Am I Doing This Right? Urban Student Teaching

Frequent accounts of my experiences in an urban classroom.

[sarahsimplified]

Like/reblog this post if you’re a young teacher! Preferably in your 20s and in the first five years of teaching. I would love to follow more of you for support, reassurance, communication, etc.

[mrskaaay]

Yo, 28 (maybe not so young? I certainly don’t have almost-retired teachers fawning over my baby status) and starting my 6th year.

[missfteacheshistory]

23 and second year social studies!!

[gracelesslyteachingthatway]

26 and starting my 2 years in urban Ed secondary (3yr teaching Higher Ed)

[teacherthoughtbubble]

Giving my students a pep talk

[teachingfeelslike]

The entire class when I say anything remotely snarky/sarcastic to one of them.

[mamafox18]

Or make a pop culture reference they recognize.

[thecharactercomma]

Em Dashes

A lot of people use semi-colons wrong because they know there’s supposed to be a pause in their sentence that they know isn’t quite a comma, so they think it must be that mysterious semi-colon. Usually, it’s actually supposed to be an em dash (—), which in some ways is more mysterious!

The em dash is the longest of the three dashes and most often used for interruptions. Interruptions in speech, in action, in thought. It’s also a great syntax addition for fight scenes, since it makes the narrative seem quick and unexpected and jolting from side to side like a fight scene should be. Read your em dash sentences out loud until you get a feel for how its pause compares to the pause of a comma. It’s a heartbeat longer. If a comma is one beat of pause, then I see an em dash as two beats of pause.

In this first example, the em dash is used to give an aside to the reader. It’s like a btw sort of moment, which can sometimes be replaced with commas or parenthesis. I think the em dashes are most suitable when your aside is decently long.

Her neighbor, Frank, is always blasting music.

Her neighbor—the one who always blasts the music—is named Frank.

My mischievous neighbor, Vince, seemed to have a knack for graveyard cavorting.

Vince—more often called (in a raised and angry voice) Vincent Price Ramsey—seemed to have a knack for graveyard cavorting.

Next up, here’s the em dash as a replacement for the semi-colon. Kinda like a slang or shortened sentence. Semi-colons have to connect two independent clauses—meaning each side of the semi-colon could stand alone as its own complete sentence. If you don’t want to do that, try an em dash:

I thought hanging out would be great—a chance to finally see the city, just like Aunt Lillian wanted.

I thought hanging out would be great; it would be a chance to finally see the city, just like Aunt Lillian wanted.

There was a headstone hardly a foot from where I’d emerged—dark grey stone a few inches thick and maybe as high as my knee.

There was a headstone hardly a foot from where I’d emerged; it was made of dark grey stone a few inches thick and maybe as high as my knee.

Sometimes, you can use an em dash to have a speaker correct themselves, or interrupt themselves to amend their sentence.

I could see the blur of the graveyard behind him—through him—

Similar to the last example, it can be used to interrupt a sentence in order to add additional information about the sentence. Often you can use a comma in this situation, too, so try to think of syntax and how that additional beat of pause changes things. In this case, Alice has just seen a ghost for the first time, so her mind is a bit too shocked for the normal pause of a comma. Read both. Doesn’t the one with the em dash sound more shocked or surprised, while the comma makes it sound like a simple observation?

He was glowing pale—almost tinged in cold blue.

He was glowing pale, almost tinged in cold blue.

Of course, it could be an interruption. It could be someone interrupting another in speech, one action interrupting another, or a character’s thoughts interrupting themselves. Here I’ll include the sentence with the em dash and the sentence following, so you can see the thing interrupted and the interruption.

You can have an action interrupt a character’s thoughts. For the first one, Alice is in a creepy situation and completely focused on something else, so when something touches her elbow, she’s shocked out of her thoughts. For the second one, Tristan is listening for an enemy when the enemy makes a move and startles him into action.

As far as I could tell it was some kind of berry—

An icy contact on my elbow broke my resolve, and I screamed until an equally cold hand clamped over my mouth.

The night was still, and yet—

Something whistled through the air. Tristan jerked backwards, narrowly avoiding an incoming dagger.

Here we have one character interrupting another in dialogue. Pretty self-explanatory.

“I’m not going to—”

Mom’s voice in the receiver cut me off. “At least consider it.”

“After all, you’re only a—”

“If you even say girl,” I interrupted, “I’ll stab you, I swear.”

The next one is part of a fight scene, so Alice’s thoughts are interrupting themselves as soon as she thinks them. She throws up an idea, “iron,” but interrupts herself from further exploring that idea, and instead casts it out. In a fight, you don’t have time to think out long, eloquent ideas. Your thoughts should come in fragments. Stab. Punch. Dodge. Swing. Would this work? No. How about this? Maybe. The em dash can help get across this uneven jolting of thoughts.

Iron—no use. I’d dropped the knife when her damn vines ensnared me, and the nails were in my pockets and out of reach. Blood—there were possibilities there.

Continuing in fight scenes, em dashes can have action interrupt action. Don’t just throw them in willy nilly, but if you have a chance for an em dash, jump on it. Instead of a word like “suddenly,” it makes it feel suddenly. Ups the tension. Em dashes are about interruption, and what is a fight scene but two people interrupting each other’s attempts to kill the other? This is especially useful for the last line in a paragraph during a fighting scene, because it’s a nice place to have one action interrupt another.

I snatched it—slit across my hand—

And stabbed her through the heart.

His swords whistled through the air—

A clean “X” appeared on the imp’s back, severing its body into four neat chunks.

So yeah, I’m basically obsessed with em dashes and I use more of them than the majority of writers. (At 72k words, my current project has 22 semi-colons and 344 em dashes. So. Yeah. Not to mention the length of this post…) Em dashes are way cool and can add a lot to your writing even though they’re just another form of punctuation. Syntax helps your reader into the mindset you’re going for, and em dashes can be a great, powerful part of that syntax!

—E

[hithertokt]

I obsessively use em dashes. I usually have to edit them out, because I use them so much—too much.

[girlwithalessonplan]

Same. And I taught a kid how to use one today in a sentence she knew sounded right but knew lacked something to guide the pace.

[artedish]

If you have kids one day that’s going to be so hard for you, because you’ll have two families. You already have your kids at school.

Yesssss honey

They finally get how much my work is woven into my life.

(via artedish)

[teachinginreallife]

When I’m calling an intense parent and get voicemail

[samanthainsecondary]

#subshaming (verb) laying the proverbial smack down on students who were rude to your sub

Subshaming may also include parent phone calls, office referrals, detentions, and/or seat changes.

[mindsofmiddleschool-deactivated]

When you’re venting about how stressful and exhausting the end of the school year is and your non teacher friends respond with “Well I mean you get the summer off so it can’t be that bad…”

[gracelesslyteachingthatway]

Especially since I'm working Summer School. 😒😪

[iwasyourteacher]

why i became an english teacher

[teacherthoughtbubble]

How the kids look when I make an out-of-date reference in class

[deathbyteaching]

“Teaching” when I’m getting sick

[inthemiddleofclass]

When my students start complaining about having homework over an expected snow break.

[holtthink]

Did I Plagiarize?

This might be a good poster to place in your classroomThe original link

[coolcatteacher]

FAntastic graphic to share with students to help them figure out if they plagiarized.

[girlwithalessonplan]

Uuuuuggghhh,,,,35 bucks!  A MIGHTY NEED!

[teacherthoughtbubble]

When my students ask me how old I am

[elvishness-deactivated20191104]

[teejay82]

EDD: If you are using Google Apps for Education, what are your favorite apps/extensions/add-ons?

I’m a newbie at this. We just fumbled through our first week of using Classroom and Google Docs. I teach 7th grade math, but I’d love to hear about what you are using in any grade level and any subject so that I can pass them on to other teachers in my district who are piloting GAfE and Chromebooks.

[girlwithalessonplan]

KAIZENA.

Voice comments are life changing. 

[watchallisonteach]

Screencastify. It’s the best app, especially if you’re teaching them how to use things on the computer. You’re able to make video tutorials and record your voice as the screen records your mouse movements. As a technology teacher, it is life changing.

[girlwithalessonplan]

A continuing battle on LAK.

As you may have heard, John Green is supporting a Kentucky teacher and a letter writing com pain to keep Looking for Alaska in her curriculum.  Long story short, despite a permission slip and the option to opt out, parent(s) have begun a crusade to have the book removed from the curriculum.

A current student took to twitter to ask me about this.  I love that students ask me about my thoughts on current events, and I have to be as diplomatic as possible in my responses (”I don’t support Trump, but I can see his appeal his fan base”), but anyone with a brain knows that I, as an English teacher, cannot be entirely diplomatic about educational censorship.

So here’s what I said:

“Vonnegut: ‘I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous…He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.’ LAK actually presents these so called erotic scenes with great sensitivity and close reading shows…they are not glorified. And the thematic subtext supports maturity and intimacy over “doing it because everyone else is.” Parents have the right to have a say over what their kids read, for sure. I just hope it’s for the right ones [reasons]. Focusing on one scene in a compelling coming of age novel is missing the entire point of the novel. See: Catcher in the Rye. Or 1984. Or Romeo and Juliet.”

If a parent came to me and was insistent, “My child shall not read this,” I would comply.  Honestly, I would.  The child is a minor and a parent has the right to dictate what they read.  Doesn’t mean I like it.  Doesn’t mean I agree.  I’m not even going to waste my breath trying to explain, “But, you’re missing the point! Yes, the eff-word is in this book, but Holden Caulfield hates the word and wants to protect children from it!”  

 But for a parent, in the case of this Kentucky school, decided, “My child isn’t reading this AND NOR IS ANYONE ELSE’S,” then I’d have a problem.  

It’s not anyone else’s job other than the teacher to decide what my kid reads.  We have school choice now in Indiana, and I choose to have my kid educated in X school by X teachers.  THEY get to decide curriculum for the whole, not parents.  So you have the choice to take your kid out of that unit or even the entire school. These types of situations like with LAK are symptomatic of the overall distrust and disrespect of public school teachers.