Monday, September 8, 2008

The New Job

In case you were wondering:

The kids call me Miss Lindsey  +2 (the shine of this has worn off some since this is now the second job that this title has been bestowed upon me)

It is totally acceptable to plan lessons around things like:  bubbles, color, books by Roald Dahl or making guitars out of shoeboxes  +10

I now know the Spongebob Squarepants theme song by heart +1?

Work starts at 3:15 pm  + 5

V____ W____ + 5 -2 = 3  (Kid's probably a genius, definitely hilarious and seriously trying my patience) 

The first thing V.W. said to me was, "Miss Lindsey, if you had one army what would you do with it?"

Harsh realization that it takes more than cajoling sarcasm and stern looks to earn the respect of 4th-graders -0-

The process by which I learned the above -5  (losing control of fifteen nine year olds sucks)

Work is a ten minute walk from the Ocean +10

Stickers go a long way +2

Salem Peterson +10

A second-grader patted me on both cheeks, giggled and ran away today during recess + 3

Defining the words:  blister and hankering +5  (Thank you Roald Dahl)




4 comments:

JC said...

Uhhhh...Miss Lindsey...uhhhh... You're so rad.

mark wallace said...

Are you yet at that point of developed alienation at which you can watch yourself teaching and say "Look at me. I'm teaching"?

Or do you know the joke about the teacher who dreamed she was teaching and woke up and she was?

Ridiculous Human Things said...

Boy I wish I was at that point already. No, everything about teaching is still very conscious because it's all still so new and foreign. I haven't yet found my specific way. Today, we wrote acrostic poems about partners but dang if that was too much for the kids. Next week I'm going back to Matilda and maybe some kind of bubble activity. Sheesh.

Maxwell said...

We're all about Bubble Activities here but we use machines——dot! factory! Sometimes I dream I'm writing and wake up editing. Your army if you had one would watch as you wore a tin pan hat and went east, then west, then sofa (oh mannn.... East/editing/brooklyn/army makes me think I miss Brooklyn like that sweet'n'long-gone lover with the odd crotch smell. (Just-recently-gone lovers are even more long-gone than the long-goners, which get more recently-gone as the calendar gap widens.) Here in Manhattan, the art scene has a crotch smell but no crotch——though art's crotch is what (we) art critics are writing about (speaking of ol/factory). Fucking raffia basket fiasco. O'Hara wrote about the arts **and** crotches, and got loved by the NY Review of Books this week.)