The Price of Youth and Inexperience

 “Oh to be young again 

Oh to be free again 

To be setting out 

To have the whole of the road before one 

To know it an adventure 

One cannot know the end of -"

Youth is a wonderful thing…but not a perfect thing.

I remember the days when I had hair, when everything did not ache, when I could bend over to pick something up with out my back and knees making horrifying cracking sounds. 

I also remember making mistakes because I could not clearly see the future that was right in front of my eyes.

That’s where being, lets just say "experienced," is a huge advantage. I can clearly see what’s coming next based on what I do today. Maybe this is because I’ve already made so many mistakes at least once or maybe it’s just what happens when you get older, err more experienced. But this is one area where your youth betrays you. 

Progress reports come out October 9th. I’ve mentioned this in each of my classes hoping that the knowledge of the impending report home to your parents and guardians will motivate some of my students. 

But I know, youth means living for today because the future seems so very far away. Even two weeks can seem like almost forever for middle school students. 

Trust me on this - two weeks will go bye in a blink. You’ll be getting your progress report and it will feel like school just started. 

If you’re working hard and doing your work, it will probably be a report filled with good news. If you have been spending your time chatting with friends, and not doing your work, well….I think you know what that progress report will look like.

There is still time to avoid that awkward conversation at home about why your ELA , math or science grade “Needs Improvement,” or worse. Check your grade on Google Classroom, talk to your teachers, get late work in….there is still time to avoid disaster…if you can see that far into the future.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

If you are new to my homeroom, there’s something you gotta know: I play music. A lot of music. Walk past my room during my prep period and you’ll hear me playing music. Sometimes I play it so loud, my neighboring teachers have to send a kid over to ask me to turn it down - sorry!

In the early morning, before you guys show up, everyone knows I’m in the building because I’m BLASTING my music. The best part of room 23 is the sound system and I make use of it - trust me. For me, music makes school a more joyful place. 

In my homeroom, we do a thing called Song of the Day. 

Every day, I play a song. Over the course of the week my homeroom students have to figure out how all five songs are related. There is a theme to my selections. 

Some recent themes were: 

• Songs by artists known primarily by one name - Cher, Adele, Rhianna & Elvis,
• Songs by artists from Massachusetts - Aerosmith, James Taylor, etc.
• Songs about vehicles - cars, boats, planes, etc.
• Songs in Spanish - this was suggested by a student and she came up with great songs!

I have a good time coming up with the themes and songs and, yes, they do reflect my taste in music. If you were to stick your head in Ms. Macinnis’ room, you would notice she also plays music during homeroom. It’s nice, soft, jazzy music. I assume that’s what she likes. In my room you are going to hear a hard driving beat and screaming guitars. I just love me some screaming guitars!

I am open to suggestions for a theme and only have few guidelines. 

• There must be five songs,
• It has to be school appropriate,
• There must be a theme - something that links all five of the songs together,
• It can’t be obvious - You have to keep people guessing until day four or five.

If you have a suggestion for a theme, even if you need help coming up with the actual songs, let me know. Let’s all have fun with the music!

Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not at the old Bartlett anymore

This year marks my 12th year as a teacher and the 9th year I have been at the Bartlett. 

I taught in room 23 for my first five years, then, for reasons I still fail to comprehend, the administration moved me to room 22, around the corner for two years.

This is also my 12th year writing this blog. If you scroll down far enough, you will discover I was writing this at two other schools I taught at before coming to the Bartlett. One of those schools was also in Lowell. 

I write this blog for and to you, my students. 

This is my forum to write about my life as a teacher, a student and a person. Sometimes, I write to amuse. Sometimes, I write to inform. And, sometimes, I write to help my students put things into perspective. Sometimes, when I’m really on my game and the words flow, I think I can inspire some kids a little, too.

I will try to post something each week - but, honestly, when things get busy, sometimes I run out of time and miss a week here and there. I will post a link on google classroom, so you’ll get an email notification when there’s something new to read.

I hope you will find them interesting but you’ll all be the judge of that. Please read, share, comment, and talk to me about what I write.  

Post script: I’ll give you a prize if you can name the movie that is referenced (but not quoted) in the title of this post.

"OMG, They're Beautiful!"

It happened. I really never 100% believed it would, but it really happened.

Our too-narrow, old, bent, fall-out-of-the-wall, graffitied lockers are gone.

They have been replaced by brand new, never-been-touched, blue beauties. They will even fit a backpack.

It’s been a long time since we had new lockers - I’d guess 25 or 30 years. And the purplish/red ones were just plain worn out.

A few years ago we had a long-term substitute who had attended the Bartlett. At the end of the year she taught here I was cleaning out some lockers, and I noticed her name written inside what had been her 8th grade locker.

Before that, and on two separate occasions, banks of lockers had somehow become detached from whatever holds them into the walls, and had come crashing down into the hallways. They were propped back into place and secured to the wall again, but I was always nervous having kids in the hallways near those two spots. 

The Bartlett Community Partnership School has been neglected for so long it just feels amazing to have a few of the basics that most other schools have. 

Your teachers have been asked not to slap stickers or labels on the lockers - we want to keep them looking new for a long, long time. You can help with that too. 

• Let’s work together to keep these lockers clean and fresh. 

• Let’s not use them as trash receptacles, let’s not store milk or unwanted fruit in them. 

• Let’s not slam them so loud the kids at the Stok can hear it.

Between the lockers, the new water fountains, the new entryway (not including dumpsters), a lot of fresh paint and some other things happening, our school is improving.

The Bartlett is comin’ back, baby, and you get to be part of it!

Speech Therapy

President Biden is a stutterer. He has worked hard to overcome his stuttering and sometimes when you watch him speaking in public, you can see him actively battling this disorder. He’s using his training right in front of us. 

Astronaut John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth. He went back to space again in his late seventies. He was an authentic American hero, but even heroes look up to others. John Glenn looked up to his wife, Annie. She was a stutterer and worked hard to overcome her speech issues to become a powerful pubic speaker. 

I too had speech therapy. When I entered school, my “R’s” sounded like “L’s.”  So, if I said “Let’s ride bikes,” it came out as “Let’s lide bikes.”

At school, I was embarrassed about how I spoke, so I rarely raised my hand or spoke in class. 

Reading in front of others was highly anxiety provoking - it was torture. During reading instruction, the whole class would sit in a circle and everyone would read one sentence. I remember counting the kids before me and trying to figure out what sentence I would have to read, so I could practice before it was my turn.

For the first few years of school, I was pulled out of class to do speech therapy. I hated it. I clearly remember the training my therapists gave me and also remember having to slow down my talking so I could put those techniques into practice. 

Eventually that training became second nature. 

It was all worth it. I got over my speech issues, became less shy, and participated in class regularly. It just took time and hard work. 

Our Stool Problem - A Brief History

As you may have noticed, we have a seating problem in the 7/8 science lab. 

Look down. What color is the stool are you sitting on?

If it’s a grey, metal stool, it was here when I arrived at Bartlett eight years ago. At that point, we had 24 grey, metal stools  - exactly the right number. 

Unfortunately, many of them were broken. 

In the Fall of 2016, I worked out a deal with the welding shop at the Voke and they repaired about eight of them.

Since then, I have been repairing them myself. Look down at the grey stools - you may notice nuts and bolts holding the legs on. That’s my work. I continue to repair the ones that break…but there is a limit to what I can do.

Unfortunately, about six years ago, an ambitious custodian threw away about four of these stools that I had not yet had a chance to repair.  Also, one of the teachers that taught in this room while I was assigned to room 22 threw even more of them away.

If you are sitting on a white stool, you can thank my neighbor. She found four white stools on the side of the road in a pile of household items that were being discarded. She grabbed them and then gave them to me for the lab.

If you are sitting on a black stool, you can thank DonorsChoose and the people who support teachers. DonorsChoose is a non-profit organization that connects teachers who need supplies with people who want to support them. All the black stools were donated to us. We did lose one of those this year when it fell over and cracked. My repair was a failure and I had to discard it. 

If you're sitting at a lab bench in a standard desk chair, you are experiencing our problem: We don’t have enough stools any more. Some students who want to sit at the lab benches end up sitting in a standard desk chair and those are way too low to be used at the lab benches. 

This is a ridiculous problem to have.  

At a minimum, you ALL deserve a chance to sit at the lab benches on an appropriately sized chair or stool.  <sigh>

Nobody Wants to Look a Fool

I am a poor speller. 

There, I said it. 

There’s no hiding it now

I don’t know why, but I just do not have the knack for spelling. I know people who just seem to have an innate sense on how words are put together. I do not. I memorize words, look them up or get them wrong. 

Several years ago, I realized my poor penmanship is a result of my poor spelling. It came to me one day, that when I could not spell a word, I would smush the wrong letters together to hide my inability to spell. 

I still catch myself doing this sometimes. I think it’s such a deeply engrained habit, that I may never be able to stop. 

Yes, I know there are ways to learn how to spell. In high school I misspelled the word “necessary" on a paper and the teacher made me write it correctly 100 times. What a pain! But, I do know how to spell “necessary,” now.

A new pizza shop opened near me and for the life of me, I can not spell “Mediterranean” as in Mediterranean Pizza.

But, technology to the rescue! 

I’ve looked up the Mediterranean Pizza website or phone number so often (And that’s a whole different problem!), my phone and iPad just suggest it to me after typing the first three letters.

I now have so many ways of getting the spelling right, I don’t have to resort to hiding misspelled words - I just fix them!

“Hey Siri, spell Mediterranean.” I might say.

Or, I’ll google it. I often say “Half my google searches are for spelling” and it’s true.

If I’m typing, like now, the document will autocorrect my spelling or if I’m so far off that even the computer can’t figure out what I’m trying to write, it will at least give me a heads-up so I can google it.

Doing high quality work is important and spelling words correctly is part of that. Nobody wants to look a fool and spelling words correctly helps avoid that.