After a year and a half of teaching, I’ve become quite familiar with the slang of teenagers in Rhode Island and beyond. Below is my best attempt to define some of the terms and expressions that I hear most often in my classroom and hallways. Disclaimer: some of these are mildly offensive. amped - adj. to be…
read more »Overheard during an Operations session E: “When I’m stressed, I like to take a shower and then lie in my bed naked.” a couple minutes later… D: “When I’m stressed, I like to walk into E’s room.” ————— [Disclaimer: This is probably the longest and most scatter-brained post I've ever written. Consider yourself warned.] As…
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Overheard during a lesson on arithmetic sequences R: “Oh my gawddd, this stuff is so awesome.” There is a remarkable disconnect between how much stuff has been happening in my classroom, school, life, etc., and how little I feel like blogging about it. Maybe my desire to write is directly proportional to the amount of…
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Overheard during whiteboard time D.: *sigh* “This class gets more and more organized every day.” Let me be real for a moment. I mean really real, not kinda sorta real, like I usually am when an acquaintance asks how TFA is going to be polite. Teaching is hard. This past week has been hard. This…
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Overheard during Independent Practice B. (to D.): “You’re ruining our lives and eating all our steak!” I may have to resort to blogging less regularly. It’s not a matter of not having enough free time (though heaven knows that’s true). Simply put, forcing myself to write every weekend isn’t always conducive to substantive, meaningful posts…
read more »Overheard at the end of a block N.: “Ohmigoshhh I lost my exit slip!” An unintended consequence of blogging on weekends is that I’m usually writing when I’m physically and emotionally at my peak. I get to catch up (somewhat) on sleep, I can actually spend some time reading for pleasure and chatting with non-teacher…
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Overheard while using my wireless clicker from inside my pocket D.: “How is he doing that?? It’s blowing my mind right now!” They say that October of the first year is supposed to be the hardest month of teaching. Before I started this job, and even a week into September, that made no sense to…
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Overheard during Guided Practice R.: “I’m totally looking up Mr. K on Facebook.” I have started writing this entry five or six times since last Friday, only to be thwarted each time by a sudden onset of writer’s block or severe exhaustion. However, now that it’s been two weeks since my last post, I feel…
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Overheard during the all-corps kickoff BBQ M,TLD: “Yes, there was poop involved with my middle school.” Somehow, I’ve come down with a case of severe acute writer’s block. Fortunately, it’s been a quiet and relatively uneventful week, so I don’t have much to write about anyway, but those things that are worth mentioning will have…
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Overheard during WaterFire, upon observing CMs with unlit torches Random person: “Well, if they can’t handle fire, they definitely can’t handle the students.” The past week has been fairly uneventful compared to Induction, Institute, and the first week of F8W, which affords the perfect opportunity to finally provide some context for my school and teaching…
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Overheard on the last day of summer school F.: “I like that vest, but it looks ugly on Mr. K.” Today marks exactly one week since the end of Institute. It’s hard to believe that just seven days ago, there was still very little on my mind except big goals, student investment, purposeful planning, effective…
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Overheard in the dining hall CM: “I just want to go to bed and fall into a coma so I don’t have to go to school tomorrow.” The days are flying by now. I can hardly believe that just three weeks ago, I had never stepped foot in the classroom as a teacher, created a…
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Overheard during a CS session after the first day of teaching CM 1: “I’m not articulating myself very well right now, sorry.” CM 2: “I’m having a hard time understanding anything right now.” CM 1: “Well, this is a bad combination.” Week two of Institute–our first week of teaching–is officially over. Someone asked me to…
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Overheard in the suite common room CT Corps Member: “I’m scared about teaching fourth graders… I don’t even know what fourth graders look like.” Well, I’ve emerged from week one of five at NYC Institute, a little tired but for the most part no worse for wear. The “here are the minute-by-minute details of my…
read more »Overheard at a bar Executive Director to a staff member: “Have we created TAL monsters?” That pretty much sums up the past week. In all seriousness though, Induction has been an amazing experience. From the moment we arrived and received our regional t-shirts (NYC Institute folks will see the glory of said t-shirts soon enough),…
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