One week down.

We made it through the first week of school! - a week that included...

• 1st question of the week: "What religion are you?" This, after me reading my "I am from" poem to the students to introduce myself and model the form they would also use. The question quickly turned into "What race are you?" The other students laughed, and this turned into "Where are you from? There were a lot of words in there I didn't understand."
  
• A think-pair-share on how English will help you reach your goals, which resulted in a boy telling me that a larger vocabulary would help him get women. To illustrate this, he told me that I am "alluring." "Excuse me?" I said. "Alluring?! You don't want to say that to your teacher. Do you know what that means?" "Beautiful," he said. (Okay, it's still weird to tell your teacher she's beautiful, but not as bad as alluring.) "This is a great time for us to look at the difference between denotation and connotation," I said. And so I went on, after reviewing scrawny vs. slender, to pull the definition of "alluring" up on the board.
  
• 3 students finishing their 1st independent reading books (while most of the class is still on page 5).
  
• A discussion on which American ideal is most important - freedom, hope, justice, or individuality? The hope group said without hope, everything else is meaningless (this was also my opinion). The other groups got into a debate about slavery. The justice and freedom groups argued about if slavery was overturned by freedom or justice, and what Harriet Tubman was really fighting for. The individuality group contended that if you're an individual, even if you're a slave, you can "pick your own cotton." When I pointed out that if you're a slave, it's not your cotton, a boy told me, "You've got to own it. You've got to feel like it's your cotton." I changed the debate to "Does freedom or justice come first?" (since this was the core argument in the slavery debate), which led into how we don't have justice. One boy said, "We don't have justice in America because if I was shot, no one would care."
  
• In the midst of the above debate, a boy on the freedom team called someone else "stupid." I went over and sort of glared at him and told him off, accidentally getting a bit closer than I had intended ("in his face," he said). A couple of minutes later, a different boy called someone else "stupid." "Go over there and get in his face! Do your batman pose!" the first boy called, apparently imitating me, legs spread out, hands on hips.
  
• A young man checked out The Complete Works of Shakespeare for his independent reading book. The next day he showed up with another book, but he assures me he is going to return to Shakespeare after.
  
• A young lady telling David she doesn't like my class because I don't let her sleep, and the same young lady telling me she doesn't like David because he took away her phone.
  
• Grading 75 100-question multiple choice tests in booklets. Never again.
  
• My first ever parent phone calls! No, I didn't call because someone was in trouble, just to introduce myself. Amazing how the tone of the parent changes when you clarify that.
  
  Second week coming up!
  
  Love to all,
  Anneke