Tag: English Teaching High School

Reality Check

Posted on by Sierra

I’m in my Princess Room. In Colorado. This room has gold walls and a luxurious purple bed spread, and just to make it more princessy, I used to have a plum beaded canopy with ornate beading and embroidery. My style has changed drastically since this room was mine, but it still makes me upset if I come home and find a poster missing or my closet re-prioritized. Home doesn’t feel the same without my mismatched posters.

But I’m at my childhood home now, which is where I was before our grand Chicago adventures. It  already feels like I woke up from a long dream rather, like I’ve just spent a pleasant weekend in Colorado and Chicago never happened. Lucky my blog negates that thoroughly.

Things are about to get crazy, and the world might start spinning off its axis. I head to Provo as soon as I pick myself up out of bed. I start decorating my classroom, I start moving back into our old and beloved apartment. I start attending meetings (and a wedding) and hopefully reconnecting with old friends. And then I start my big girl job… I’ve had a low-level stomach ache for the past three days and I think that it’s a manifestation of my anxiety. This is about to get real.

So I’m blogging in defiance.

I am a first-time high school TEACHER.

Posted on by Sierra

In high school, I was a book-wormy over-achiever, a stretch-too-thinner, student body governmenter, hang out with the Assistant Principal (Hey Mrs. Lacy, if you’re reading this), Susie High School. So because I loved high school so much, I vowed I would never go back. How lame would it be if I spent my life in high school?

Of course, in a little more than a month, I will step into a high school classroom again. I won’t be any taller than I was in high school. I won’t really look much different than I did in high school. I will still pack my lunch. I will still be a nerd.

But this time, as I step into the high school classroom, I will be the teacher. The classroom will be mine.

So much for convictions.

Here’s the thing: I got a rush from doing my homework. I sat in the front row. I got along with and obeyed most of my teachers (except Mr. Svendson. We had issues). So now I am teaching English, and  all the activities that I have planned sound really fun, but they might only sound fun because I am a high school loving English Geek.

So now I am launching heavy duty into my classroom planning, and yeah, I am starting to freak out a little.  I want to hear from YOU. All of you. Whether you loved high school, but especially if you hated it.

Tell me what your teachers (specifically English, if possible) did to make your high school heavenly or hellish. 

You best believe this is going on my wall. 

The Hormone Cocktail

Posted on by Sierra

In fourth grade, when we got a new teacher (before the days of picture roles), Rachael Miesen and I switched names. For the whole day, I was Rachael and she was Sierra. It was hard to get used to, but we sure did get a lot of laughs.

Today, at the high school, I got my comeuppance, with interest. 

For those of you who don’t know, which is probably most of you, I got my school placement for next year, complete with a “Big Girl Wardrobe” (which involves khakis, I am sorry to say) and the title “Mrs. Penrod” (or PR as one student called me all day). I am delighted to announce that I will be teaching English at a local High School with an ambiguous degree of permanence. I am thrilled for this opportunity. Since I still look like a high schooler, I figure I may as well own it, and make my life out of being in high school. I really thrived there back in the day, anyway.

Admittedly, however, today as I entered the “hormone cocktail” that is the 10th grade English classroom, I almost reconsidered my career choice. It was first hour and the students came in with real chips in their sleepy, slouchy shoulders.

“I thought she was a new student, not our teacher!” said one, when he found out that I was teaching that day. This is a prime example of something that is OK to say about yourself, but cuts a little too deep whenever someone considers you to be their 15 year-old peer.

Lemme tell you about high school tenth graders. They like attention. It doesn’t matter if it’s from the girl they are sitting next to, or the rest of the bros in the class, or even negative attention from the teacher. They just want it, and lots of it. And “PJ” and “New Zealand” (their names are changed), were in fine form. They were the “Name Switchers.” When they weren’t busy harassing the girls in class or making racial slurs, they were actively busy not doing the assignment and persistently distracting others from doing the same.

I suppose this story doesn’t have a real arch or anything. But just as I almost began to reconsider my teaching career, I was delighted that second period clapped at the conclusion of my lesson instead of glaring, and several of them asked me to make sure to teach 11th grade next year. They also grasped the concepts I was teaching quite nicely.

I am learning that teaching is probably a lot like that. One minute, you might lose all hope in the youth of the nation, but the next, they always reward you with a little bit of kindness and a whole lot of potential.

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PS: Bethany had her baby today! And he is such a handsome little devil. Momma Bear and Little Cub are both doing well.

The “Germ Casserole”

Posted on by Sierra
For the record, I hate that when you type in “high school” to the Google search bar, you are besieged with pictures of Zac Efron and that Hudgins chick. I’m sorry, but the two weeks that I have spent in one of the local high schools in the area has confirmed that there are no beautiful chemistry nerds breaking out into song anywhere inside the school.


This is not accurate.
  Now, I’m not bagging on your musical, so calm down, pre-teens. I am simply saying that when I Google-search “High School,” I wish the images of the Nirvana-memorabilia clad kid with plaster casting his broken nose, and the Jamaican cheerleader, and the high functioning autistic young man would show up.
 I think I remember high school with rose-colored glasses—I belong to the small minority of US citizens that absolutely loved high school. I thought it was so great that the basketball players at my school may as well have been bouncing their basketballs in unison. I am glad to have had this experience to go back to the high school, this time as an educator, so that these students could pull the rose-colored glasses off my face, and unceremoniously fling them to the ground, where they then become trampled by a stampeding mass of hormones.


The first thing that happened to me as I stepped into the “Germ Casserole,” proudly donning my teacher-observer badge and brimming with optimism:
A student burped in my face.

Yet, still full to bursting with idealism, thrilled to teach the students the joy of participial phrases and thesis statements, I heard a student compare the works of Shakespeare and Nicholas Sparks with this sentiment: “That’s like trying to compare Gerard Butler with Heath Ledger… You just can’t do it.” (Poor Heath, I hope you’re Shakespeare.)

Later in the week, I graded one too many literary analysis papers citing Bella’s mother as an important supernumerary in Twilight because she made Bella move to Forks where she could meet Edward and fall in love.

On Thursday, a multitude of skinny boys in various phases of awkward kept attempting to friend me on facebook.

Yesterday, I made an enemy by asking the Nirvana-shirted boy what happened to his nose, and he had to admit that he lost a fight.
 
And today I am realizing how excited it all makes me. I’m so excited. 
Bring on the hand sanitizer and the thick skin. I’m ready.