What In Tarnation?!?!? In the Classroom

Previously on WIT?!?!?:

Day One: Comm. Arts
Day Two: Writing

I was watching the Colbert Report last night and enjoyed his Threat Down Top 5 in which he listed the top five things that are a threat to America right now (number one, if you are curious, was bears). I thought it might be fun to do a Threat Down Top 5 for the Math MAP session.

So here now, The MAP Threat Down Top 5! The Five Top things that threaten all my students’ potential “advanced” scores.

5) Manipulatives. The math MAP test comes with a set of manipulatives. A ruler, some purple squares and a few pattern blocks. They sound innocent don’t they? I mean, who can have a problem with hands-on manipulatives? Don’t those kinetic-spacial learners need that kind of help? That’s is awfully kind of DESE to provide such a tool for my students. Well, that is a load. Don’t buy into the lie. You see, the manipulatives are much more amusing than the test. Remember, that intergalactic war made with pencils? Well, the makers of MAP give my students with overactive imaginations a whole fleet of spaceships to stage dogfights with. Let’s not mention the possibility of losing the one manipulative that you need out of the whole bunch. I still wake up in a cold sweat dreaming of the science MAP test that we used to give. They gave our kids a whole flippin’ baggy of leaves with names on them (don’t get me started on the names) and the students had to correctly count all the leaves. That task becomes more difficult when several of your leaves are under the desk next to you because you decided to dump your baggy out on the edge of your desk allowing several of your leaves (normally the leaves named Pedro and Ellen, they were especially frisky) to fall on the floor. Manipulatives are evil. An actual quote from one of my students today that nicely sums up the usefulness of these manipulatives: “Look, I made a conveyor belt out of mine block thingys. The purple boxes start here and they travel along the belt and wind up here!” This of course was sucking up precious brain cycles that could have been used on the test. I should have asked him to name the simple machines used in his invention.

4) Snack - Snack and break time are actually good. I have wonderful parents and wonderful second grade teachers who have generously provided appropriate snacks for my class this year. However, today’s juice containers didn’t make the trip from home to school all in one piece. One of the apple juices was punctured in transit causing all of its appley goodness to coat the other juice containers. When apple juice evaporates it leaves behind a sticky residue. This residue gets on tiny fingers and tiny fingers touch the test and the test gets jammed in the scanning machine somewhere in sunny California. I imagine the worst kind of paper jam. Just like in a copier machine, once you have extracted that paper, there is no grade the tiny shreds that remain.

3) Snot - Today, my class has tripled its production in flem and snot. It is running like milk and honey in the Promised Land from their little noses. That of course puts me on tissue partol. Running a tissue here running one there. Another over there. Not quite as bad as the Dictionary Gold Rush of ‘07 but close. I have developed a system in which I can deliver multiple tissues to a student with minimal effort from me, patent pending of course. I take several tissues and wad them up in a loose ball and launch that sucker across the room. They fly fairly well and fairly accurately. I was quite surprised. I have only missed my target once today. The wad landed on the recipient’s neighbor’s head. I found it amusing. Just now I handed a tissue to my friend sitting next to me. He used it and then tried to hand it back to me. “Thank you,” he politely replied holding out the now snotty rag. “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?” I responded. He realized the faux pax he made and started laughing. He has a rather infectious laugh so I couldn’t help but laugh too.

That brings us to…

2b) Laughing - It just is distracting. Of course people who aren’t laughing and are around laughing people want to be on the joke. Our laughter was the kind that you try to control because you know that you are supposed to be serious but the more you try to control it the more difficult it becomes. Soon half the class was look at us. Some of those got up the nerve to whisper, “What’s so funny?”

2a) Rushing - I have some students that I cannot convince that this test (or any other test for that matter) isn’t a race. Their goal is to be the first one done. It doesn’t matter how many times I say that being the first one done isn’t a good thing. Today was no different and my rushers skipped or ignored important directions. Internally I fumed. Lava pouring out of my ears; them totally clueless as to why they didn’t get any effort tickets. As I collected tests, I pointed out to one of my rushers that the directions say to show your work. He says that he did. “No…” I point out that he only wrote an answer on the line. “That is the work,” he cheerfully said. “What?!?!?” I said, “Since when have I accepted just an answer as showing your work?” He scratches his head as if he is perplexed and I continue, magma pushing further to the surface, ” No don’t strain yourself thinking about this answer… Try just before never. No ticket today.” Still confused he starts to say but… I interrupt him, “You don’t want to go there right now. We will take a survey of the class later to see if they think your answer was showing your work.” I did, and the class agreed with me despite his pleas.

1) Bears - Like Colbert, the biggest threat to test scores would be a bear entering my room. Thankfully that didn’t happen.

A tiny update on Day 3: Lawn mowers showed up outside to mow at 10 am. After confirming that it was indeed mowers I sprinted (hard to imagine, I know) to the phone to report the mowing who could do something about it. I then paused to catch my breath.

And that, friends, brings my MAP Journaling to a close. Hope you enjoyed them.

The way I wrote all of these MAP journals was by typing into an e-mail. The plan was to mail it home and then post it here. On a whim, I decided to e-mail it to my whole building. Folks liked the first one. I mean really liked it. There were threats on my life if I didn’t produce one the next day. Someone forwarded my first message to the other elementary buildings and the e-mails spread like wild fire. I have people coming up to me who I don’t know, thanking me for writing them. I got all kinds of good feedback. My favorite was from a relatively new teacher. They write:

Your emails bring me not only joy, but great relief. I’m thrilled to find out these things don’t happen exclusively in my room.

Oh, and I’ve got one to add to your list. We had a farter during Session II of math. His little bowels whistled Dixie thrice on Thursday. The first sounded quite “liquidy” and I fought the urge to ask him if he needed to wipe. The two aftershocks sounded something like the steamboat whistles we use in our Missouri Program. I’m thankful he hadn’t eaten corn the night before.

I’m not sure how to close an email of this nature. “Sincerely” and “Yours truly” seem a bit out of place after talking about farts.

Flatulently yours,
-Teacher

I think he needs to write them next year. So funny.

Class dismissed!