Happy V-Day! How did you celebrate?

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! It hardly even seemed like a holiday today, since we were expressly forbidden to indulge in any semblance of a party or customary rituals. In fact, our principal came on the speaker this morning to announce that some kids had been spotted with chocolates and that she and the Assistant Principal would be coming around with a cart to collect the contraband goodies.

The Texas educational system is going downhill, but really, are we in 1970s West Germany now?? 10 minutes of passing out cards and Hershey's Kisses is going to make or break little Johnny's chances of passing the TAKS test in 2 months??

So we didn't do much. But I'd love to hear from the rest of you out there what (if anything) you did with your class. In this week's INTERACTIVE MONDAY, please share how your day was. You don't even have to limit it to the classroom. Did you do anything else special outside of school?

For instance, I surprised my wife with the flowers/wine/chicken parm that graces the top of this post. I had never made chicken parmesan before, but I CAN follow a recipe, and I gotta say, it was DAMN good!

Maybe tomorrow, I'll try 4-cheese lasagna with a trifle. How hard can it be?

Off task, with love

So I was having this conversation with a fellow teacher, Ed U Cater, on Friday after work. He is a fourth grade teacher, and so I frequently bequeath him with my former students. We were discussing a few of those former students, with him asking if they were nearly as ditzy in the third grade as they seem to be now.

He told me a story about one girl in particular. All of the fourth graders took a practice TAKS writing test on Friday, and this girl finished early. However, instead of checking, editing, and revising her work as she was instructed to do, she took out a piece of paper and began to draw.

Ed noticed that the little girl had drawn a picture of a cute, cuddly teddy bear. Right before he took the paper away from her and ripped it in half.

After school, discussing this at the bar during our community outreach volunteer program activity, and was agonizing over his action, feeling he had been a bit extreme.

I imagine a scene where the little girl stared at him in horror and asked, "Why do you hate love??"

His story actually brought back a memory from last year, with one of my little girls who was frequently off task. We were doing a whole group math activity, when I noticed that this little girl was drawing on a piece of paper.

I said to her, "Put that away! Why aren't you doing your work?"

She looked at me in shock and answered, "But I'm making you a Best Teacher card!" Completely with a look and a tone of voice that said, "When we came in this morning, our two choices were to pay attention and do the math work or to draw a Best Teacher card, and I made my choice!"

Just a bit nonplussed, I responded, "Well, that's a very nice, but you need to do that home!"

At least I didn't take the cart away and rip it up. But then I'm just not a cold, heartless bastard.

Who hates love.

Box Top Par-tay!

Well, we did it. We finally won something.

The school had a contest to see which homeroom could collect the most "Boxtops in Education" pieces (worth 10 cents each for the school). My class rallied and collected a total of 200 box tops. One kid brought in around 70 or 80 all by himself...

So we get special treats for Valentine's (Valentime's?) Day tomorrow. Sweet...

Along the same lines, this week's Mr. Teacher column at education.com is titled, "V-reaky Friday." It's all about the typical school Valentine's Day party. I'm sure you can relate.

Enjoy!

How do you pronuncificate that?

Is it just me, or does it bug anyone else when somebody says "Valentime's Day?"

Let me put the emphasis on that -- Valen TIMES Day...

Just curious.

On another note entirely, I wanted to post a short review about a fellow blogger's book which she sent me back around Thanksgiving.

Angela Powell has written a book called The Cornerstone: Classroom Management That Makes Teaching More Effective, Efficient, and Enjoyable. She also runs a web site and blog which can be reached by going to http://www.thecornerstoneforteachers.com/.

The first thing that I noticed about Angela's book is that it is huge! Weighing in at almost 500 pages (standard letter size, no less!), the book could literally serve as a classroom's cornerstone. But kidding aside, there's way too much valuable information inside to not keep it readily available on the bookshelf.

The Cornerstone is a handy reference guide for new and veteran teachers alike. There are tips, techniques, strategies, and actual anecdotes on a variety of topics, including behavior management, classroom organization, and developing and using routines.

I should state that I have not yet read the entire book. That's one of the great things about it though, is that you don't have to start at page one and read through to the back cover. Upon perusing the table of contents, the first thing that struck my fancy was Chapter 9: How to Teach Any Procedure. As I read through Angela's advice and stories from experience, I alternated between thoughts of, "Yeah, I already do that, and it works pretty well," and, "That sounds intriguing; I ought to give that a try!"

The only downside I have noted is that the photographs, showing implementations of the strategy suggested in the book, are black and white as opposed to color photographs. I fully understand the reason for this -- color photographs significantly raise the cost of printing each book -- but the pictures lose a bit in black and white.

Nevertheless, the upside far outweighs this minor downside, and I highly recommend The Cornerstone to teachers of all levels. For all of us that turn back to The First Days of School by Harry Wong in late August, The Cornerstone by Angela Powell makes a fine companion piece.

Happy Valentine's Day

A few observations from the Valentine's Day party at school today:

A couple of kids who did not bring ANYTHING for anybody else sat at their desks and shouted, "I didn't get one of those yet!" at the kids who DID bring things for everybody.

A couple of kids brought a box of Valentines that had no names on them, despite me handing out a list of class names on Tuesday. They then expected to be able to fill out the information on each card within 10 minutes.

My visually impaired student kept coming up to me and asking, "Mister Teacher, who is this one for? Who is THIS one for?" because he couldn't read the names his mom had printed on the cards.

A couple of kids brought ginormous bags of Hot Cheetos, and shared them by dumping a handful on each desk.

The little girl with pink eye was handing out cupcakes and frosted cookies. And I do mean HANDING them out. (My class tomorrow might look like a bad Kodak photograph.)

I now have enough candy to last until Halloween.

Sleep now.