#teach tag

[koby-official]

fuuuuuck that.

i hate it here.

[takemetoutah]

giving myself psychic damage by listening to the OMORI soundtrack while grading papers. why am i like this.

[ocotllo]

yesterday at work one of my 3 year olds kept wanting to play a game where we push on each other kinda sumo-style (i always let them win and pretend to fall over a die when they push me past the line. All the kids love it but little Michael is obsessed), but we were playing a different game and i knew if i played that with him it would derail the whole activity but he just kept pushing and pushing until i put on my “monster voice” and scooped him up.

He laughed for a second and then his face got serious. I put him down and he just said, very sternly, “you hurt me.” I quickly realized his jacket zipper had scraped his back when I picked him up but it wasn’t bleeding it was barely even a scrape. I tried to play it off, a lot of kids will just get distracted. Most kids are just frustrated by the pain itself so I said, “woops! that was an accident but you’re alright! lets go play with the hula hoops!” with a big smile on my face.

He wasn’t budging. “You did that on purpose,” he muttered. “Michael I’d never hurt you on purpose,” I returned in a soft tone. Stubborn. He would not move, would not look at me, just stood there, glaring at the ground repeating that I’d hurt him. I took a moment to corral the other 6 kids (who had started beating each other with the hula hoops while I was busy with Michael) and then kneeled down in front of him.

“Michael, may I see the scrape? Okay, it’s already almost gone an it’s not bleeding. When I picked you up, your jacket zipper scraped your back,” i paused to show him with my own zipper on my arm how zippers can leave light scrapes, “I am very sorry that I hurt you. It was an accident but I should have been more careful.” With that, he tackle-hugged me with enough force to almost knock me over for real and everything was fine again after that.

Dealing with kids on a deeper emotional level and catering to their individual needs is something i preach a lot, but in the chaos of teaching sometimes I forget. This just really reinforced for me the importance of taking the time to treat every child with respect and care. Even the ones who will just smile with me and get distracted quickly deserve a genuine explanation and apology.

[ocotllo]

this is the funniest thing ive ever seen tag yourself im Rihanna

[eldritchdike]

As always I saw a non-nuanced take on education and wrote a rant about it. But instead of actually replying on that post and being ratio'd I'll just give it to y'all:

What I've found is that there are a shit ton wrong with the education system in the US (and likely other places though I'll only speak on what I have experienced myself). Homework is an issue in that it overburdens the students. Students not doing their own work is an issue in that they don't learn the skills we're teaching. The point of public education is the recognition that basic schooling is beneficial to society as a whole and I believe that. As others in the notes have said: passing students who don't learn these skills is an issue because we end up with high school graduates who can't read and don't know that dinosaurs existed. There's huge despairities between how schools are funded which is a problem because schools with highly disadvantaged students can't keep hold of quality administration or teachers, provide new textbooks, ect. One adult being in charge of 30+ children is, I think, is in of itself an issue because that adult has remarkedly little oversight. I think homework is bad so *I* don't assign it, but many of my colleagues do. AND teachers are overburdened by trying to teach all 30+ of our students in a given hour. AND there are dozens more problems on top of these.

To be honest, I don't have a solution to these problems other than to build a whole new system. But I don't think the blame can be put on any one group in specific. Many teachers are doing what we can given the circumstances. Just as our students are usually doing their best, and their parents are doing their best. Is it enough? Probably not. Is fixing any one of these problems going to fix the whole thing? I'm not convinced.

[bangingyourpc]

The 王 kanji is a little difficult to think of a mnemonic for so every time you stumble across this kanji just think "Oh King". Do you think this adoringly? Despairingly? Angrily? Maybe try out different inflections to help you better recall.  

Kanji: 王 Meaning: King Radicals: 王 ON: おう KUN: n/a Vocab: 1. 王 ; pronounced with the ON reading, meaning the same thing as its kanji. 2. 王子 ; pronounced with both ON readings, meaning prince. 3. 女王 ; pronounced with both ON readings, meaning queen. 4. 王女 ; pronounced with both ON readings, meaning princess (be careful not to mix this word up with queen!).

[bangingyourpc]

Kanji: 犬 Meaning: dog  Radicals: 犬 ON: n/i KUN: いぬ Vocab:  1. 犬 ; pronounced with KUN reading, meaning the same as its kanji. 2. 子犬 ; pronounced with both KUN readings, meaning puppy.

[bangingyourpc]

The mnemonic for 火 is fairly short; just imagine your car on fire. Really picture it. Like "holy shit my car is on fire!!!!!" Just like that. 

Kanji: 火 Meaning: Fire Radicals: 火 ON: か KUN: ひ Vocab: 1. 火 ; pronounced with KUN reading, meaning the same as its kanji. 2. 火山 ; pronounced with both ON readings, with slight variation in 山 (かざん), meaning volcano.