Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Woodson Academy at Ron Brown Middle School's newest 9th Grade English teacher:

ME.

Tomorrow, at Ron Brown Middle School, 2 pm. If I get it...School starts Monday.

Hopefully, I am about to move really really fast.

Apparently DC Public Schools recruitment staff works late. At 11:30 p.m., I just got my email stating that I have been "Recommended". That is, I successfully passed my panel interview and may now talk to principals of individual schools and see about interviewing for specific positions. :D

My Honors class has decided they want to write a musical. This is obviously insane, which is why I feel I must do it. That, and because I keep hearing the chibi-Scott Walters in my head shouting about the need for NEW theater that is rooted in the community it's created for. And because it's a great opportunity for them to do cool things with ( Read more... )

So here I am, finishing up the last day of a very busy 1st semester. We'll be out of school for two weeks, and then we come back on my birthday to have regular class for two days before we go into the exam review schedule and then start taking finals. After all that business is finished, though, some excitement ensues: laptops ( Read more... )

Today, the remedial 9th grade class is taking their test on The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, by Ernest Gaines. Section III of the test reads as follows ( Read more... )

It's time for more excerpts from my students' essays. I'm running behind on grading, which is why these haven't made it here, like, a month ago. (Sorry, it's been a busy semester.) Anyway, from this year's Essays on Transcendentalism:

On Emerson's claim that "envy is ignorance" -

"Ignorance means you are rude and non-mannered. Things like ( Read more... )

A great answer on a vocabulary quiz for Pre-English:

unstable: not the smart.

Okay, so now that my initial OMGWTF at teaching Pre-English is over, I'm working on figuring out how to do it effectively ( Read more... )

So today the kids had a mini-project to go along with the novels they're reading. They had to pretend they were making the movie of their novel, and then pick four characters to find pictures of and cast actors in those roles. (If there's already a movie of their book, they were not allowed to use those actors.) Everyone was supposed to bring ( Read more... )