infer some things that aren't explicitly on the page. And teenagers? Yeah, most aren't following that closely. 

Every period I made sure to stop and point out what was happening. I know they weren't getting it as I heard no chuckles. No snorts. No intimation that anyone was laughing. I mean, these kiddos don't react much at all, but even correcting for this, there was still no way they were getting it. 

Then, eighth period, my fourth time through the scene, I broke. We read through...

"Wha's matter?" he inquired calmly. "Did we run outa gas?"

"Look!"

Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel—he stared at it for a moment and then looked upward as though he suspected that it had dropped from the sky.

"It came off," some one explained.

He nodded.

"At first I din' notice we'd stopped."

A pause. Then, taking a long breath and straightening his shoulders he remarked in a determined voice:

"Wonder'ff tell me where there's a gas'line station?"

At least a dozen men, some of them little better off than he was, explained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined by any physical bond.

"Back out," he suggested after a moment. "Put her in reverse."

"But the wheel's off!"

He hesitated.

"No harm in trying," he said.

And it was the "wheel and car were no longer joined by any physical bond" that got me. I was explaining, and I couldn't hold it any longer. I began to laugh. And then the laughter just took over. I couldn't stop. 

I've had moments where something struck me as so funny I couldn't stop laughing. Usually I'm alone. Sometimes I'm with others who find it just as funny. This time? Yeah, all of them looked at me like I'd lost my mind. 

So, I hit play on the audio while I got the giggles out. A joke explained is a joke lost. Even if they didn't find it funny, at least I was able to convey that the guy was so drunk he didn't understand what was going on. I hope. 

At least I'm enjoying the book. They aren't. I mean, they're really too young. So many of the nuances of the story you can't really get until you've lived a bit. 

You'd get it. You might be surprised at how much better the book is when you've experienced more of life than a teenager has. 

Modern Video Problems

Tuesday. Third period. 

Upon finishing reading chapter three of The Great Gatsby, we were to watch the scene from the 2013 movie version. 

This was in the lesson plans. I saw it weeks before. So, like any prepared teacher, I set about making sure I had what I needed to get this done. Because technology wasn't going to make this easy for me. 

The movie was on Netflix. Was. But, alas, since Ms. A had found it there, it had been removed, for when I went to look for it, it was gone. And it wasn't streaming anywhere else. (If you ever want to know where some movie is streaming, just search it up on IMDb.com. It lists it there on the first page.) 

Ms. A had it on DVD. But, no one has a DVD player any longer. I have a teacher computer. No DVD player in it. (The old, out-of-date computers have DVD players in them, but they don't work all that well. And I couldn't get a hold of one.) I called the library to see if they still had a player (as I had heard that they were getting rid of theirs). They did. But, it didn't have a cable that would connect to the in-class TV. (It had the RCA connector, not the HDMI cable that the TV has connections for.) 

I looked on YouTube and found some video clips of the movie. That were heavily edited and not very long. Sigh. 

After discussing it with another teacher, Ms. K, the co-teacher, bought a digital copy on Amazon. Phew. Problem solved. 

So, it was Wednesday, the day to show the video. We were on a shortened schedule for state testing. The audio for the chapter took about a half hour. 

But, I stop. And discuss. So, even shortening my discussion because I knew it was going to be a time crunch, we finished reading with about ten minutes left in class. The video clip was ten minutes long. Close, but I could make it. 

I went to play the video... 

It worked just fine. On my computer. The projection? They could hear, but they could not see. Deep sigh. 

I did not have time to troubleshoot. (I saw it worked on my computer and hadn't bothered to make sure it projected.) I had a YouTube clip to show to finish out the period, but that was all I could do. And since I wasn't going to have time for the other classes, I took my time stopping and discussing with them. 

But Ms. A wanted the clip shown, so it was time to figure it out. 

I know five ways to connect the computer to the TV screen. The way I was using wouldn't show the video. I knew another way that would show the video, but it was jerky. Not smooth. I managed to scrounge an HDMI cable, but when I found the cable, I also found a wireless display adapter. But it wasn't connected. 

Luckily, I had kept a copy of the instructions on how to connect the thing in my files. Still, it took me 45 minutes to get it to work. Sigh. (And then it turned out there was an easier way that I figured out two days later.) 

The good news: it worked. Finally. 

When I went to show the video the next day, it played. And I watched as they watched it. So, success. Eventually. 

It's always something. 

School Choice

What if? It's the basis of many stories. We ask. We ponder. We wonder. 

On Tuesdays I throw one out there. What if? It may be speculative. It may stem from something I see. It may be something I pull from the news. 

Make of it what you will. If a for instance is not specified, interpret that instance as you wish. And if the idea turns into a story, I'd appreciate a thank you in the acknowledgements 😉

Yes, I know, an actual "what if?" post. A question occurred to me (for no reason whatsoever), and I thought I might as well post it: 

What if every child was required to attend a public school? (Specifically, private schools would no longer be allowed.) 

Keeping My Hands Busy

I took this yarn... 

...that I blogged about almost a month ago, and I began swatching. Then I knit a garter stitch bottom and attached a moss stitch kind of border... 

...but while taking this picture, I measured this against the tote bag. It'll stretch, but it's smaller than I anticipated. I think I need to rip this whole thing out and start again. 

I don't really have any good project ideas. And I need a take along project for Saturdays. So, this is it for now. Since I don't actually have need for this thing, it can take as long as it takes. Or until I find something else to work on. 

At some point, I'll switch yarns and patterns, so I swatched a cable pattern that may or may not end up on this. 

I'm not even at half a pattern repeat yet, so it doesn't look like anything. But that's okay. I'm playing right now. Just seeing what'll work. 

I may get a project out of this. I may set it all aside and do something else. But it's something to keep my hands busy. For that, it's working perfectly. 

Make Work

Last week we started our annual state testing. (This week we'll finish it up.) I explained the schedule on Wednesday. As I mentioned yesterday, what this meant for me was that I had two hours of "free" time to get some things accomplished. Which meant some things got done that I might not have gotten to otherwise...

Before spring break, the eleventh grade classes did a whole lot of anticipatory stuff for reading The Great Gatsby. We talked about the 1920s. They read about the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald. And they had a couple videos to watch. 

I had them take notes. And then I gave them points for taking the notes (mostly because I expected that they'd ignore the material and spend the time on their phones if I didn't). Or, rather, I gave them points for the first day of notes, but for the rest of them I wasn't going to bother. Because it was practically spring break. 

Thursday. Jocelyn had to go home early. She came to class briefly to find out what the assignment was going to be. She got the title of the video so she could watch it and turn in the notes so she wouldn't miss any assignments. 

I would have told her not to bother, but she did this so fast. Mostly, what I was concerned about was that the video, a biography on F. Scott Fitzgerald, briefly discussed The Great Gatsby including how it ended. This part I skipped over while showing it in class (as we didn't want spoilers before reading the book), but how did I explain this to Jocelyn? 

When I wrote last week's blog post mentioning the video, I looked it up, searching for it rather than clicking on the link Ms. A left. And, surprisingly, the first video to pop up on YouTube is without spoiler. Someone edited it out! Meaning, Jocelyn most likely saw the version without the spoiler. Big Whew!

Then, on Friday, during eighth period, I informed them they'd need to take notes...

Evan: "I'm not going to take notes. You're not going to grade them." 

Yeah, so now I have to grade them. 

So, when all this time opened up this week, the first thing I did was to grade all the notes from before spring break. 

Because, seriously? I'm pretty easy going most of the time, but when someone challenges me like that? Don't tell me I'm not going to do something. I will so do that thing. 

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.)