MY WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL FANTASTIC DAY
I woke before the alarm clock, was out of the door five minutes early, the weather was perfect—the perfect sky, the perfect breeze, the perfect temperature—and one of my former colleagues drove up to me one mile into my walk and offered me door to door service to my school. How cool is that!
I wrote some, revised some, answered correspondence, and prepared my classroom for the lessons of the day. These included a show and tell of African artifacts, some dating back hundreds of years, some recently purchased. I practiced the scary story I was going to tell—a story that actually happened to me many years ago and I prepared for the third day of the scary story/science fiction week. Then I went outside even though I didn’t have to and I walked around the playground. Everything was quiet. The too-good-to-be-true kind of quiet. And it stayed quiet. Yeah!
My classroom came in quietly too. Even Cursing Boy from my horrible, horrible, terrible day. And he apologized. And I told him I accepted his apology and I said, “When I need to learn new curse words, I’ll use you for my consultant.” He laughed and worked all day and did not even speak out of turn. Not once. I told my class my scary story and asked for persuasive essays on if they thought the story was true or not. I received great responses. Then we read a portion of Ray Bradbury’s speculative science fiction—and again the class did great. Great answers. Great responses. I pulled out my African artifacts and you could hear a pin drop. Another great activity. When we switched classes, the next room did just as well. Whoopee!
After lunch I introduced to my room the first concepts of trigonometry. They paid attention. They took notes. They tried hard to understand. And when the principal came on the intercom to invite my class to the tech fair, I was giving final directions. They were engaged. They were excited. I was excited. They were catching on. Super doopper!
The tech fair went well. We came back upstairs. We got ready to go home—but my day wasn’t over yet because now it was time for the second round in the teacher/student basketball game. Remember: We lost the first time. So I suited up and went into the gym and the students started yelling: “Brownstein! Brownstein! Brownstein!” They clapped and applauded and chanted my name over a dozen times. So I got into the game—and guess what?—I passed better, did not miss anything thrown to me at all, even dribbled the ball twice, took a number of passes, and attempted one shot. Well, at least it hit the outer rim. I even got one rebound. And here’s the best part of all: We were down by twelve when I got into the game and when I came off the court, we were down by two. Unbelievable!
We won the game and now there will be one more. "Michael," one of the teachers asked, "will you be playing again?" It’s a two out of three series. Of course, I'll be playing again. Maybe this time I’ll make a basket—but I still wish the teachers would challenge the students to field hockey. Now that’s a game I can play.
I wrote some, revised some, answered correspondence, and prepared my classroom for the lessons of the day. These included a show and tell of African artifacts, some dating back hundreds of years, some recently purchased. I practiced the scary story I was going to tell—a story that actually happened to me many years ago and I prepared for the third day of the scary story/science fiction week. Then I went outside even though I didn’t have to and I walked around the playground. Everything was quiet. The too-good-to-be-true kind of quiet. And it stayed quiet. Yeah!
My classroom came in quietly too. Even Cursing Boy from my horrible, horrible, terrible day. And he apologized. And I told him I accepted his apology and I said, “When I need to learn new curse words, I’ll use you for my consultant.” He laughed and worked all day and did not even speak out of turn. Not once. I told my class my scary story and asked for persuasive essays on if they thought the story was true or not. I received great responses. Then we read a portion of Ray Bradbury’s speculative science fiction—and again the class did great. Great answers. Great responses. I pulled out my African artifacts and you could hear a pin drop. Another great activity. When we switched classes, the next room did just as well. Whoopee!
After lunch I introduced to my room the first concepts of trigonometry. They paid attention. They took notes. They tried hard to understand. And when the principal came on the intercom to invite my class to the tech fair, I was giving final directions. They were engaged. They were excited. I was excited. They were catching on. Super doopper!
The tech fair went well. We came back upstairs. We got ready to go home—but my day wasn’t over yet because now it was time for the second round in the teacher/student basketball game. Remember: We lost the first time. So I suited up and went into the gym and the students started yelling: “Brownstein! Brownstein! Brownstein!” They clapped and applauded and chanted my name over a dozen times. So I got into the game—and guess what?—I passed better, did not miss anything thrown to me at all, even dribbled the ball twice, took a number of passes, and attempted one shot. Well, at least it hit the outer rim. I even got one rebound. And here’s the best part of all: We were down by twelve when I got into the game and when I came off the court, we were down by two. Unbelievable!
We won the game and now there will be one more. "Michael," one of the teachers asked, "will you be playing again?" It’s a two out of three series. Of course, I'll be playing again. Maybe this time I’ll make a basket—but I still wish the teachers would challenge the students to field hockey. Now that’s a game I can play.
posted by A Teacher's Log | 5:12 AM
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