Halloweenie

Halloween is great. One of my favorite shows as a kid, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, had a great Halloween episode entitled Halloweenie. The basic plot is how the older brother feels like he's too old to go trick-or-treating with his younger brother for fear of being made fun of by his schoolmates. (A short clip is found here) What a great show first of all. Secondly, what a great message. I hate when people start to ruin things for children. Kids lose a part of their childhood the minute they stop believing in magic, ghosts, or even Santa Clause.

I was so happy to see every student walk into class that last Friday with not only some great costumes, but an excited attitude for the Halloween festivities. The school that I work at is so wonderful. They have the best celebrations and activities. I get sad when other schools don't let their kids dress up and do fun things. Sure the day was almost a total waste and very little learning was going on, but when was being a kid just about learning.

I don't remember the day I learned long division, or when I learned to hate math. (It may have actually been the same day) I do, however, remember the scary story my teacher read to us on Halloween in fifth grade. I do remember learning that awful dance in 6th grade where we used the poles and utterly bombed our performance in front of the other 6 graders. I do remember all of those little things I did during school that had nothing to do with the Core Curriculum, but it made those other long days of sitting in those rock hard chairs more bearable.

Also, I hate the news. Why is celebrating Halloween so controversial? Is there nothing more important to talk about? I'm sure hundreds of people are dying in foreign lands every day due to disease, war, or shortages of food and clean water. I guess it's better than hearing about another child that Brangelina are adopting. Here's to Halloween and all the rights and rituals that go along with it. ksl.com - School Halloween activities: fun or waste of time?

SEP Time...where is my 5 Hour Energy when I need it?

Ummm...Life is great, but teaching is tough. I had my class going in the right direction behavior wise and then the system decided to throw the proverbial stick into my teaching spokes. I recently added two new students to my class. I hope they catch on to my classroom management plan because they are making it difficult to focus on teaching. Very intelligent kids though. I don't know if that's a blessing, or a cursing. People tend to turn a blind eye to trouble makers if they don't screw the school's test scores up. I think that's where the real travesty in education lies.

When people look at education and say that it's broken, they look at their math and science test scores. REALLY!? Is that all we care about in society these days? In a world of Enron and Bernie Madoffs, what good does it do to teach someone math if they use their skill to cheat and lie to others? I wish they had a test for decency and honesty because I bet those numbers would be more disheartening than the math scores. If we could get those imaginary, but very real, scores up I'm sure the math and science scores would follow suit.

I digress and proceed to talk about how unprepared I am to deal with parent teacher conferences this Monday and Tuesday. They have been handing me test scores to give to parents that I don't even know how to read, let alone explain to others. Speaking of tests, there are about 5 of them that they have already taken and none of the numbers make sense to me. Most of the testing seems to be so ridiculous and self serving to me. They have to read 115 words a minute in order to pass one test, but then we tell them how important it is to take their time and carefully read each sentence so that they can predict, pick up context clues, and understand their text.

Other than the fear of not knowing what I'm talking about, I'm really excited to meet ALL of the kids' parents. I'm so intrigued that just a simple meeting with them tells me so much about their background. It should be a great experience. I just hope one of them doesn't end up doing this to me. I guess the real horror would be turning into her. Cheers