TAKSing Times

The title is "Charm Is Not Magic" -- the copyright and image belong to the artist. However, it sums up what I had to do on Friday: persuade a bunch of recalcitrant freshmen that, (a) no, the testing week was NOT done and (b) yes, they WERE going to write a 2-page essay for a person who was not their teacher ... This on top of recovering from a nasty bout of flu that sent me home for a day and a half. Oy!!
Mom says I got the bronchitis/flu from hanging at Faire; shoot, if you'd been around my students the last 2 weeks, you'd been exposed to all sorts of germs ... and I may have picked up some nasty little snotrag without thinking (or washing or at least sanitizing). Who knows? But the germs laid me low ... still, I did get to see bits of the royal wedding as I got dressed for school. I forgot that Kate Middleton and I share a saint's day. (St. Catherine of Siena) No one can top the Brits for old-style pomp and circumstance, though the event generally went unnoticed by my freshmen ... who will be "my" sophomores in about 4 months if I'm still teaching English II.
You guessed it -- I went back to SHS when I could've stayed home because I needed those sample compositions to be done right. The JROTC gentleman was great as a hall monitor and general muscle -- and it turned out he and I knew the same officers in DISD, courtesy of my 25+ years at FDRHS -- but I would not want him to teach the basic comp methods we use for English II and III. That I can do in my sleep -- or half-sick. My challenge was trying not to cough out a lung while keeping order ... I managed. Still, I was glad that they switched from a C-day (which meant I'd meet with 3 classes with 40 minutes off) to B-day (which meant I got time off and met only 1 class). Most sophomores were more interested in finding out whether they could legally moved out of their parents' home at age 17 ... The law is fuzzy: you can if you can support yourself ... but how to prove residency if you're living with a friend so you can enroll in school.
More proof that SHS is a better "fit" than my old school ... Three of the 27 freshmen are anime fans; one says I'm his favorite teacher for 2 reasons: manga and anime. They want to attend A-Kon in June. (See me there!) Also, one girl was raving over the 3-day Doctor Who last week. She confessed that Doctor 10 (David Tennant) was "her" Doctor and nearly swooned when I told her that I had met Tom Baker. (Doctor 4 was her second favorite.) We also had a bizarre discussion about the difference between rock and metal ... which at first I took literally before I realized it was music -- and impressed 1 kid because I do know what "corridos" are. (They're ballads dedicated to the deeds of the Mexican drug cartels.) So, I'm on my way to establishing that I know waaay too much trivia -- which isn't a bad position for a teacher in an urban setting. I'm just glad that a few of us SF geeks are around -- and there are several teachers who are going to A-Kon and watch the Doctor (not to mention Star Trek as well -- last year's discussion of "who's your captain" still amuses me).
Next week, we get back into Shakespeare's Julius Caesar -- we may even see a bit of film and video as we finish the play ... and analyze early modern English. (Woo-hoo! Does this encompass a 3rd language for some of these kids?)
Truly, it takes charm AND magic to persuade the little darlings that reading 400-year-old literature will not hurt their brains ... and backstabbing politics has been around much longer than any of us have been alive.