A week in the classroom of...

Since I don't much have a life anymore outside of teaching, I decided to adapt the "week in the life of" idea to a more classroom-focused one. After all, if I didn't, there'd be little to tell: "Oh, the potato man was 5 minutes late today; I heard 3 gunshots instead of just one; my limonada was too sweet."

History: This week we've been tackling feudalism; my younger class is learning about the various parts of a true castle and the purpose of each. We're doing a lot of relating back to non-academic subjects; neither the word "keep" nor the definition given in our workbook means anything to my kids, but when I mention The Two Towers movie, they suddenly understand what I'm talking about. My older group is learning more about the leaders of the time, and the causes and effects of feudalism. We're also spending some time tackling current global conflicts. Few of my students can see why the UN Peace committees are so backlogged; after all, they solved the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir in only a day (they're solution: dissolve the Partition-era borders or build an impenetrable wall around Kashmir itself and declare it independent). We're still working on the idea of "repercussions."

Math: We have problems with talking and getting off-topic in math; my students know all the right questions to make me forget we're in math class and make me start telling stories. Therefore, we have boxes; that is to say, we have cut large packing boxes down to make desk carrels. We now look like a group of very poor office workers, but at least our seatwork is getting done.

Science 1: We had our grand midterm today; we'll see how everyone does. This is my biggest class of the day, so we primarily work in teams with a little whole-class instruction. We watch some Magic School Bus, listen to some old-time radio shows about famous inventors, and do a lot of cutting, coloring, gluing, and papier-macheing. Oh, and we occasionally blow stuff up or set things on fire (all done with proper supervision and safety precautions).

World Cultures and Religions: Ahh, my favorite class, if only because Aamir Khan has done all the teaching this week. We're currently watching Lagaan (with subtitles edited for minor profanity), analyzing it for aspects of culture: food, dress, language, family relationships, traditional holidays, and religion. We're also learning about the UK's age of imperialism and pre-Partition India--oh, and cricket. The kids have become very involved in the story; they made me pause it yesterday so they could analyze each character's strengths and weaknesses in reference to the cricket team (well, the boys did that; the girls debated about whether Bhuvan should end up with Eliza or Gauri). Additionally, the students are planning a coup for next week once the movie has finished: apparently, I will play the part of the British (um, with what army??), and they will play the part of the villagers of Champaner and will stomp my, erm, "butt" in a game of cricket in the park.

ESL: This class would be more properly named "Lyrics and Subtitles," as our two primary activities are rearranging cut-and-scrambled lyrics and watching English movies with English subtitles (not called closed-captioning, apparently, because non-dialogue cues are not provided). We also play a lot of games with picture flashcards and read a lot of picture books aloud (so far, Noisy Nora and Corduroy are the class favorites). Body Boggle and Catchphrase (the OLD version, modified to remove inappropriate words) are also popular, but not nearly as readily usable. This class isn't officially on my schedule (I teach it to 3 students during my planning period), and I'm not actually certified in ESL, so I guess and experiment a lot. Actually, perhaps the class should be named "Miss Melby Flies by the Seat of her Pants."

Chemistry: A.K.A. "Atomic Particles through Emoticons." RealScience4kids donated a bunch of chemistry books to our school since they were about to reprint due to multiple flagrant typos and errors in the current edition. Seeing as they're advanced chemistry books, though, with a reading level of 10th grade (my students are mostly on a reading level of 7th grade, if that), we're moving verrrry slowly and using a lot of stretched metaphors. For example, subatomic particles have been assigned semi-appropriate emoticon representatives; protons are red smiley-faces, electrons are blue sad-faces, and neutrons are brown shrugging :| faces. Atoms are buses. Balancing equations is like converting a lego house into a lego boat and car: you can build whatever you want, but you have to use the same number and kind of legos as before. I'm not sure how effective the whole thing is; we'll find out when they take their midterms on Friday...