Word of the Day

Today's word of the day that you will not believe the students have never heard of before:

REVISE

Can't believe how many times I have had to explain that in the past week or so.

Note to self: Next year, be sure to get better step by step worksheets to teach how to write up a Works Cited page (bibliography). Apparently it is much tougher than I thought to give them the book's info and have them put it into the correct format. Oh my god, how hard was this. What is so f-in' hard about "last name, first name"? Explaining the difference between a magazine and a magazine article was like being in the seventh realm of hell today.

And then, we teachers all got on today about how much we need a detention after school. They won't do it because they say we have to have a bus service and hire someone to stay for supervising detention.

Excuse me? A bus service for detention? I would have always been in detention if I got a bus ride home! I remember the few detentions I had in middle school being such a drag because I didn't want to walk all the way home, or even worse, have to have mom or dad come pick me up. That would be it right there. One pick up and that would never have happened again. Detentions kept me in line (for the most part). Plus, there are some behaviors that are just worth some time spent after school. Not everything is a referral-to-the-vice-principal affair. Plus, I hate calling home.

Detention should be a bad thing. It should be very easy for a teacher to give, as a quick consequence to those silly little behaviors that add up. When one girl today had her third straight day of staring at a piece of paper, I just want to walk over and say, "If this doesn't get done like everybody else is doing, you are going to have to stay after school to finish it." Instead, I have no options there because I apparently need to take time to call home and everything before I write up a referral. When these things happen a couple or three times a day, I can't make all those phone calls. I have my own kids to get home to. I take care of my business at home.

Detention should be tough. It should inconvenience the parents to come pick them up. Then they would think twice about shit during the school day. It made me not be such a smart ass. (Now, when I got my own car and had morning detention for my Spanish teacher, that was a different story--I didn't care because the only one inconvenienced was me and I was a morning person anyway.)

I need a detention option.