GranolaBox

This is what I get almost every June.

Filed under: Teaching on May 19th, 2011 | 1 Comment »

While showing the Iron Giant during my 11th grade US History Cold War lesson: Me: Can anyone give me words to describe Annie Hughes? Hogarth’s mother? Female Student: Hard working! Another Female Student: Single mom… Male Student: MILF!!!

Filed under: General Observations, Teaching on May 7th, 2011 | Add Comment! »

The quote “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying” is often misused. Jim Rome uses it a lot on his radio show. According “Jungle” lore, it was most famously used by a pro baseball coach who used it to encourage his team’s base runners to lead off bases more to and consequently steal more bases. [...]

Filed under: General Observations, Teaching on December 27th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

This is some advice I shared with one my students who just graduated… I thought others might benefit. Make sure, on your super duper mac book, that you have an organizer program, and USE IT. Better yet, if you can get a phone with an organizer that syncs to the computer. Put everything on that [...]

Filed under: Teaching on August 20th, 2009 | Add Comment! »

I’m in a weird state of mind about the way things are going. My conventional rose-coloured glasses wants to believe that the economic bailout will actually make a difference. I’m not basing this hope on anything rational, but there IS something to the power of positive collective thought. All the people whose opinions I really [...]

Filed under: EWAKI, Politics, Teaching on October 4th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Next year I get to teach AP United States Government and Politics. I’ve never taught the course, there’s no established curriculum other than what the college board wants me to teach, and I’ll have about 80 of my school’s best and brightest seniors who’ve signed up for the course. So many kids are taking the [...]

Filed under: Teaching on July 5th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

I think this is the first snow day we’ve had all year. The first thing you need to know about snow days for teachers is that most of us like them and look forward to them more than the students do. The reason is that not only do we get the day off, but we [...]

Filed under: General Observations, Teaching on February 11th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

This is the response from one of my tenth graders to a homework question Q: When foreign suppliers cut oil sales,or choose to sell their oil to other people, how should the United States respond? A: First we face them politically and talk about a solution and if that doesn’t work do what the US [...]

Filed under: Politics, Teaching on February 7th, 2008 | Add Comment! »

At the beginning of most of my American History lessons I play a song to get my students thinking about the lesson. Friday I was teaching about Alexander Hamilton’s financial plan and so I wanted to use the Pink Floyd song “Money.” My kids are high school juniors, and I’ve been teaching long enough to [...]

Filed under: Teaching on November 17th, 2007 | Add Comment! »

Two events conspired over the past couple weeks that have made me feel “pre-old.” For the last week of my summer vacation, I had all three of my daughters. With Small and the newly 10 year old medium, it was pretty much business as usual. My 12.8 year old daughter though, is showing signs of [...]

Filed under: General Observations, Teaching on September 22nd, 2007 | 1 Comment »