Have you seen this? It’s pretty cool:
A former professor e-mailed it to me and said she could see it as an interesting activity for students to do — create a poem that could be read backwards and forwards. I know it’s a little vapid and cliche, but I like it, and I think it could be inspirational to a demographic about which most are pessimistic.
My friend Matt tells a great story about the first time he walked into a Wegman’s, that food lover’s paradise. He had heard my sister and I gush about the prepared-foods counter (chicken breast rolled up with roasted red pepper and pesto), the bakery (warm, yeasty cheese bread), and the bulk-foods section (a glorious wall of crackers, nuts and candies, all neatly compartmentalized into bins.) All of this buildup proved to be too much: when he finally got there, he pushed his cart to the entrance, took in all the bustle and nutritional diversity around him . . . and turned around and went home, completely overwhelmed.
Anyone who has searched for something simple on the Internet has probably had a similar experience. I recently tried to find out how to store my local apples over the winter. One website said they MUST be wrapped individually in newspaper. Another said they must NEVER, without exception, be individually wrapped. Many others offered variations on these two themes. It can be a lot to unravel and come to a decision.
So for a teacher, trying to successfully pilfer a set of lesson plans for use in her classroom, a bit of narrowing down is needed. I recently met with some of the teachers in my department to share my favorite websites for lesson planning. Here are a few good ones:
Interesting article from CNN (though a few months old — I can’t read it all, people) about the boundaries between teachers and students, and how they’ve changed as a result of social networking:
The Lamar County School Board in Missouri recently implemented a policy forbidding teachers and students from having any text-message conversations or social-networking friendships.
Jim Keith, an education lawyer who represents several school boards in Missouri, has been giving talks to teachers in which he explains that most of the inappropriate student-teacher relationships start out on a friendship level.
Keith spoke of one instance where a parent thought her child was spending extra time with a teacher who was trying to help her child overcome shyness. At Keith’s urging, they checked the child’s phone bill and found 4,200 text messages between the teacher and student.
“As an educator, there is a line of demarcation between you and your student,” Keith said. “It’s a line that you cannot come close to, let alone step over. You’ve got to establish it from Day One and say, ‘I’m not your buddy; I’m not your friend; I’m just your teacher.’ “
The article focuses mainly on the possibility of sexually inappropriate relationships, but I think there’s just as much harm to be found when teachers forget about the natural impediments of friendship between them and their students. This is very, very hard for me. My students are just on the verge of adulthood, and they have fleeting periods of depth and maturity that are so convincing I believe for a moment they are just like me. Then they want to debate a recent quiz grade or offer an excuse about homework, and I suddenly remember they are children; barely so, but children still. And that makes me the adult.
I have other reasons for staying away from social networking, but this is the greatest. Even if I posted every detail of my life, there is little that could be incriminating in the future (I’m not sophisticated enough for dual identities.) But just the thought that my students could be friends with me, know that I’m going shopping with my mother or having friends over for dinner, makes me feel uncomfortable. We’re not friends. My job is to be their teacher.
They’re a lot of work. I mean, a LOT of work. Finding substitutes, preparing lesson plans. Researching transportation, costs and rules. Collecting money, submitting purchase orders. The sort of menial busywork I detest more than anything.
But. BUT. Meeting in the school lobby early on a Friday morning, and then wickedly, gleefully, walking OUT. Waiting for the train in the crisp fall air. Talking to your students about their college plans, favorite football players, your shared love of pulled pork and dislike of overzealous air-conditioning systems. Letting slip a sympathetic, “That sucks,” and not realizing it until four or five sentences later. Feeling not like teacher and student, but like humans — just humans out for a day of fun.
The Newseum is incredibly well-designed and boasts more than a dozen interactive, dynamic exhibits. My students said gleefully, as we left, “That did NOT feel like a museum!” We played a game about ethics; they got to get in front of a live camera and read the teleprompter; we watched countless short and long film segments, read gripping accounts of reporting as it merged with personal lives, searched databases of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs and journalists killed in the line of duty, and more than once were overcome by emotion while reading about or re-experiencing a historical event. Case in point: watching a documentary about sports coverage, I got choked up hearing the TV announcer squalling, “The RED SOX are WORLD CHAMPIONS!” And we all know how I feel about sports.
I visited about a month ago in preparation for the trip, took copious notes, and made up a four-page handout with trivia to collect during the trip and writing prompts to respond to for homework. Between that visit and yesterday’s, about four hours each, I think I saw just about everything, though I barely scratched the surface of the wealth of information in each exhibit. I’m seriously considering a membership. (For families, that’s the only way it would be affordable, at $20 a pop for tickets.)
My colleague and fellow chaperone took a photo of us at one of the exhibits, a story about the Berlin Wall that included several sections of the actual wall. The East German side was bleak and blank, but the West German side was filled with angry, playful graffiti. I wish I could publish it here, but for privacy reasons I don’t want to put photos of my students up. You’ll just have to imagine it: we stood, smiling, relaxed, having a great Friday full of ideas and freedom. That’s what field trips are all about.
Cell phones have gone too far.
Tonight, during a piano lesson, a dad stepped out to answer his loudly ringing phone. It was the third or fourth time it had happened that day. Trying to keep my cool, I continued working with his son. A minute later, a loud buzz came from the student’s pocket. “Hang on,” he said. “I gotta take this.”
“Okay,” I said, standing up. “This lesson is over. I’ll see you next week!” I left him gaping on the piano bench. Sorry, folks, but enough is enough.