Hooray, hooray today is payday! School has been out for almost three weeks now and today’s the day. The “real” teachers got their final check two weeks after last day of school. We have to wait three weeks for them to cut our checks. They COULD have verified and run the payroll for everyone at the same time, but they make us wait until the end

I worked a grand total of 79 classroom subbing days for the just ended 2007-08 school year. This was working for a single district with 15 elementary schools. Surprisingly, 51 of those subbing days (65 %!!) were for a single school in the district. Two schools monopolized 69/79 (87%) of my jobs. Not sure if it’s good or bad to be seen so

I came across the term “popcorn reading” on a lesson plan not long after I started subbing four years ago. I didn’t know what: “Have the kids popcorn read the next chapter” actually meant. When asked, the kids explained it was just taking turns reading a paragraph from the text book or the current class novel. Sometimes it’s drawing random names

"Student Outcomes": Karissa Kilgore Posted by Michael Arnzen on Jun 24, 2008 in 'Student Outcomes'. | 3 Comments "Student Outcomes" is a new, ongoing series of interviews with my former students who are now living life after college. Considering how much of our work is based on the assumption that "learning outcomes" will be met,

You can't take your "stuff" with you, George... ...and, in an interesting segue, here's a guy getting rid of all his "stuff"

This guy explains why everything sounds like a question?

Went out to the movies tonight to celebrate our 38th wedding anniversary. Dialog from the movie: Q: You're a teacher?? A: Only part time... That's MY line! Guess the movie this dialog was from and you get 1 "AttaBoy" point!!

Is Reading to Students Bad? Posted by Michael Arnzen on Jun 19, 2008 in Praxis. | 5 Comments The forums over at Teacher Magazine have a great conversation going on right now about the advantages and disadvantages of reading text aloud to students in the classroom. Apparently a high school teacher was given a hard time by his administrators,

...if there is one Longest question ever for McCain