Donate Now Sorry for not posting yesterday, the plan was to fly to Chicago after school and then post from there, but instead I got stuck sitting on the tarmac for three hours thanks to Chicago’s awesome weather. By the time I finally got in I decided sleep was more important. Yesterday was pretty uneventful,…

Donate Now Not at school, at my apartment – it’s currently dark and cold, and I’m using a complicated web of extension cords from the one functioning outlet in my kitchen to power my router and a desk lamp, while trying to pack for winter break by the light of my cell phone. So this…

I found out of the weekend that two of my students are suspended until September 2010 for bringing a BB gun to school on Friday. I can’t say I’m sad to have seen the last of one of them, who constantly hits other kids, picks fights, and often refuses to even pick up a pencil.…

We recently had a project funded on Donors Choose, and got a ceiling mounting kit for our classroom projector. This is awesome because our projector currently sits on a bulky cart, which takes up a bunch of space in the middle of the room and gets bumped every five seconds, which results in all the…

One of my classes has decided that for Christmas they want to get my Bill Nye. As in, they want to assemble all the notes they’ve taken on his videos and send them to him along with my phone number, at which point he’ll be so impressed that he’ll call me and we’ll get married.…

We had a special after school incentive trip today; we picked two kids from each class to bring to the Dave and Buster’s in Times Square, then to the tree at Rockefeller Center. It was a bit insane trying to drag two dozen kids through Times Square during rush hour, but fortunately we didn’t lose…

I decided to do a lesson on extreme weather, thinking that if I explained how tornadoes/tsunamis/hurricanes actually happen it might calm some of my students’ 2012 fears. Big mistake. All I got all day long were variations of “BUT WHAT IF THERE IS A HURRICANE OF TORNADOES?!?!” and “WHAT ABOUT IF YOU HAVE TO GO…

I didn’t want to start unit four only to have it be cut in half by winter break, so I decided to do a week-long mini-unit on weather. Weather is supposed to be covered in sixth grade and is tested on the eighth grade state science test, but given that there is no sixth grade…

Okay, I know I don’t usually post on the weekend, but look what just showed up in my inbox! Subject: Happy First Day of Hannukah! I might not be Jewish, but to pass on to one of my favourite teachers who’s Jewish. Happy First day OF Hanukkah!

I have noticed that my students like to whine for the sake of whining. Ms. L and I switch off between the lab and the classroom depending on which of us needs which room for the day’s lesson, so my students don’t always know which room they’ll be in on a given day. If I…

I stayed up all night coughing, took NyQuil and slept for twelve hours, then woke up to the following email: Why weren’t you here today? Some man gave us “work” that he collected. I was bored and inattentive. Are you sick or something? And are you coming tomorrow? I’d really like to know because I…

I meant to write about this on Monday but totally forgot, so pretend this is from two days ago. Whenever I give a unit test, I always put a word search on the back with vocabulary words from the unit. Not very high level, I know, but the kids who finish early need something to…

I cannot convey how much I love Miranda. She is in a pretty rowdy class, but no matter what her classmates are doing she just rolls her eyes at them and keeps on going with her work. And her work is awesome. When I assign short answers, she writes mini-essays. When I assign simple review…

Today was our unit 3 test, so not much to report except for that one student, due to a rather spectacular combination of not knowing the material and deciding to test my “I take points away if you talk during a test” policy, ended up with a -5%. Also, I’ve started to notice that certain…

Despite my still-aching thigh, today was actually a pretty fun day. We played review jeopardy to get ready for our unit test on Monday, and the kids were able to get very into it without going competition-crazy (as sometimes happens with games). It was one of those nice days when I actually felt like a…

I kicked off first period by walking straight into a desk, which I’ve done before but never with such vigor. I spent the entire rest of the day rubbing my sore thigh, and when I got home there was a huge gross bruise on it. Not that any of you people care, since no one…

Well, not really. But I did the showing convection currents using hot, dyed water demo today, and in one class I accidentally knocked over the little jar of hot red water onto myself. I kind of yelped, mostly with surprise. But I had just made a big deal about all of the kids staying away…

I have this super-annoying kid named Jorge, who never shuts up, sits down, or stops throwing paper balls. He is very aware of his annoyingness, and sometimes says things to me like “It’s okay, Ms. Rubin, you can admit that sometimes you just want to squish my head.” But yesterday we had a big breakthrough…