Sunday, June 7, 2009

confusing

so i was rejected by the DCPS (dc public schools), apparently. that's incredibly unfortunate. i don't really know what to say to that. does that mean that i can't continue in DC at all? or can i go to individual schools? if that's the case, then how did i get an interview at this one school in DC?? strange, strange. i hope they don't reject me on the basis that i wasn't accepted into the DCPS system...oy. i'm a little disappointed, to be honest.

how does this affect my job search now?

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

i like writing. writing is fun.

and i love teaching grammar. man, i'm quite happy to be getting into familiar territory. let me back up a bit.

our unit is not titled, unfortunately--nothing snappy like before with Empowering the Skin I'm In...too bad, huh? well, our new unit is on folktales. we did a little study on telling and retelling stories (aka, the premise behind folktales). along with that, i enveloped the kids in this kick i had: vivid details. as a writer, that's a big no duh. but the kids need practice. they need to get into the idea that writing means you have to be powerful, snappy, interesting! so we did that, and that was fun and worked out very well--we did a bunch of mini-lessons on four of the eight parts of speech (adverb, adjective, noun and verb) and made them all vivid. so i think it's clear to say that they know what the word means, and what it implies, which is awesome. their application of said vivid details is pretty decent in one class, and in the other it's a bit weak. but i think some vocabulary lessons and quizzes could help that out.

we then did a big investigation (it's an Expeditionary Learning term, i feel) of folktales, and now we're doing a more in-depth investigation of tall tales. we're watching Big Fish, which is an awesome movie, and it's helping them get more of a picture of tall tales, i feel. at the end of this, i expect them to be experts on the style of tall tales, and how they should be told/written, which is what we'll be doing: writing tall tales! i scrapped the idea of memoir for some continuity, so we'll be doing a slight bit of memoir now, but really only a small bit. either way, it'll be awesome, i think, and i'll be able to teach some grammar and story-writing.

that's the news. nothing fantastic as of yet. the DC interview (i had an interview!) went well, but i haven't heard anything from them yet. i got positive signals, but when i called them yesterday, i got the "thank you for calling, we're still in the interview process, but we'll call you and let you know by at least next week." so, i dunno what that means. i'm really hoping that i get this job--it's a great school, and it seems like a fantastic fit for me. here's hoping!