Teaching
Spirit Week 2012
This is my favorite week of school: Spirit Week. Granted, I love celebrating Halloween; so this is almost the “warm up” to that. Monday was “Crazy Hair Day.” Most days, I fight with my hair to minimize its craziness. On this particular day, I upped the ante. Several Halloween celebrations ago when I still lived … Continue reading
Opening the Third Eye
Toward the end of teaching my most behaviorally challenging Physics class, I paused my explanation of how to use the kinematic equation, which displayed on the powerpoint, so students could jot down some notes. One of the biggest disrupters, both in size and “spiritedness,” took advantage of the silence and said, “Ms. Roberson, let me know … Continue reading
Bounce
The much-anticipated first day of school found me shedding a few tears and dropping many F-bombs, all before 9 am. I’d accepted a new teaching position as an English Language Learner science teacher, which means that I had to hustle during the sweet week of school without students and prep for 5 different science classes. … Continue reading
Graduation Day 2012
Usually I only attend a high school graduation if there are a significant number of seniors who I know are walking. After teaching at the same high school for the past three years, my advisory class has finally grown up and walked across the stage. For some seniors, they had one of my science classes … Continue reading
Vatican City Prostitutes
I can truly tell that spring break is a week away, given how challenging last week was. Due to two doctors’ appointments, I took Wednesday off, but I still felt just as drained on Friday as if I’d actually worked five days. I noticed that one of my neighboring teachers, who is new to my high … Continue reading
Budding Cartoonist
I can hardly ever retrace the path of my creative ideas, but as far as my latest one, I know I was swimming. If I care to go back a little further, I had checked out two books the Saturday before I’d gone swimming. One was “A History of Mathematics” by Carl B. Boyer and … Continue reading
Half Day Vacation
Christmas vacation has already started for me since we’ve been on half days since last Thursday. For the first time in the three years that I’ve been teaching at my current high school, all four of the exam days are “early release,” which means my professional stress level has gone dramatically down. Even with the … Continue reading
Work = mad
As the semester draws to an end, one would think that I would spend a great deal of my time preparing final exams and their accompanying study guides, but the school administration has geared up a final kick of its own. We’re now spending too much time in too many meetings “analyzing student data.” Once … Continue reading
“Morticia Addams”
I believe in celebrating Halloween like a celebrate my birthday, over a period of time. Anytime I get to dress up more than once in order to observe Halloween, I’m very happy. I don’t know if there’s any deep, pyschological meaning behind dressing up as someone else for a period of time other than using … Continue reading
Rhythm of Life
During the week, I hustle throughout the school day, juggling so many tasks that when I hit the weekend and only do 20 things during the weekend, I actually feel as if I’ve had a mini-vacation. My weekend consisted of swimming, samba, flash mob practice, capoeira performance, salsa, painting, yoga, cooking for the week and a … Continue reading