Mrs. Ram's Jams

Tag: english teacher

• A Mrs. Ram’s Jams Guide to Grading Papers at Home

  Posted at 3:16 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on October 19, 2019

  

  Although I manage to grade most student-written essays during school hours, inevitably home grading transpires from time to time. Here’s what my grading process looks like when I do lug home heaps of papers.

  1. Sit at the kitchen table, and empty llama tote bag of dreaded essays.
  2. Shuffle all essays into groups of five, piling them into one tower by alternating stacks perpendicularly.
  3. Grab blue Uniball pen. Fancy pens make grading tolerable. Giggle because the word “Uniball” is funny.
  4. Snap a picture of grading setup, witty teacher caption included, and post it to Insta and Facebook stories.
  5. Realize fifteen minutes has passed. Pick up Uniball. Bust into laughter again. Little Thing hollers, “What’s so funny? Can I see?”
  6. Skim first paper while chuckling. Chuckles dissolve into whimpers of distress because the first essay is ghastly, soul-crushing.
  7. Shuffle the broken paper to stack’s end.
  8. Scan the next five essays without connecting pen to paper, and hyperventilating starts. HOW CAN ALL OF THEM BE PIECES OF POO ON A STICK?????? Question career path and meaning of life. Become convinced of worst teacher on the planet status. Stash those five essays to the back of the pile.
  9. Search for best student writer’s essay. Read it. Faith in humanity is restored.
  10. Glance up and around. Am horrified by the dishes mounded in the sink and clutter-strewn house. Decide to tidy up, clean the toilets, and scrub the master bathroom’s floor with a toothbrush.
  11. Register it’s dinner time, have wasted an entire Saturday afternoon, and cook dinner.
  12. Make husband do dishes in order to get back to grading.
  13. Scroll through Facebook on the ChromeBook for an hour instead with the stack of papers as an audience. Their collective judgment is palpable.
  14. Pick up Uniball. Smirk. 
  15. Trudge through five essays, finally giving feedback.
  16. Decide grading is more fun with wine. Pour a glass.
  17. Down the glass swiftly like a college student shooting a lemon drop.
  18. Grade five more essays in half the time, because wine. Uniball has the time of his life.
  19. Pour another glass, and lose steam quickly after, only grading two more essays. 
  20. Call it a night, and resolve to spend Sunday afternoon at the library grading because Grading. At. Home. Doesn’t. Work.
  21. Tuck a wilted and defeated Uniball into bed, errrr, back into his llama tote bag house.
  22. Decide a blue felt pen is more appropriate for library essay grading. It would be mildly embarrassing to get kicked out for hysterical laughter.

  

  Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

   

  Advertisements
  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 0 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, english teacher, funny, grading essays, humor, middle school teacher, students, teaching, writing

• A Poem: English Class Will Never Be Baseball

  Posted at 3:40 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on September 21, 2019

  

  English class will never be baseball.

  Cracking open a book can’t compete with the crack of the bat and the crowd’s cheers for you.

  Fumbling through Homer’s The Odyssey will feel more like fumbling a grounder in the bottom of the ninth during a tied game than hitting a homer to win it all.

  Throwing words around with a pen and paper to write an essay will never rival throwing warm-up pitches in the bullpen.

  The thunk of the catcher’s hand pounding his mitt between curveballs and changeups will never sound like “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” nor The Catcher in the Rye.

  Wry puns and satire will never play hardball in your playbook. Three strikes you’re out and triple plays are more important to you than the rule of threes and idioms.

  Sliding into second and shaking hands at the game’s end will never be sliding into the second act of a Shakespeare play.

  And that’s just fine, sluggers, because English class isn’t supposed to be baseball, but the real MVPs and big leaguers value both.

  

  Photo by Matthew T Rader on Pexels.com

   

  Posted in poems, poetry, reading, teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 4 Comments | Tagged baseball, blogging, blogs, english class, english teacher, middle school teacher, poems, poems about teaching, poetry, teaching, teaching boys, teaching middle school, writing

• A Teacher Tale: What’s Your Late Work Policy?

  Posted at 8:45 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on July 26, 2019

  

  As I sit here staring at my syllabus for next year in denial that I’m embarking upon my 14th year of teaching, I grapple with changing my late work policy for the upcoming school year.

  Last year during the first semester, I accepted late participation work for half credit and any late test grade assignments for a letter grade off until the grading period’s end, resulting in a bejeebus load of poo-on-a-stick late work to assess right before grades were due. Post Christmas, I didn’t accept any late participation work and issued one late pass per nine weeks for test grade tasks, allowing students 24 hours to turn in a late assignment for full credit. Once that pass was cashed in though, I didn’t accept work period–unless the student was in danger of failing. 

  If you’re reading this with a parental or administrative eye, you might cringe at my former policy’s harshness, but . . . 

  1. In my classroom, there are nine grades per nine weeks. Typically, students take two tests. I’ll assess them through writing and projects for the other grades. Unfortunately, a hefty number of 8th graders avoid completing complex assessments because it’s time-consuming, hard, and, let’s face it, boring. 
  2. You might decry my policy for admitting my assessments are time-consuming, frustrated with your middle schooler’s homework workload. However, if students are bringing work home from my class, they aren’t using the time that I give them in class wisely. Ninety-five percent of the time they are provided AMPLE time to complete work in class. 
  3. If students hand in an essay or project four weeks after it’s due, we’ve moved on. The material that was covered isn’t freshly emblazoned in their brain juices. More than likely what they end up handing in doesn’t follow directions, demonstrate mastery, or is low caliber work. 
  4. Keeping track of late work and grading it makes Mrs. Ram Jam even more insane than she already is. My brain has a hard time reshifting to grading assignments from weeks ago, compounding a near palpable increase in my own time anxiety. My students’ lack of time management makes my own time anxiety worse–crazy, right? 
  5. Kids need to be taught accountability and time management skills. Unfinished work needs a consequence. 

  

  Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

  With all that being said, I’m leaning towards enacting my second-semester policy for the entire school year.

  Please feel free to share your late work policies or what your district/school suggests to do and the reasoning behind it. I’m always up for suggestions. And enjoy your last week or two of summer, teachers!  

   

  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 4 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, english teacher, late work, students, teacher, teaching, writing

• A Mrs. Ram’s Jams Holiday Tale: Llamas We Have Herd on High

  Posted at 10:47 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on December 21, 2018

  

  On Wednesday, I had to holler at a student, “Stop waltzing with my llama!”

  He had snatched my dusty rose colored giant stuffed llama, gifted to me earlier in the week by another student, from her on-top-of-the-filing-cabinet home and was slow dancing with her in front of the other students as they wandered in and found their seats.

  [Meet Rubert, Rue for short. She came pre-christened with a fancy bow.]

  

  Chaos ensued.

  A member of the peanut gallery questioned, “Is waltzing a real word?”

  A heckler joked, “Why did the llama cross the road? To get away from Mrs. Ram.”

  “Spell waltz for me. Are you SURE it’s a real word?”

  “Mrs. Ram, have you ever eaten llama jerky?” a different kid asked.

  I sol-llama-emnly swear ridiculousness like this happens all the time.

  And it’s my own damn fault.

  My teaching schtick is a well-balanced art of whimsy, silly, and that-teacher-is-quite-possibly-a-psychopath-I-question-her-stability. However I upped my own ante this year and decided to incorporate my love for the word llama into my teaching persona by decorating my classroom in llamas and purchasing a spit ton of llama t-shirts to wear to school. My favorite one reads: Comma Llama. #englishteacher.

  Because why the hell not? And have you walked into a store recently? Llamas are freaking everywhere. Plus, Fortnite has introduced loot llamas, sundry filled llama piñatas, so even middle school boys get fired up about llamas. (When the kids first told me about loot llamas, I thought they meant lute llamas. I was like why would there be a llama playing a lute in a video game, but a llama piñata filled with bonus items makes a bajeebus load more sense.)  

  And because of llama paraphernalia proliferation and my revamped llama themed classroom, I have been fed a hearty diet of llama loot the entire month of December.

  It started innocently enough. A girl in my first block walked in on a Monday morning and handed me a pair of fuzzy llama socks. They’re woolly nice. (I couldn’t help myself. That was too easy.)

  Then, the next morning another girl showed up with a STUFFED. LLAMA. HEAD. For me. To cherish forever and ever. It’s flat on the back–for easy wall mounting like a taxidermied deer head. Our teacher coach affixed her to my podium with a 3M hook.  

  I named her Rama-Llama Ding Dong. Isn’t she gorgeous?

  

  Other llama gifts include: a journal, a pillow, a porcelain container, a Texas Aggies shirt, and three more pairs of socks. One of the pairs of socks were given to me with chocolates, which inspired me to break out in an extemporaneous song aptly entitled “Chocolates and Llama Socks” sung to the tune of “Five Little Speckled Frogs.” I mortified the gift giver, and now, much to my glee, I have students who I don’t even teach belting the lyrics in the hallways and asking me to sing it for them.

  

  And I can’t forget about this card; it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

  

  I’m fairly certain this was by far the best teacher gift Christmas ever, but I am a little disappointed that nobody showed up with a real llama for me for Christmas.  

  Maybe, I’ll wake up on December 25th and discover that Santa left me one in my backyard.  

  A girl can dream, can’t she?  

  

  (GIF taken from https://giphy.com/gifs/llama-1081l2F7uGjkK4)

   

  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 5 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, english teacher, llama, loot llama, teaching, writing

• Search

  Search for:

• Recent Posts

  • A Mrs. Ram’s Jams Guide to Grading Papers at Home October 19, 2019
  • September 2019 Mini Book Reviews October 4, 2019
  • One Sentence Story with Daily Word Prompts: Initial, Umbrage, and Languor September 28, 2019
  • A Poem: English Class Will Never Be Baseball September 21, 2019
  • A Mrs. Ram’s Jams Teaching Tale: Reading Comprehension Fails in The Odyssey September 15, 2019
  • Mini Book Reviews for August 2019 September 7, 2019
  • A Mrs. Ram’s Jams Tale: What I Bought Versus What I Got–Llama Dress Edition August 31, 2019
  • A Poem: You’re the Apple of my Eye, Phone August 24, 2019

• Follow Blog via Email

  Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

  Join 262 other followers

  Follow

• Follow Mrs. Ram's Jams on WordPress.com