get thee away from the computer

It is a beautiful day but I am feeding my addiction to the web. between facebook, lost blogs and ebay, a girl can stay online 24-7. Got sideswiped by a car yesterday, at the intersection 1/2 block away from my school. I've made this turn 204 days a year for 5 years, but it takes one driver deciding that left turn from the right lane is OK and I need a new bumper. Thank god for insurance. If only I did not stop to talk to my former student's mother, then perhaps no accident. but i should be grateful that noone was hurt and the damage is pretty minimal. maybe someone has jinxed me with their evil eye. i thought a lot about our discussion in the wed. class about 'the evil eye'. my mother is adamant about not discussion impending trips or medical procedures in fear of being jinxed. as a result sometimes i find out that my parents are going on a 6 weeks trip a day or two before they leave or that my dad was in a hospital for 2 days. also i was always jealous of my friends' parents who bragged about their children, my parents always played everything down, which made me feel unappreciated.

thanks to my bff (best friend forever) r. who is picking me up to see drag me to hell. i've been a fan of sam raimi since i saw evil dead in the 80's. and thus with a little help from my friends i break my internet addiction binge for today with no money spent on ebay, thank god.

Little milestones II

One of the hazards of being a teacher is the attachment one forms to the students. In two weeks I have gotten really attached to a student who is in my summer school. I think on second day I realized that he can't read and some emergency measures had to come in place. In this respect I am particularly thankful to SK who was my reading methods professor. She was a really tough and uncompromising teacher, but boy did I learn a lot. Anyway, Jesse's progress is really amazing. He's starting to read and because his English is very good and I suspect he is very intelligent, he is able to figure out words semantically. I feel like a proud parent and want to show him off to everyone. Unfortunately, summer school is almost over and I hope dr. G (the principal) puts him in my class for next year, so I can continue working with him. I know I should not have favorites or get attached, but I just can't help it.

My class today was really inspiring. One of the reasons I went back to graduate school was teaching little people. One has to simplify one's language and although I really do so minimally, I felt my brain was turning to mush. Ignorance can be blissful and cuddly reality, but it was starting to depress me. Anyway, I think this summer I will try to read up on contrastive rhetoric.

I just checked my Facebook and someone posted a link to Andrei Codrescu's blog on NPR and boy did he ripped Facebook to shreds. I'll save that for my paper for the class. But then again with limited time on my hands how would I find this information without Facebook and all the smartiepants smurfs that gather all the tasty cultural tidbits for me.

OK, time for bed. I promised my friend that I will finish reading his screenplay and comment on it. For once my bluntness is an asset. Plus there are 3 or 4 issues of New Yorker saying "Read Me!"

Disk disaster - play by play

On Sunday, late at night, I finished my monster of a unit plan and realized I had no paper. So I saved my opus grandus to my trusty (or so I thought) memory stick and forgot to save it to do what I always do for insurance, email myself a copy. Off I went to teach. Well, at 12:35 pm, my disk came up empty. Nothing on my classroom computer. Nothing on my MAC when I got home, nothing on my LAUSD laptop. My dear neighbor who is IT specialist told me he'll be home at 7:00, but at 8 there was no sight of his car. I called my mom and then frantically called my friends to see if anyone could help. From 9 until 10:15 my neighbor had valiantly tried to recover files I foolishly did not back up. Scrambled is my webquest (thank got we uploaded it last week). Gone are my word files and powerpoint presentations. How much sleep did I have - 0. But my unit plan is done. Of course I would like to know why this happened. How did my memory stick got corrupted? Of course it came from LAUSD, so it should have been a warning. Well, I hope I survive today on no sleep and finish the lesson plan in time for today's class.

Pulling rabbits out of hat

Everyday is a small step forward for my non-reading student Jesse. I am using Language Experience Approach where I use guided reading of a high-content, low level book. Once I noticed that Jesse has memorized the book, I had him copy ALL the words in the book (it's really short) on the index cards and now I am using the words in the book as flashcards. He is used to memorizing the words as whole and is struggling with blending the sounds together.

Yesterday, I went to talk to the person who for 100K is supposed to make sure that the students like Jesse do not fall through the cracks. She was pretty dismissive, "Yes I know about Jesse." I tried very hard not to get mad, because I do not want to give her even a drop of power. I am kind of glad that CA is in the financial crunch, because this person is losing her job, which she is inept in doing anyway.

little milestones

My summer school group has a non-reader. I don't want to say disrespectful things about my fellow teachers, but it's pretty shameful that his previous teacher has done nothing to get this boy any additional help. Instead he placated the boy's grandmother by telling her the student was doing better. Like hell! This 9 year old who is already one year behind is going into 3rd grade not able to read "peg the red hen". I am trying to do the best I can by having him practice with a wonderful phonics, reading program online, but what he really needs is one-on-one instruction and i can work about 20 minutes a day. I cannot pair him with more advanced reader, because i'm afraid it would be really humiliating for him. The classroom is really small and it is obvious for everyone who is doing well and who is not. Perhaps I should pair him off with a girl from my 3rd grade who was where he is now in the beginning of the 2nd grade, but now eventhough she is seriously behind, she is able to read independently. But the question remains as to how can a teacher live with himself, knowing he did nothing to help this boy. This teacher is highly popular with students and parents, because he is Latino, young and peppy. Parents just drink his Cool-Aid and have no clue, how far behind their children are falling through crappy instruction. How can I be so sure he did nothing? We have a wonderful reading specialist who works with students who have learning disabilitities. The jerk of a lazy teacher could have asked her to see the struggling boy informally, as she would have. Meanwhile the lazy, yet charismatic teacher is on his way to becoming an administrator. Time to take a nap.

power of technology

I love new technology! This morning I used skype to video conference with my brother in SF. I remember when the ability to see loved ones who are far away on a computer monitor was the stuff of sci-fi novels. And here I am cooing to my little nephew, whom I can't wait to see once the school is over. My nephew has gray eyes, which is surprising when one looks at my immediate family. My father, brother and I all have brown eyes. My mom's eyes are hazel, but my aunts and uncle from both sides of the family are the blue eyed devils. Whatever I studied in a biology class regarding the genetics must be true.

Welcome to reality.

I am teaching an intersession class. While most students are on vacation, some attend school for 20 days, 4 hours per day to catch up. In my case my students are catching up on reading comprehension, reading fluency, ESL or all of the above. I have 20 students. 12 3rd graders and 8 2nd graders. One girl just arrived from Guatemala and speaks no English.

4 students are from the bilingual program. They are the prime example what happens when someone without formal SLA background is teaching bilingual class. Language arts were taught in Spanish and Math in English. While these students reading fluency in Spanish is way ahead of their English counterparts, they do not have even a rudimentary knowledge of English phonics. SH sound and CH sounds which are not differentiated in Spanish are the same to them. As a result they spell 'shop' as 'chop'. So I worked with them using explicit instruction and minimal pairs. While they can differentiate between the 2 sounds, they cannot produce them orally. I am going to spend this week on these sounds. In addition, "f" and "wh" sounds are also confused, not to mention, they have no clue about "th". Their teacher was a bilingual speaker and that's how he got the job. He does not have BCLAD or passed his Spanish A levels. These students are starkly different from another bilingual class taught by a qualified teacher. His students read in Spanish 1 grade above and in English on grade level.

I most enjoyed working with a girl from Guatemala. She is bright and enthusiastic.

One little 2nd grader has special needs. She can hardly read at the end of 2nd grade.

This is the most diverse intersession group I have ever taught.