In which I am stunned and grateful

On August 11, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching3 Comments

This table represents the largesse that the Internet has showered upon me from my wish list over the course of the last week or two, and y’all, I’m not exaggerating or joking at all when I tell you that this is probably about $350 worth of supplies. Those Post-It poster cards are like $120 a pack all by themselves. There are 600 pencils in those boxes, which is probably at least a semester’s worth. Two boxes of Expo markers will get me through most of the year. There are not many kids wearing masks any longer so 300 of them will probably set me for the rest of my career. (I will probably give at least one of those bags to the nurse so that she has more on hand, actually.) And you would be amazed at what an 8th grader will do for a sparkly gold star.

Shut up, I’m trying to be genuine here.

None of you had to shell out for any of this– from the number of packages I’ve received there have been several who didn’t reveal themselves either here or on Bluesky– and my appreciation is deep and real. Thank you.

The room is coming along:

Bored 6th grader, for scale.

The main innovation here is moving one of the semicircle tables to front and center from where it was last year, over by the green board, and it tended to be a haven for the kids who weren’t planning on doing a lot of work. I also stole the second one from a supply room, and some of the desks have changed orientation, giving me a decent middle area to stomp around in while I’m talking. In theory, at some point in the near future the wall on the left is going to be acquiring a full-length whiteboard, which is why there’s nothing on it right now, but who knows how long that will take. I’m required to be back on Monday; everything this week was off-contract, and I think I got enough done today that next week I can focus on fine-tuning the details (my desk is a useless mess right now) and actually worrying about curriculum and assignments and shit for the first couple of days of school.

A miracle

On December 11, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

I have written lesson plans– well, okay, I have planned– well, okay, I have determined subject matter— for every day of school between now and Winter Break, which — especially the way I’ve phrased it– may not sound like the miracle that it is.

That was a very complicated sentence and I dare you to diagram it.

Anyway, I’ve been doing this job long enough that for the most part the difficulty in “lesson planning” is just deciding what to do, and the actual doing is all muscle memory by now even if I’m doing a lesson I’ve never done before, or changing up an old one. I can spin a couple of sentences of “plan” into a 47-minute lesson with next to no difficulty at all, but the actual process, the this-before-this-and-don’t-forget-this of it all is the difficult part. I’ll need to devote some time to actually writing the assignments for tomorrow for both my Algebra and Pre-Algebra classes, which will take a few minutes, but that calendar on Canvas? That shit’s filled out. And that’s a wonderful feeling.

I might even put it all up on the wall for the kids tomorrow so they can look at it. I went out and bought some stuff for the classroom today, as I’ve got most of my setup done and it’s time to turn my attention to the walls. The room’s feeling more like me with every passing day, although the lack of windows still hurts my soul, and I need another lamp. One more lamp in there and I can start turning the lights off while they work and rely on the LEDs and the lamps to keep the room lit enough that my ancient-ass eyes can see. Right now I’m still just too blind for it.

Here we go again

On August 8, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

I love how the panorama effect makes my classroom look much deeper than it actually is, and the fact that the lights changed color a couple of times while I was … panorama-ing … is kind of neat too. But basically that’s all I’ve managed to do so far, is get the lights up. The desks are absolutely not staying in that configuration, but I want something new this year and I haven’t come up with the new look yet. I do like how the lights look, though, and when they’re off and the regular lights are on you can barely tell they’re there, which is also nice. That white bag in the middle of the picture is full of stuff from the teacher store that needs to go up.

And, just for the hell of it, no pressure, no nothing, here’s my classroom Amazon wish list. If any of you happen to have discretionary income piling up with nowhere to go, even a couple of boxes of pencils would be massively appreciated, and I genuinely mean that. (And, in all seriousness, if you were to get one thing on that list, it’d be pencils. We go through so many pencils.)

I need to rewrite every policy I have, redo the class website, and ten thousand other things, and I’m also in a weird place where despite knowing all of that– after nineteen years, you can imagine some of this shit should be muscle memory– I feel like I have no idea what to do. I’m kind of reconceptualizing what’s going to go on the walls this year, where I only want to put things up there if I think the kids are going to actually look at them once in a while. So, what does that look like?

Dunno. I got a week to think about it, I guess.