Mrs. Ram's Jams

Tag: funny

• 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

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

• A Mrs. Ram’s Jams Teaching Tale: Reading Comprehension Fails in The Odyssey

  Posted at 12:23 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on September 15, 2019

  

  Currently, I am teaching The Odyssey for the first time in my career (I think. I might have blocked out teaching it like a bad memory; it’s not my favorite text.) As per my curriculum’s instructions, I’ve been working on summarizing, characterization, and conflict with the kids while reading Book One, and this week I assessed those skills using a passage they hadn’t read before. 

  And while most students rocked the summarizing skill portion of the task, some epically misunderstood these lines from the text: 

  But all of the suitors broke into uproar through the shadowed halls,
  all of them lifting prayers to lie beside [Penelope], share her bed,
  until discreet Telemachus took command:

  (A little context might be helpful as well:  Odysseus, the king of Ithaka, is taking an eternity to get home from the Trojan War and people fear him dead. His wife Penelope, a snack, is bedeviled by suitors who have taken up residence in her own home.) 

  Now think like an 8th grader. How would you interpret this with your nearly teenage brain? Let’s look at some student responses. 

  1. “Penelope dies, which leaves the suitors devastated.”
  2. “Penelope’s suitors hope to follow her into her room, but Telemachus does not allow it.”
  3. “The suitors are outraged that Penelope has gone back to her room without them.”
  4. “The suitors are entering Penelope’s room as Telemachus yells at them for destroying his house.”
  5. “The suitors come to ask Penelope if they can sleep next to her . . .”
  6. “The suitors try to get into Penelope’s bed and cause an uproar, but Telemachus stops them.”
  7. “The suitors bombarded Telemachus’s mom by going beside her in her own bed.”

  Y’all. I giggled uncontrollably while grading. Handling questions about why students missed points for these interpretations is going to be brutal. I don’t think a comment like Well, Kayla, you insinuate salacious behavior occurred instead of explaining that individually the suitors wish to marry Penelope will go over well. So please think happy thoughts for me and my sanity when I hand these assignments back. 

  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 1 Comment | Tagged blogging, blogs, funny, humor, reading, reading comprehension, students, teaching, writing

• A Mrs. Ram’s Jams Tale: What I Bought Versus What I Got–Llama Dress Edition

  Posted at 2:21 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on August 31, 2019

  

  Like any llama loving teacher, I scoured the internet for llama-phernalia for my classroom before summer’s end. I scored a new water bottle, shoulder tote, and sticker decal set. 

  And while my favorite fluffy animal has been incorporated into my teacher wardrobe via a plethora of printed punny shirts, I desperately wanted a llama dress for the first day of school. Now before judging me, I realize a llama dress might be a bit obnoxious on the first day, but the longer I teach, the more I let my crazy flag fly from the get-go. At my school, we’re allowed to wear jeans and T-shirts as rewards, and teachers-a-plenty wore jeans on the first day of school. But, I’m of the staunch opinion that IT’S TOO HOT FOR PANTS in Louisiana in August, particularly when sweating through outdoor recess duty at lunchtime. So imma wear a dress, a llama one at that, thanks. 

  Unfortunately for me, Amazon doesn’t currently offer a llama dress (I’m researching ways to remedy this situation. I mean, how dare they!). Adding one to my already chock full-ama virtual shopping cart wasn’t an option, so venturing out into the non-Amazon, scary Russian roulette interwebs shopping realm was my last resort to fulfilling my dream.

  On meowpinky.com, my eyes grazed this dress, and like any responsible social media user in her mid to late 30s, I immediately screenshot it and polled my Facebook friends as to whether I should purchase it. To no one’s surprise, the answer was yes. I decided on green, even though it was available in many colors, because I wanted to make my new llama friend feel like she was in nature, chomping on hay or grass or whatever llamas eat. (Mental note:  Must make time to research what llamas actually eat.)

  

  I anxiously awaited my new llama dress, but she didn’t arrive by the first day of school. In fact, she didn’t arrive until last week because she journeyed all the way from China, and upon arrival in the U.S., meandered her way from the West Coast to Louisiana like the free-range camelid she is.  

  When she finally arrived, I tore into her packaging with glee and unfurled her to view her full glory. And while she is glorious, she’s not quite the glorious that I was expecting. She looks rather cheap, and I’m quite scandalized by her appearance. She’s honestly gloriously terrible, and I love her even more because of it.

  You see, the person who brought her into being simply printed her outline in black on a giant piece of army green vinyl and then IRONED ON THE ENTIRE PIECE OF ARMY GREEN VINYL, OFF CENTER NO LESS, ONTO AN UNMATCHED MOSS GREEN DRESS.

  

  Her poor pockets resemble two marsupial pouches, she is of the camel family dammit, that look like they have both housed five too many babies. 

  

   I would wear her to school to parade her around, despite being poorly made (It’s not her fault.), but she’s too short to wear even with leggings. So me showing her off like a proud mama displaying pics of her newborn on Insta, Facebook, and WordPress will have to suffice as her first and last public appearance. 

  

  I’d love to hear about your online shopping mishaps! 

   

  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 0 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, funny, humor, llama, llamas, shopping gone wrong, teaching, writing

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