Antsy Sixth Period

There's Bryan in front of me eating a sandwich just after lunch. I had to move him to my friend, Alta's room. Ari passes a note to Megan who passes it to Hana. Hana drinks from her soda then has a brief conversation with Ari. Eva is asking Ari something. Ben is sitting there in front of his journal doing nothing- wait, wait, he is now writing. Brian is taking a big swig of something orange. Nicole is reading Lord of the Flies, which was the homework for last night. Bryan just made two loud coughs. Brenden is quiet. Hmmm, I wonder what is wrong. Ginsea is looking to both sides of the room. But the room is quiet- and then I have two little tests and a quick grammar exercise. Max comes up to me and politly asks if he can have the test to take in the RSP room. I give him his tests.

Then I will hand back their literary essays. I am pretty displeased with the shallowness of the analysis, but I am not one to call it to their attention. My main focus is that they follow an argument in a logical way and that they follow the devised five paragraph essay format. It is an easy one and I would estimate that about 50% got it right. I chalk up the shallow thinking to sophomore disability that we will work on. My main goal this year with my English students is to get them to analyze literature, no small task. And in Ender's Game, a light science fiction, the task was difficult. Now as we read "Lord of the Flies" I am bombarding them with symbolism, socio-political theory and Freudian analysis. The should be pulling out the obvious at least.

I sit here now after class exhausted. I crammed the class full of assignments. After journal they took their vocabulary quiz, then a mini- grammar lesson that I go around and hand grade A+ if they get all three sentences correct. Then I gave them what I call the "Did you read Chapter 1? test." I handed back their essays, gave back the portfolios from last year and collected them again. Then for this antsy gregarious bunch I decided to have the class use the text to draw a picture of the island. But they were noisey. I projected a little powerpoint that asks questions about chapter 1 and asked them to answer a series of questions on the back of their map. One kid says, "All of that is in Chapter 1?" So it is. Then, collected it and yes, now I have to grade it.

Just as the bell rings and the students leave, the phone rings. Lindsey tells me that there is a student study team for Anothony in whose room? I walk to the other side of the campus to the wrong room and finally make it to the right one. This student has been struggling all year, more of a Junior High School type Freshman, in term of maturity. He is confident that he can turn in a story, pass the upcoming vocabulary quizes and read ten more chapters of a book where he has only gotten to Chapter 5.

So here I am. Now what am I doing tomorrow? 3:45 PM- time to prep for tomorrow's classes.