Tuesday, April 13, 2010

In Which I Assign Myself 500 Pages of Bad Reading



Let's start by clearing up this one little detail: I'm an idiot. Stupid, really.

Case(s) in point:

1. Call it a delusional vision of who I wish I were (read: a hard *assed teacher), but I assigned the AP kids 10 page research papers on self-selected debatable topics they've lived with all year long. Nearly 50 kids, 10 pages. All due earlier this week. Yup. That was stupid.

2. Add that lapse in judgment to the pile of Spring Break grading I procrastinated beyond, you know, Spring Break and you start to see that teaching English is far less preferable to, say, teaching gym.

3. I'm blogging rather than facing any of this because ignorance is bliss.

4. Combine all of the above with the brilliant timing of after school study sessions with the AP kids, starting back on the weight-loss-get-in-shape band wagon from which I so miserably fell over the past three months (oops), and teaching an all-new unit on argumentative writing with my 9th graders (not my forte nor theirs) which requires the time and energy equivalent of my first year of teaching and I'm thinking I've got to be on a top ten list somewhere.

Like I said. Stupid.

*For obvious reasons this is not the week to give up my ever-so classy tendency of talking like a teamster. We'll save that one for later.

7 comments:

Shannon said...

Oh Brooke.
If only we were ALL as stupid as you...the world would be a better (more witty) place.

Good luck with the papers, and the argumentative writing, and the bandwagon. If anyone can do it all, that would be you.

Lildonbro said...

oh man, the secret life of teachers.
Who knew they probably didn't really want to read all of the crap they made you write.
I think you should make them do peer readings, that's what my English teacher did Senior year of college, he never read any of the papers.

Jen said...

A catch phrase comes to mind, I think from the A Team... I pity the fool? I'm just kidding. You are an awesome diva of teaching excellence. May the fairy queens of of survival and endurance be with you in this difficult time.

Stephanie said...

I wouldn't call you stupid, but you did display a shocking lapse in judgment with those papers... :)

Good luck!

Shannon said...

Brooke,
I was so excited to find you on facebook...but I can't find you! Help me. I'm under Shannon Booher. You must be under something other than your first and last name? I'm at a loss here.

Libby said...

Well, what do you do?

I'm sure that some of my teachers never read my papers in college. That is probably also true of high school papers. There you go, I answered you're problem.

Now can we hear a recap of your trip, pretty please?!

* said...

Ignorance *is* bliss.

Hope everything turned out OK.

PS: What YA novels have you read lately? Would love to pick your brain sometime.

PPS: Are you on Goodreads?