#WeekendCoffeeShare: Reasonable Positivity Edition

On September 19, 2015September 19, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories5 Comments

If we were having coffee, I’d be pretty happy. I badly want to be having coffee right now, but our coffeepot wants for a vinegaring, and it’s running slllooooowwwwww.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad week. The boy made it through a week of school with no poopery issues. At my school, we had a couple of notable suspensions that kept my afternoon class functional all week, and the first math test of the year went way better than I thought it was going to. My homeroom girls ate the thing alive, and my afternoon class showed a somewhat unexpected haves-and-have-nots pattern, where the kids either did great or very poorly. I was expecting the poorly part, mind you, as they don’t pay attention and there’s way too many special ed kids in there to be able to teach them effectively, but the number of them that did really well was really gratifying. What I didn’t see was kids in the middle. They either missed one or two or they missed eight.

I would probably point at my wrist at some point and remark about how there wasn’t a brand-new Pebble Time Steel on it, because the post office is screwing with me (if you want to take it personallly) or having some issues with their tracking system if you don’t. The tracking on the package is simultaneously insisting both that my watch is in California (where it has been since “shipping” on Tuesday) and that it will arrive yesterday. I’m crossing my fingers that a slew of updates will pop all at once and I’m getting it today. We’ll see.

I am looking forward to being mugged when some nitwit mistakes my $250 red and gold Pebble for a $17,000 Apple Watch, by the way.

And then I’d point out that it’s #SilerSaturday again, and Skylights is free, and since Skylights is my favorite of my books you really ought to download it and give it a read because it’s great.

How’re you?

Friday grab bag (ALSO: 1500th post!)

On September 18, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

This is my 1500th post. The blog came into existence in June of 2013, so that’s a rather ridiculous number. Clearly the place was appropriately named. I’m closing in on my 200,000th pageview, so I probably ought to start thanking people every day for bothering to pay attention to me at all.
Speaking of thanking people for paying attention, how about a free book? It’s #SilerSaturday again tomorrow, and Skylights is the book of the week. I’m really looking forward to seeing how it does, since this is the first time it’s ever been free other than a handful of little contests and giveaways. It’ll probably go free sometime late tonight and will be free until the wee hours of Sunday morning.
It hit me today that I don’t really have any funny or interesting stories from school yet. The dynamics of my classes haven’t really changed all that much, although I’m starting to get the afternoon dialed in a bit better (don’t tell them.) I just don’t have anything memorable to say yet. That’s really surprising.
That said, our district has in its infinite wisdom decided that on Monday and Tuesday of next week every math, language arts and special ed teacher in seventh and eight grade in the entire district is going to be at a training, and that furthermore all teachers new to the district should also be at a training on Tuesday. These two things overlap, of course. How people are expected to attend both is an open question, and the fact that we appear to have no subs at all even on a normal day means that they may as well cancel school. We have 22 people scheduled to be out on Tuesday, plus one of the administrators, and that only because they rioted and insisted that one of them be allowed to stay behind. Yeah. They thought they were pulling 22 teachers and both of the administrators. From every middle school in town, plus the high schools. You understand why I don’t want to work for these people any longer.
We played a fun game at lunch, called “Try to come up with a way for this plan to be more stupid than it is.” No one won.
Our zoo acquired four new tigers this week. Four! Omg zoo zoo zoo zoo NOW. I’m going this weekend tigers tigers TIGERS!!!
I was all psyched about starting to watch Dr. Who this season. Apparently Dr. Who was not all psyched about me starting to watch it. Doing it anyway, show! Screw you!
That’s all I can think of. Watch Sourcerer tomorrow for another Fear the Walking Dead post, though. And remember: Skylights is free on #SilerSaturday for the first time! It’s a great book! Check it out!

Taking the night off

On September 17, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Behave, kids.

#Weekendcoffeeshare: Fear and Self-Loathing edition

On September 12, 2015September 11, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories20 Comments

I’ll be honest: if we were having coffee, the very first thing I’d do is point out that it’s the inaugural #SilerSaturday and hey my book is free at Amazon have you downloaded Benevolence Archives yet you really should no risk it’s freeeeeeee.

After that I would look sheepish and apologize and try not to bring it up again but I’d probably mention it at least once more because the book’s good dammit and if you love me you will download a thing for free.

But anyway.

After that? Parental and husbandly anxiety, mostly. My son, who is four, is enrolled at an insanely expensive private school that my wife and I can only barely afford, and that was before I took a twelve thousand dollar pay cut since my last job isn’t my job anymore. And he got suspended at the end of… well, not last week, the week before that, because he’s still pooping himself, for reasons that I’m not getting into right now (because coffee) but just trust me they make sense.

And my wife has been home with him for the entire time, because I’ve missed too many days of school already, and she’s letting me get away with the sort-of-excuse that it sort-of is. My kids have a math test this upcoming week and they’ve had a week less instruction than the other fifth-graders because I’ve either been sick or pulled out of my room to do something else so many times already. The boy is still inexplicably diarrhetic and he’s been back in pull-ups for the last couple of days after months in underwear, and we’re quickly getting to the point where we’re worrying that they’re just going to suggest un-enrolling him and trying again next year.

Now, my kid’s birthday is in August. He’s the youngest kid in his class. It would have been entirely reasonable to leave him in day care for another year (where they change diapers) and wait a year to enroll him in school. Plenty of people have made the decision that they’d rather have their kid be the oldest in his grade instead of the youngest, and some of them will defend it fiercely. We didn’t make that call, but there is a non-zero chance that we may be about to have it made for us.

And… hell, I’m taking it personally, I’ll be honest. This is a perfectly normal damn thing and I’m acting like he’s doing something to me, which he’s not, but… dammit. Insanely expensive private school, did I mention that? Insanely expensive exclusive private school. Like, I don’t feel like I belong there. Masters of the Universe type private school. And there’s a chance that my kid is gonna get kicked out because of poop.

It’s got me twisted. Really twisted, in a way I don’t like.

Eventually we might get around to the fact that I saw someone from high school this week who I haven’t seen in maybe fifteen years, and that’s still got me weirded out too, which happens every time I see someone from high school. I’ve not made a secret of the fact that I’m not super happy about living in the same state I grew up in, much less the same town. The conversation was perfectly happy and innocuous and pleasant, mind you, and even ended refreshingly, without the typical “We should hang out sometime!” lie that frequently accompanies these sorts of things. But… yeah. I’ve got a lot of reasons for my head to be muddled right now. I need to get it cleared out.

Download a free book. It’ll help. 🙂

#NEVAR4GIT

On September 11, 2015September 11, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

A true story:

I was out of the classroom today, again, taking care of some bidness that needed taking care of. During part of said bidness I needed to go around to each and every grade-level teacher in the building, some of them twice, and get them to sign and date something.

I had the following conversation, I am not joking, every single time, right down to the under-the-breath profanity:

MR. SILER: <hands teacher clipboard and pen> Sign here, date here, verify this here.
TEACHER: <verifies, signs, stares off into space for a second> What’s the date today?
MR. SILER: September 11th.
TEACHER: Oh… Shit. I feel terrible. Of course it is.

I was commiserating with, oh, the first three or four, and after that just started making fun of people. Because, again: I had this conversation with every single teacher. The best one was the one who was literally showing a video about 9/11 while I was in the room.

Blecch arglebargle yucch hoccch PTUI

On September 10, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy7 Comments

This is all I have at the moment.

#Weekendcoffeeshare: math edition

On September 5, 2015September 5, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

If we were having coffee, I’d likely keep trying to talk about long division, and you’d probably spend the entire conversation trying to change the subject.

After three weeks of this, I’m starting to suspect that I may not be very good at this whole “having coffee with people” thing, honestly.

But anyway: long division. I realized something this week. I have never taught long division before. I’ve always had at least sixth graders, and by that time most of them have it down and the mathematics are complicated enough that I’m frequently willing to hand a calculator to the kids who are struggling anyway, at least after being shown sufficient effort. These kids, though? Some of them appear to have had it last year, others don’t. Maybe a third of my kids are comfortable with it, and all of those are concentrated into one class. My entire afternoon group is basically clueless.

One girl in particular makes me want to go find her fourth grade teacher and slap the shit out of her. She appears to be the only one who has been in this particular teacher’s class, but I’m told the teacher “didn’t like” the standard algorithm so she taught the kids a different way. Without getting too deep into details, the “different way” works all right when you’re doing something like 55 divided by 6, which will give you a small answer in a couple of steps and a small remainder. It becomes insanely complicated when the problem is a more fifth-grade-ish 8108/9, and will become flatly impossible to use once two-digit divisors or decimals enter the picture, which they’re going to do soon.

Professional malpractice, is what I’m saying here. You don’t teach kids a method of doing something that is going to completely break in the very next year of school. You particularly don’t do it to this specific girl, who appears, to put it mildly, to not have been born with the usual allotment of confidence in math skills that one might expect, and was in tears when she didn’t understand my first example. Typically I expect at least three examples before I’ll allow don’t-get-it crying to happen.

Got my work cut out for me here, is what I’m saying, and I’m seriously in need of some research time this weekend for better teaching strategies. Lucky for me, it’s a three-day weekend.

Thank a union member, by the way.

#Weekendcoffeeshare: Orange juice edition

On August 29, 2015August 28, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories7 Comments

If we were having coffee, I’d be chasing it with orange juice, and probably not enjoying the combination all that much. My students went through half a fracking box of tissues in class yesterday, and one girl and one co-worker in particular may as well have had spigots attached to their noses for the majority of the day. I got home yesterday and could physically feel the sick trying to take root in my body, so I’m ODing on vitamin C and trying to head off my traditional Third Week of School Illness.

Beyond that, I’d probably keep my mouth shut and see if I could get you to do most of the talking. I would try not to let the conversation turn to things like convention plans for 2016 (man oh man do I have convention plans for 2016, after getting locked out of several opportunities in 2015) because I don’t want to count chickens before they’re hatched. I’d also be trying to calculate just how much editing I could get done with the rest of my weekend when I wasn’t at work or grading things or trying not to bore my friends. There’s a good chance of rain at OtherJob tonight, and I’m kinda crossing my fingers for it, because that way I can get some school work done.

I would try and not let the wave of despair that thought creates show on my face. All in all, despite the whining I’ve been doing, this year is shaping up nicely. I just need to beat my PM class into shape.

I would probably try and talk you into coming over and playing with the drone with me, because it’s still that much fun.

But yeah. Mostly alternating genuine listening with glassy-eyed stares, and oh my god so much Vitamin C.