Mrs. Ram's Jams

Category: teaching

• A Teacher Tale: Ways My 8th Graders Horrified Me Recently

  Posted at 11:44 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on March 13, 2021

  

  Some classroom snapshots that demonstrate why I love and hate teaching middle schoolers, who I refer to with equal parts affection and exasperation as goofbuckets: 

  ---

  Goofbucket #1: If I have a red-headed baby can I just throw it out the window? [Having temporarily forgotten that he sits next to a blatantly ginger (sweet sweet sweet) girl.]

  Ginger-Haired-Shoulder-Partner Goofbucket: [Shoots him with an eat-poo-and-die look that I thought she was incapable of making.]

  Me: There’s a word for that: defenestrate. And no. And I’m pretty sure you just hurt Ginger-Haired-Shoulder-Partner Goofbucket’s feelings.

  ---

  Goofbucket #2: Hand sanitizer low-key tastes good.

  ---

  *****In my school district, students have to wear uniforms. And. It’s. A. Battle. Every. Single. Day. To. Get. Middle. Schoolers. To. Follow. The. Policy. (Do I agree with public school uniform policy? No. But I enforce it because it’s part of my job.)

  We always have a few who try to get away with not wearing uniform shirts by just wearing a school-approved sweatshirt or hoodie instead with whatever t-shirt underneath. 

  Well, a couple of weeks ago, one of my students rolled into first block wearing a black hoodie, which they’re not allowed to wear. *****

  Me: [Stopping him at the door.] Hey, you know you can’t wear black hoodies in the classroom. I’m just going to need you to take it off.

  Goofbucket #3: I can’t.

  Me: Why not?

  Goofbucket #3: I don’t have a shirt on.

  Me: [Startled.] You don’t have on any shirt underneath your hoodie????

  Goofbucket #3: No, ma’am.

  Me: [Aghast.] Who wears a hoodie without wearing ANY shirt underneath it?????

  Goofbucket #3: [Hangs head in shame.]

  Me: Go downstairs and get a shirt from ISSP. 

  [Goofbucket #3 comes back 15 minutes later wearing a very wrinkly school-approved anorak that’s a tad too small. His midriff is visible when he raises his arms slightly.]

  Me: What are you wearing????

  Goofbucket #3: Coach was out of uniform shirts so he sent me to the locker room to find something to wear. All I could find was this jacket.

  Me: So you just took some random jacket???? 

  [Both of us hang our heads in defeat.]

  (Sidebar: A few years ago, a similar situation transpired, but it was with a girl, and she couldn’t take her sweatshirt off because she wasn’t wearing a bra. Like, I get you girl, #freethetatas all the way, and whew, you’re brave, but you can’t do that here!!!)

  ---

  *****I’m not quite sure how we arrived at this conversation, but this transpired during my advisory.*****

  Me: Teaching is like performing, and y’all are my audience.

  Confused Goofbucket: We’re your audience?

  Me: Yeah, and if this were back in Shakespeare’s day and I were performing on stage at the Globe Theater and the audience didn’t like my performance, what would the audience have thrown at me? You should be far enough into your Shakespeare WebQuest to answer that.

  Goofbucket #5:  BEER!!!!!!!

  [The whole room gets silent.]

  Me: [Deadpans.] Wrong answer. Also, you better believe that I’m telling your mother you said that.

  Goofbucket #5: [Cowers in fear.]

  Me: [Behind a hardened stare, delights in his fright. Takes a silent curtain call.]

  ---

  *****In the middle of class, I watched a student, Goofbucket #1 who’ve you already met, drink water through his mask. (I honestly think he forgot he was wearing one.)*****

  Me: [Stops going over intro to Romeo and Juliet slides.] Did you just drink water through your mask?

  Goofbucket #1: [Puts the water bottle down and closes his eyes because he knows the class will never let him live it down. Starts laughing.] Yes.

  Me: When’s the last time you washed your mask????? [Asks because obviously 8th graders are gross and some of them wear the same mask every single day.]

  Goofbucket #1: Yesterday.

  Me: Thank god. [Finds my own mask getting wet from the laughing-so-hard-I’m-crying tears.]

  *****I watched the wet circle on his mask slowly dry the rest of the block.*****

  ---
  Posted in education, teaching, Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged comedy, middle school teacher, teaching

• Teaching Fail: When Acronyms Backfire

  Posted at 9:32 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on February 20, 2021

  

  My students and I have been working on argumentative texts, and I swore on Facebook not too long ago that I would ensure my students would never forget how to evaluate an argument and a source.

  So I turned to Google while lesson planning and discovered the CRAAP method for examining sources. All you have to do is ask yourself is this source CRAAP to analyze for currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose–and voila, the children remember how to evaluate a source! And they get to say CRAAP in the classroom, so it makes them feel like they can cuss but actually aren’t! Students love that cusp of danger feeling! 

  And my teacher soul radiated warm fuzzies every time I heard them say CRAAP while discussing texts about failure.

  CRAAP never sounded so good! CRAAP was magic! They were learning! They would know forever how to evaluate a resource!

  Well.

  It backfired.

  While my students did test corrections yesterday, I examined exit tickets that analyzed if a failure fluff piece from Medium.com was a compelling argument.

  What did my students do in their formal writing???

  Used the word CRAAP–EVERYWHERE.

  I audibly groaned everytime I came across a sentence that said “this source isn’t CRAAP.”

  Not only did they come up with incorrect answers (sigh, only like five kids said the source and the argument itself was crappy), they actually thought saying CRAAP in their writing was a brilliant idea!!!

  After having done a badass job of teaching how to evaluate sources and arguments using articles about failure, I WAS AND AM THE FAILURE AND IT MADE ME FEEL CRAPPY.

  Crap. Crap. Crap. Extra Crap.

  What if they do that on their benchmark???? Or god forbid the LEAP test????

  How do I get the CRAAP out of them?

  Well, that sounded terrible, but you know what I mean!

  Looks like they’re in for a crappy Tuesday because they’re going to be rewriting those exit tickets. 

  (Sidebar:  When I looked at these same exit tickets, so many students kept referring to the author by his first name. I asked my fourth block why–because they fully know to use the author’s last name. Their response? His last name was too hard to spell so it was easier to use his first name.)

  

  (gif credit)

  Posted in education, teaching, Uncategorized | 2 Comments | Tagged education, funny, teacher, teacher problems, teaching

• A Teacher Tale: A Rant About Cheating in Digital Classrooms

  Posted at 9:36 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on February 13, 2021

  

  Now that I’m an in-person and at-home synchronous teaching master–HA–I forget to start my Google Meet at third block about half the time and occasionally talk while my microphone is on mute–I need help mastering ALL THE STUDENT CHEATING THAT IS HAPPENING ALL THE TIME BECAUSE THEY ARE ALWAYS ON THEIR DEVICES.

  I miss paper. And pencils. And pens. And THINKING instead of Google searching and regurgitating whatever Spark Notes is telling them about symbolism in Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery.

  I’m starting to wish that Google was never invented.

  I’m so frustrated because some students’ grades are complete shams. Their grades aren’t reflective of their knowledge and ability. The grades are reflective of cheating and getting away with it.

  It seems like all my digital resources have been compromised. 

  All of the answers to CommonLit assessments are readily available to students on Quizlet.

  The state curriculum that we’re using is web-based. Want to guess how secure it is? Not very. Our unit test answers are plastered all over the internet.

  I can’t lock a Google Form anymore because my 8th graders don’t have Chromebooks.

  I gave the kids To Kill a Mockingbird before Christmas break to read on their own and a banana-ton of questions to answer as a test grade. It’s due in two weeks. Guess what some kids are doing? Googling the answers instead of reading the book. (In hindsight, this was a terrible assignment to give them.)

  And now that I’m teaching at home virtual learners who are, for the most part, unsupervised while they’re at home all day, cheating is even more of an issue. And I could be mistaken, but I think some of my in-person learners are staying home on days when they have lots of tests and logging in virtually to class so they can cheat more easily. 

  And while we do have Impero as monitoring software, it’s only on school devices. Some of my students use two different devices, one for the Google Meet, and one for classwork, which is fine, but I can’t see what they’re doing on the other device. This also becomes problematic when I do give locked tests through Illuminate. (Also no lesson planning or grading gets done when the students are testing anymore because I have to watch what they’re doing like a hawk.)

  End rambly semi-coherent rant.

  Do y’all have any teacher hacks to help prevent cheating, especially during testing, in this digital classroom era? This teacher needs help! 

  Here are some of the things I already do:

  1. Their cameras must be on and their faces must be fully visible. Most of the time, my rule is eyebrows and up, but this doesn’t work during testing. No blurred backgrounds are allowed either.
  2. I make all students push their sleeves up and show me their wrists to see if they have smart watches on. If they’re wearing one, I make the kids at home stand up and go put their watches on the other side of the room and the kids at school put their watches in their backpacks. (I personally don’t think kids should wear smart watches at school, period.)
  3. I make the kids at home show me their phones and have them put their phones on the other side of the room too. I don’t think this actually works. Lots of them tell me that their phones are already in another room. Yeah right.
  4. I make them have their microphones on the whole time they’re testing.
  5. Tests have to be taken on the school-issued device. 
  6. I give tests in a locked browser if at all possible. I wish I could lock students into a Google Form or CommonLit. UGHHH.
  7. I stalk them on Impero when I give them unsecure assessments.

  Is it terrible that I delight in their looks of misery when they realize I’ve thwarted most of their reliable cheating methods? Give me more ideas so I can get my schadenfreude on! 

  But in all seriousness, I can’t believe that parents of in-person learners aren’t making more of a stink about how easy it is for at-home learners to cheat and ultimately get better grades. 

  Is there anything that parents and students hate more than grades not being fair?

  Posted in teaching | 0 Comments | Tagged digital classrooms, education, student cheating, teaching, teaching during a pandemic

• A Teacher Tale: The English Teacher Who Hates to Read Aloud

  Posted at 11:31 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on January 23, 2021

  

  If I were to open my MyChart app for you, you’d see a scary list of my illnesses:  ulcerative colitis, fibromyalgia, Ménière’s, and IBS–to name a few. And while they sucketh harder than all marathons ever run collectively, most of my chronic issues are hidden beneath my cracked wide-open and bleeding (thanks visible psoriasis), painful to the touch most days (thanks invisible fibromyalgia), and purple-then-blue-then-white-then-red (thanks visible Raynaud’s) epidermis. 

  But if you were to open my classroom door and stay for a while, you’d see another of my afflictions (and I’m not talking about my very visible llama problem). While it doesn’t cause me any physical pain, the emotional distress it inflicts upon me makes me feel embarrassed and like a failure.

  You’d expect this funny, vibrant, spunky, whimsical (if I do say so myself) English teacher to be downright eloquent, a blonde version of John Keating in Dead Poet’s Society, but, y’all–I. Hate. To. Read. Aloud. In. Class. Because. I. Fuck. It. Up—-so hard. 

  

  Why?

  1. I read ALL the time but–to myself. And while my dad read the funnies out loud to me as a child, I don’t remember other adults consistently reading texts aloud to me. I might be misremembering, because my brain is fickle, but I’m fairly certain that by middle school, we did most of our reading for English class by ourselves. What does this boil down to? I haven’t heard a shit-ton of words that I would recognize in print ever pronounced. So throughout the years, I made up my own pronunciations. Yeah, I used to sit with a dictionary to look up a word’s meaning, but I never bothered with the pronunciation. It’s a whole hell of a lot easier now to stop and have Google’s online dictionary pronounce schadenfreude for you than it was in the 90s because a hardcover Webster’s Dictionary lacked that feature. I’ve blundered through words like caste, propitious, and scythe because I’d never heard them spoken only to have students correct me. That shit’s embarrassing. And it happens all the time. Once I even had a parent call to complain that I didn’t pronounce yeoman correctly while teaching The Canterbury Tales for the first time. Sorry that I’m not fluent in Middle English? How often is that word used in casual conversation? Also, get over yourself. I can’t ever get ahead of myself either because the curriculum is always changing. Next year? I get a brand-new curriculum (woohoo?), meaning new literature and an unexplored minefield of words I’ve never heard spoken.
  2. Y’all. The amount of Greek, Hebrew, Latin, French, and Spanish that is embedded in the texts that we read throws me for a loop as well. This Midwesterner who relocated to the deep Cajun French South only knows how to say bonjour in French. I can read some Greek, from studying abroad, and am even better at reading Russian (thanks college), but pronouncing Greek and Russian words? Nope. I bombed every Russian oral exam. Last year I taught The Odyssey, and I told the students, hey, I’ve never taught this before, there’s a lot of Greek, let’s work through this together. And it took us several rounds to remember how to say Telemachus, Antinous, Aeaea, etc., correctly. We just finished Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize Lecture “Hope, Despair, and Memory” last week, and I know I mispronounced every single thing in Hebrew and several allusions–despite looking up how to say them beforehand. It takes time to commit how to say previously unknown words to memory. 
  3. There are just some words I can’t say. Like magnanimity. Despite listening to how to say this word on repeat, I can’t say it. I go all Nemo trying to say anemone and start thinking about magma and then the Magna Carta, and now I’ve exposed you to the rabbit hole that is my brain. Sorry!!!!
  4. Fibromyalgia. Most of the time, my fibro is invisible, but I struggle with cognitive function and brain fog if I’m in a flare, making my fibro finally visible. It’s worse in the morning and at night. What’s it like? Not being able to pronounce words that you know how to say. Slurring your words when you’re reading or talking when you are dead sober. The inability to find the word you want to use, even when it’s staring you dead in the face. Transposing letters in words. Saying one word when you meant to use a different one. Not being able to form a sentence period in the morning when you’re supposed to get students excited about literature and the kids look at you like you’re stupid when language fails you. And now that I’ve written this, I wonder just how much my fibro prevents me from mastering numbers 2-3.

  

  So how does this English teacher who hates to read aloud because she can’t spoken-word well cope? She relies heavily on audio versions of texts, and when she can’t find audio, she explains herself and asks for a little grace. 

  As a teacher, talk about your own struggles, issues, illnesses, etc., to normalize that it’s okay to discuss things that society would rather see swept under the rug. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “Hey, Mrs. Ram is struggling today due to a fibro flare, so please excuse her as she tortures your eardrums while she reads this aloud to you.” 

  And answer their questions if they have any, and move on. Some of them will judge you, no matter what you say (or in my case how you say it), but you’d be surprised how forgiving students (and people in general) can be when you’re honest about your own limitations and invisible battles you might be fighting. 
  

  Posted in education, fibromyalgia, meniere's disease, teaching, ulcerative colitis, Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged english teacher, fibromyalgia, invisible illness, reading aloud, teachers who curse

• Defund the Grammar Police

  Posted at 11:13 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on January 16, 2021

  

  Pssssssstttttt.

  You. Yes, you. 

  It’s time to hand in your self-bestowed grammar police badge.

  Quit writing snarky posts about other people’s command of Standard English.

  

  This past week, I encountered a Facebook post where the person said that a major percentage of social media users needed remedial English classes.

  Normally I would just keep on scrolling, but I stopped and made a comment because, oh the irony, the post had errors within it. I softened the blow with “Would you hate me forever if I…” and then proceeded to point out that sentences should never start with numerals (and patted myself on the back for not also pointing out that he should be using one space instead of two after a period). He responded with a sentence where nearly every word was used incorrectly and that he would have never guessed that I would have been so offended by numerals. I “haha”-ed his comment, but the original post still left a sour taste in my mouth.

  I saw multiple posts last week decrying, “It’s the Capitol Building–not the capital building facepalm emoji.” 

  And posts about the differences among there, their, and they’re will probably never go out of grammar shaming vogue.

  Because I am the grammar police, like have gotten paid for 15 years to read terrible writing by middle schoolers and high schoolers, let me let you in on a little secret—your weird sense of pride in being better at syntax, capitalization, and spelling than your peers makes me uncomfortable. Does pointing out grammar mistakes make you feel better about yourself? Are you trying to belittle the point the other person is trying to make? Do you recognize that your behavior is more than a little elitist? 

  First of all. It’s social media. Get over it. People don’t capitalize proper nouns and punctuation is optional. Who cares if someone you haven’t seen since high school uses its when they mean to use it’s?

  Autocorrect and predictive texts can ruin comments too. Have a little grace.

  Some people give zero fucks about proofreading.

  I diligently proofread, and errors still make their way onto Facebook. And on my blog–even after several reads, merry-go-rounds of spell checks, etc. I’m my own editor because I’m not paying anybody to do it and trying to solicit your friends to proofread something is akin to asking them for money that they know you’ll never pay back. It’s way easier to point out errors in someone else’s writing than your own. Having this blog has humbled my grammar policing because I know how hard it is to produce an error-free piece of writing. I am thrilled when I go back after a few weeks to revisit a post and realize there are no typos. 

  Some people write how they speak, particularly in informal writing, and there is nothing wrong with the way that ANYBODY speaks. When you are mocking the way a person is writing, you might be mocking how they talk, and now you’re inadvertently casting judgements about spoken language. There is nothing wrong with anybody’s dialect of English. 

  Go pick up any work of fiction. ANY WORK OF FICTION. Run-on sentences and fragments abound. Commas are used whenever the author wants to use the little guy. Hell, I’ve even read books where there are no quotation marks for dialogue. Language rules are meant to be broken. 

  Learning those Standard English rules are freaking hard. And while you might have mastered them, lots of people haven’t. And who knows if Twitter Thomas was even taught them after elementary school.

  Let’s throw it back twenty years. How much writing by your friends were you seeing daily? Maybe something on AIM, but nowhere near the amount you’re consuming now. Twenty years ago, you wouldn’t have been making these judgements about other people’s writing because you wouldn’t have even been exposed to it.

  You know what I look for anymore as an English teacher–meaning. If I sat and marked every knowledge of language and conventions error on every big writing assignment that I gave my students, I WOULD NEVER FINISH GRADING THEM. EVER. I ask myself, do these sentences make sense? Do I understand the point the student is trying to make? I pretty much only point out sentence construction issues because meaning will always be more important than modifiers being misplaced, words being left out, and misspelled words–especially since most writing is timed anymore. Our rubrics don’t even place that much emphasis on grammar anymore because meaning IS more important.

  When’s the last time you took a look at “The Declaration of Independence”? There. Are. Common. Nouns. Capitalized. Throughout. Its. Entirety. Thomas Jefferson himself capitalized words to the beat of his own founding-father’s heart. 

  So ask yourself, do I know what my fourth cousin’s husband meant when he wrote a post about killing the Biggest Buck of his life or are you going to let those capital Bs ruin your day? He’s probably just using them for emphasis. And killing an 18-pointer is freaking badass. I’d be capitalizing the shit out of that post too. And if he spells it dear instead of deer? Take a page out of Elsa’s book and let it doe. (Let it doe! Let it doe!)

  I’ll leave a box out on my sticky-note strewn teacher’s desk. I expect your imaginary grammar police badge to be in it by the end of the day, or I’m going to have to write you up for being MEAN instead of looking for MEANING. Hopefully my student-given sign sitting atop my desk that reads World’s Goodest Teacher makes you pause in humor and not contempt on your way out. 

  

  (But also, if you find any typos in this–HELP A GIRL OUT!) 

  Posted in teaching, writing | 6 Comments | Tagged english teacher, grammar police

• A Teacher Poem: Going Through the eMotions

  Posted at 10:46 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on December 19, 2020

  

  plaster a big smile on your face
  even though it's hidden by your mask
  wish the mask covered up your eyes too
  because you're end of the school year tired but it's only December
  because it's hard to fake enthusiasm with your retinas and your pupils
  
  remind your in-person pupils, all twelve of them, to keep their space
  don't touch his desk
  or his backpack
  or his breakfast
  
  pinch your nose and close your eyes while you tell him for the umpteenth time to get his mask over his nose
  lose your mind as he covers his eyeballs with it
  because the sass, the audacity, is too much
  because you're jealous
  
  begin going through the eMotions
  
  start your Google Meet
  check you COVID screening spreadsheet
  tell a student that if she doesn't turn her camera on, she will be marked absent
  she doesn't
  choke on your sigh of frustration 
  because she never listens
  because you don't know if she's with her mom or her dad
  because she might not even be there
  because you don't know if she has anything to eat today
  be thankful that the resolution sucks so the kids at home don't see the tear leaking out of your left eye
  but the resolution IRL works just fine
  nobody sees anyway because they're teenagers who have screens for faces
  
  you're overwhelmed by going through the eMotions
  
  put on a dog and pony show, a three ring circus, an Oscar worthy performance to try to get anybody to talk during the lesson
  but the only thing you can hear is the clack clack clack of the keys 
  
  let them type their exit tickets while you recall pen and paper with nostalgia, the worst emotion of them all
  
  work on fully digitizing a week's worth of lessons
  turn pink and then red when you remember you can't use anything you've spent hours creating next school year because the curriculum is switching for the second time in two years
  angry pound the keys as you type with a force that could shatter 
  your fingernails
  your desk
  the county
  
  because you're tired of going through the eMotions
  
  sift through Google Classroom for an assignment that he completed three weeks late that he expects to be graded RIGHT NOW
  and so does his mom
  she's only emailed you five times about it
  you've responded once in return
  the assignment's only half done
  like the school year
  like your sanity
  like your self-esteem
  
  ignore the other late work emails
  
  rest your forehead on your desk
  stare at your lap and breathe, breathe, breathe deep
  look up to see if anyone witnessed your saga, your mental break down, your calamity
  but they're teenagers who have screens for faces and Ray-Bradbury-is-rolling-over-in-his-grave 
  AirPods
  because they're only concerned about their own emotions, not yours
  
  and you're marrow-deep tired of going through the eMotions
  
  so
  
  you hand them a book--tactile, paper, cover, spine, pages to turn, black ink
  and they stare at it like their mom put Brussels sprouts on their plate
  when you've actually given them chocolate cake
  
  because you're tired of eMotions
  
  you smile, a real one this time, that lights up your bloodshot eyes
  because books
  because the bell rang
  because it's finally break
  and you've got two weeks off from going through the motions
  
  try to turn off your inner monologue as you power down your Dell
  but you know that you'll spend your entire break
  going through your emotions
  

  Posted in education, poems, poetry, teaching | 0 Comments | Tagged poems, poems about teaching, poetry

• Mrs. Ram’s Holiday Gift Guide for Teachers

  Posted at 10:41 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on December 12, 2020

  

  Tired of giving gift cards, coffee mugs, and home-baked goodies to your children’s teachers every year for Christmas? 

  Have you put off shopping for teacher gifts because you lack good ideas?

  Look no further! I’ve got some great teacher gift ideas for you.

  Plants. I squealed in delight when the school librarian dropped off this perfect little succulent in my room this week.

  

  Once, I received a begonia hanging basket and about died on the spot. If your child showed up with a tiny poinsettia for me, I would explode with Christmas joy. Seriously, consider giving plants this Christmas. They’re inexpensive and unexpected. 

  A lunch-sized Crock-Pot. If you’re willing to spend a little more on a Christmas gift, this is perfect for teachers. I purchased one for myself, and it has been life-changing. Some schools don’t allow teachers to have their own microwaves in their rooms, and right now using a communal microwave grosses me out. With COVID, lots of teachers have to monitor students during lunch and can barely find the time to eat, let alone heat up their lunch. I plug in my baby Crock-Pot at the end of third block, and my chicken and veggie soup or pot roast is the perfect temperature by the end of fourth block. Every teacher I know who has one can’t live without theirs. 

  

  Cool handmade shit you or your friends make.  ‘Tis the season to promote yourself! Last year, I received a gorgeous pottery ornament and bowl made by a student’s mother. I’ve gotten the most delicious salsa that a student’s mother sells, and once I tasted it, I turned around and bought some to give to my friends for Christmas. And while I’m not crafty, I have friends who are. One of my besties from high school makes the MOST gorgeous and fantastic artisan soaps, so guess what Little Thing’s teachers are getting this year?

  

  (Here’s a link to her website:  Persifer Soap Company.) (Image credit.)

  I’m sure you have friends who make earrings, bath bombs, hot chocolate bombs, etc. Support your friends, and give the cool shit they make to your kids’ teachers. 

  Cool handmade shit your kids make. I have received gifts that have made me cry and are framed and precious and I will cherish them forever and ever. (Rambly incoherent sentence intended because I’m incoherent just thinking about them.) I had a student two years ago paint me this. I was a mess for the rest of the day.

  

  I had a student draw this for me one year. (Context:  Mrs. Ram, that’s me, loves Goose, my husband’s nickname, with Little Thing watching the two of us. I die now, okay?)

  

  Your kids are talented. I love to get their works of art.

  Gifts that relate to the teacher’s classroom theme. More than likely, your kids’ teachers’ classrooms are decorated with a theme. Mine’s decorated in llamas, so anything llama related is welcome! Llama sticky notes? Yes, please! Llama pencils? Sure! Llama stuffed animals, hand towels, or journals? Absolutely! Ask your kids how their teachers’ classrooms are decorated and go from there. 

  

  Gift cards to local businesses. Okay, I know I started this post by saying Tired of giving gift cards…but but but. Think outside the box with this one. Don’t just go with gift cards for Amazon, Walmart, Target, or Starbucks. Think local, especially with small businesses being hit hard this year. Give the gift of a manicure or pedicure! Give the gift of your favorite Mexican restaurant! Give the gift of your favorite florist or boutique!

  

  But in all honesty, teachers enjoy all the gifts they receive. They will love every coffee mug and Starbucks gift card they receive. 

  It’s just nice to be recognized and appreciated, especially during such a tumultuous school year. 

  Posted in education, teaching, Uncategorized | 3 Comments | Tagged english teacher, gifts for teachers, middle school teacher, teacher gifts, teaching

• What I Miss

  Posted at 7:56 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on November 21, 2020

  

  I’m rather wistful this morning. Here are two things that I’ve been missing HARD because of the pandemic:

  1. Wearing fancy earrings. I have a whole drawer full of golden hoops, tortoise shell danglies, leather teardrops, and Kendra Scott knockoffs that are slowly going out of style. Instead, I’m donning studs, BORING, because I am fearful of losing an earlobe when tearing my mask off my face after class ends. Have you ever ripped a piercing wide open? I have— between freshman and sophomore year of college waiting tables at my cousin’s restaurant. I bussed a table using a big Rubbermaid container and brought it back to the dishwashing area. As I was setting it down, its lip got caught on my belly button ring and ripped that senior-year-in-high-school-spring-break-bad-decision right out. I screamed. It hurt like hell. For years the top of my bellybutton looked like it had floppy devil horns hanging upside down from it. I don’t want my ears to suffer the same fate. Occasionally I’ll sport my fancy earrings anyway when I want to live on the wild side or simply forget the dangers of fancy earring wearing. The only upside to wearing them is if you wear hoops. Then at least when you take your mask off, the hoopies catch the elastic and your mask can hang like a hammock from them if you don’t feel like putting your mask on your desk. 
  2. Name brand hand sanitizer. All I want for Christmas is some Germ-X or Purell. That cheap shit smells like tequila, and by nine a.m., WHILE I’M TEACHING CHILDREN, all I can think about is a giant top-shelf margarita. I’ve had to stop myself mid lesson from sniffing it because I’m all nostalgic for bygone Friday afternoon happy hours with my teacher friends. It’s not fair that my classroom smells like a Mexican restaurant when it’s unsafe to even patronize (Patrón-ize?) one currently. So if you walk past my classroom door and see me fondling a bottle of GermsNoMore and bringing it lovingly up to my nose, I might need you to come in and confiscate it and replace it with some chips and salsa, thank you very much. 

  If you need me for anything this Thanksgiving break, you can find me in my backyard wearing my favorite tortoise shell oversized hoopies sipping a massive margarita in my not-yet-purchased hammock. 

  

  ---

  What are the random things that you miss, friends?

  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 4 Comments | Tagged funny, pandemic, teaching

• A Teacher Tale: How I Tortured My Students for My Own Entertainment This Week

  Posted at 10:51 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on October 24, 2020

  

  It’s no secret that my class’s content is mind-numbing. I sympathize with my students who have fallen asleep, cheeks pressed to their sanitized desks and drool unspooling from the corners of their mouths, lulled into slumber because The Odyssey is boring. Who can blame them? It’s terribly long, was written eons ago, and is a poem. I struggle to contain my excitement, too.

  (You have no idea how much middle schoolers loathe poetry. But I adore yelling:  Guess what? We’re going to read a poem today!!!! And delight in the resounding chorus of teenage groans of displeasure following my pronouncement.) 

  Anyway, to further torture students, I try to make it as awkward as possible for my own entertainment.

  Because messing with the kids is the best part of my job. 

  Here’s how I tortured my students this week:

  1. I made them do their work in Kami. If you’re unfamiliar with Kami, it’s a PDF annotation program. The students despise it because despite an autosave feature, it only saves frequently not constantly. Apparently they’ve never known the despair of writing an essay in Microsoft Word that you’ve stayed up all night to complete that’s due to a professor in a couple of hours and losing your work because you accidentally closed the document without hitting “save now.” The. Horror. Google Docs has spoiled them. Experiencing the collective agony of pre-Google technology will make them better human beings.
  2. I made them talk to their laptops. Well, I specifically asked them to converse with Kami and ply her with compliments so she’d be more willing to save their work. An ALARMING number of students performed the exact opposite of my request and told Kami horrible, awful things, calling her names. One student even expressed to Kami a disquieting desire to light her on fire. Middle schoolers are terrible at being kind, but they loved talking to inanimate objects–even though they were being total Regina Georges while doing so. Weirdos. 

  

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  3. I made them listen to the cyclops scene from The Odyssey straight through, it’s thirty minutes long, without stopping–on a Friday. Sir Ian McKellen narrates the audiobook for them, but Gandalf fails to impress them. I did soften the blow by playing some pop culture clips of the Lotus Eaters beforehand. At least I didn’t test them?

  

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  4. I talked to myself obnoxiously to fill awkward silences. My second block refuses to warm up to me, laugh at my terrible puns and dad jokes, and to be anything but serious. I will loosen them up, and if it means I’m narrating my inner monologue audibly for the rest of the year, then so be it. 
  5. I called myself beautiful. Actually, I referred to myself as a “lustrous goddess,” like in The Odyssey, and the boys laughed in horror at a grown woman’s audacity at calling herself pretty. If you want your ego shattered, I suggest employing this strategy. Another good strategy is to ask them to guess your age. ONLY embark on either of these methods if you can brush off the comments and have a sense of humor about their reactions. (Also. What. The. Hell? What kind of society have we created that it’s not socially acceptable to call yourself beautiful and that it makes people and children uncomfortable when you do?)

  

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  What did you do, teacher friends, to add a little humor to your classrooms this week? 

  Posted in education, teaching | 2 Comments | Tagged english teacher, middle school, middle school teacher, teaching, teaching middle school

• A Teacher Tale: Teaching During a Pandemic Update #1

  Posted at 10:25 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on October 17, 2020

  

  Don’t get me wrong, pandemic teaching is rough, an understatement, but my teacher life got a gazillion times easier last week.

  My school had its fifth first day of school last week. What a weird thing to type, but it’s 2020.  Here are the five first days we’ve had:

  1. The first day for Group One students.
  2. The first day for Group Two students.
  3. The first day teaching in-person and at-home learners.
  4. The first day with both Groups One and Two on campus.
  5. The first day for previously at-home learners.

  At the first nine weeks’ end, our Home Based Virtual Learners (HBVLs) had the option to come back to physical school, and so many did. And while it’s fantastic to finally meet them IRL–cue me squealing in excitement through my mask while taking a HBVL’s temperature last Wednesday Jayda!!!!! It’s so nice to meet you in real life! Look at you!–It. Was. So. Strange.

  I’d just been teaching heads and necks, sometimes just eyebrows and foreheads, and instead of floating heads eerily levitating through the hallways on Wednesday morning like a Disney Channel show’s terrible Halloween episode, those heads were connected to BODIES. Some of my HBVL boys are GIANT, and it completely caught me off guard.

  And something that didn’t catch me off guard–the freedom afforded by being unchained to my computer screen for four blocks. Because with more HBVLs on campus, administration gave us the go-ahead to create a virtual school schedule, so I only teach virtually during third block now. 

  

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  I can stand up if I want. I can move around more, even though I’m still keeping my distance. I don’t have to constantly monitor the Google Meet chat, my email, and Impero (our student technology monitoring software) every single class. I don’t have to shut down a Meet at the end of every class and start a new one while trying to make sure the in-person students are social distancing, know what’s due the following day, and are walking into the hallway on time. There’s more normalcy, but I know it’s possibly short-lived with fall’s onset and increasing numbers of COVID-19 throughout the country.

  And while those students returning to school has made teaching a gazillion times easier, other aspects of more students on campus are troublesome:

  

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  • More students means less space for social distancing in the hallways and in the classrooms.
  • More students aren’t wearing their masks properly.
  • More students are sharing supplies and food when they aren’t supposed to.
  • More students are sitting in cramped classrooms without their masks on eating lunch.
  • More students means going through more sanitizing wipes, and who knows if and when we will run out. 
  • More students means more are showing up to school sick even though they should stay home.
  • More students is harder to manage than fewer students.
  • More students makes it appear like the coronavirus is disappearing when it’s not. 

  And like I said, I’m ecstatic more students are back and actual teaching is easier, but we can’t forget that this isn’t over yet. Please do your part to help keep all students, teachers, and everyone else safe. 

  There’s only so much teachers can do. 

  

  (GIF credit)

  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged teacher problems, teaching, teaching during a pandemic, teaching middle school

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