My students seem to be slightly obsessed with all the e-reader options available today–they’ve asked permission to bring everything from Kindles to Nooks to iPhones to read in class, and they’ve repeatedly asked me for months to tell them yet again how to cite page numbers off of an e-book. While I can see the …
50 Weeks to Organized: Week 16
In last week’s organizational post, I moaned about how I would probably regret choosing to tackle the filing cabinet this week (especially since we’re hitting midterms and parent-teacher conferences this week at the school). Surprisingly, I actually ended up getting most of it done over the weekend instead of procrastinating it all until the last …
Tuesday Tell-All
*Every spring, I am made new by the extended hours of sunlight streaming through our windows until late into the evening–the delight of having daylight at 7:30 P.M still has not worn off yet, and I often find myself staring at the way the light reflects off the cilantro plant that I just potted, or …
Happy Hour
Last Friday, a student (we’ll call him Barry) came into my 6th hour creative writing class, gave a big sigh [of relief], and said, “Mrs. Meidell, are we your happy hour?” I laughed and replied back with, “Why? Is this YOUR happy hour?” He thought for a second, then said, “Yeah. I’d say that it …
Dreaming Big
Some days, when I have to remind myself that I actually voluntarily put myself into the job that I’m in, I let my mind wander to a place of dreams–dreams where I’m not having to constantly monitor and babysit what 150 teenagers are doing every second and where my job isn’t notoriously known for being …
Thoughts on Making a Difference
Today has definitely been one of those days: the kind of day when I ask myself, over and over again, “Am I making any kind of difference in my students’ lives? Or am I just here to make sure they stay busy and don’t hurt each other?” I often wonder if other teachers think of …
50 Weeks to Organized: Week 15
Okay, let’s be real for a moment: I’m having a really hard time keeping up with this whole “50 Weeks to Organized” project. No, this is not an “I’m going to give up” post–this is an “I’m finding this whole process a lot harder than I thought it would be and a lot of the …
Tuesday Tell-All
*I was just mentioning to my mother-in-law the other day how we’d better take some new family pictures soon because everyone’s little family (except ours) has changed since we last took some two years ago (every single one of my sisters-in-law has had a baby in the past year–crazy sauce!), and this is what happens: *We …