… that teachers have when they realize their students are reaching out through their work.
I was STILL planning my Social Studies lesson at 11PM tonight. I logged onto tumblr for a moment to add a link to my classroom blog and noticed a new follower. Of course I creeped, and…
IT WAS ONE OF MY SOCIAL STUDIES STUDENTS! They have been blogging about the class! At the beginning of the semester I tried to get my class into blogging but it was a project we dropped to focus on other skills they needed to work on.
At first I was shocked but this makes perfect sense. She’s one of the students in my largely homogenous class that often feels overlooked. She’s naturally shy and wouldn’t dream of speaking up about the racial and cultural assumptions that affect her every day. Tumblr has become a safe sounding board for self-reflection and frustration.
I was really disappointed that our class didn’t keep up with blogging but something really worthwhile has come out of our attempt.
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
I think I’ll post this in my classroom and let students check off what they have read. I have a few that could go on a checking spree…
I love this band. I love unconventional metaphors. I love hitting play and hearing precisely what I needed to hear. Today was an “I don’t measure up to what I was shooting for” day.
“I just wish I
Were a toothbrush
Or a solder gun
Make me something
Somebody can use”
In my inbox 6PM:
“Hey Miss A. The shop teacher didn’t have any hot pink spray paint for my ELA project. I know you’re going to the city tonight. Could you pick me up a can of pink and I’ll pay you back?”
(I stopped on my way home.)
Seriously. This is how things get done in small towns!
Summit of Yamnuska, Kananaskis and then heading for the scree slopes.
Heart Mountain traverse, Kananaskis, 2100m. We returned to finish it without the snow (minus the 50ft buttslide I took to get down a snowy chute). Will my knees still work tomorrow? If so, Yamnuska!
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
New hall pass. It may not stop them but I just made it less convenient and more conspicuous to wander the hallways.
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.
Miss Anderson, would you rather have your favorite cat or a $50 bill?
You can’t forget about the process. Language Arts are about the process as much as the product, we know this, but you forget the process if you don’t immerse yourself in it.
I gave my Grade 7’s the task of creating collages that express the concept of “innovation”. Irony: I was barraged by 21 students wanting approval for each clipping they found. “Is this innovative?” they wanted to know.
I stayed after school tonight and made my own collage. I probably hadn’t made one since I was in high school. Tomorrow I’ll describe my process to them instead of describing the final product. Process-driven teaching leaves room for innovation.
Heart Mountain, Kananaskis. Too. Much. Snow… Had to call it a day 75 vertical meters from the top. Lost feeling in my fingers trying to claw my way up an icy gully. Should have guessed when the guys with crampons and axes passed us on their way back down.
We’ll see how long this lasts… (Taken with instagram)
Is it just me, or are we all feeling sucked dry lately?
At this time last year I wasn’t a teacher, I was wandering Peru. I remember vising a church where they were preparing a float for the Easter procession. Instead of the usual Catholic fare (crucifixes and such) there was a Pelican, its chest pecked bare and bleeding. (This thing would have guilted the HELL out of your chocolate bunny). According to legend the Pelican will peck her chest open and bleed herself to feed young when food is scarce. The image stuck with me on my travels.
A couple months later, back in Canada I came across a pendant. Stamped in silver: a 19th century wax seal with that same pelican. Around my neck now, she’s pulling her feathers out for a nest of young to the tune of “Non Sibi,” or “Not For Self.”
I wanted to scream the other day, when I realized that some of the students I have worked hardest for this year don’t appreciate me, or even like me, at all. I’m ripping out my feathers, here. I moved for this job and I’ve spared no expense, no relationship, and no amount of time to give these kids the best that I can offer.
I reminded myself that I get paid for this job, even if I don’t love every minute of it. Unfortunately, I remembered also that my GPA could have scored me a much better paying job if it wasn’t for this damn talisman around my neck. I need something more from life than money can afford me.
Non Sibi. Non Sibi. Non Sibi. My students will never be aware of, or understand, the sacrifices I have made this year. I will never be aware of, or understand, the impact I have on some of my students. The Pelican never knew it would become a legend.
Easter Break was lame. I had to go to Montana where I was cat-free for one week with NO BBC!
This is genius. I want to do this in my classroom. End.
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I am going to use this! AWESOME
#want
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