Friday, February 12, 2016

Much love

There is so much love on this day! The kids are hyped full of sugar and kisses galore and not much learning is accomplished! :) Oh well! It is days like this that allows kids to connect and to show their appreciation for one another. I know these are dark- we are watching a film- but they are willing to share their goods!
Nallely Briones Loredo

Kaelanne Wood, Celeste Caro, and Luz DeLos Santos

Tayler Braswell and Stefanie Thomas

Paige Perkins Parker

I love this particular class and these particular young ladies (though I love them all- these girls are just rock stars!) 

As far as the rest of the week goes: 
11th grade: Reading "The Way to Rainy Mountain" and working through meaning getting ready to use Socratic Circles for the discussion. I hope the kids will find meaning within the story :) 

10th grade: We are finishing our poetry slides. I will have to upload one or two to share. They are proving quite beautiful! 

I hope all finds a few minutes with loved ones :) Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!! 

Friday, February 5, 2016

Funny Teenagers

As my kids are working on their poetry projects and there is a quiet in the class, I decided to jump on here and write. Just a moment ago, one of my boys gets up to use the restroom, and when he is walking back, he trips on a chair causing a set of giggles in the predominately female room. He blushes (yes, he was okay) and laughs at himself. Once he is settled, they have all returned to work.

This project is far greater than I had anticipated, and I am already making changes to the requirements for next year. I know this group can manage the task at hand, so I am leaving it alone for this year and just extending the time. I even have one young lady show me how to insert moving images:

.animated penguin gif 

This is too cool! I love learning from them!

This particular student just said to me, "either I don't know how to count, or there are only fifteen of the terms."
I said, "look on the back page."
She turned it around and jumped! A whole page of terms are waiting for her attention! Made both of us just laugh!

11th grade, and I had one boy come to me yesterday, and we had the following conversation:
"Mrs. Arney! Look! I am finally becoming a man!" and he rubs the side of his face. "I am getting facial hair and everything!"
I look up and smile and said, "I am so proud of you!"
The entire class busted up laughing!

This is how my week has gone! They are so funny! I keep thinking more will come and it does!

Currently, I have a young lady who writes beautiful poetry, and I am searching for contests to enter her work into. If we can find a few, she will get published and possibly earn a few scholarships!

We have just enjoyed the learning we have accomplished this week- the poetry project and learning to do a close reading...

That is proving to be a challenge. I have had to do more one to one teaching- which is the area I truly do accel- but it does get tiresome repeating myself over and over again. The benefit to this is I get to see far more aha moments :) Which I love, so I believe this is not so bad. Everyday, I get more and more work turned in. I guess that is something anyway. Sometimes I wonder if it is even good to set due dates....that has been the area of frustration for me. Anyway, I believe that the good this week has outweighed the bad, and if that is the worst that happens, we are in very good shape!