classroom – Blue Cereal Education

‘D’ Is For ‘Dilemma’

Blue Cereal — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 22:23:13 +0000

I remember sitting down to my very first teacher certification test a quarter-century ago. I’d reported to some obscure little “testing center” hidden in an office complex I’d passed a hundred times without noticing and brought along all the right paperwork. I was armed with a reasonable knowledge of history and plenty of pedagogical theory, with a side of buzzwords and popular edu-trends of the time.

The first section of the exam was multiple choice. I read the first question and marked ‘D’. The second question I felt confident of as well; it also happened to be ‘D’. So was question three. And four. And five.

I stopped after the tenth question and scrolled back through my answers so far. They were all ‘D’.

Things I Heard This Week

Blue Cereal — Sun, 26 Sep 2021 10:46:50 +0000

I teach in a district that’s had some struggles in recent years. We’re majority-minority and 100% of my kids are “free and reduced lunch” (mostly “free”). Add in eighteen months of not having real school and the fact that most of the schools feeding into mine are already under state “control” (an ironic term by any measure), and it’s easy to grow discouraged. There aren’t always those “breakthrough” moments you count on to stay motivated - personally or academically.

All the more reason to build a few monuments to the encouraging or amusing episodes which do occur from time to time. Here are three from this past week.

Lessons From Pandemic Teaching

Blue Cereal — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 00:47:59 +0000

We’ll soon hit a full year of trying to figure out how public education works (or doesn’t) during a pandemic. Some of the experience gained may be specific to 2020 – the social and political dynamics of which have not been even remotely encouraging (see what I did there?). I’d respectfully suggest, however, that many … Continue reading

Scaffold The $#*& Out Of It

Blue Cereal — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 13:32:25 +0000

For English or Social Studies teachers (especially those frothy AP types), the Holy Hand Grenade of rapport-killers is the Five Paragraph Essay. Come out in favor, come out opposed, or simply mention it in passing, and off the rest of us will go. Only Wikipedia and Teach For America have achieved similar infamy for their ability to produce pseudo-intellectual chaos and mutual hostility, online or in the teachers’ lounge.

Honestly, you’d be better off bringing up religion, immigration, or abortion. Fewer emotions or deeply entrenched convictions in play that way.

Lies We Tell Our Students

Blue Cereal — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 00:37:24 +0000

I don’t like to lie to my students. I try not to, but it’s not always easy. Sometimes it’s literally required by the folks signing my paycheck, creating what we in the teaching business call “a dilemma.” My ex-wife and I never told our kids there was a Santa, a Tooth Fairy, or an Easter … Continue reading

Tearing It Up

Blue Cereal — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 19:40:12 +0000

We’re exactly two weeks into the new school year, and things in AP World and AP U.S. History have started off about as well as one might expect, given the many interruptions and the wide variety of skill levels and content-knowledge gathered together in each section. They may be talented teenagers, but they’re still, you … Continue reading

The Mesopotamians & Jumping the Classroom Shark

Blue Cereal — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 14:51:31 +0000

Pop culture connections are a blessing and a curse in the high school history classroom. On the one hand, YAY ANYTHING THAT REINFORCES CONTENT IN UNEXPECTED WAYS! – even if it’s strange, inaccurate, and fictional {I’m looking at you, Hollywood}. On the other, it’s difficult to anticipate when such things have jumped the shark in relation to teen culture. Just to keep things really frustrating, some of the most promising and engaging sources are so far from school-appropriate that no amount of editing will make them OK, no matter how much I want to use them anyway.

Do I Really Look Like A Guy With A Plan?

Blue Cereal — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 15:05:38 +0000

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring… Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As … Continue reading

The Problem With Linear Reality (You Can’t Go Back)

Blue Cereal — Sun, 29 Apr 2018 13:29:34 +0000

Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’… into the future. Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’… into the future. One of the sobering things about edu-bloggery – or social media in general – is how hard it can be to keep up when your tangible, so-called “real” world gets crazy. Far more humbling, though, is that … Continue reading

Actual Reflections (and too many questions)

Blue Cereal — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 01:06:21 +0000

My school is on trimesters, so coming back wasn’t a new start so much as picking up where we left off. Still, having two weeks to regroup and get a jump on some of the planning for this month was, well… it may have saved my life. At least emotionally. Whatever the formatting of the … Continue reading