Mrs. Ram's Jams

Tag: teaching

• 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

   

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  Posted in poems, poetry, reading, teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 0 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 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 | 0 Comments | 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

• How I Build Relationships with Students on the First Day of School

  Posted at 2:11 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on August 17, 2019

  

  On the first day of school, I memorize each of my new students’ names by the time they exit my classroom. Yes, you read that sentence correctly. Let me reiterate:  Mrs. Ram Jam, a walking disaster who can’t even remember her own telephone number or her husband’s real name 80 percent of the time (In my defense, he goes by his nickname. If you know my husband, do you even know his real name????), matches every single kid’s countenance to their name correctly within a 75 minute class period on the first day, retaining a 98 percent accuracy the next day–and I teach 90 kids, every day.

  You might be flabbergasted, flummoxed, or impressed by my powers of memorization, but here are three reasons why I make committing their names to mind a priority:

  1. I’m trying to build relationships. It shows the students I care–from day one. It says I don’t know YOU as a person, but I value YOU, even though I don’t know YOU yet. It says I’m here for YOU and I see YOU and I recognize how YOU are an individual, separate from the sea of other faces in this classroom. 
  2. It makes me look like a badass. (Just kidding!) 
  3. I lied. There are no other reasons. See bullet one. 

  Now for the how I do it:

  1. I handwrite all students’ names, emblazing them on my mush-for-brain, and tape their names to their assigned desks.
  2. On the first day, I stand outside my door, student roster clipped to a clipboard, and look at students’ faces while saying their names out loud, confirming their pronunciation.
  3. I call students by name anytime I address them in class.
  4. While students do an icebreaker that requires them to meet everyone, I’m up and talking to them, ensuring I match each name to each face several times. 
  5. Right before class’s end and without looking at their names, I stand in front of the class, go around the room, and say every student’s name correctly–like a badass.
  6. During my off period, I click through our online grading/attendance program, looking at their names and their pictures to reinforce name-to-brain imprinting.

  (Sidebar:  THIS ONLY APPLIES TO STUDENTS’ FIRST NAMES. LAST NAMES TAKE ME WEEKS. BABY STEPS, Y’ALL. BABY. STEPS.)

  While memorizing students’ names on the first day might not be how you start building relationships, I’d love to hear your beginning of the year methods that make you look like the badass teacher that you are.  

  And for those of you who struggle with memorizing students’ names, here’s an oldie but a goodie that I wrote last year:  A Poem (Plus Stage Directions): Why Teachers Can’t Remember Names at the Beginning of the Year.

  Happy new school year!

  

  Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 6 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, buildingrelationships, students, teaching, 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

• An English Teacher Tale: Guess What? Cold Read Tests Don’t Work and How I’ve Gotten It So Wrong

  Posted at 3:38 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on June 29, 2019

  

  Invigorated and overwhelmed, I’m freshly nestled home post three day teacher leader conference in New Orleans. While attending, I listened to 2018 National Teacher of the Year Mandy Manning discuss teaching fearLESS (teaching with less fear). I learned more about growth mindset, the importance of recruiting teachers, and cultural competency. But mostly my chosen sessions focused on ELA curriculum shifts, particularly text complexity. 

  By midafternoon on conference day two, two things became glaringly clear: 

  1. The New Orleans Convention Center is a dementor; it sucked my soul arid. (I’m not knocking the conference AT ALL; it rocked. The convention center itself is cavernous and scary, all dim backlighting and conference tables billowing in death-black robe tablecloths. The stale air permeating the facility was akin to a dementor’s dreaded kiss, leaving me dehydrated and lifeless by day’s end.)
  2. According to experts, I’ve been testing and teaching my subject matter the wrong way for at least 8 years; if I’ve been doing it wrong, chances are you’ve been doing it wrong too. And I’m a great teacher–and chances are you are too. (I’m not saying I’m doing everything wrong.)

  About 8 years ago, Louisiana ELA educators started making the shift to assessing kids with “cold read” (readings that kids hadn’t seen before) tests, the idea being that kids should be able to use the standards that are being taught in the classroom and apply them to any text that’s given to them, essentially moving away from testing kids on the content that we’ve taught them and focusing on mastery of standards. This is more reflective of the way our end of the year state tests work too (Students are given multiple pieces of complex text they’ve never encountered before, answer multiple choice questions about those texts, and then write essays about those texts–all strictly timed.). Disclaimer–this is a MAJOR oversimplification of the process, and I may have botched it. Please bear in mind my recently escaped dementor’s kiss. I’m awaiting Dumbledore to appear with some chocolate for me, and then I’ll be back hunting horcruxes, errrrrr, I mean existing like a rational muggle in no time. 

  For a few years now, I’ve been lamenting to my fellow coworkers, my mom, willing ears:

  1. How can you give “cold” literature to kids, timed no less, and expect them to comprehend and analyze it? They could be given anything on those tests! For example, I could be teaching To Kill a Mockingbird and focusing on the Civil Rights Movement and the Great Depression. How does that content help them read a cold read task about the Cold War on a benchmark or standardized test? It doesn’t. I can’t prepare kids’ background knowledge on every single topic/culture/time period/etc. that they encounter. 
  2. Vocabulary is my biggest battle. How can I prepare my kids for every single word that they encounter on a cold read test? Yeah, context clues might help, and they know how to use context clues, but YOU CAN’T FIGURE OUT EVERY SINGLE WORD FROM CONTEXT. And yeah there are roots, prefixes, affixes and other tricks, but again, it’s no panacea. Furthermore, what about the words they encounter in test questions and answer choices where there’s virtually no context? It’s mind-boggling, disorienting even, to think about how limiting this can be for a child to be successful when it comes to reading comprehension, and if they don’t understand what they read, they sure as heck can’t analyze it.

  So why highlight these two points and how does it relate to me teaching and testing the wrong way (and quite possibly you too)? Louisiana is currently piloting a program where . . . wait for it  . . . the state test aligns to English teachers’ actual content in their classroom . . . because research shows that:

  1. Teaching solely standard based for ELA doesn’t work. How many of you have been told to develop your lessons around a standard and subsequently gone scrambling around for content that lends itself to teaching said standard while trying to find interrelated texts? [Mrs. Ram raises her hand.] Sidebar–I do rely heavily on my district’s curriculum, but I supplement.
  2. Giving struggling students texts to read on their “reading level” actually does more harm than good because they’re not grappling with more complicated syntax and vocabulary. Say you’re teaching about the Holocaust at the 8th grade level and decide to give your struggling readers Number the Stars while handing out The Boy in the Striped Pajamas to your more accelerated readers, focusing on teaching the same standards in both texts over the course of reading. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most English teachers have done this, myself included, but I have moved away from doing this–whether in relation to big pieces of literature or different leveled exit tickets. But look at this chart using ACT data:(image credit) What can you surmise? Hey, how well people do on the ACT has to do with their ability to read complex texts. Also, I learned that it doesn’t matter if students have mastery of skills necessarily. I know if my students have mastered a standard, but if students can’t read a specific complex text independently they’re unable to answer test questions correctly. (Both bullet points 1 and 2’s ideas were discussed in Tim Shanahan’s Ed Talk: “Educational Equity and the Importance of Complex Text.”) This ties in directly with my next bullet.
  3. Background knowledge is key for success on tackling complex texts. So Recht and Leslie, researchers, did this study known as the baseball experiment. Over-simplistic premise: Let’s give kids a comprehension test about baseball. Look at this:(image credit) Guess what? The kids, no matter their reading ability, who had little prior knowledge of baseball did way worse on the test than kids of any reading ability who were more familiar with baseball. Earth shattering, isn’t it? P.S. this study has been around since 1988, and this is my first time seeing it. I have a master’s degree in curriculum–WHY HAVEN’T I SEEN IT BEFORE? If we learned about it in grad school, I don’t remember it.

  Y’all might have been privy to this info before, and while my biggest struggles as a teacher are directly reflected in my main takeaways from the conference, I feel validated in my criticisms of the way we test children, but heartbrokenly irate that we’ve gotten some teaching and testing methods so wrong for almost a decade. For at least this next year, if not two or three, my students are still going to take standardized tests with cold read passages that are not reflective of what my students, your children, are capable of achieving. 

  But change is on the horizon. Thank goodness. To read more about Louisiana’s Innovative Assessment pilot click here.  

  Teachable Moment: While I know this post is rambly, all over the place, full of glue words and not written on a particularly high reading level, keep in mind what I’ve been I’ve been telling you. How many of you aren’t teachers who read this post? What teacher jargon did you struggle with? Did you know what a “cold read” task was before reading this? Or even what mastery of a standard entails? Do you know what the standards are? Do you know how to determine what makes a complex text? Do you know what ELA stands for? Chances are if you aren’t an English teacher or even a teacher in general you had to struggle to make meaning with what I was talking about. Then on top of that I made Harry Potter allusions throughout this post. If you’ve never read Harry Potter or seen the movies, are you going to get all of those references? Or is it going to go right over your head? An allusion missed means there’s missing meaning in a text. On that note, do you know what allusion means? Did you figure out what it means based on the context? Or did you just fly by it and register it as a word you don’t know? Think about all the different ways you had to make meaning behind my thoughts, my word choice, the way I built my sentences, the way I structured this post. How many different ways can understanding be hindered? (This idea is taken from Natalie Wexler’s Ed Talk: “The Importance of Background Knowledge” and applied to my own writing.)

  And that friends is what our children are trying to do every single day when they’re in my classroom with readings they encounter and why it’s a shame to ask them on a standardized test to read texts they’re completely unfamiliar with. 

   

  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized | 4 Comments | Tagged blogging, cold read tests, standardized tests, students, teaching

• A Reflection on My Thirteenth Year of Teaching

  Posted at 1:44 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on June 15, 2019

  

  In May, I finished my thirteenth year of teaching. (How in the French toast did that happen?) Here are my key takeaways from this school year. (Please excuse the formatting issues. I CANNOT figure out how to fix them.)

  1. Sayonara(ish) technology. My district is fortunate enough to provide devices to every single student in the parish, but this teacher is going back to making the copy machine my long lost paramour. I know paper isn’t sexy and students need digital literacy skills but . . .

  • Technology is the biggest behavior problem in my classroom. Micromanaging 20-25 students with screens for faces is damn near impossible. For starters the kids don’t recognize checking their grades, googling random pieces of information, skimming their inboxes, etc. as off-task behavior. Then there are the students who email back and forth with their friends, play games, or watch YouTube videos. Technology makes classroom management harder, and a student who isn’t paying attention isn’t mastering content. (On a side note: while technology exists that teachers can control what students access during a lesson, our district doesn’t own it on a wide scale yet. I’m hoping to pilot software that combats this issue next year.)
  • Troubleshooting technology problems wastes valuable instructional minutes. Technology doesn’t always work. Sometimes it’s a school wide issue or district issue, but sometimes the students’ individual technology just refuses to behave. Multiple times daily I stop lessons for individual students’ internet connectivity problems, device and website login problems, and the list goes on and on. While teaching troubleshooting techniques and offering my own help remains integral in a digital classroom, sometimes the ONLY solution is sending them to the library for help. And again, this detracts from the lesson. Heck, the student isn’t present for part of it.
  • Research shows that students retain information more when taking notes by hand. Paper engages students more.They can quickly annotate and highlight instead of navigating through cumbersome technology equivalents–that you have to teach them how to use, which takes even more time and varies from program to program (Drummond).

  Disclaimer:  I’m not fully eschewing technology, but I’m cutting back big time next year.

  

  Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels.com

  2. An endless combination of nicknames exist with my last name. My personal favorite from this year? Mrs. Ramengobble. I’m also enamoured with Mrs. Ma’am-a-gost (albeit seemingly redundant). Am I insulted? No. I will respond to anything students call me, unless it’s mean. I feel honored every time a new nickname is bestowed upon me. It fits in with my next bullet point.
  3. Have fun. Let’s be honest, English class content can be disinteresting for the average eighth grader. I recognize my subject’s limitations and balance it by building student relationships and cracking jokes. And whether students like English class or not, they’ll leave my room at the end of year loving me (or convinced that I’m a psychopath), dammit.
  4. Refrain from telling students they’re smart. I don’t think I’ve ever really done this in the first place, but I sure won’t be doing it from now on. At our eighth grade awards night every year, each teacher hands out an outstanding student award and gives a little speech. In almost all of those speeches, every teacher used the term “hard-working” to describe their chosen student. The terms smart and intelligent weren’t used once. Teachers are in the business of growth. We value students who take feedback and run with it. Every single student I taught last year was smart. But not everyone was a hard worker. Or an active participant in their own education. Praising students’ intelligence pigeonholes them. Sometimes they think they deserve an A without working towards it and then lash at you for their earned “B” or “C.” And sometimes it manifests in anxiety where they believe they can’t live up to a perceived expectation (“Should We Stop Telling Kids They’re Smart?”). I will be making more of an effort next year to praise growth daily with my students.
     

     Photo by Giftpundits.com on Pexels.com

  Bring on year 14! (Gulp!)

  Works Cited:

  Drummond, Steve. “In The Age Of Screen Time, Is Paper Dead?” NPR, NPR, 10 Sept. 2017, http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/09/10/544546911/in-the-age-of-screen-time-is-paper- dead.

  “Should We Stop Telling Kids They’re Smart?” NPR, NPR, 24 June 2016,                              http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=483126798.

   

  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 4 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, reflection, students, teaching, writing

• A Poem: Stop What You’re Doing and Lock the Door

  Posted at 8:55 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on March 8, 2019

  

  

  stand at the door

  make conversation

  Happy morning, students!

  check their uniforms

  Take off that necklace, please!

  No labels on socks; that’s a citation.

  the bell rings

  go inside

  lock the door behind you

  take attendance

  “Can I charge my ChromeBook?”

  You mean, may I charge my ChromeBook? Yes, you may.

  “Can I take my doctor’s excuse to the office?

  Ummmm, number one–you should have done that before the bell rang. Number two–did you not just hear me say it’s “may” not “can”? Sign out. And somebody go lock the door.

  submit attendance

  read announcements

  knock knock

  go answer the door and lock it behind you

  continue reading announcements

  knock knock

  stop what you’re doing and answer the door and lock it behind you

  go over the objective

  overhead intercom interrupts–“Can you send So-and-so to the office?”

  So-and-so, stop what you’re doing, sign out, and go to the office. And somebody please go lock the door behind her.

  model your thinking

  knock knock

  Somebody, stop what you’re doing and go answer the door. And don’t forget to lock it.

  students work on group work

  take a student’s ChromeBook because he’s playing games

  admonish another for for using hers as a mirror

  “Hey, my ChromeBook’s frozen!“

  And? That’s a statement. If you want help, please ask a question.

  “Can I go to the library to get my ChromeBook fixed?”

  Did you try to trouble shoot? Did you turn it off and back on?

  continue to monitor the students

  “It still won’t work.”

  Take it down to the library. Sign out.

  stop what you’re doing and lock the door

  they’re finally working

  sit down at your desk

  check your email

  check exit tickets

  check your coffee breath

  pop a mint

  field questions from your desk

  decide that’s useless

  they’re restless

  help them

  make them laugh

  get them back on task

  knock knock

  This is ridiculous. said under your breath

  stop what you’re doing and answer the door

  “You look mad. Can I tell you a joke?”

  ignore the remark

  forget what you’re doing and what day it is and your middle name

  take a deep breath to recenter yourself

  hold a discussion

  overhead intercom interrupts–“Lock down! Lock down! This is a lock down! Active shooter! Active shooter!”

  Students, get in the corner. Be quiet.

  check the blinds to make sure they’re drawn and swipe your phone and your laptop from your desk and turn off the lights and open the cabinet door to block the view from the classroom door and huddle on the floor next to your students and send an everyone’s-accounted-for email

  shush the children

  Moment of Clarity.

  The. Door. Isn’t. Locked.

  Crawl on the floor.

  Reach up.

  Cold lock in your sweaty fingers.

  Twist it as as someone pounds on the door.

  Students whimper.

  Look up. See a cop.

  His glare, a condescending reprimand.

  Because even though you stopped what you were doing, you forgot to lock the door.

  The overhead intercom interrupts–“All clear. All clear. It was only a drill.”

  but you know that the only thing that’s clear is the drill of your beating heart and your lesson is ruined and you’re close to tears because the only thing that’s important anymore is having your door locked

  Posted in fibromyalgia, kids, poetry, teaching, Uncategorized | 6 Comments | Tagged blogging, poems, poems about teaching, poetry, teaching, writing

• A Poem: A Student Departs

  Posted at 2:23 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on February 9, 2019

  

  Because a version of this has happened to me twice in the past two weeks.

  ---

  a stranger approaches
  maturity’s quietude
  candor blurs his angles
  lankiness perpendicular to his broad shoulders
  smooth aplomb, vintage messenger, scoffed loafers

  Miss, do you remember me?

  his smile unleashes
  youth’s echo
  vulnerability shrouded in tomfoolery
  pudginess crowned with a pimply forehead
  asymmetrical slouch, dragon sketches, untied Chucks

  Yes, sweet boy. How could I forget?

  a student departs

  Posted in poems, poetry, teaching, Uncategorized | 2 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, poems, poems about teaching, poetry, teaching, writing

• A Poem: Books Are Babies

  Posted at 10:04 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on January 17, 2019

  

  I tell a version of this to my students the first time I hand out school-owned novels to them to read for class. Because. Middle. Schoolers. Destroy. All. Of. The. Things.

  ---

  Books are babies.
  If you wouldn’t do it to a baby, then you shouldn’t do it to a book.

  Would you
  throw a baby to another person?
  bend a baby backwards?
  leave a baby in the classroom or on the bus by itself for the night?
  step on a baby?
  smack your friend with a baby?
  shove a baby spine side up in the bottom of a backpack and then put books on top of him?
  balance a baby on your head?
  drop a baby?

  Books are babies.
  If you wouldn’t do it to a baby, then you shouldn’t do it to a book.

  You should
  read to your baby.
  talk to your friends about your baby.
  laugh at your baby when it says something funny.
  cry when your baby breaks your heart.
  cheer your baby on.
  learn from your baby.
  love your baby.

  Because books are babies.

  Posted in books, poems, poetry, reading, teaching, Uncategorized | 2 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, books, poems, poetry, reading, students, teaching, writing

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