Ye Olde Booke Summarie

The book that I read is called H.I.V.E (Higher Institute of Villainous Education) by Mark Walden. (pp309, ©2006, Aladdin paperbacks) It is has a recommended age of 10-14 years old. Its protagonist is a young genius named Otto. Otto has re-shaped his dilapidated orphanage into a livable home for himself, his fellow orphans and their kind but overwhelmed caretaker. Unfortunately, some of his methods are decidedly extra-legal. When his pocket empire is challenged, Otto deals with it in an explosively public manner. This brings him to the attention of H.I.V.E. Otto is abducted and taken to H.I.V.E. and instructed in Basic Villainy, Escape and Evasion, Evil Robots and Their Uses and Death Rays and Other Beams. Can Otto thrive here? Can he escape? Will he make friends?
I highly recommend this book for fans of the movies “Sky High” and “Mystery Men”. It would also appeal to anyone who enjoyed the “Wild Cards” superhero anthology or the “Watchmen” graphic novel. It’s not for all superhero fans but that group of superhero fans that wonder: “What would the world *really* be like with superheroes?”

General Classroom Shots

I like my classroom. It's very big. We have lots of room for fun activities.


This is a small part of all of the cool new toys that we've been getting for our classrooms.


These are my plants. I have a variegated spider plant (airplane) plant and a plant that I can't remember the name of but it's cool. (and hardy)


This is the short side of my classroom. Here are the set ups for a measurement lab with brand new equipment. If you look closely, you can see the screws at the base of the three small graduated cylinders that they used to deface the counter tops.



Here are my bulletin boards including the FRONT PAGE article on our rocket club.


Here are half of my desks. I've called it an "echelon" formation.

I feel so much better about all the chowder-headed stuff that happened today after looking at pictures of my classroom.......

More Highs and Lows

High: A generous handful of students radically improved their grades on this last test. I think that real world evaluations helped.

Low: A handful of students packed it in. They just quit. One went from a 34 to a 17 average.

High: Students really enjoyed the measurement lab today.

Low: A student broke a meterstick over another student. He wasn't trying to hurt him, just being a chowder-head.

Another Low: A student took a wood-screw and scratched obscenities into my lab counters. I didn't see them do it, but I know that some student did. The fact that it's directed at me is more than a little disturbing. I think that we will make it a group project to sand out the obscenities before that class is allowed back in the lab.

Christmas in November

We got our lab equipment today. It's almost $10K per classroom. It's totally awesome. There were six palettes of equipment. I'm so glad that we have it. It would have been really nice to have it in August.

Bullying

I was bullied in school. Not because I was little, but because I was big. (and poor) I was 6'2" in the 7th grade and anywhere from 4 to 15 guys regularly beat the snot out of me in 7th through 10th grade. Things have changed a lot since then. Boys now bully like girls do. Name calling, "getting in their head", stepping on shoelaces, unspecified complaints (Mr. XXXXXXXX whiiiinneee, can you move meeeeee, XXXXXXXX is being weird again), throwing tiny bits of things. It's stupid.

My own son has been the victim of this stuff. It seems like the smaller boys are the ones who like to partake in this pastime. They gang up on the bigger kids and keep at them like a band of yapping chihuahuas. The bigger kids aren't going to resort to that kind of infantile crap and when they are finally pushed to the limit, they explode violently. You can't condone or permit the violence. The victim winds up getting in trouble.

I'm working with the victim in my class to make sure that he comes to me as *soon* as the others do something unacceptable. Don't let the anger build to the point where there is an eruption. I'm going to be visiting the kid in ISS and having yet another "come to Jesus" talk with my class.

Gain and Loss

On Friday, I found out that one of my students who has made such marvelous progress in the six weeks that she has been at our school is being transferred to another foster family. That stinks on ice. I gave her a hug and told her that we were at the mercy of others in this instance. I gave her my card with my home and cell numbers on them. I'm going to make sure and write to her at her new school. This child needs to be shown how grown ups act when teenagers have problems. She's going to be in the system for a long time. I doubt either of her parents will leave incarceration before she graduates high school.

My second run-away of the year returned to school. She is so so bright and could really benefit from an education. I told her that an education was the ticket to doing what she wanted to do and that there were 3 billion dudes on the planet and she wasn't going to run out of time for dudes. She is going to do "home schooling" as soon as her court-ordered stint in ISS is over. *sigh*

One of my students was really struggling with Lewis Electron Dot Structure and really "got it" after I took 3 minutes to work with him. 3 minutes and he has the primary and secondary quantum numbers for an electron down! Woohoo!!!

Those moments are why you become a teacher.

1st quarter

One of my students begged me for a D today. She has a 34%. She *refused* to participate in a lab just two days ago. She just hasn't made the connection between the work and the grade. She insists that I'm just mean. *hunh*