Nonsense, Drivel, and Balderdash

My 6th graders scored low in their ability to recognize "Author's Purpose" on their recent English diagnostic test, so I have been tasked with trying to get them to think of writing as having an audience and an intent. While the goal is to get them to see why an author would include a certain paragraph, I am starting out by oversimplifying the three main reasons that anyone would undertake writing for an audience: to entertain, to inform, or to persuade. In the course of the lesson, we discussed Genre and how different types of writing often naturally lend themselves to favor one of those purposes. Non-fiction, I told them, is more likely to be purely written to inform than fiction would be, etc. Anyway, I had some writing excerpts on powerpoint and we were taking turns guessing what the purpose of those different types of writing might be. One example came up and it was something in the vein of "Thomas got up and looked out the window. The sun was shining and he had...

I was trimming the ole beard the other day when I noticed something strange. There was an oddly colored hair among the jumble of blonde, dark, and ginger colored facial hair. A solitary white hair stuck out like sore thumb. Unconcerned, I took the tweezers and plucked it out. After all, everyone has a rogue hair that refuses to conform from time to time. That was a month ago. I have plucked that same hair out several times, but it refuses to stay down. "What are you doing hair??" I plead with it. "It is not your time yet! Stay down a bit longer... just 10 more years. You can do that, right?" But it doesn't listen. It keeps coming back. I have had to come to come to grips with the fact that this gray hair may be permanent. And, even harder to swallow, I've had to accept that I am getting older. A few weeks back, my high school friend Charles came over for a weekend of man-time. My wife was out of town and so we planned on playing video games, staying u...

In a way, I expected a post like this one to come earlier in my teaching career, but better late than never. The names of my students and coworkers have been changed.  A couple of weeks back, I was in one of my 6th grade classes while the students worked in that productive disarray that characterizes middle school group work. As I walked past one of the groups, a sound caught my ear. It was annoying, so I followed it to its source: one of my 11 year old boys was making a loud humming sound. "Hmmmmmmmm" "Albert, please stop that. It is distracting." I said He looked up, laughed, and explained as if he were letting me in on the joke."I'm masturbating!" he announced. "Albert!" I exclaimed indignant, "That is extremely inappropriate! I don't want to hear those kinds of jokes in class!" But instead of the usual reaction of disgruntled shame that follows a reprimand, Albert just looked confused and hurt. "Why is it inappro...

And the prize to "hardest thing about teaching middle schoolers" goes to... (drum roll)... "Hormones!" Yep, hormones make it very hard to teach them. Now, hormonal issues in 7th grade are very different from the ones that a high school teacher might deal with. We don't have to deal with sexual harassment or sexual tension. In 7th grade, kids have started experiencing sexual impulses, but they aren't really aware of what they are, so they don't act on them. No, the main hormonal problem that affects my ability to do my job is "inconsistency." A 7th grade classroom is the most inconsistent place on the planet. More unstable than the most volatile substance, more explosive than the Balkans, more unpredictable than the "end of days..." You never know what you are going to get. One day a student will come to class happy and ready to learn, and the next he is bouncing off the walls. Not just that, but one moment he will be happy, and the...