The Teacher in Me

So, this is how my students see me 😀...

I always ask my students to artistically represent the songs we prepare to sing. Here are a couple of pieces representing the song True Colors...

Thoughts?

Florida teacher says she was fired for refusing to give students partial credit on an assignment they didn't turn in The eighth-grade history teacher refused to give 50 percent credit to students who didn't turn in any work.

How much should schools do to foster “friendships”? This thought hit me as I read an excerpt from a chapter on friendship written by CS Lewis is “The Four Loves.” Check it out:

“And the possibility of going through life without the experience is rooted in that fact which separates Friendship so sharply from both the other loves. Friendship is—in a sense not at all derogatory to it—the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary. It has least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale. It is essentially between individuals; the moment two men are friends they have in some degree drawn apart together from the herd. Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and without Affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship. The species, biologically considered, has no need of it. The pack or herd —the community—may even dislike and distrust it. Its leaders very often do. Headmasters and Head-mistresses and Heads of religious communities, colonels and ships’ captains, can feel uneasy when close and strong friendships arise between little knots of their subiects.”

For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.

Teachers: do not suck the life out of learning. Teach the beauty of everything you teach be it math, English, music, social studies; there is beauty in them all. Infect students with passion every day. Do not lose heart. Persevere!

How important is grammar anyway? Is it just a pretentious convention? I've heard it said "proper" grammar is a form of power and bias. Curious to hear your thoughts 💭 on the matter...