The Praxis of Pedagogy

Motherfucker! Seems all I do is school shit. I feel like labor before it got organized and wrestled weekends from the capitalists. On Saturday, I was in a linguistics class from 8:30 AM to 4:30PM. And it wasn't exciting linguistics. It was past participle. Present perfect. Direct object. Grammar. We pretty much spent much of the day discussing grammar. It was painful. Incredibly slow and painful. Time flies when you are having fun. Time creeps along when you are in pain. If I didn't have solitaire on my phone I don't know what I would have done. I will be the solitaire champion of the world after this class. Apparently when the whole language school of thought came in, grammar went out. My teacher said few that went through school starting in the 80s got grammar. So that would be me. I can tell you a noun, adjective, verb. But after that, I can't really get into details. There were mostly older people in my class and a few of them really seemed to be having a ball.

So then I get home and pass out at 8 PM and miss my friend's birthday. That is the 2nd friend's birthday that I've missed cause I just passed the fuck out. I'm always up late on the weekdays and come the weekend I'm fucking out! But you know what...I'm having more fun doing this than I ever did selling pins. And pins was less work with more money. But that shit drove me crazy. Too much bad karma in that for me.

Anyways on Sunday, my buddy Jeremy and I worked on getting Easy Grade Pro up and running to make progress reports. They are way past due by the way. But people weren't getting us grades and we were both swamped with shit. So I talked to the principal and got today a minimum day to do grades. We're still not finished and have to input some Wednesday grades. I have class from 4-7 tomorrow so I can't really input more grades afterschool.

I started off all the classes with SSR as always. Still bothers me that students forget to bring books on Monday. Next quarter I will have to take points off on contracts when students don't have their SSR books. So in 1st period I had a test review game for 1st period. In 2nd period we did our double entry journal and read "Things Fall Apart." The first part of the book really gets into Ibo culture and the kids are finding it kind of boring. They want something to happen. But I think that once the second half of the book starts they will get into it more. The 1st half will really make the 2nd half more interesting because readers will understand the character and background more. In 3rd period, I handed out the reading that I used previously about Islam from the "Cartoon History of the Universe." Then I did a 4 square hold em up exercise. In this exercise, students read a page of the book and then I would ask them a question. They would then write the answer in one square of a piece of paper that had been folded up 4 times. This is to check for reading comprehension. This was actually quite effective cause it allowed me to see that I have one new student with incredibly low skills. I mean the "Cartoon History" is a bit advanced in it's writing, but the pictures sure do help. But this student had very low skills and had I not spoken to her about it after class then I wouldn't have known. This was a very effective lesson for me on gauging student's reading comprehension. Much better than me reading and students just following along. Makes them have to do some work. I haven't even realized it, but the end of this quarter is coming up quick.