snow days

Today is snow day number 5.

We had school yesterday, but woke up this morning with snow falling hard again. At first, 98% of the schools in the area tried to start with a 2 hour delay. About half an hour ago, they called saying it was cancelled and a majority of those 2 hour delay schools switched to cancel the day. The snow is supposed to stop, but not until after students would have to be transported to school. So far, I've had one Odd day and one Even day with my classes this semester.

Yesterday my classes surprised me by being a little more focused than I expected. We got through the intro work for both plays and actually ended up reading a good chunk of Act I of both Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. That was a load off of my back. Plus, as I look back on last year, this is about where I was already in the second week of Midsummer because there were interruptions and I did a lot more activities with the terminology and themes before we started reading. Once I realized that, I relaxed a bit. Another positive is that my English 9 kids already have a general idea about R&J, liked discussing the true/false statements and actually seemed excited and ready to read. Also: they seemed to understand it already (more than I expected, I mean-- it is Shakespeare, always a challenge for HS kids) and a few of them even got the humor in the first scene. As for Midsummer, that play introduces so many characters to begin with that the students were at first confused. Shakespeare throws out a lot of names and conflicts at the very start, so I can understand their confusion, especially after days of not having class. 7th period was pretty chatty and hyper, but less rowdy than I expected and it seemed like a few of them were catching on. That play gets easier as it goes on, so I'm still looking forward to teaching it for a second year. My English 10 kids are awesome and I think this play is definitely their style, if the snow could stop interrupting the schedule.

This weekend and the snow day on Monday led to me finishing my part of my application to grad school. That's a great feeling. All I'm waiting on is transcripts to be sent from WMU to VCU and two references (they've been held up by the snow days, but both say they can get it to me by the end of the week). I have everything I need to work on Romeo & Juliet, lesson plans and updating my classroom site, so I'll use this day to work on anything I would've worked on during my planning period. The only thing I don't have here that I had to do today was the failure letters teachers were responsible for sending out, but that can be done tomorrow.

lemme brag a sec...

My seniors have finally finished Macbeth, which is a joy for all of us involved. It took way too long to get through, due to the timing: Start before winter break, go through semester change, etc. Seriously awkward timing for trying to teach a play. But it's all done! Tests are finished, projects and essays are done and we move on to the time period of 1660-1800. That's right-- trying to teach almost 200 years of literature before moving on to the Romantic period. There is a plus though: language is more modern. No more whining about "Why isn't this in English?!"
We started off by reading Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal". If you haven't read this, do it. It's hilarious. Read Gulliver's Travels, too, while you're at it. We've talked about satire throughout the year, it seems, so now was a good time to bring it up again and finally assign a writing assignment for the whole class (others that could've been satirical were optional, they could also be honest/serious) that involved satire. So, the students had to write their own "modest" proposal. Let me tell you, this was genius. There have only been a few times I've enjoyed reading every writing assignment, and this is one of those times. Some of these are absolutely hilarious! I'm very proud of my seniors right now, which is great since the last few weeks, they've been infuriatingly lazy and whiny.
Also, my 10th graders are actually enjoying A Midsummer Night's Dream, especially Act III (also my favorite act). A few of them are understanding it without me translating Shakespearean English into more modern English (!!!). Plus, they liked the Royal Shakespeare Company's version of it (so far) when I showed them Acts I and II. I'm going to show them the version made a few years ago when we're all done with the play.
I've decided on the second play we'll read in that class, too: The Glass Menagerie. I figured it worked because of family/parent issues. I don't want to do Julius Caesar, even though it'd be really easy for me to teach. No need to do 2 Shakespeare plays, some of those kids would probably try and poison my coffee. Another 10th grade teacher suggested that I not do Antigone because the version we have is a "bad" one and causing her a lot of trouble. The third other choice we have is one I'm not even remotely into and couldn't tell you the title of it to save my life. The one I chose seems to be modern enough and has a few things I could connect to Midsummer, so it'll work just fine.