Something to Cheer About?

Mrs. Eagle and I attended the NSTA conference in Nashville last weekend and had a wonderful time, picked up some fantastic ideas (as usual) and bought some really cool stuff.

On an aside, this was held at the Opryland Hotel which in May had something like 15' of water in it from the flooding.  It just opened about two weeks prior to the conference so we were eager to see how it had been repaired.  Oh.  My.  You would NEVER know that the building had been damaged so badly.  There was absolutely no sign of it.  The place was amazing!

In any case, one of the really cool things I bought was a Dr. Seuss book, Oh Say Can You Seed?  Okay, it's actually not written or drawn by the late Dr. Seuss, but his family has authorized the use of his characters for educational publications done in the Seuss style.  This book is all about flowering plants and since we were just finishing up our unit on flowering plants, I just had to have it.  It's nice when you can find neat things that actually align with your standards.  And this book is really well done from the science standpoint.

So, back at school, we finished up our review for our on Tuesday and I had time to read this book to them.  I used the document reader so they could see all the pictures up on the screen, and took the last few minutes of class to give the kids a dose of Dr. Seuss.

It always amazes me how seventh graders will become deadly silent and completely absorbed when you read to them.  I've often wondered if I'd get the same results if I was reading cereal boxes.  They still love picture books.  And they love being read to.  So I read to them and you could have heard a pin drop.

Amazing.  I must do this more often.

However, the funniest, and most surprising response was from my sixth period class.    I read the book, finished the last page, and closed it.

And they applauded.

I am not kidding.

They applauded.

It was the weirdest thing.  And truth be told, it made us all laugh.  And they said how much they enjoyed it.

But seriously, as a teacher, when was the first (or last time) you ever got a round of applause for what we do each and every day?

Amazing.

Wedding Bells

As luck would have it, one of my on-line friends and fellow blogger, Mr. Teacher, is getting married this week! (And if memory serves, he met the future Mrs. Teacher at an in-service! Sometimes they actually are worthwhile!) In any case, in honor of this momentous event, Mr. Teacher is offering a special deal on his book, Learn Me Good. If you haven't read this book, do so! It's hilarious and heartwarming and just a fun read for educators and non-educators alike. So scoot on over to his site, buy the book and help the young man pay for his wedding!

Reason Number 324 Why It's a Really Good Idea to Review Materials

One of the standards that we kept when The State revamped the middle school standards, was body systems. Our old book had very little on this subject so we were pretty tickled to see that the new book actually had a lot more information on the different systems.

And in some cases, too much information. Like the full color, gloriously accurate illustration of the male reproductive system. The book publisher, however, apparently realized that the pictures in the teacher edition (which is what we get to preview before during the Book Publishers Dog and Pony Show) were a bit too graphic. The student edition of the book has nothing but white space where the pictures (both male and female) used to be.

Now before everyone crawls all over me about how important reproductive knowledge is, and how we're censoring books and all that, please rest assured that we do teach this but in a less "graphic" way (and I might add that our standards don't even specify what body systems to teach, but rather that kids "understand how they are interrelated.") These kids have all gone through the birds and bees talks in lower grades, and in their health classes, although in each situation permission slips were sent home so parents could approve or disapprove. Quite honestly, I have no desire to teach the whole birds and bees thing with a bunch of immature seventh graders, especially considering that some of them may already know more than I do, while others are still playing with Barbies and are as naive as they come.

And I think parents should be teaching this to their children, rather than me, but I digress.

Today my kids were taking their social studies benchmark test and I'm keeping one eye on them (which is like watching paint dry) while I'm looking ahead to try to see what kind of materials we can use for our upcoming unit. Our workbook is wonderful, so I'm flipping through it when all of a sudden, I see The Picture. I'm sure my eyes just about popped out of my head, because that was the last thing I expected to see. They removed the picture from the textbook, but kept it in the workbook.

Mrs. Eagle and Mrs. Hummingbird came by for planning after the test and I showed them the page. They were astounded as well. Mrs. Hummingbird, who has seventh grader on my team was particularly astounded. "Oh gracious, there's no way I'd want my kid looking at that without permission."

"I can't believe they haven't found that," said Mrs. Eagle. "We would have heard the uproar and giggles if they had."

"Now what?" I asked. "Think we should show it to The Principal?"

"Oh yeah," said Mrs. Eagle. "She could use the giggle."

Suffice it to say, The Principal about fell out of her seat, and echoed Mrs. Hummingbird's opinion that she didn't want her daughter to see that picture, and Academic Coach (who has a seventh grade boy) said the same thing. Mrs. Sparrow, who is in charge of textbooks, and used to teach science, went white and said, "Oh good gracious, that would be highly uncomfortable to use in a classroom."

"Oh my word," said The Principal, "the kids would lose their minds if they saw that, and we'd have parents storming the office."

I think it was the parent response that had us the most concerned.

So, after the dance this afternoon, we spent a few minutes tearing this section out of the workbooks. Thank goodness that we keep workbooks in the classroom (if we let them leave the room they'd disappear in the black holes that are backpacks and lockers). It took all of fifteen minutes for us to get the pages torn out. They'll work well in my compost bin!

I'll Believe it When I See It

The first year I taught at The School we were lucky enough to get new science textbooks.

Except they didn't arrive until October.

And school started in August.

Every time we had a faculty meeting, a science teacher would wave his or her hand in the air and ask the soon to be infamous question, "Any news on when we'll get our science books?"

The answer, which our vice principal got from book distribution guys who most likely got it from a publisher rep who probably got it from a guy named Buddy who drove a truck was "They're on THE TRUCK."

We had no idea where THE TRUCK was and soon wildly exciting guessing games were going on about just, where, THE TRUCK was. Many felt that Alaska was a good guess. There was much joy and celebration when the new books, finally, arrived.

So this year, what with the standards changing and our old books having pretty much seen their better days, we are supposed to get new books. We've spent the whole year gearing up for the new books, going to publisher presentations, reviewing the sample copies, and eventually selecting the book that best suited our needs. And we were told that they would definitely be there in August, ready and waiting for school to start.

However.

None of us really, truly believed that. For one thing, there's always a BUDGET CRISIS and one of the first things that get yanked are new textbooks, and there had been rumors going around all year about the fact that we may just have to milk another year out of our old books. That was something none of us in middle school even wanted to contemplate since our standards got all switched around and our books were built around the old standards. One idea floated was to have a class set of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade books and just use whichever book had that particular standard in it. Fun.

And then, after our experience with THE TRUCK, whenever anyone said, "Oh, yes, they'll be there in August," we all snickered and laughed and kicked each other under the table at faculty meetings.

Sure they will. As I told my students last year, "I'll believe it when I see it."

I saw it.

Today Mrs. Eagle and I were coming back from lunch and walked in by the front office only to see a young man struggling to open a door and push in a huge cart with boxes stacked on it. We went and held the door open for him so he could get through, when Mrs. Eagle noticed the labels on the boxes.

"Hey, are those science books?" she asked him.

"Hum, I think so," he said. "I'm not really sure."

"Hang on, I want to read the label," I said and I checked the label out. "It's science books," I said. "But I can't tell what grade."

Since the young man didn't know where the book room was, we gleefully showed him the way...and made him open one of the boxes so we could see what was inside.

Glory Be! They were all seventh grade science books!!!

I think we may have scared him a bit when we started squealing and clapping our hands in excitement.

The Final Harry Potter Read Until You Drop-A-Thon

I finished my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last night at 11:06. Loved it, hated it, loved it. There's things I was definitely unhappy with (don't worry, I'm not going to spoil it for you) and things I loved about it. Overall, definitely worth ignoring housework for a few days while I plowed through it.

However, I hate the fact that it's over with. The anticipation of the next chapter in the saga of Harry and his friends was almost as good as finally getting the book in your hands and reading it. Now it's over and I'm kind of left a bit deflated. I honestly loved the world that J. K. Rowling created and truly will miss visiting there every book. Now what do we look forward to?

Sigh.