Working for the weekend

Man, is it nice to sleep in on Saturday (unlike my poor wife who had to get up and go to a math training today).

A few quick hits today.

First, speaking of my wife, we had an ultrasound done last Friday, and it was pretty spectacular to see our little 8-week-old wingnut, looking like a little spaceship from the old arcade game Defender. He's got a pretty huge head, and a really rapid heart beat. I'm guessing he'll be a ten-pounder at least, like his old man.

Next up, a friendly reminder and request to everyone who got a free copy of Learn Me Gooder a few weeks ago. Please don't forget to write a review online when you are finished. So far, only about 3 people have made good on that exchange. Thanks to those 3!!

I encourage everyone to check out the current Carnival of Education over at Bell Ringers. Carol is great about including posts from Learn Me Good, even when I forget to submit one! Thanks, Carol!

The Teachers Certification Degrees site has included Learn Me Good on its list of Top 50 Elementary Teacher Blogs. It's really just an honor to be nominated.

And finally, a few quick hits from the week at school:

-- The "Fruits and Vegetables" program has been upped to TWO days a week this year. So yesterday at around 2, we were asked by PA (it was either the 2nd or 3rd of about 5 announcements in the afternoon, but we're very "flexible" that way) to send a couple of kids to the cafeteria to get the veggies and then to let the kids eat them in class. This is because the kids have proven a tendency to use the veggies as projectiles when allowed to take them on the bus. My two gophers returned with buckets to broccoli and cauliflower. YUMMY!!
Oh, and the stuff was STILL all over the floor in the 5th grade hallway at the end of the day.

-- We practiced measuring, with a tape measure, this week. The kids enjoyed it. We measured body parts (get your mind out of the gutter) and then turned that data into bar graphs. In fact, I was in the process of demonstrating how to measure the circumference of one's thigh when the fruit and vegetable announcement came on. I now have proof that my thigh is bigger around than most kids' heads.

-- In my latest attempt to get my homeroom to actually participate in class, I made an appeal to the "excellent students" in the class. Without naming any names, and without visibly averting my eyes from kids I know NOT to be excellent students, I asked the "excellent students" in the class to please help me out by actively monitoring their partners while we did boardwork. I think this may have helped a bit. We'll see.

-- The kids SEEMED to grasp how to make change after we practiced, practiced, practiced nearly all day Monday and Tuesday, but on the quiz I gave yesterday, it became clear that most of them had forgotten again. In a scenario where two apples are being bought for 65 cents each, and a $5 bill is being produced to pay for them, a couple of kids STILL tried to add 65 + 2, many kids added the two apples but left that as their answer (not the change received), and a few still think you should subtract items you are buying. In this case, that means 65 - 65, resulting in the opinion that ONE apple costs you money, but buying TWO apples gets you both of them for free.
Is it any wonder our economy is in the toilet?

October quick hits

Catching up time here. I've either been too busy, despondent, or hungry to post much lately, and a little housekeeping is in order.

First of all, I have put the Kindle edition of Learn Me Gooder and the Nook edition of Learn Me Gooder on sale for only 99 cents through this coming Sunday, October 9. If you haven't snatched it up yet, please do so now, and tell all your friends that have an e-reader!

Secondly, a big thank you to those of you who have made good on your end of the free-book-for-a-review swap that I offered last week. I really appreciate it! And for anyone who is able, please copy your review onto Amazon.uk.co! Thanks!

Nextly, Carol of Bellringers was kind enough to include one of my posts in the latest Carnival of Education, so here's a little linky love for the Carnival.

Lastly, a big shout out to Paula at Dailycheapreads.com who featured Learn Me Gooder on her site today! If you have a Kindle, you HAVE to have dailycheapreads bookmarked!

Who wants to read?

I've been thinking it over lately, and I've decided to go ahead and do it. It worked (somewhat) with the first one, so maybe it'll work with this one.

From now through the end of September (that means midnight this Friday), I will email a copy of Learn Me Gooder to anyone who sends me an email (learnmegood2 AT yahoo DOT com) asking for one. The catch is, I am asking you, if you do read that email copy, to then write a review of it on Amazon and/or B&N.com

Of course, if you REALLY like it, I'd love it if you spread the word to friends and family (yours, not mine), join my facebook page, request a copy at your local library(s), and write letters to Entertainment Weekly asking them for a 2-page spread featuring my books.

But I'm going on good will and honesty here, so if you ask for a copy, I'm trusting you to follow through with the review later. Good or bad. Just honest.

Thanks in advance, and you're welcome in advance.

Identity Crisis

The second week of school is off with a bang. A kid fell down in front of me today and somehow lost his pants -- seriously, there was suddenly a full butt staring us all in the face. Another kid told me that it's probably ok to inhale strange chemicals in science class because you might get super powers. One of my little girls who can barely be heard when she speaks in class was the one yelling at the top of her lungs in the bathroom after lunch.

A relatively short post today, so I thought I'd supplement it with a freebie chapter from Learn Me Gooder (available now!). Thankfully, I haven't had anyone this year that doesn't seem to know their own name, but I certainly did once...

Date: Monday, September 14, 2009

To: Fred Bommerson

From: Jack Woodson

Subject: Identity Crisis

Hey bud,

That’s right, I called Priya a time sink. Heat sinks, which we are intimately familiar with, draw away heat from a source. Time sinks, like certain children I know, draw away valuable min-utes from a lesson, dispersing them to the four winds, never to be reclaimed again. My time sinks are highly efficient, too!

Once again, it’s Monday, and as some people my parents’ age once sang – Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day. As opposed to Friday, which I would trust with my life, my banking password, and my vintage Star Wars action figure collection.

Still, the Mondays of this year, as well as most every day, have been made brighter by a certain ray of sunshine in my class. Her name is Katie, and she always seems to have a smile on her face. There have been several mornings when I have been ticked off well before 8:15 am – kids not having their homework, kids somehow needing to trade pencils ten times in ten minutes, kids insisting a triangle has four sides – and when I’ve walked around the room like a sourpuss. On these occasions, Katie always has a way of looking up from her morning work, catching my eye, flashing her brilliant smile, and then going right back to work.

After that, there’s just no way I can remain angry. At least not until Lakeisha opens her mouth again.

If Katie is the ray of sunshine, then the new kid I got today is the flashlight beam through murky water.

Ever since school started, I’ve been hearing about this new kid that I was supposed to get named Kevin. He’s a special ed kid, so Ms. Hamm and Miss Knox have been coordinating things and heralding his arrival.

First, it was, “Kev will be here on Thursday.” Then, “Kevin will be here next Tuesday.” Finally, “We’re really not sure why Kev isn’t here yet.”

At long last, Kevin showed up today. I saw the new kid in my line this morning, and I greeted him warmly with the name I had heard most often. “Hi! You must be Kev!”

DaQuayvius immediately corrected me – “It’s Kevin!”

I sometimes think DaQuayvius must have thirty fingers, because he seems to have a finger in everyone’s business. I have no doubt he knows Kevin’s entire life story after spending a mere twenty minutes with him in the gym.

I gave DaQuayvius a quick stink eye then asked the new boy, “What do you prefer to be called, Kevin or Kev?”

He mulled it over then answered, “Well, sometimes people call me Kevin, and some people call me Kev. But my real name is Anferny. My mom just likes how Kevin sounds.”

Not once had I heard the name “Anferny” mentioned in any discussions about this kid, so I had my suspicions. I asked him, “So what should I call you – Kevin or Kev?”

He replied, “Anferny.”

OK, we have a winner. For the next thirty minutes, I called him Anferny. “Anferny, do you have a pencil?” “Anferny, come and get a math journal.” “Did you learn how many cents are in a dollar at your old school, Anferny?”

At about half past eight, Miss Knox dropped by to see how the new kid was doing. When I told her about the name change, her mouth dropped, and she took “Anferny” out into the hallway to speak with him. A couple of minutes later, they came back into my classroom, and the little boy said to me with a sheepish grin, “You can call me Kev now.”

Oooooookay...

If this happens again tomorrow, I’m going to make an executive decision and start calling him Doofenshmirtz.

After helping “Kev” with his identity crisis this morning, it seemed a little anti-climactic that our after school staff meeting would be all about the Campus Crisis Plan. Back in mid-August, we were each given a document roughly the size of the Greater Chicago Area phone directory and told to memorize it. This document was the Crisis Plan, and in brief, it tells us what to do in the case that a crazed gunman or bomb-toting maniac wanders into our school. Basically, we lock the doors, pull the blinds, and cower beneath our desks. Oh, and we are also supposed to slide a special green laminated card under our door into the hallway, telling everyone that we are A-OK.

Not surprisingly, many of us were wondering just who was going to see that sign, if we were all locked in our rooms. Are we putting out the sign for the benefit of the maniac stalking the halls? If so, should it really be the green sign, or the red “All is NOT OK” card? Or do we slide out the green one, and then once the maniac starts trying to break down our door, slide out the red one – real subtle-like?

In order to test our new knowledge, we played a mock version of Jeopardy. Hopefully, I am not the only one who saw the irony in this.

Not that it’s a bad idea to have a crisis plan on hand. It might have been nice to have one at HPU that time the guy crashed his cocaine-laden SUV into the corner of our offices and then ran off into the sand pit next door. Though it was exciting for all of us to stand around on the delivery dock in back watching the police search the area with dogs and helicopters, I think that if there had been a crisis plan in place, you never would have dared me to rip my shirt off and run wildly across the parking lot. Of course, if I had taken your dare, I doubt I would be here writing you this email right now.

I might instead be trying to convince some scary person that my name really is Anferny as I subtly slide a red laminated card under the door.

See ya later,

Dan Jerzone

The day is here!

It's finally August 22, 2011!! This is a red-letter day for two reasons. Number 1, it's the first day of the new school year, and I have either:

a) met my new kids and had a great day getting to know them.
b) flopped through my lesson plans and barely survived the day.
c) gone stark raving mad and run, mouth foaming, up and down the hallways shouting, "The British are coming!"
d) all of the above.

Ideally, the first day will go smoothly with few or no issues. I'll report back on that tomorrow.

The other reason this is a big day is that Learn Me Good is (OFFICIALLY) released! Some astute readers actually noticed that it was released on Saturday (wanted to be sure it was released on time), but today is the OFFICIAL publication date. Here are a few links:

To get a paperback copy, go here.
To get a Kindle copy, go here.
If you're in the UK, go here.
To get the Nook copy, go here.
To see a funny Batman dog video, go here.


Big thanks to Candy of Candy's Raves for already putting up the first (and unarguably the best so far) review already! :)

And thank you to everyone else who has or who will spread the word about the new book release!

Meet the Teacher night

Only 4 more days till Learn Me Gooder hits the (virtual) shelves!! YAY!! My principal never did give me approval to post my flier above the sign-in clock in the office, so I taped it to the refrigerator door in the teacher's lounge. I'm not sure that many people have seen it, because not a lot of my coworkers have mentioned that they'd like to order a copy (not that they necessarily would even if the flier was staring them in the face). Still, I'm excited that it'll only be a few more days!

In the meantime, my classroom still is nowhere near ready (though I am LOVING the "freezer room"). I have all day tomorrow to get things in shape, and I'll probably need the whole day.

Tonight, I was at the school till 7, with the last 3 hours being Meet the Teacher Night. Last year, we didn't have much of a turnout, so I was able to use most of that time to continue working on my room. This year, though, we had a near-steady flow of parents and kids come talk to us. My new partner taught 2nd grade last year, so he knows a lot of these kids, and he said that we have a whole lot of low academic students. Oh well. Nowhere to go but up, right?

It's the final countdown

OK, it's really just one of many countdowns, but there's no cool techno-cheesy song with that title.

We're only ONE WEEK away from the release date of Learn Me Gooder!! Can I get a WHOOP, WHOOP?

Of course, we're only one week away from the first day of school, as well. Can I get a D'OH, D'OH?

The kids don't show up for another week, but today is actually the first day back to school for most of us, as our week of staff development begins. Here's hoping I will have plenty of time to work in my classroom, as I've been moved (along with most of the rest of the school). This will be my 5th classroom in 9 years, and I will be working with my 7th partner in that time. Geez, do I stink or something?

In hindsight, I probably should have started weaning myself off of the 2am bedtimes a few weeks ago, but it's too late for that now.

Here's to a great beginning of the 2011-2012 school year to everybody out there!

Cover me!

Here it is! The final cover, front and back! My special effects wizard was able to turn the chalkboard green!

Release date set!

I've decided to release Learn Me Gooder on the first day of the new school year in Dallas. So LMG2 will be out an available on AUGUST 22, 2011!!

Please buy it on that day! Please tell your friends to buy it on that day! Please write a note to your local congressman asking him or her to buy it on that day! Let's shoot for the top 10 on Amazon, people! (Or maybe the top 1,000 even?) :)

Let the countdown begin!

Cover me!

Had a really fun photoshoot with my nephew the other day, and today I've been playing around with concept ideas.

Here are a few mockups that I really like.

So it begins...

I am an obsessive, I will admit that up front. This applies to many (or most) things in my life, but today I'm particularly focusing on writing. Given my druthers, I would probably keep tweaking drafts over and over and over, and never actually getting anywhere.

So I am going to draw the line somewhere. I had what I thought was my final draft, and I even sent it out to several friends and family members for proofing and feedback. The good news is that the feedback has been good, and I am relatively satisfied that Learn Me Gooder does not in fact suck.

My crack team of editors has also pointed out several excessive commas, misspellings, missing punctuation marks, and even a completely incorrect reference to a Bible verse (I'm Catholic, what can I say?). I am exceptionally thankful for my readers, and I am looking forward to hearing from the ones that haven't finished reading yet.

However, my obsessive nature makes (made) me feel like it JUST. WASN'T. GOOD. ENOUGH. YET.

So I've been tweaking again.

This might tick off my beta readers, when they find out that the draft they've read or are reading is like an obsolete iphone 3G, with the 4G being released. BUT, this is where I'm drawing that line that I spoke of earlier.

I've been going through the manuscript one LAST time, adding details here, scrubbing lines here, making transitions smoother here. I think I'm going to have to be happy with this (truly) FINAL draft.

I'm only in September of this last draft, so I still have some work to do (and there's the whole matter of the cover, the blurb, etc), but ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages...

I give to you the opening chapter of Learn Me Gooder:
(please hold your applause -- or unbridled fury -- till the very end)

Date: Monday, August 24, 2009

To: Fred Bommerson

From: Jack Woodson

Subject: Here we go again

Fred! My man!

Long time no talk, buddy! Wait, I talked to you on Saturday, right? But it’s been a long time since I e-mailed you from my classroom! What’s that you say – I’ve NEVER e-mailed you from my classroom? That’s because the portable classrooms outside didn’t have Internet access, but this year – wait for it – I’m inside the main building, baby!

I’m very pleased to report that the third grade will no longer be treated like steerage on the Titanic! No more sloshing through puddles when it rains just to get to the cafeteria. No more braving the freezing cold in February during restroom breaks. No more families of raccoons living (and sometimes dying) underneath the classroom floor.

Being inside will be fantastic. But I have so much more to talk about than just the new digs. Today was the first day of the brand new school year, and it’s amazing how I still get the first-day jitters, even with seven years of experience under my belt. I got into bed at ten o’clock last night, but I know I didn’t fall asleep before two. When I DID sleep, I had dreams where I was in class but couldn’t talk. When I opened my mouth, all that came out was a bleating trumpet sound, ala Charlie Brown’s generic adult. Not a very restful night, but I was up and at the school at seven anyway, ready and raring to go.

My morning started in the moshpit of our gymnasium, where all of the students and most of their parents had been packed in like sardines, waiting for the teachers to pick up their classes. I waded in to the gym, and it occurred to me that I must not be doing things right as a teacher because every year, they send me brand new kids and tell me to start over!

As I made my way through the maddening crowd, one lady stopped me and asked, “Excuse me, are you Mr. Woodson? Do you have Lakeisha Jefferson in your class?”

I consulted my class roster, and sure enough, there she was. Upon hearing the news, Ms. Jefferson seemed pleased that I would be teaching her daughter. A little TOO pleased. After witnessing a lengthy victory dance and the fourth violent hip thrust, I was starting to feel slightly uncomfortable with just HOW pleased she seemed to be.

She explained, “Lakeisha can be a handful sometimes, but I think she’ll behave better for a male teacher.”

Oh, joy! That’s a theory I can’t WAIT to test!

Once I had rounded up my students and taken them to my classroom, I was able to observe a few of the other kids. I have a boy named Jacob who is only 7 years old. Typically, third graders begin the year at age 8 and turn 9 at some point. Sure, we get our fair share of retainees who turn 10 (or, in one or two instances, 11) in the third grade. And I’m not even counting Alhambra, who turned 16, because he was clearly at the wrong school. But Jacob will only TURN 8 this year! He’s a baby among babies! He does seem relatively bright, though.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Nestor (who is already 9), who can barely read or write. He already has me extremely worried.

This morning, I started the kids off with the usual first day activities – partial differential equations. Just kidding, they were doing the simple little “tell me about yourself” worksheets. Favorite color, favorite movies, names of family members, etc. I noticed Nestor following a pattern. He would ask his neighbor, “What does this say?” Then he would scribble something on his paper. “What does this say?” Scribble.

I wandered over and glanced at his paper. On every line, he had written the same thing, which was not even a real word.

“What is your favorite book?” “OGO”

“How many brothers and sisters do you have?” “OGO”

“What is your best friend’s name?” “OGO”

Clearly, I was not going to glean any personal information from Nestor’s entrance questionnaire. So I decided to use an alternate assessment to gauge his number sense. I gave him a blank sheet of paper and asked him to write down the numbers in order, as high as he could count. I watched as he wrote 1, 2, and 3, then I walked away to see how some of the other kids were doing. After about three minutes, Nestor raised his hand and motioned me over.

He asked, “What comes after R?”

At that moment, I experienced an ice cream headache without having actually consumed any ice cream.

As you can see, I’ve got my work cut out for me here. Nestor’s counting woes already make me think back to Hernando from a few years ago, who ALWAYS thought “catorce” came next when counting. Whenever we had a little free time, we would break out the counting cubes and practice in his native language.

“Uno, dos, tres. . . What comes next, Hernando?”

“Catorce?”

It’s possible that Bono of U2 was hanging around my portable that year and used Hernando as an inspiration for the opening to “Vertigo,” but somehow I doubt it.

There are two girls named Anna in my homeroom this year. They’re quite easy to tell apart, though. One of them is super short, and the other has an unusually deep, raspy voice. Both seem intelligent and well behaved, so I’m pleased to have both “Tiny Anna” and “Smoker Anna” in my class.

My afternoon class started the day in Mrs. Bird’s classroom (she’s my partner this year). One of her introductory activities was having the kids write their answer to the question, “How did you spend your summer?”

I looked at a random paper this afternoon, from a little girl named Betsy, and I was pleased to see that it started with, “It was fun, we went to Six Flags and Cici’s Pizza, and I got a new puppy.”

That’s so much better than if it had said, “My dad got caught trying to smuggle illegal fighting llamas into the country, so we visited him every Thursday from two to four at the Brownsville County Lockup. Also, my new puppy smells like paint thinner.”

Another girl in Mrs. Bird’s homeroom already feels comfortable enough to use a nickname in class. Her name is Gwenn, but on her papers, she wrote, “Priti Prinses.” I’m assuming she means Pretty Princess. I’m also assuming that’s a self-appointed nickname.

Well hey, I think the custodians want me out of here now, so I’m going to go home and find something to eat. Say hey to the gang there at Heat Pumps Unlimited for me. Let them know that my days of sleeping till noon are over.

At least until Saturday.

Talk to you later,

Newt B Ginnings

It is finished!

Hey everyone,

My "final" draft of Learn Me Gooder is finally finished! Now I've sent it out to a few "editors" for proofreading and feedback, and assuming they don't all say it is worse than Showgirls, I'll be that much closer to publishing!

In the meantime, as an extra incentive to get LMG2 out there even faster, I've decided to put Learn Me Good (1) on sale for 99 cents for the foreseeable future. I'm talking about the e-versions, so that's LMG for the Kindle, LMG for the Nook, and LMG on Smashwords.

If you already have a copy, please tell your friends and neighbors!

And happy 4th of July!

May sample post of Learn Me Gooder

Happy May, folks! There's barely a month of school left, and testing is over, so we are definitely in the home stretch!

Please don't forget to enter the Learn Me Gooder names contest, open till May 7. So far, there aren't many entries, so your chances of winning 500 free business cards are super!

Here is the latest advance screening sample chapter of Learn Me Gooder, coming soon to a store near you!

Date: Monday, October 5, 2009

To: Fred Bommerson

From: Jack Woodson

Subject: You are what you wear

Hey Fred,

Last Thursday marked the end of the first six-weeks grading period. Friday was Fair Day – State Fair, not “play impartially without cheating” – so there was no school. Preparing report cards would be SO much more fun if Nintendo would just hurry up and develop Gradebook Hero for the Playstation or Wii.

Today is the first Monday of October, and that means a big change in how we come to work. Summer dress code is officially over. Never mind the fact that it's still over 100 degrees outside, and even inside the classroom, I feel like a microwaved poodle. The HVAC units in our classrooms seem to have been cobbled together by drunk baby pandas in the 1950s, and they are just as likely to HEAT an already hot classroom as they are to cool it. Nevertheless, now that it's October, I'm required to wear a tie and a button down shirt. For me, this means a long-sleeve shirt, because I just can't bring myself to wear a short-sleeve shirt with a tie and look like I stepped out of the NASA Apollo program of the 1960s.

Our art teacher, Mr. Vann, decided a few years ago that he didn't like his tie hanging down into the clay/paint/whatever, so he started wearing a bow tie. This hasn't been challenged, so I'm thinking maybe I could start wearing a bolo and maybe be ok.

I know from experience that many other teachers around the district are not held to the dress code. I've been to plenty of off-site trainings and conferences where the other male teachers were wearing jeans and t-shirts. However, my principal is a stickler for the district dress code, so I have to follow suit.

Usually, the transition goes unnoticed, or at least uncommented on, by my students. This year, though, I received several compliments.

"Nice tie!"

"You look great today!"

"I like your shirt!"

"Handsome!"

"You look like a businessman!"

"Is that 10 pounds of crap in a 5 pound bag?"

Just so you know, I threw that last one in as an example of the kind of thing that was NOT said to me today. Everything was very positive!

We compared numbers today, deciding greater than, less than, or equal to. My kids seemed to grasp that pretty well for the most part. Of course, they really sank their teeth into the whole “alligator mouth eats the greater number” mnemonic. Literally. Almost all of them drew the inequality signs complete with jagged teeth, forked tongues, and in some cases, fiery breath.

Mrs. Fitzgerald told me at lunch that one of the kids in her class looked at a problem where the two numbers were equal and declared, “The alligator don’t know which side to eat!”

Mrs. Bird also shared a funny story at lunch. She has been fed up with the rote, wooden, zombie-like nature of the kids' Pledge of Allegiance recital in the mornings, so today she had them write out the Pledge on paper. In addition to a myriad of misspellings, one thing really stood out to her.

Q had written (and I assume has been saying), "One Asian, under God…"

He must have forgotten where he lives, though he wasn’t the only one geographically confused today. On our walk out to the buses, J told methat when her dad gets out of jail (!), they are going to move away from the United States. I figured she meant moving to Mexico, so I jokingly asked her, “Oh, so you’ll move to Japan?” “No!” she answered. “The moon?” I asked. “No!”

When I asked her where they were going to move to, she replied, “To Miami.”

Talk to you later,

Carmen Sandiego