Donate Now The back of my school is separated by a narrow alley from an apartment building. Today, in the middle of a lesson that was actually going quite smoothly for once, Taneya shrieked and pointed out the window. There was an obese naked man walking around in his apartment, apparently oblivious to the fact…

Donate Now Telling the kids my nose is runny because I have swine flu (really it’s allergies), then standing near the misbehaving ones and sneezing ominously. Forty days!

Today the seventh grade had a field trip to see Disney’s Earth. Personally, I thought it was awesome. The footage was amazing, the music was really nice, and I learned some cool new things – did you know that lions will attack full-grown elephants? Unfortunately, it was a bit much for the 12-year-old attention span,…

I have to be honest, when I first heard about the Bronx teacher who called in a bomb threat to his school I was a little jealous. I have a TFA friend who teaches there, they evacuated the whole building and almost all the kids got picked up early by their parents – he finished…

Me: I like to dip my french fries in milkshakes. Student: Ew, really? Strawberry or vanilla? Me: Actually, chocolate. Student: THEY MAKE CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKES?!?! Of all the things I have taught my students, I think this was the most important. Forty-three days…

Now I teach self-contained special ed! Well, sort of… Self-contained special ed means there are 12 students, 1 teacher, and 1 paraprofessional. Until recently, the seventh grade had two such classes, neither of which I ever taught. But one of the teachers left, and finding a replacement at this time of the year isn’t feasible.…

Robert walked briskly into the room while pumping his arms at his sides, then plopped down in his chair. Beth patted him on the back and declared, “Nice speed-walking!” Garth, a giant lump of a boy who has been held back several times and almost never talks, saved up enough points for me to take…

A new mixed drink, you ask? Nope, it’s what one of the science club kids thought the title of “Osmosis Jones” was. And he totally accepted that it had a bizarre name like that without question… makes me wonder what else they mishear but dutifully believe since I say it. Hmm. I had an oddly…

I was expecting the first day back from spring break to be absolutely heinous, but it ended up being quite tolerable. I actually found myself missing a select few students over the break, so having them to look forward to kind of offset having to deal with the students I was secretly hoping would move…

Today was the last day of school before our glorious, eleven-day spring break! We watched Osmosis Jones, which is surprisingly biologically accurate. Osmosis Jones is a cop/white blood cell inside Bill Murray, and he’s working with a cold pill to stop a virus from taking over the body. There are lots of cute little biology…

You know those Alltell commercials where the other cell phone companies are represented as huge dorks? Whenever I look at Gustavo, I can’t help but imagine him as the Hispanic equivalent of the Sprint dude. He wears polo shirts tucked into his belted slacks every day, and if the school had an A/V Club he…

Throughout the year, I’ve been going to the gym teacher when I have problems with students who play on the basketball team he coaches. He’s been really great at working with me to keep them on track in the classroom, via threatening to pull them from games if he gets a bad report But today,…

Spirit week culminated after school today with a teachers vs. students basketball game, and for the first time in my life I actually enjoyed watching a sport. Except I wasn’t enjoying it as a game of basketball so much as I was enjoying it as theater – it was incredibly entertaing to see some of…

Remember the “DAAAAAAAAADDY!!!!!!!” meme that I wrote about awhile ago? Now it has transformed into “DOOOODOOOO!!!” As in, the kids in this particular (and very cool, might I add) clique go around calling each other “Doo Doo” all day long. I even see them writing “Doo Doo Lists” in their notebooks, which list all their…

Actually, despite the ominous date, the worst a kid did to me today was tell me that I had something on my shirt when I didn’t – but it wasn’t even accompanied by a nose-flick when I looked down to check. I think they were being good for me today because I was the only…