Paranoid

Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm finding that choosing useful, engaging, appropriate short stories for 9th graders has been incredibly difficult. I'm trying to find something for my summer school class besides Poe, Hawthorne, or O'Henry. I'm loving ZZ Packer's collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, and Junot Diaz's Drown. However, I'm having difficulty choosing one or two stories that I feel confident doing with the kids. Either the language is too rough, the topics too dark, the implications too sexual - or any of it, too close to home. Yes, maybe I'm just paranoid - but I'm afraid of doing something a little new and different, and having it come back to bite me, even though it was entirely well-thought-out and purposeful. Even though ZZ Packer's collection is recommended on the Common Core Curriculum.

Paranoid. Yes.

I think I may bite the bullet though and go with Packer's "Brownies." It's an excellent story about race, misperceptions, and compassion and understanding. I think its message is crucial, yet its delivery is engaging and entertaining. I just hope my students can handle it.

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Summer School!!!!

Yes that's right -- I'm teachin' summer school!

It's actually not nearly as bad as you might think. My kids get a little chatty sometimes, but they're overall pretty good. They don't want to be stuck taking English forever!

I'm "teaching" 2 classes - I say "teaching" because the first class is an online course, where my role is that of a mentor. The students have an online teacher, but I am there to make sure they stay on task, answer questions they may have, help them with the technology (which is Blackboard), etc. From my end, this is nice - I don't have to plan, the students can take whatever English course they failed, regardless of the school schedule, and it's something new and experimental. On the other hand, I wonder how many of them will be successful. There's a whole lot of YouTube going on when I look around at the computers, despite my parrot-like commands for them to focus on their work and stay on track. That, and some other tech-related issues having to do with what we have in our computer lab, and the organization of the students' courses. I'm still out on whether I think this is a good option for struggling students.

My other class is a "live" class: 9th grade English. I really enjoy this one. I spend 2 hours with the kids each day, Monday to Thursday, and I'm really surprised at how quickly the time moves. It makes me wonder how we get through everything in 40-minute spurts during the year! It moves quickly for me, but I know it's a long time for some of the students --- some of them get really restless during the 2nd half. Overall, though, I think it affords the time to allow them to practice writing, and allows me time to check in with everyone at least once during class. We also have our own laptop cart, and I've set the kids up on Google docs. It's nice to have the time to experiment.

Anyway, that's all for now. More to come...!

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