End of the streak...

So my streak of not writing up students ended last week. We had a tardy lockout and one of my students told me that if I did not let him in that he would not come to class. I didn't let him in and he was true to his word. What he didn't know is that I would make him pay a price for ditching my class. So I wrote him up and he got dean's detention anyway, which is what he would have gotten had he simply taken his ticket to detention. Id10t.

Speaking of id10ts there is second period, THAT class. I totally rearranged my room because they could not handle the way it was before. I gave two students detention last week because they would not shut their mouths, and that didn't help. So today I informed them that because they insist on acting like little kids I would treat them like little kids and the next time one of them opens their mouth they get detention. Mind you this is also my worst class academically as well. 2/3 of them are failing right now and they don't seem to care. Mass detentions seem to be in order for them.

That reminds me I have to write up another brain sturgeon (you guessed it 2nd period) for skipping two of my detentions. Now he is the dean's problem. The school policy is that students can reschedule one detention but once they blow that one off, then it goes to the dean's office.

On the bright side, I have a guest speaker coming in tomorrow for National GIS Day and he is going to do a presentation on the conquest of Guatemala. It should be a welcome break for my students to hear someone other than me speak. And the short story literature circles in my honors class is going very well. They are working on their group power point presentations and for the most part they are going well. And the mystery boxes went very well with them. Hopefully 5th and 6th period will do well with their mystery boxes as well.

What I really hope for is a turnaround for 2nd period. We'll see...

The Big Red Binder

Tomorrow I have my meeting with my AP regarding my Big Red Binder. For those of you who don't teach in Las Vegas let me explain. The Big Red Binder is where you keep your lesson plans, your attendance sheets and other related items. To the administration and the district, The Big Red Binder is a very big deal. They are supposed to be able to come into your room while you are teaching, open up The Big Red Binder and follow along with the lesson via the plans. Your attendance sheets are supposed to be uber accurate as well so you end up having to write in new students and crossing out the ones that have dropped your class in pen. The school prints out new sheets on a monthly basis to reflect your enrollment. Some schools also have you put your sub plans in there as well. I'm not sure if I have to do it here but I have the room. Did I mention the binders are BIG? Like with those huge 5 inch rings big. So for the last two days I have been putting The Big Red Binder in order. Now I did have the lesson plans in there already but I split them into the three sections and rearranged the order to make it easier to read. I also put in all the attendance print outs and tomorrow during my prep I'll go through the most recent one and add the new students while crossing out the ones who are no longer there. Hopefully I will have done it correctly. We'll see. I also need to finish up my emergency sub plans. I have four of the five days done and I should have the last one done tonight.

In other news I finished The Yellow Wallpaper with the two classes who were reading it. I am SO doing this story every year. The students seemed to enjoy it, even if they were grossed out and a bit confused at times. The honors kids also enjoyed hearing about why she wrote the story, although my other class would not shut up long enough for me to let them know so they missed out.

Finally I started calling parents tonight. One call was to check in on a suspended student to see if they needed more homework. One was because the kid wanted to sleep in class for the last two days and the last was because he likes to wear his pants below his buttocks. Tomorrow will be round two of the calls.

Quarter 1

Is done and in the books. Today I asked my students to write about what went right and wrong for them in the last eight weeks. Among the usual things such as not liking their seats, boring stories and promising to try harder next quarter, I saw a couple of interesting things. One of the first things that I noticed with some concern is the fact that the students think the class is easy. I am glad that I had only a few students fail, but I am concerned that they didn't really earn their grades. Now I know a couple of students mentioned that I explain things really well so they don't get confused but I worry at the thought of easy. Is it easy because I explain the lessons so well or is it easy because my standards are too low? I want them to succeed but I want them to learn. I didn't do a bunch of big projects for most of my classes but I will do more this quarter than just the active reading and the narrative.

The other thing was the response I got from a student who said "You make me like English!"

And that is why I teach.

Hey Mister!

I hate getting a cold. It's bad enough when you have a regular job, but it really sucks when you're a teacher. You can't go through the motions or just call in sick. That means a wasted instructional day and they're precious enough as it is. So this week has been a bit of a challenge to say the least. Fortunately most of my students got the hint about me not putting up with any crap due to my sickness.

And even more fortunately for me, I had the audio version of the story we were reading. "The Cask of Amontillado" so I could simply play the mp3 file and then stop it to have quick discussions. Today I was planning on just finishing the last few minutes and then doing a catch up day. That changed when my AP showed up unannounced to observe me for most of the period. I instantly switched gears (good thing I had not announced my plan) and actually taught the rest of the story along with the audio file. The class did really well today and we had a good discussion.

Near the end of class while the AP was writing furiously in her notes with her head on her arm a student on the other side of the classroom raised his hand to ask a question and when I walked over to him to see what the problem was, he looked over at the AP (Assistant Principal) and said quite seriously, "Hey Mister, why is that lady sleeping?". With a concealed smile I told him that she was awake and was writing some notes. That seemed to satisfy him and he went back to work. When I saw my AP later in the day I relayed the conversation to her and she got a big grin out of it as she headed off to lunch duty.

It was not until later that I realized that the unspoken question was really "Hey Mister, why are you letting her sleep?" I'm infamous for kicking desks to wake up students who are sleeping. Although I have occasionally let sick students alone. I'm firm not a monster after all and the students are pretty good about knowing the difference between the two.

So far that has been the funniest thing that's happened this year!

Gah

So I was talking to my DC today and he had some bad news. Apparently those tests that I had my students take for the last two days were the wrong ones. Oh, they were English I tests and they were most certainly the interim tests for the fall, the problem is that they were the wrong year. Of course nobody told either the DC or the AP. The county finally got around to sending us the right books. Nice, huh? Now all my students have to retake the test a second time which means I lose two more instructional days because of this snafu. Now I am a bit annoyed but what can I do? Yell and scream? That would be your tax dollars at work for you.

At least the quarter is ending on the 21st of this month and then we start everything again. I am so glad I had that internship last year because I'm not nearly as flustered as I would have been had this been my first year. And I get a three day weekend at the end of the month due to Nevada Day! I'll take it!

Flexibility

It's a must have for teachers. You have to be able to adapt your lessons on the fly and be able to reschedule interm assessments from next week to say... tomorrow and Wednesday. Yea, gotta love the schedule shuffling by the powers that be. But I was the good soldier in the hope that when I need some consideration that I'll get it. Plus my Department Chair promised me that this would not haunt me come evaluation time. So after I was done complaining (just so I'd feel better) to my DC, I realized as I was driving home that this could actually work to my advantage.

I am desperately behind on my grading and filing and having two whole days where my students aren't actually turning anything in will give me the chance to get caught up on both. And it will also allow me to get the lessons I had planned over the weekend fine tuned and the copies of the graphic organizers made so I can continue the lessons on active reading.

Finally, my room is all decorated for Halloween and the kids thought it was really cool that I took the time to decorate my room. Apparently I was one of the few teachers who did decorate their classrooms. And if they think it looks cool now, wait until Christmas!

Halloween

Halloween is coming up shortly and my room is almost decorated. I had to run to the Dollar Tree to pick up just a few more things for my back wall which is almost totally bare at this point. The rest of the room looks pretty good. I have up the fake cobwebs in areas that cannot be easily reached by the students, the window clings, my Peanuts Great Pumpkin Display, spiders, skulls and various other items to add some atmosphere to my room.

I just need to find my spooky sounds CD so I can put it on my PC at school so when we read our short stories I can have a bit of extra atmosphere. The stories I am planning on doing this month are "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" . I had been thinking about doing "The Telltale Heart", but I didn't want to subject them to that story yet again, nor did I have enough copies of "Dracula", "Frankenstein" or any of the other classics of the horror genre to use in the classroom. In addition, I don't want to overdo it when it comes to reading fiction so I'm also mixing in some current events articles ranging from sports to news and politics. I still have not had time to chase down anything relating to music etc, but I will at some point.

Since we celebrate Nevada Day the last Friday of October I'll be showing "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" the last half of class on the 29th just to give the kids a short break.

No, no costumes for me, I'm scary enough as it is...

Rants and Raves

Why is it when students leave your class because their schedule got changed nobody informs the teacher? I mean I'm trying to do attendance and yesterday my students were there in SASI. Then today? Nothing, no emails, no forms to sign, no notifications in SASI that they had dropped. It looked like it they just fell off the face of the earth. I had to trek down to the attendance office to find out that yes, these two students are now in another class. So I then had to trek up to the 2nd floor office to tell them what happened so that the Assistant Principal (AP) could talk to the counselors about proper flipping procedures. I realize that I'm just a teacher but a heads up would be nice.

Now for the rave part. I'm currently teaching my honors students the skill of active reading and will start teaching it to my regular classes tomorrow. We're working on free response where at the end of every paragraph they jot down some thoughts, questions ect. on what they have just read. This is a continuation of the prereading I did yesterday featuring news articles and posts by bloggers such as The Other McCain, Buckhorn Road, and Jammie Wearing Fool. The goal was to read the headline, make a prediction about what they thought they were going to read and then write down if they were correct or not. The article about Polanski still had most of the class torqued up at Polanski's rape of that girl. So today I used an article from Fox News online that talked about how Medicare knowingly pays too much for equipment and boy did I get a reaction to that article from my students. Here are my favorites...

1. What is wrong with congress?
2. These congressmen must be stupid...
3. It gets me irritated that they keep on wasting money. I find it very stupid
4. The two guys that are congressmen are pigs.
5. So much money they could save and their wasting it. It's absolutely pointless and stupid.
   
6. And my favorite... This is f*****g c**p (yes they did write it with the stars)
   

I'm hoping that my regular classes give me similar reactions to all that wasted money. I was also able to rearrange my seats so that my room no longer looks like it belongs in a reform school. It's not perfect but it's a vast improvement on what I had. I may even be able to lose some desks and create enough room for beanbags!

Those are 9th graders in case you're curious. They liked it the last time I brought in current events so I am going to continue to bring them in on a regular basis.

Duh

Yet another awe inspiring title from yours truly. I was stressing about teaching reading strategies and I did get some good pre-reading strategies from my AP who used to teach reading before she crossed over to the dark side of administration. Bless them, because I have less than no desire to get into administration. I'd rather just teach thank you very much.

Anyway as I was driving home from school I remembered that I had a binder full of active reading strategies that I learned during training last year. Which is where my brilliant title comes from... Duh! Why not use one of them? Hello! McFly! Anyone home? And to think I'm a licensed teacher to boot!

So what I came up with was to combine what I got from my AP with what I had in my binder. I'm going to use headlines from articles in the Las Vegas Review Journal and The Wall Street Journal, with the writings of blogs that I follow on a regular basis.

Buckhorn Road wrote about how Astroturf is not all it's cracked up to be, especially when it's hot outside.

Jammie Wearing Fool has an update on the Roman Polanski scandal.

And finally The Other McCain discusses his 'appearance' on Meet The Press. And when did become OK to not have proof to back up charges of racism in this country anyway?

In need of a title

Seriously, I have no clue what to title this one. Yea, anyway my observation went pretty well and the classes' personalities are starting to become crystal clear. And I also need to get them to read more nonfiction text which they will be doing in the next couple of weeks once I get the lesson planning done for them. Oh and I have to come up with emergency sub plans as well. I have two days done and Karlana was nice enough to send me some of hers. Stop by her blog when you get the chance, she writes on a plethora of different subjects and does it well.

1st period is your typical class, some kids who should be in honors and some who couldn't care any less about passing not to mention a few who cannot show up on time, ever. Academically they're doing OK but not great. I don't really have any meatballs though so it's a pretty good class to start with.

2nd period is my Excedrin class in spades, it already had more than it's share of chuckleheads and then they added 10 more students for a grand total of 41 kids. I am now on seating chart #4 and we've been in school for 5 or 6 weeks. Whereas 1st period is going to do group work, 2nd period isn't because they could not stay quiet for independent reading. And surprise, their grades as a class suck eggs. Rotten eggs. Looks like the Siberia seats will get some use from them tomorrow.

My honors class is what you would expect of honors students, bright kids who talk fast and work harder. Today they began their mystery box assignment and tomorrow when they finish "The Most Dangerous Game" they'll start "She Unnames Them" and then it's off to short story literacy groups. That's where a group will pick a story to read then fill out the elements worksheet and then will start creating power point presentations to teach the rest of the class about the story they read. I just hope all the freedom I am going to give them does not come back to bite me in the gradebook so to speak. I am also going to have them read some nonfiction work.

5th period is like 3rd period except they are a regular class but I only have 2 kids who are failing and their class grade is right there with the honors kids. They'll be doing lots of group work as well I think. I may just give them the same (or similar) work as the honors and see what happens. I am going to loosen the leash on them as well and see how they do. Library, here we come! Pray for the librarian if you can though!

6th period is between 5th and 1st. I think if I had them at a different point of the day they would really shine but it's the last class of the day and they are kinda done with school at that point but I have some GREAT kids that day. Their grades are pretty good as well.

What I really want is to have a class where there are no F's and few D's and with my honors kids and with 5th period I just may get my wish as I have only a couple of kids who are failing in either class.

I also need to mention that one of the nonfiction texts my students are going to read is by Mary Baker who wrote a very compelling article about why she no longer considers herself an African American. My honors and 5th period will read that one, discuss and write about it and my other three classes will read a shorter piece by Teddy Roosevelt talking about what it means to be an American without the hyphen. Credit goes to Saberpoint for posting it in all it's un-hypenated glory. It's shorter than the Mary Baker piece but has the same message about the importance of simply being an American regardless of where you immigrated to this country from. It's a message some of these kids sorely need to learn.

Speaking of Teddy, here is my favorite quote of his. Feel free to mention it next time you get called an '-ist' for criticizing the President...

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

Observation

I knew this day was coming, the day that my supervisor would come in and observe my class while I teach my students. Tomorrow (possibly Wednesday) is the day of my first observation and to say I am stressed is a bit of an understatement!

For those of you who don't understand let me explain. In education, instead of the normal review with your supervisor where you fill out your form and your boss does theirs and you meet and hash it out, your supervisor (usually the principal or vice-principal) will sit in your class and observe you teach. They will look at your lesson plans, the setup of your classroom, what you have up on your white/chalk boards and even how you have decorated your classroom. They do this several times during the year depending on where you are in your career. Then they will discuss their observations with you at the end of the year and give you your review.

The only way I can get off the probationary list is to get high marks on my observations, and if after two years I don't get off of probation, I have to find a new career.

I think I have everything set for this week but I'm sure I forgot something. I need to do some emergency sub plans to put in my big binder and give to the office.

The joys of teaching.

Switching Units

So today I switched units with my classes. The two classes that were doing short stories are now starting the narrative writing unit and the ones doing the writing are now starting the short stories. One of the things I forgot to account for was my honors class. Silly me thinking that they would just plod along reading "Two Kinds" for three or four days like my regular classes! Looks like tomorrow they are going to work in groups and do the elements worksheets as they read. I figure they should finish it by Monday at the latest and then we can do short story literature groups. Of course I have not written up the plans for it yet, but what the hell, I'll come up with something and make it work. Now I need to reserve the computer lab for them so they can teach the rest of the class about they story they read as a group. Plus I need to reserve time in the library since the librarian dropped the hint that she had not seen me with my students yet. Some English teacher I am! Finally, I had a chat with the soccer coach about two of my students who could not figure out what 'no talking' meant. Today along with the teenage death stare I got silence from both of them, and the football player who was acting like a meatball is now passing with a solid C (from a 40% F) and actually pays attention the whole period. Yay for coaches!

Bad Timing

Sigh, the timing for the transferring of 160 students to the other English 1 teachers came at the worst possible time. Because we did not make our enrollment numbers we lost an English Teacher and a support staff position. So now that I am two days from finishing up a 2 1/2 week unit on narrative writing and a short story unit of the same length. I now have between 5-8 new students in my regular classes (none for my honors class but I have plenty of honors students in my regular classes) and have to find something for them to do for the next couple of days. At least for the writing part I found some quick narrative prompts so I can get an idea of their ability. As far as the short stories go, they'll just have to catch up on 'The Most Dangerous Game" and then we'll start on the writing unit.

I can't help but wonder that if the CCEA had not fought so hard for the raises due teachers this year, that some of the positions would not have been eliminated, but hey it's all about the students, right?

Progress Reports

Updates below!

I love it when I get warned about little things like progress reports, so I am not thrilled that I didn't find out until Thursday afternoon that progress reports grades are due on Monday. Normally I give my students fair warning so the ones who care and turn in missing work in their classes and keep their phones. So today after school I spent 2 hours trying to get missing work put together for my classes. I got first and part of second period done and on Monday I'll get the other ones done. Monday will be a make up work party along with working on their regularly scheduled work. I will probably be printing out extra reports to keep students out of trouble. They will get a 25% penalty for the really late work but the students seem to like the idea that they can still get a decent grade for late work and I like not having all the 'mi' for missing in my grade book.

There is also the rumor that a position is not going to be filled so that all the English classes are going to be much bigger than before. I'm not exactly thrilled about this rumor because I don't need 5 classes with 45 students each in them. I already have THAT class to deal with, you know the one that drives you to drink? It's 2nd period and I'll be changing their seats this weekend and hope this works along with some phone calls next week. At least I finally got my attendance program this week which had made my life much easier.

Update #1: My posters came in today. So on Monday along with the college pennants (all of the PAC-10 schools, thanks Dick!) to hang up I will also hang up my 'Victims of Che' poster as well as my Friedrich Hayek poster, after I laminate them of course. Go me!

Update #2: The rumors are true and now I'll have at least 40 kids per class. Looks like I'll have to go back over the procedures again. What really sucks is that I am finishing up a unit on narrative writing as well as a unit on short stories that many of my students will miss and I will have to figure out some way to get them caught up before the super important mid term assessments in a few weeks. Man, that is really going to throw a wrench into my plans.

Open House

Man are my feet SORE. I guess standing up from 7 am to 1:30pm and then from 6-8pm will do that to you. I ended up with 25 students coming in with their parents and three or four more who came without their parents. That's not bad for high school. The parents were very nice and the snacks and juice were a big hit. Plus my daughter came with me and made $10 for watching an infant for a fellow teacher who could not find a sitter. Classy gal she is, just don't tell her...

I am continually impressed by how smart my students are in my class. I wish everyone would stop slamming today's students because they are way smarter than we give them credit for. I'm amazed that some of them keep coming to school with the fact their home lives are a tire fire.

The problem is that now I am a day behind on grading and it's going to get worse because I have training tomorrow so grading is shot for tomorrow as well. Can you say 'burn the midnight oil'? I knew you could! If people knew how many hours teachers put in they would stop bitching about what kind of money we make. I easily put in 55 hours a week, sometimes more, including nights, weekends and holidays.

Another Mystery

I'm not sure why, but out of my four regular English 1 classes, the last two periods are doing better as a class than the first two periods. Here are the class averages by period as of yesterday.

Period 1: 54.4% with 17 Fs
Period 2: 50.7% with 16 Fs
Period 5: 67.2% with 7 Fs
Period 6: 66.4% with 9Fs

I have 4th period prep and 3rd period is my honors class. You would think that 5th and 6th period because they are late in the day would be hanging off the walls and not doing any work but that really isn't the case. I am getting more makeup work in today as well which is nice. Late work is the bane of teachers and I still have yet to find a system that works for me and that will induce the maximum number of students to turn it in. I've tried the 'if it's late it's a zero' tactic, the 'just turn it in' tactic, and the 'turn it in for 50% credit' tactic and they have all failed. This year I am trying something new. They get dinged 5% per day until they lose 25% of their grade and it seems to be working. The fact that they can turn it in and get a 'C' is doing the trick so far. It does punish them for turning it late, but not so much that it's not worth it to them. I remember when I was in high school (was it really more than 20 years?) and that if I could only get 50% credit, it simply was not worth my time.

Tomorrow is open house at our school, and like last year I have resorted to bribery to get my students to come to open house. I told them that if they show up and sign in with their parents they get 10 extra credit points. Last year, when I was interning at the prep school I literally had 8 or 9 parents tell me their kids dragged them to the open house just so they could get their points. Hell, if it worked there, it should work here. Plus I am making walking taco dip as well as a snack for anyone who comes by. Well, actually my wife is doing that for me.

At least I'll eat well tomorrow night!

A Rude Shock

Some of my students are in for a rude shock this week. I posted grades on the uber ugly bulletin board that were just as ugly. Why they can't do or turn in a quick write that is done at the beginning of class is a mystery that even Sherlock Holmes can't solve. I even have a couple of honors students who have literally a 0% in my class right now.

What is sad is that there is no reason for my students to be failing at this point. My quick writes are easy points and they students have a good amount of leeway in how they approach their assignments.

My hope is that posting the grades and switching the seats will light a fire under some of these students.

Speaking of rude shocks, we had two fire alarms go off this week, 10 minutes before school started. Yesterday was not bad but this morning I was literally under the alarm when it went off. Can you say 'instant headache'? I knew you could. Then I had this donkey of a student who walked back onto campus sporting a nice baseball cap. The problem is that you are not allowed to wear your cap on campus. I kindly asked this young man to take off his cap and got ignored. I repeated my request "Sir, would you please remove your hat?" and was told 'no'. Wrong answer... I then asked him for the cap, "you're not getting my cap!" Strike two! OK, then you're going to have to give it to the dean. "No, I'm not!" And you're out! I then continue to follow him around campus and continue to ask him to go to the dean's office and he continues to refuse. I signal one of the administration to let them know and they start to move in. All this time we've gone to the two story building to the 2nd floor, across the walkway where the principal shouts to me that she wants to talk to him "No, I'm going to class!" and then across to the three story building where he is finally corralled by one of the security monitors. I hope to find out what happened to him tomorrow.

And finally we have a pep rally on Friday, what's the over/under on cell phone confiscations? I am done playing with these kids, either they play by the rules or they pay the price. I plan on bringing a bunch of ziplock bags to stick the phones and iPods in with the form.

A Rude Shock Indeed...

'The Speech'

Ever since this whole firestorm about Obama's speech started, I've been wrestling with how to approach this without destroying my plans for the week and without knowing what to do with the rest of my classes for the day.

Fortunately Dr. Rulffes helped me out with that one. He sent an email to everyone saying that the speech was not mandatory and that it would be archived for future use. His reasoning was that the speech was all well and good but only if it does not interfere with the day to day teaching. (Plus any parent who wants their child not to hear the speech can opt out, my daughter will watch the speech but she will do so with an open mind!) So what I am going to do is to watch the speech at a later time and then design my own lesson to use at a later date.

For once everyone wins!

Update: I found the text of his speech at Politico. Had President Obama released his text with the announcement this would not have been the firestorm that it was. You'd think that someone as smart as he is would have anticipated the concern this speech would cause amoung those on the right side of the aisle and done something to assuage those fears, but hey, I'm just an English teacher.

End of the honeymoon

No, not the one Obama had with the country although you might be right about that as well. I'm talking about the one in the classroom when the students start testing the teachers and staff to see what they can get away with.

Today there was a Freshmen assembly in the gym and to say is was a mess is an understatement of biblical proportions. There was talking, flirting, sagging and oh yes, texting a plenty! I spent the entire assembly stalking the bleachers keeping the phones hidden and the shorts up.

When we got back to class I let my students know just how I felt. I told them that how they act in an assembly reflects personally on me and that I wasn't going to have any nonsense and that it did not matter if they were in my class or not, they're my students and I expect them to behave properly.

I've also get seven students in first period who think I'm kidding about tardies and detention, boy are they in for a shock tomorrow morning when they get in and receive their prize for failing to show up on time. One kid already has three tardies in eight days, which means he gets a phone call home as well. What's sad is in my other four classes I don't have kids showing up late, maybe 3 or 4 out of 35-40 students per class have 1 tardy which is not bad.

Finally I was able to get rid of three desks in my room which has allowed me to create a couple of 'Siberia' seats for the kids who can't figure out the rules, all three of them. Tomorrow some of my students will enjoy their trip to Western Russia, I'll let you know how their tours go.

Today was a good day...

Yea, I know it's still the honeymoon period when kids pretend to like you and try, but it was still a good day. The first week or so where I teach is kind of a loss because kids are moving in and out of your room so frequently that long term projects/homework is pretty much out. So today I was planning on doing some writing assessment. One of my fellow teachers had found this one online from New York State.

Prompt: Youʼve been in school for most of your life, so you know different teachers decorate their classrooms in different manners. Think of your ideal of the perfect classroom. Is it colorful? Does it have desks or tables? What does it look like? How does it smell? Are there any sounds in it? Write an essay describing your idea of the perfect classroom. Your teacher may even incorporate some of your ideas into the room!

Now if you fell asleep in your Fruit Loops I don't blame you. So after first period, I started to interject a bit of commentary into the prompt to get them to look at it in a different light.

Prompt: Youʼve been in school for most of your life (well duh!), so you know different teachers decorate their classrooms in different manners (gee, ya think?). Think of your ideal of the perfect classroom (who the heck wrote this sentence anyway?). Is it colorful? Does it have desks or tables? What does it look like? How does it smell?(please don't tell me how it smells!) Are there any sounds in it? Write an essay describing your idea of the perfect classroom. Your teacher may even incorporate some of your ideas into the room!

In addition to my commentary (yes I aced my sarcasm classes!), we talked about things that kids liked to see in the classroom and then expanded it to different classes such as auto shop, art, music and PE. I loved watching them write down ideas and then start their drafts. When asked how long to make it I told them to completely cover the material. What I hope is that when they write about what is interesting to them, the length will come naturally and so far, so good. Tomorrow we finish the drafts, do some peer reviews and then start the final draft.

Now it's your turn... What do you like to see in a classroom?

Update #1: Looks like I need to get me some bean bag chairs! And more lava lamps too! Amazing what happens when you give students options...