Mrs. Ram's Jams

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    • A Teacher Poem: Buzz Words

      Posted at 11:17 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on January 25, 2020

      begin with the end in mind, AKA backward design
      Common Core and 504
      ELL, STEM, and IEP are not absentee (But if they were, you’d have to let them make up the work, for sure.)
      collaborate and debate
      Claim retired, and its replacement is assertion; try teaching that to little persons.

      rigor
      response
      reflection
      rubric
      will point you in the right (write?) direction

      facilitate with fidelity; provide actionable feedback . . . (but don’t call in sick unless you’re having a heart attack)
      Is your summative assessment warm or cold? (Grab a blanket–so we’re told.)
      flip the classroom; personalize learning (to get their brains churning)

      What’s the objective? 
      Does it align with the standards?
      How does the curriculum get them college and career ready?

      Scaffold.
      Differentiate.
      Rigor.
      Peer conversations.
      Rigor.
      Text complexity.

      Rigor.
      Rigor.
      Rigor.

      Build relationships. 
      Rigor.
      One to one.
      Rigor.
      Lexile.
      Rigor. 

      Rigor.
      Rigor.
      Rigor.

      TRIGGER WARNING

      The kids still find it boring.

      And by week’s end, the only buzz words we care about are Tito’s, tequila, and Tanqueray (with honorable mentions to happy hour and chardonnay).

      close up photo of person holding wine glass

      Photo by Daria Shevtsova on Pexels.com

      Posted in poems, poetry, teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 2 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, english teacher, humor, middle school teacher, poems, poems about teaching, poetry, teacher, teaching, teaching middle school, writing

    • 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.
      colored pen set at daytime

      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 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.

      baseball

      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

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    • Recent Posts

      • A Teacher Poem: Buzz Words January 25, 2020
      • A Poem About Ulcerative Colitis: The Ouroboros January 18, 2020
      • Mrs. Ram’s Jams New Year’s Resolutions for 2020 January 11, 2020
      • Top Twenty Books 2019 January 2, 2020
      • 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

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