Good Things.

So, those of you who know me know that I had one particularly awful day on Tuesday and that the fallout is still ... falling. I will post about it once all the chips are down. Anyways, the rest of the week was spent at different assignments at OHS and boy was I glad!! It's like going home. And the kids are so awesome. A few examples from today:

I wore my "Queen Bee" costume and got lots of laughs and compliments. I even got one "Your Highness." And a drawing!

Not bad for a 17 year old, right?

One of the girls dressed up as Tank Girl. So rad.

One of my former students offered to organize some sort of march on the school district office to get me my job back.

A special ed kid told me that there is an eagle in his head that is controlled by the GPS and other machinery in his glasses. Only not really! Ha ha!

AND one of my former co-workers bought me a beer after work. TGIF!

Back to Work!

Great vacation.

Anyhow, back at the salt mine:

Ms. GT: "Okay, let's work on that still life drawing!"

Cranky Student (C.S.) : "I don't wanna draw! This is hard!"

Ms. GT: "Well, yes, but this will make you a better artist if you try something new and challenging."

C.S.: "It doesn't matter for my art! I only draw manga."

Ms. GT: "Even manga artists need to know about shading, proportion, and drawing realistic objects that might be near the characters."

C.S.: "It makes my brain hurt!"

Ms. GT: "Good. It's supposed to."

At this point other students at the table start to snicker a bit.

Ms. GT: "If you told the PE teacher that benching made your arms hurt he would say the exact same thing. Exercise all your muscles."

C.S.: "But I don't wanna."

Ms. GT: "If there was a class in complaining you would have a 4.0."

C.S. "I wish there were. But I'm stuck here drawing."

Up, Up and Awaaaaay!

Just had 2 very nice days at AK8 Part Deux - a different K-8 school that the AK-8 teacher moved to which is also called .... AK-8. Anyways, I saw all grade levels, drew elephants and value scales and volcanoes, discussed "Washington Crosses the Delaware" at length, and somehow survived the technology classes too.

Tomorrow I believe I am taking off work and taking off in a plane! I'm hoping not to work but you never know if your favorite teacher will have an emergency. Then I'm headed to the East Coast without my laptop for a few days.

Ta ta!

F*#&ing Eels

Argh!

Teenagers can be such slippery, evil little eels. They wiggle out the door and are never seen again. Today I had to take second roll at the end of what should have been a fairly self-contained Spanish class because they kept slipping out rather than wait for the hall pass or because it is a nice Friday and they "don't wanna do Spanish!" Grr!!!!

Checkers

Played checkers in special ed class ...



... and lost.

I'm back!

Arrgh! Internet issues!! Finally resolved.

So, since the last entry:

SHS - Photography classes! Keeping an eye on a darkroom AND classroom with 35 squirrelly 10-12th graders is a challenge to say the least. Plus distributing materials, collecting money for replacement materials, and helping kids avoid major disasters like opening their film in the light.

SHS - Back to the digital media classes while Mr. U was ill. This time, working with faces in Photoshop - creating composite photos and altering their own faces into free-choice goofiness. At the end of one period I gave them the extra credit option to write a 5-page paper on the gender implications in the habit of the boys adding tons of facial hair to their own photos (one kid even made himself into a wolf-man-type-thing) and makeup to each others' photos. No one did it, but they thought it was funny that I asked them to.

OHS - Life Skills. This is a super-special ed classroom where we were pretty much self-contained for the whole day (3rd period they went to electives), working on things like drawing, numbers (via a game of Yahtzee), doing household chores (getting ready for lunch, cleaning up after, other duties), cursive, plus we went for a walk to the neighborhood park and read out a few chapters of "Percy Jackson." I had three aides but it was still exhausting!

SHS - Language Arts - super easy day of checking in homework and then popping in a movie - the juniors were watching "Guilty By Suspicion" in relation to "The Crucible" and "The Scarlet Letter," (I got to watch the emotional Senate hearing ending three times) and the seniors were watching "Good Morning Vietnam" in relation to "When Heaven and the Earth Switched Places," a Vietnam memoir.