Wednesday, February 17, 2010

WTF? The 2010 Version

So all the English 1 teachers at my school do reading comprehension every Friday to keep students sharp (in theory) with their skills. So last Friday I gave my students a short reading passage on dog shows along with 10 multiple choice questions for them to answer. Now most of my classes did about how you would expect. Some did well, some didn't with most someplace in the middle. Then there was 6th period. Normally they do pretty well but on this assignment they just puked all over the place. As in 1 A, 1 C's, 1 D, and 18 F's. Seriously? I can't tell you how many students thought that this article was a F****** biography! Really? It's not like I've never used the term nonfiction in class before, unless you count all those times we went over those terms. It's not like we went over things like looking at the questions carefully and to pay attention to words in ALL CAPS or in bold, or italizied!

As if this academic vomit was not bad enough I made the mistake of letting my students work on their college/career project in class, thinking (id10t me) that most of the students would actually jump at the chance to avoid homework. I now know better. Tomorrow when the students walk through the door they'll find minimal time to F*** off, er I mean work on their project. Instead they'll find plenty of work to keep them busy, and the poster project is still due on Monday. No more class time for projects for them, now they get to work all period and the projects will be done at home.

Yea and we start Romeo and Juliet next week...