Question Reality

What if this was the dream and that bizarre dream you had last night was the reality?

In Case You Missed These...

Contests, contests, and contests. And blogfests. It's been busy in the blogosphere.

I'm a couple weeks late, but Michael Offutt has released his second book. Make sure to check it out.

Link to his blog. Links for the book.

Charity Bradford is having a contest to give away a necklace to go along with her book release.

Go here to enter.

And Briane P is holding a Traveling Blogathon of Doom for Christmas. You could win some books.

Link to his blog. Comments give you entries.

With all these contests and releases, I kind of want to do a contest. What should I give away?  

And if I've missed your contest, blogfest, or what-have-you, feel free to add it in the comments. 

Knowledge Gap

Last week was a holiday week, so no new stories. Time to dip into the archives. This I first posted on November 27, 2007. 

6th period I was covering an English class. They were finishing up a short story. One of the main characters' names was Marilyn, and the students couldn't pronounce it.

"Marilyn, as in Marilyn Monroe," I explained.

"Who?"

"Isn't there a teacher named...?"

"You've never heard of Marilyn Monroe?" I asked the class.

They claimed that they hadn't. This surprised me. I thought she was an icon.

Earlier in the day, I happened across two students having an argument. I got pulled into it.

"She doesn't think that Bruce Lee is the best martial artist of our generation," the boy explained.

"Your generation?" I asked. "Isn't Bruce Lee dead?"

(Note: this boy was born no earlier than 1993.)

"Fine, in this century, then," the boy said.

"Didn't he die in the '70s?" I asked.

This exasperated the boy. I let him have his initial point, though. If he thought Bruce Lee was the best, then so be it.

So, same day. They know Bruce Lee, they don't know Marilyn Monroe. Scary.

By my post counter, I see that this is post number 2¹⁰. Because I'm that sort of geek. I just though it was cool.

Unexpected Reaction

It's hard to know what will rile them up.

Last Friday I covered an 8th grade US history class. The assignment was to start watching a movie.

Gideon's Trumpet. "Old" but in color. They had questions to answer. Good classes, so I only had occasional bursts of chatter.

(Looking for links for this post, I stumbled across the whole movie posted to YouTube. So, in case you're curious and have an hour and 45 minutes to spare...)


But what's interesting about showing a video is what the kids react to. Every period had the strongest reaction to one scene. (It starts at about 28:48 in the video.)

It's night. Some prisoner wants to arm wrestle for "smokes". He's shirtless. And the students all reacted to the man's hairy chest. Strongly.

I'm not sure if they were shocked or disgusted. They reacted like it was the strangest thing that they had ever seen. It took some minutes before they'd settle back down again.

Then in subsequent scenes with shirtless and sweaty men, they reacted again. I pointed out that the movie takes place in Florida. It was probably hot.

We only got 49 minutes into it. I wonder what other shocks they'll encounter in the second hour. (Not that I'll ever know...)

How to Make a Bad Impression

We had been in class for maybe 10 minutes and I was done with Kenneth. Already, he had been out of his seat and roaming the room three times. He interrupted other students who were answering my questions. And he was twisted around in his seat so he could bother the student behind him.

When Kenneth let it be known (loudly) that I was boring him ("Can I just start now?") I knew it was time for him to go.

(To be fair here, we were reviewing literary terms such as plot, climax, resolution, character, and point of view. They'd gone over these terms before. They made flash cards. But the lesson plan said to review the terms again so they'd be ready for a test on Friday, and they were 8th graders which means that they won't really study on their own.)

"Take your work. Go next door." I even pointed in the direction I wanted him to go.

"Outside?"

"Next door."

45 minutes later, I got a phone call from another sub. Kenneth had just arrived. Also, he slammed into a desk, laughed, and disrupted that class.

Two thoughts occurred:

1. Why was I directed to send students out to a class with a sub?
2. Where had Kenneth been for 45 minutes?  

Not five minutes later Kenneth returned to retrieve his stuff. I asked him where he had been all period.  

"Outside. There is no next door."  

The room we were in was at the end of a building. There was no next door on one side. But on the other, the way I pointed...  

(By the way, I later figured out that the room I sent Kenneth to and the one he went to were not the same. He disrupted the class at the other end of the hall.)  

At this point I tried to collect his assignment (the thing he was supposed to be doing in the other classroom), but he wouldn't give it to me. Because, of course, he had not done it.  

Kenneth was pleased with himself. I could tell. He had put one over on the sub.  

Of course, Kenneth doesn't know me very well. Because as he was playing this game, I was mentally composing my note. (I debated whether or not a referral would have been better, but I figured he would just toss it and go to lunch as lunch was five minutes away.)  

I spent half of the next class period writing all of this down. I got the impression that this teacher is of the strict variety. Yeah, I wouldn't want to be in Kenneth's shoes that next day.  

Stalker

I mean me.

"Did we have math homework?"

6th period. 7th grade English. They had a packet on verbs and adverbs to work on. We spent a lot of time going over it with me giving examples.

It had been a strange day. Roving assignment. The schools have been doing these teacher trainings for about a month or so now. It's on campus and part day. They pull a bunch of teachers for a couple periods at a time--some for three, some for less than that.

For us subs, it means that we cover a couple different teachers in a day. This day I covered 7th grade history for three periods, pre-algebra for one period, and 7th grade English for one period.

The 7th grade history classes were fine. A bit loud. But on task.

Then the pre-algebra class was right next door. And about a third of the class had been in one of the history classes.

The English class was a bit farther than that. Not next door, but the rooms were within sight of each other. And, of course, I had a handful of students that I had encountered earlier in the day. It's like I was following them.

Bwahahahaha!

Stalking students. Another service I offer.

(By the way, the answer to the math homework question was no. She was asking me. Because I had been there.)

Visual Learner

I saw this purse in Interweave Knits Fall 2012 issue (not sure of the legalities of posting pics that are not my own, so I'll keep to posting links).

I'm not a big fan of doing color work, but then I saw that the myriad of color changes were achieved using only two different variegated yarns.

Curious, I figured I'd give it a try.

The pattern called for a new cast on. I read through the instructions. They might as well have been in Greek for all the sense they made. I read them, attempted to do as instructed...

(Those instructions are actually a bit better than the ones in the magazine. If I could post what was in the magazine, you'd see how impossible those instructions really are. If I had had access to these, I might have been able to do it. Lots of pictures helps.)

After 20 minutes of attempts, I realized there was no way I was going to figure it out. That's when I realized that there is another tool at my disposal: YouTube.



Why couldn't they just say this in the first place?

(Ain't technology grand? And that cast on is way cool--once I could see how it was done.)