This week flew by for me. For me, personally, it was somewhat uneventful, but here are some highlights....
--Big administrative changes will be taking place at our school next year. I still haven't figured out how I feel about it. Sure, things could be much better, but things could also be much, much worse. I'm trying to think optimistically. I don't really feel comfortable saying more about it here.
--I managed to schedule "movie time" for all my classes this week so I could do more planning. Why do I feel guilty about that? They are all watching movie versions of plays they have just read---the juniors are watching A Raisin in the Sun and the honors classes are watching Death of a Salesman--and they all really seem to be watching the movies. I think I'm posting this because you're supposed to comment and say, "Amy, it really is okay that your students are watching movies this week." :) I've scheduled my first essay for my honors classes this coming week. I still don't know how I'm going to grade them, but I've got to get this figured out sooner or later. (Jen, how many hours of sleep do you get a night???)
--Speaking of A Raisin in the Sun...I'm shocked by how many of my students believe that racism no longer exists. They also believe there are no longer "white" neighborhoods and "black" neighborhoods. (Not all my students believe this...but many of them do, primarily the ones with the Gucci handbags and Apple iPhones.) These are the same students who refer to one of our football rivals as being located "in the ghetto." I think we could have a really interesting discussion about this in class, but frankly, I see so many ways it could go south that I'm afraid to probe the subject.
That's about it here. I don't have too many plans for the weekend, but that's fine with me.
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5 comments:
I get about six hours every night...
It's perfectly fine for you to be showing those two movies!!! Those movies aren't exactly HOW SHE MOVE! :) HAHAHAH
Your movie choices are definitely appropriate. It seems you are struggling with creating the ever-looming "rubric." I just don't know how we ever learned anything without rubrics and "learning focused" lessons that provide student learning maps (note my sarcasm). Why can't we just teach??
Jen, they'd probably enjoy HOW SHE MOVE so much more!
And Kristy, you don't even want to get me started on all that. Grading was so much simpler when I could write a few comments and slap a grade on...
How about teaching for 12 years with a master's degree, documenting great student gains, and then finding out your not "HQ" to teach any subject to SpEd on your own other than SS. I thought I taught SpEd, and not that I am SpEd!!! Talk about OFFENSIVE!! (I mean, I don't expect to teach high school calculus or honors Eng., but your telling me I can't collaborate with reg ed and plan so that I can "accelerate" and/or expose my kids to GPS?? Anywho, that's why I co-teach.
Hi Amy,
I found your site via Max and have been checking in every once and a while, but never commented. I really like the site!
My senior year AP English teacher did nothing but show movies and talk (they were Shakespeare plays, but still, we read nothing that year), so I think the occasional movie is perfectly appropriate, and you seem to have picked them perfectly. After all, plays are meant to be watched, not read.
Sadly, I can believe that your white students don't believe in racism. I wrote my grad school thesis on a Seattle City program to reduce Institutional Racism, so have been looking at the issue of white privilege a lot, and have realized that we (white people) often have a really hard time understanding it. It's like how men never believe that sexism still exists. It's especially hard in Seattle where almost everyone is liberal and hold this crazy belief that racism only exists in the South. (I'm from Virginia, and find that we're much more segregated here in WA than I was when in the South.)
Anyway, enough rambling. I just wanted to express some empathy and wish you the best.
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