Countdown TAKs/T/F

I think I should apologize for not blogging this weekend, but after submitting grades, I distinctly remember looking at my computer to make sure that it was actually Sunday, and not Saturday night as my body hoped it was. The weekend felt altogether much too short, but looking back on it, the week should not have been that taxing. Monday was a "Staff Development Day" which is always a humbling experience because I get to put on my student cap again and see what it's like to sit around in the same room for 8 hours with nothing but my imagination and some type of learning objective. Yes, I doodled, and no, the trainer didn't get on my case about it. I brought work to grade in the break periods, as grades were due by the following Monday. I felt like I wouldn't have gotten away with my behavior in my class, but when I think about it, I don't really bother my kids too much. I try to keep them on task, but if they really don't want to work, I don't force it. I have a few students that work the best when they doodle, so I make sure that they have enough paper to learn and to play. I'm not a big fan of angry kids, and I don't see a point of making kids angry if they don't see the point of an assignment. It's usually not their fault they don't see a purpose to an assignment, it's mine. So if they give me attitude, I try to give them purpose, and more times than not, the attitude goes away. It works surprisingly well. I said usually because sometimes kids can be kids and really just not care at all and feel a need to rebel even if it's in their best interest NOT TO DO SO. At least I know the feeling and can empathize.
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I've put a large countdown on my board, showing the amount of school days left until TAKs, counting the current day. On Wednesday, the kids will be on 15. I feel more than a little bittersweet that I will be leaving for 2 of these days to go to the True/False Film Festival. Yes, I will be leaving the weekend before TAKs, and I will only have one day with the kids, but I had already booked the trip and I had told my administration about the trip before I was even hired and they didn't have a problem with it. I still feel like I'm letting down the kids, but at least I'm doing my darndest to make sure they are super-prepared well before the day I leave.
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I've got too many funny kid stories to count from this last week. I really felt like I enjoyed my job more than usual, and I only have the kids to thank. I don't know if it's because of the countdown and the greater "sense of urgency" but they seem on-task, or at least are more entertaining when they are off-task. Well, I'll tell one story...

So I have 68 Limited English Proficient or "LEP" students, and in one class that has a majority of LEP students, we were reading a poem called "Skinny Tomboy Kid". I was having the students focus on descriptive words, specifically those that pertained to the character. When we came to tomboy, my non-LEPs understood, but one my LEP students thought "tomboy" meant "lesbian" and said so in class. He was not joking at all, it was just an honest to goodness misunderstanding. As you might imagine, I had to clear up the definition of tomboy for the student, and told the class that "tomboy" was not the same as "lesbian" because a tomboy was a girl who liked to do boy things, like play sports, games, and maybe fight. When I said this, one of my athletic LEP girls gasped, got really red, and the whole class burst into laughter, because clearly she thought that by playing sports, everyone thought she liked girls instead of boys. I quickly recovered by asking every girl in the class if they have P.E., which they do, and asked them if they played sports. They all said yes, and I said, "well, technically you all are tomboys. The word doesn't have the same meaning as it used to because it's more acceptable for girls to play sports and do anything boys do without being judged for it." The class stopped its giggles as they finally understood, but I still crack myself up if I think about the whole situation again.
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I leave you all with one last nugget of awesomeness. I urge you to check out the website www.freerice.com. It's an amazing website where you are given multiple choice questions asking you to determine the correct meaning of a given word. There are TONS of words, so it's great to build your vocabulary, but the best part is that for every word you get right, the website donates 20 grains of rice to feed hungry nations. I checked it out, and the site is legitimate, as it takes the ad revenues generated from each ad (at the bottom of each question) and uses them to buy the 20 grains of rice. It's the absolute COOLEST idea I've ever heard of. Being able to enrich your own mind while helping to feed the hungry is probably the most worthwhile internet minutes you could spend. So check it out, test yourself, and get to feeding some hungry nations!