The Problem with Pockets

The problem with pockets is simple.

They're barely just big as a dimple.

The phones they don’t fit, and 

Sir Isaac could tell, when they slip, they most surely hit.

And the girls make a gasp like a wimple.

Yeah, if you’re a middle school girl who carries a phone, you’ve got a problem. Your pockets don’t fit your phone.

I see this all day long - huge phones dangling out of tiny, little pockets. I warn students they’re about to lose their phone. I hear the distinctive smack of glass, aluminum and plastic hitting the tile floor in my room. It’s a daily occurrence. Oh, and it’s mostly a girl problem.

The fashion designers seem to think females don’t need to carry anything in those back pockets. They make them sooooo small - they’re really more decorative than functional. Are they thinking girls and women put all their important stuff in a handbag?

Guys have large, fully functional pockets for all the important things they must carry. You know big, expensive things like cell phones. 

It’s not fair. It’s gender bias from the fashionistas.

But, I have solution. A fix that will keep your phones out of free-fall in my room. A wondrous space that will not only keep your social media server safe, but will also provide free power. Imagine a place where your phone is landed, secure, getting a free charge and you can see it the whole time right from your seat.

What is this seemingly magical remedy to the pocket problem? 

It’s simple - use the charging station at the front of the room - and you’ll never again hear that glass-aluminum-plastic-tile smack and have to make a gasp like a wimple.

The Reflective Student

There will be times when you are asked to reflect on your work in class. I usually end each unit of study by asking you to write a multi-paragraph essay about your learning.

I do this because looking back at your work and thinking about what you have learned, how you learned and what challenges you overcame is an important part of your education. 

You will come to understand what strategies work best for you and what doesn’t work. 

You will see how your understanding of the science content has grown - how much you have learned. You will see connections between things that you never knew existed.

Think about the Roadmap bulletin board last year's 7th grade made. They were looking back at all the things they learned. When they were working on it, many students said they were surprised about how much they learned last year. You never really think about it in the moment. It is only when you stop, look back and reflect on how far you've come that you begin to see the bigger picture. That's when you can really appreciate how hard you worked and how much you learned.

Your teachers do this kind of reflective thinking all the time. We’re constantly looking back at our work and evaluating how things went. How to improve a lesson or an assessment for example. 

Looking at your work, and using that experience to improve, is one of the most important skills you can develop in middle school. Being able to honestly reflect on your work will serve you well as you move into high school, college and the work force. 

It’s really the only way any of us ever get better at what we do. 

Such A Good Idea

This past summer, a high school ELA teacher told me about a cool way of breaking up a long block and energizing her students. 

Her school does two-hour blocks twice a week for ELA and Math.  She feels it is really hard  for students (and teachers) to concentrate for such a long class. “It’s really asking a lot of active, young students to focus for, basically two, back-to-back, classes.” she said. 

“I like to give them a break about 90 minutes into the class,” she explained.

Her break is to play Sweet Caroline.

The catch is…everyone has to stand up and sing along - just like they do at Fenway Park in the middle of the eighth inning. (Like this)

She described how into it the kids get. “They’re sooooooo loud,” she said. They are so loud the classes on either side of her classroom open their doors and all those kids and teachers sing along as well.

Then, fully refreshed, they all power through the final 30 minutes of class.

What a great idea…so good, so good, so good.

I Do Not Have Turn-in Bins

Something odd happened right at the end of the last school year: A student got up, walked over to the windowsill and dropped a piece of paper into my ”Unclaimed Work” bin.

When I asked him what he was doing, he said “turning in some late homework.” Mind you, there is a label on the bin that says “Unclaimed Work,” and this student had been in my class for about 170 days - he should have known my routines by this point in the year. I guess he never noticed I do not have turn-in bins for homework. 

He probably did not fully understand what ”Unclaimed Work” means either. That bin is for work that I have corrected but can not return to the owner because he or she failed to write their name on the paper. In the 2016-2017 school year, I said “Put your name on your paper” 12,189 times - I counted.

Every time I returned work, in every class, I had a student walk around showing the nameless papers to the other students trying to find the perpetrators of these anonymous assignments. Anything that doesn’t get claimed and resubmitted to me, goes in the ”Unclaimed Work” bin.

I know some teachers do use turn-in bins for homework and assignments, but I do not. 

I collect your work, or have students collect it, clip it all together, and put in my uncorrected work bin for that particular class. I do this because it helps me stay organized.  

If you have late work, hand it to me I’ll put it in the right place. 

Of course, if you don’t usually write your name on your work anyway, you might as well skip the whole collection, grading, returning process and drop it directly into the unclaimed work bin for me. 

That would save me some time. 

Welcome To My Blog: Episode V – The Science Teacher Strikes Back

My new 7th grade is the fifth class I have welcomed to read my blog. 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.

I hope you find it interesting. Please read, share, comment, agree or disagree with my thoughts and feelings.

I started this blog here in Lowell on January 10th, 2014. My teaching partner challenged me to post my thoughts and feelings every day until the end of the school year. 

This is my 181st post. That’s enough for one post for an entire school year plus one day. I guess you can think of this as the first post of my second school-year. But it’s not. 

It’s taken me nearly four years to get this far - 181 essays (‘cause that’s really what they are) is a lot of writing. This is also the third school where I have shared my blog. 

When I started, I was teaching Math and Science at the Hellenic American Academy right here in Lowell. I taught grades 6, 7 and 8. 

After that, I taught 8th grade Math and Science for two years at the Christa McAuliffe Charter School in Framingham.

This is my second year teaching 7th and 8th grade Science at the Bartlett Community Partnership School. 

This should be a great year. I’m excited to be back from summer vacation and start with a group of 8th grade students I know well, and to meet a whole new crop of 7th graders.