MuggleMom

I have no magic. The magic I've created in my life exists in my children who radiate magic in nearly everything they do. So, does that make me a Muggle? Or a Mom? I am also a School Librarian and Freshman English teacher. I've spent 30 years in the ranks of public education and I have many thoughts on what is wrong in public education.

[teachinginreallife]

When students waste their time on an assignment we’ve been working on everyday for 3 weeks and then tell me they are nowhere close to being done on the due date

[teachinginreallife]

When a student tries to explain why their assignment isn’t done on the due date

[muggle-mom]

Exactly.

[pewresearch]

About a quarter of American adults (26%) say they haven’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year, whether in print, electronic or audio form. So who, exactly, are these non-book readers?

[muggle-mom]

Sadly, I expect this number or increase.

[just-shower-thoughts]

The reason Harry wasn’t chosen for Ravenclaw was because he tried to catch the Hogwarts letters from the air instead of taking one from the fucking floor.

[herhmione]

hillary clinton is albus dumbledore (ridiculously qualified, smart as hell, powerful, kind of shady, probably would say “the ends justify the means”, maybe a little morally grey but overall the best and most respected person for the job)

donald trump is gilderoy lockhart (dumb as shit, inflates his accomplishments, has an ego the size of russia, somehow people like him anyway???, is taken seriously by absolutely 0 actually qualified people, no one can figure out why the hell he’s even here)

[muggle-mom]

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

What kind of neighborhood regularly gives out rocks to a child with an obviously homemade costume? I mean, wouldn’t you sort of take pity on them and maybe give them extra candy? Or, even if you wanted to somehow punish them (ugh), then you’d maybe give them the icky candy like Necco Wafers. But to give a child a ROCK, which means that CB was carrying around a sack of rocks by night’s end—metaphorically significant. Way to go Charles Schultz. Fifty years ago you nailed the concepts of entitlement and privilege and their effects on the working middle class pretty well.

[autumncozy]

By Nutmeg Nanny

[muggle-mom]

I can smell this picture. 😐

[advancedscurvy]

do you know how cold it is right now in Ohio and Minnesota?????? it’s nice and the trees are changing and I miss it and I do not want to be in 90° Texas weather

[muggle-mom]

Do you?

[mdmshakespeare]

Welcome to all of my new followers. This is a small taste of what you can expect here.

[pig-whale]

My teaching, basically. Made my students sing 10-15 seconds of anything they wanted in Spanish(in groups). Call me maybe and We are the Champions were my favorites. It was a good first day.

[wondrous-warrior-deactivated202]

So peaceful

[muggle-mom]

School

As I sit here waiting for my car's oil change, and ponder that in just over a week, I will start my 30th year of teaching, it makes me sad. I love teaching and always have. Sadly, the art of real teaching has been stripped from those of us who call ourselves educators. For the first year of my career, I'm not excited to start a new year. I think I lost my passion for teaching when administrators say, " ... But that's the way we've always done it," and "If we're a team, we don't disagree." I call BS. Tackling the tough stuff in education is just that-- it's a tackle, and we're not all going to see things the same way in the process of growth. And, avoiding the tackle because the way we did it ten years ago is unconscionable to those of us who are real educators. Yeah, I'm bitter. Bitter at the game play of our "leaders." My students will drag me out of this funk on the first day, for they are the only hope I have for a better education system in the future.

[georgetakei]

[georgetakei]

Wow. These def draw from some stereotypes. But– California is my favorite.  The 50 States Of America Is They Were Actually High School Kids. 

[etoapia-deactivated20150703]

The Smart Student’s Credo

Nobody can teach you as well as you can teach yourself. 

Merely listening to your teachers and completing their assignments is never enough.

Not everything you are assigned to read or asked to do is equally important. 

Grades are just subjective opinions. 

Making mistakes (and occasionally appearing foolish) is the price you pay for learning and improving. 

The point of a question is to get you to think–not simply to answer it. 

You’re in school to learn to think for yourself, not to repeat what your textbooks and teachers tell you. 

Subjects do not always seem interesting and relevant, but being actively engaged in learning them is better than being passively bored and not learning them. 

Few things are as potentially difficult, frustrating, or frightening as genuine learning, yet nothing is so rewarding and empowering. 

How well you do in school reflects your attitude and your method, not your ability. 

If you’re doing it for the grades or for the approval of others, you’re missing the satisfactions of the process and putting your self-esteem at the mercy of things outside your control. 

School is a game, but it’s a very important game. 

–Adam Robinson

[wincherella]

I think might put this in my classroom.

[rookieteacher25]

Agreed

[muggle-mom]

It's going up in mine!

[weareteachers]

In his research on the digital divide, Mark Warschauer, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and an expert on technology in U.S. classrooms, heard many teachers complain that computers in the classroom doubled their workload. Not only did they have to design lesson plans involving computers, they also had to write low-tech backup plans in case of technology failures, which were frequent. Even when the technology works, it’s not necessarily used well. Students are often asked to copy-and-paste bits of information they find online into PowerPoint slides without being challenged to think about how to select good material or how to construct a strong argument. Meanwhile, teachers who have computers dumped into their classrooms feel like seafaring captains suddenly asked to pilot a jumbo jet, all while the unruly passengers are given free access to the controls. For teachers already struggling to keep their students engaged, a computer is less help, more hindrance.

Technology won’t fix America’s neediest schools. It makes bad education worse.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/04/technology-wont-fix-americas-neediest-schools-it-makes-bad-education-worse/

(via weareteachers)

[muggle-mom]

How to make your teenagers crazy

1.   Refer to their favorite movies, tv shows, and books as something other than the actual title. 

“Who is that on your shirt?  Oh, is that that Stuck at Home thing you watch?”

“Don’t you ever get tired of Square Sponge?”

“I heard someone else talking about that Nighttime Welcome Show.”  

They don’t realize that I actually spend more time thinking of how to annoy them than I spend thinking about their favorite stuff.

[fishingboatproceeds]

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things. -Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”