Educating Erin

Well, it has certainly been a long time since I updated here! After finishing the long-term position last January, one of my contacts at that school led me to another long-term position, also in 8th grade. I finished out the year there, and had an overall very positive experience.

Flash forward to August, when another long-term position in that district was posted. This one is for the entire year. I called the principal, met with her, and landed the job. Gainful employment is once again mine!

I will be teaching 9th and 10th grade English, and I’m *very* excited about this opportunity. I get to teach Shakespeare! To Kill a Mockingbird! A hip graphic novel!

I’ll be slowly but surely making some updates around here, and writing about some of my educational experiences. This is my first *full year* position in one place, and it’s overwhelming and exciting all at once!

Look for more updates soon.

Last Friday, I finished up a long-term job. It wasn’t my first long-term job, but it was the first one that felt “real.” Maybe it was because I started at the beginning of the year, which gave me the chance to set up a classroom. Maybe it was because it was longer than any of the others. Or maybe it was because it was in a district that felt like home to me.

At any rate, it was a wonderful experience. My coworkers were kind and helpful. The administration and support staff were as well. And my students? Well, see for yourself. This is just a taste of what they did for me on my last day:

I am touched and honored beyond words. And while I’m sad that it has ended, I wouldn’t have traded this experience for anything.

I’ve been hired as a long-term sub, teaching 8th grade English language arts. I’ll be working until the end of November. Here’s hoping something else materializes in the meantime.

Whee!

I don’t agree with everything this author has to say, but I do think that this was an excellent point:

We have both a challenge and an opportunity before us. We cannot continue to fail children because recruiting and retaining new teachers is too hard. The key is in the support — America doesn’t treat teaching like a profession.

-Mark Lampkin at Huffington Post

Inspired by my friend Eden…new baby gifts:

Items can be purchased in my Etsy shop!

Visit me at my Etsy shop!

Here’s a sampling of what you’ll see there:

With wedding season coming upon us, I just wanted to remind you of my custom-designed Calligraphy gifts.

More samples can be viewed here.

Here’s a comment from the satisfied recipient of the piece pictured above:

The photo does not even begin to do this piece justice. It is truly beautiful and Ben and I are honored to have it in our home. -Kelly Woods

Orders received before April 15 will receive a 10% discount!

My preferred lead time is at least three weeks before the wedding date. If you need a rush order, contact me and we’ll talk!

Click on the “Calligraphy” tab for more information.

I’m searching for some good websites I can direct my students to, for help in finding good argumentative essay topics.

In my travels, I came across a site called Best Essays, one of the many, many “buy an essay from us” sites out there. What I find both amusing and troubling is that they pledge that their essays are “plagiarism free!”

I suppose that’s sort of technically true. They’re promising students that they essay they’re purchasing is an original work and hasn’t been taken from somewhere else. Except that as soon as the student turns it in to their teacher, it’s plagiarized.

Sigh.

What they should be saying, I suppose, is “there’s no way your teacher will catch you!”

I’m depressed.

Over at Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch a few weeks ago, they “reviewed the reviews” of Freedom Writers. I really want to see this movie.

Some backstory. A few years ago, I took a job in public relations at a nonprofit agency in WNY. For the most part, I hated this job. I won’t get into why. But while I worked there, I got to do a few really, really cool things. One of those things was meeting Erin Gruwell, the teacher behind the Freedom Writers Diary.

Ms. Gruwell, and several of her students, signed my copy of the book. And even though I could never accomplish the things she accomplished, meeting her and reading this book was a large part of what inspired me to become a teacher. So I found snippets of reviews like this completely annoying:

“And not that she needed a crack habit, but Erin herself is so unbelievably saintly — and her fellow teachers so snivelingly evil — that she’s impossible to believe as anything more than an inspiration-bot. Every student is fundamentally good and easily taught and reformed, and the eventual triumph of the human spirit is so predetermined that it’s not particularly satisfying. The music swells, the tears well up, Swank smiles lovingly, and the crack pipe starts to look rather appealing.”

Hm. Mr. Josh Bell of Las Vegas Weekly seems to completely ignore the fact that Erin Gruwell is an actual person. I don’t know how true-to-life (or to the book) Freedom Writers is, but, well, this just seems like an utterly ridiculous thing to say. Erin Gruwell’s story is one that seems made-for-Hollywood, too good to be true. But the thing is, it IS true.

I hope this movie does well. I hope millions and millions of people see it, educators especially, and are inspired to change the world in both large and small ways.

“Those of us who are interested in improving education have a habit of paying too much attention to schools and not enough to children.” -Harold Howe II

I started reading this book quite a while ago. I’d started reading a library copy, and then decided to get a copy of my own. I thought it was excellent and a must-read for anyone in the education field.