October 06, 2005
Teaching is great, but...
...failing students is not. This week I handed out my first two failing grades. So we've got the notes in students' communication books, and the requests for parental signatures on the tests in question, etc.
We've finished the Epic of Gilgamesh in 7th grade, and are about a week away from finishing Hamlet in 9th/10th. Fall break is this next Monday and Tuesday, so I'm filling in the days left in 7th with a few Rudyard Kipling poems ("Gunga Din" and "The Ballad of East and West"), while we're watching both Kenneth Branagh's and Derek Jacobi's versions of Hamlet. 5th grade is math, and math is, well, math. Arithmatic mostly at this age.
Teaching should be a free volunteer hobby not a saleried position!
Posted by: TOny Campbell at October 6, 2005 07:24 PMTony, why don't you:
a. buy a dictionary
b. earn a college degree
c. get your license to teach
d. teach for free
e. stfu
Teaching should be a free volunteer hobby not a saleried position!
Posted by: TOny Campbell at October 6, 2005 07:24 PM
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAA
wait that was a joke, right?
The school you teach at sounds a little (Ok, a lot) harder than where I went to school. Oh well...I learned.
Posted by: Evan Donovan at October 6, 2005 09:23 PMDon't forget: you didn't hand them out. The children earned the grades. And you have a paper trail, so buckle up, here's some coffee, and good luck.
Posted by: Krista at October 6, 2005 10:59 PMBeth, that was great!
Posted by: jCave at October 6, 2005 11:51 PMRyan, where do you teach? I want to send my children to your school! I didn't even know that the Epic of Gilgamesh existed until 10th grade. Most of my peers find this exceptional, of course, because most of them have yet to hear of it!
Posted by: jp at October 7, 2005 10:32 AMI LOVE the Branagh version of Hamlet. LOVE. And cannot wait for it to come out on DVD.
Ten points for having such broad awesomeness in your repetoire, Davidson.
Posted by: amanda at October 10, 2005 04:52 PMTony:
Were you taught by volunteers? That explains alot...
Posted by: CRM-114 at October 10, 2005 05:13 PMwell unlike you who had everything in place for them my brother and i lived in a car when our mother and father left us when i was three so whatever assumptions, everyone wants excellent mentorship should be something you enter into as passing of the knowledge not looked upon as a career that is what is wrong with going to church and why attendence is down you don't have to have a degree to be a minister to be called by the Lord but you do to understand grant writing, affiliation, and tax breaks! Ge that sallery, same thing with the teachers who complain of the thought of year around school, boo hoo go cry me a river, i was home schooled the best foster care could do back then so say what you want i have an opinion and everyone i noticed that posted here is a school teacher so what does that say about open mindeness and a free society what are you teaching students in the schools these days on my dime??? Perhaps it is you who needs to go to the school of life and step outside yourself and see the world from a different angle than your safe haven.
Posted by: TOny Campbell at October 10, 2005 07:02 PMTony: I'm gonna go with josh on this one. Your writing skills say far more about your educational background than any description of your life. You aren't in any position to comment on educational practice or theory, having neither yourself.
Amanda: I think Branagh is the anti-Christ if Shakespeare interpretation. Having watched his version in immediate comparison with the Jacobi version, Branagh can't do Hamlet to save his neck.
jp: I teach at Covenant Christian Academy, a classical, largely Reformed school in Harrisburg, PA.
Posted by: ryan at October 11, 2005 10:13 PM