"Schultz I have an appointment and will not arrive at school until around noon." "There will not be a substitute teacher so you will have to move to the front of the room." "Who will occupy the back of the room as we are required to have two adults in the room?" "Oreo, and I'll leave the lesson plan and work sheets on your desk."
I've been in the front of the room a number of times over the last three years but for some reason I'm nervous about moving up front this time. I'm not really sure why so I decided to get to school a little earlier than normal to prepare. As I unlock the door I see right a way the lesson plans sitting on my desk with Post It notes stuck on them. I'm feeling a little more relaxed so I do my normal morning routine which is to feed our two gold fish and take the chairs off of the scholars desk and put them on the floor. I then sit at my desk and take the lid off of my BP gas station coffee (by the way I prefer the Kona blend) and look at the lesson plans. On the top of the pile it says Onomatopoeia. I hate that word. It's like entrepreneur, it doesn't role off my tongue properly, so I set this worksheet aside and see what's next. Hyperbole? Yikes! By the way, yikes is an onomatopoeia. Ok, where is the dictionary as I need to look up hyper-bowl. I find the scholars version of Webster and find hi-per-bowl-e. Ohhh! Hyperbole, noun, obvious and intentional exaggeration.
It's now 9:50am and the scholars are arriving and immediately I hear from each scholar, "Mr. Schultz, why are you sitting at Miss Gnu's desk?" "Have a seat, eat your breakfast and then I'll tell you when everyone gets here." I catch a break as NoFouls and Wide are absent. I then tell the scholars Miss Gnu has an appointment and will arrive later. I then inform them that Ms. Oreo will be in the room and will sit at my desk and you can get help from her if you need it.
Before I proceed I need to remind everyone that we have scholars that range from the first through fourth grade in our classroom. They have an assortment of issues ranging from anger control to anxiety issues to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to autism. What they don't have is an inability to learn.
Ok, time to get the day started. On the whiteboard I write in big letters onomatopoeia. "What's that word Mr. Schultz?" It's pronounced ona-mata-pee-a and we'll practice saying it. We made it through the first two syllables when things took a turn for the worse. MiniJ started yelling "pee". "Mr. Schultz said pee." He goes from sitting to standing and is doing his little I'm hyped up dance and is laughing because I said pee. We are now in delay as we have to get everyone settled down and back on task. Finally, we are back on task and I tell the scholars that the definition of onomatopoeia is a noisy word. Then I ask for a volunteer to try and come up with a noisy word. MiniJ volunteers and shouts loudly "mud." I politely thank MiniJ for his effort and say mud is not a noisy word. I ask for another volunteer and no hands go up so I say I'll give you an onomatopoeia so listen carefully. Bang! I again ask for volunteers and hands go up and I get the following, Boo, Baa, Pow, and Boom. Great, I believe they have the idea. I read each onomatopoeia to them again and as I did I realized we had a lot of "b" words. So I wrote the "b" words in a sentence with a couple articles and a conjunction added and then asked them what kind of sentence I wrote. Uh-Uh-Uh's hand goes up, "that's an alliteration Mr. Schultz." That's correct and I'm heading toward her for some high fives and assign the class a five minute brain break.
Back to work and we move on to hyperbole. I remind the scholars that hyperbole means exaggeration and ask for an example. I get no takers so I give them one. "Mr. Schultz is as old as dirt." I'm getting blank looks so I tell them I'm sixty five years old so am I as old as dirt?" "No Mr. Schultz you are not as old as dirt because dirt has been around forever." That's right, I exaggerated didn't I." Now who wants to try and give me a hyperbole. Uh-Uh-Uh's hand goes up. "My pencil is so long it can reach to the top of Mount Olympus." I'm stunned and can only think I wish Gnu could have been in the room to hear this. Uh-Uh-Uh is in the second grade and has an oppositional defiant disorder combined with an anger issue and can be downright stubborn and she just game me a hyperbole with wording that came from our lesson on Greek mythology. Amazing, simply amazing!
Gnu return shortly after lunch and I moved to the back of the room. Oreo was in the room and stood next to me. "You know there is a program called Teach for America." "Stop!" "I know about Teach for America and the answer is no." "Well, you need to reconsider it because you missed your calling."
I have a couple brief updates and then I'm out of here. First, Gnu informed me via a text message that the case conference was held for River and he will be leaving us in a few days. I don't have the specifics but when I do I'll let you know what transpired. Next, we will begin the second round of ISTEP mandatory statewide testing in a couple days. The test process hasn't even started and it's off to a rough start. Prior to taking the actual test all of the scholars in the third through sixth grade had to take ISTEP practice tests on the laptop computers. The practice tests, depending on grade level, covered math, language arts and science. A lot of time and effort was put in by our inclusion teachers and Title One teachers to get through this practice test process. A lot of classroom academic time was lost moving the scholars to the testing room and back to the classroom. And what is the end result. It was a total waste of time as the school corporation has told the state that it's wants the pencil and paper copy of the test as we will not be using the computers. Why? Computer system failures. Not only at my school corporation but at other school corporations across the state. For the second year in a row the organization that provides the test has failed to keep it's servers operational. Apparently this organization fails to recognize that during ISTEP testing a hundred thousand or so scholars are going to log onto their servers at approximately the same time. And you know what happens, CRASH! Tens of millions of dollars of tax payers money is spent on this test and we get CRASH! By the way, that's an onomatopoeia.
Thanks for continuing to read my blog. POOF! I'm out.
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