Donate Now …because today is the SECOND SNOW DAY IN ONE YEAR! This is unprecedented in NYC history – today is only the fourth snow day in the past six years. The snow also canceled the parent-teacher conferences that were supposed to happen last night. I like to think that it is my karmic repayment…

Donate Now After a year and a half of teaching, a kid spontaneously puked at my feet today. That is all I have to say.

Today we learned about the skeletal system. I had to shoot down about a million “boner” jokes, ranging from the subtle (“are there certain bones that can grow really fast?”) to the not (“BOYS HAVE A BONE IN THEIR PENIS!”). Ugh. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve been spending lunch with Miranda recently…

The one drawback to offering kids popcorn and a movie as an incentive is that you end up having to watch a lot of lame movies – I have seen Twilight five times, which I’m pretty sure would be more effective than waterboarding at getting suspected terrorists to talk. Anyways, I stayed after today to…

After having an awesome break and getting the BEST VALENTIME EVER, I was feeling pretty relaxed heading into school today. I just had a great vacation, there’s only five weeks until spring break, in general there’s a lot to be happy about… Until I got to school and saw That Jackass Tito, of brought-a-gun-into-school fame,…

I know I don’t usually post during breaks, but look what a student just emailed me!!!

(I found out today that pretty much all my bilingual students think that’s what the holiday is called.) I really hate Valentine’s Day at school (or in this case the Friday before Valentine’s Day), because the kids are all running around exchanging carnations and cheap chocolate and are just completely cracked out on middle school…

In addition to being the BEST SNOW DAY EVER, yesterday was also supposed to have been Wacky Wednesday for spirit week. Today was Career Day, and since the students weren’t allowed to dress up as rappers or sports stars they mostly dressed very formally (some even in suits!) as doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, etc… You know,…

I started off today grumpy because I got to bed later than I wanted to last night, and I am a big baby and don’t do well with less than eight hours of sleep. Then I got to school, only to find the building swarming with firemen and everyone huddled together in the gym. Apparently…

I called a student’s mom today at the number I’ve reached her at before, was answered by a feminine voice, and proceeded to address the person I was talking to as “Mrs. ___” for a good five minutes before the person stopped me to say, “This is actually Shatoya’s father.” I wanted to die. On…

1. There was a big hullabaloo before school even started today, because after school (and off school grounds) yesterday a group of three seventh and eighth grade girls jumped and beat the crap out of another eighth grade girl – it was so bad that the police had to be called. I teach or have…

My sister is visiting me for a few days, and today she came to school with me. I was afraid that some kid would have a screaming meltdown and really embarrass me, but they actually went out of their way to be good and impress her! A few times some kid would start to act…

I realize I already whined yesterday about the scantron machine, but permit me one more thing to bitch about – the students have technology on the first floor, because that’s where the computer lab is, so if a class has technology after you you have to line them up and walk them down the stairs.…

Remember my epiphany about being able to access the school scantron last year? I have since become dependent on it for my system of grading tests and tracking student mastery of individual standards – each set of five questions covers one standard, so I can quickly look at each kid’s scantron and see their percent…

At the end of last school year, my AP came up with a proposal to take 15 then-sixth-graders who had been held back at least once and continue to have behavior/academic issues and put them into a special class called “7+.” The class would be taught only by the most veteran teachers (including the AP…