Thursday, March 26, 2009

SOLSC Day 26

Today at the swim meet, I overheard a couple of eighth girls talking. "Well, if she's dead, we won't have to do all those assignments."

"What on earth are you talking about?" I asked them, my eyes wide as a lemur's.

They shrugged, barely embarrassed, but my mind churned. So it's come to this, has it? The students planning our demise so that they can save themselves from some insipid assignment.

Noticing my slack jaw and furrowed brow, one of them explained, "We have two vocabulary worksheets, some dialog worksheets, a vocabulary test, a project and a scary story all due before next Friday."

I nodded and considered for a moment who I was talking to. You might be wondering what sort of heinous students wish their teacher ill to get out of an assignment, but I knew from experience that these girls were neither lazy nor non-compliant, and that they were referring to an intensified English class.

So, what advice for these young ones?

2 comments:

  1. no advice, but I bet Lemurs could add to that scary story.

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  2. One of my students left class last week and said that this was the first day she didn't have any English homework in a the whole quarter. I told her to enjoy her weekend, as I knew we were ramping up for the research paper.

    But I'm teach college.

    I did a long-term sub job in an accelerated HS English class once and I was fairly disgusted with they wanted those students to do. It began with an intensive reading list over the summer, of books that I'd never even touched, with two book reports due on the first day of class. Inconceivable to me. Where's the joy in THAT reading?

    Do we need to rethink some of these things? Have we infected the young with our achieve-at-all-costs virus, when they don't have the skills or wherewithal to fend it off?

    I don't really have the answers--just the questions--just like you.

    Thoughtful post--
    Elizabeth
    http://peninkpaper.blogspot.com/

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