We Shall Overcome

Three snow days and we finally went back school yesterday.  I had a Monday/Friday opportunity to teach students the major concepts necessary to pass the state test in April.  Mind you, if I don't teach them well enough, the principal is certain he will be fired as well as half our staff.  This all due to some pie in the sky figure the state and federal government dreams up in order to make sure all are students reach proficiency by 2014.  The chance of pushing the test back is minimal at best.  No, they usually just tack the days to the end of the year when all students feel they are technically out because the big tests have already been given. 

We are still wading through the same story I started a week and a half ago that I was planning to use to cement their understanding of propaganda.  I have also had them write out reading strategy responses in their journals, and I plan to put them into pairs where they have to complete graphic organizers that focus on different skills based on their reading comprehension MAP scores. 

Give it to them as homework, you might think.  Ahhh.  Not if you want it read.  Kids don't do homework anymore.  Nobody really makes them.  I even tried to spark up my homework by telling kids to do the following assignment:

1.  Watch a TV commercial
2.  Analyze commercial:  Identify product being sold and target audience.  What persuasive/propaganda techniques are being used?  Is this commercial being used persuasively or as propaganda?  Why do you feel that way.
3.  Text response to number I gave them where I have a poll set up for the class.  (see http://www.polleverywhere.com/ if you are interested in trying this with your students.  It is a cool site!)

I had four incomplete responses texted to me, one well written e-mail response from my overachiever, several who took the initiative and wrote the homework out on paper because they had difficulty with the texting instructions they had to write out in their agenda.  The rest?  Whiners who cried out "I couldn't get it to work" and so many others who said "What homework"?

I think I may be a little surly as well because just about every one of my students who I friended on Facebook think I have a direct connection to God's weather plans and my district's decisions regarding school.  For some reason they all seem to think I know whether we are going to have school or not.  Never mind that I tell them over and over that, just like them, I find out when they find out - from channel 27 or from the onecall system our school sends out with recorded messages.  Coincidentally, it's those same students who said "What homework" in class.  when I asked them about it on Facebook, and I explained it to them several times on facebook both en masse and individually, they said they would do it...I have this really great bridge I can sell 'ya ...

And here we are, at the beginning of a three day weekend -- That's right - Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  Don't get me wrong.  I am so glad King finally received a day that our country honors him.  But have you ever tried to get 7th graders, or any graders, for that matter to get back to work after a multitude of snowdays (I think we have been to work in January a total of six days this year - if that!) and the threat of more nasty weather next week?  Especially after having just been off  for Christmas Break.  All the routines have been forgotten, the expectations, the work ethic.  It's like starting from scratch. 

With all this being said, I just received my Take One box in the mail, a program that lets you turn in the first portfolio entry for the National Board Certification process.  When I got the box, I remembered reading the first few standards in the instruction manual and thinking - "Wow.  They don't cut you any slack for being in a difficult environment, for having difficult students.  There are no excuses in this program for students not learning. It is the teacher's job to figure out how to teach each student.  Period.

So maybe it is quite appropriate that MLK Day is Monday.  I will be singing that hymn and applying it to my life on so many levels.  Yes - -We Shall Overcome!