As many of you know, I had a "brilliant" idea last week, and I enlisted the help of as many friends and fans as were willing to help me implement it.

I am a longtime reader and lover of Entertainment Weekly the magazine, and I've always thought it would be wonderful exposure to have Learn Me Good featured in the Books section of that magazine. I am also well aware that the writers of EW are highly unlikely to suddenly pluck a relatively unheard of novel out of the blue to feature in their pages.

So I hatched a scheme.

First, I sent this email to two of the book editors at EW:
**********
Hello, Ms. X and Mr Y,

I know that you typically review and promote books that are published by the "Big 6," but I have also seen a few non-traditional and independent authors working their way into the pages of EW recently. With the rise of e-books especially, readers are showing a willingness to give a chance to more writers than just those named King, Patterson, or Meyers. It's often a lot harder for those writers to get noticed, though.

I am one of those writers, and I'm also a teacher who is on summer vacation, so I have a little free time on my hands. As such, I thought I'd introduce you to my first novel, Learn Me Good.

I've asked a few friends and fans to write to you about Learn Me Good as well.

Learn Me Good is the story of Jack Woodson, a thermal design engineer who was laid off from his job.

Switching careers to be a teacher, he faces new challenges. Conference calls have been replaced with parent conferences. Product testing has given way to standardized testing. Instead of business cards, Jack now passes out report cards. The only thing that hasn't changed noticeably is the maturity level of the people surrounding him all day.

Learn Me Good is a hilarious first-person account, inspired by real life experiences. Through a series of emails to Fred Bommerson, his buddy who still works at Heat Pumps Unlimited, Jack chronicles a year-in-the-life of a brand new teacher. With subject lines such as "Irritable Vowel Syndrome," "In math class, no one can hear you scream," and "I love the smell of Lysol in the morning," Jack writes each email with a dash of sarcasm and plenty of irreverent wit.

"Jack Woodson (Duke Egr, class of '95) is currently living and working in Dallas, TX. He has forty children, and all of them have different mothers."

"I teach, therefore I am... poor."

Learn Me Good was self-published in paperback in 2006 and has since sold almost 1,500 copies. In 2009, it was published as an e-book for the Amazon Kindle, and it has since sold over 17,000 copies. It has received 185 reviews on Amazon.com, and 126 of those are 5-star reviews.

I would really love to have you check out Learn Me Good (and/or the sequel, Learn Me Gooder) and see if it might be worthy of mention or review in the pages of Entertainment Weekly. I would be more than happy to send you an electronic copy and/or a paperback copy upon request.

Thank you for your time,

John Pearson
***********

Perhaps if that had been the entirety of my plan, the editors would have taken notice and contacted me for an interview. I say perhaps in the sense that it is not an absolute impossibility. In the words of Mr. Spock, though, it seems highly illogical that I would have gotten that outcome from my email alone.

So I asked people to send in their own testimonials to the good folks at EW.

This was the "call to arms" email that I sent out to my willing volunteers (edited to remove email addresses):
************
Thank you again for helping me with this attempt to get noticed by Entertainment Weekly. Here's what I'd like you to do. This Tuesday, July 3, at around noon, I am going to send an email to the 2 reviewers at EW. I will mention in the email that I've asked a few friends and fans of Learn Me Good to email them as well. Please send your email a little AFTER noon CST (if it's later in the day, it's certainly not going to hurt anything).

Please make the subject line: "Learn Me Good by John Pearson"

I've included sort of a "boiler plate" message below the line of stars. Please feel free to cut and paste that into your email. But what will really add impact would be if you would personalize your email by adding a sentence or two (or more, if you are so inclined) including your own thoughts and opinions of the book (and even Learn Me Gooder if you want).

And then keep your fingers crossed that they get in touch with me in a positive light! :)

One more time, thank you so much for your support and help in this endeavor.

John

*************************************************************************************************
I teach, therefore I am... poor.

Learn Me Good is the story of Jack Woodson, a thermal design engineer who was laid off from his job. Switching careers to be a teacher, he faces new challenges. Conference calls have been replaced with parent conferences. Product testing has given way to standardized testing. Instead of business cards, Jack now passes out report cards. The only thing that hasn't changed noticeably is the maturity level of the people surrounding him all day.

Learn Me Good is a hilarious first-person account, inspired by real life experiences. Through a series of emails to Fred Bommerson, his buddy who still works at Heat Pumps Unlimited, Jack chronicles a year-in-the-life of a brand new teacher. With subject lines such as "Irritable Vowel Syndrome," "In math class, no one can hear you scream," and "I love the smell of Lysol in the morning," Jack writes each email with a dash of sarcasm and plenty of irreverent wit.

Since its original publication, Learn Me Good has sold almost 1,500 paperback copies and over 17,000 e-copies. It has received 184 reviews on Amazon.com, and 125 of those are 5-star reviews. These are amazing statistics for a self-published novel with no major backing!

Please look into featuring Learn Me Good and/or its sequel, Learn Me Gooder, in the pages of Entertainment Weekly.
**************

So that was the setup for my experiment. It may seem amateurish to some, but hey, I AM an amateur!

I knew there was a chance that this might be seen as a major annoyance, but I also figured that seeing a lot of individual and differing words of praise would make the EW folks think, "Wow, people really like this book! Maybe we should take a look!"

And now for the results (at least the immediate results):

There were great results and really bad results.

First, the great results. At least, what I consider great results. There was a tremendous outpouring of support and willingness to help from people who have read Learn Me Good. Over 100 people responded to my original request, and around 40 of those emailed me Tuesday to let me know that they had sent EW an email. Many of those 40 actually included their EW email, and I was truly touched and amazed by the words of kindness, praise, and admiration.

It truly made me feel incredible as an author.

As for the bad news? Yeah, one of the EW editors REALLY did not take things well.

She never actually wrote back to ME, but several people forwarded me the note she had written back to them:
********
Please tell your friend Mr. Pearson that getting 5000 emails like this—filling up my inbox—ensures I will NEVER cover this book.
********

Ouch. On the bright side-- 5,000 emails received! HOLY CRAP, that's incredible!!!

On the down side, I'm quite sure she was exaggerating. By a factor of 100.

Also on the downside, plan go backfire. Big time.

Honestly, I never intended this to be an exercise in spamming the good folks at EW. It wasn't just me, sending the same email over and over and over again. It was a whole lot of different people saying different things about the same book.

Nevertheless, it was obviously taken as spam.

After I began writing this post, I received an email from the other EW editor (who coincidentally happens to be a fellow Duke alumnus). It was quite a bit kinder and gentler:
*********
Hi John, It's awesome that your books have so many admirers! But any way you can call them off? We're getting too many e-mails.
**********

I obliged, sending an email to all the people who I had not heard from. I also sent an apologetic email to the two EW editors, trying to explain that my intent was not spamariffic.

And thus endeth the (failed) EW experiment of '12.

Next week, Rolling Stone? Anyone? Anyone?

Just kidding!

I've been wanting to make one of these snarky pictures for a while, and so I finally did!

It's time once again for the Carnival of Education, put together with love and care (and intense heat) by Carol of Bellringers!

Hey all,
I am planning a promotional event (stunt) for Learn Me Good in a few weeks, and I really need your help.  This would not require more than a few minutes of your time and a few kind words about Learn Me Good.

If you would be willing to help (and I'm in your debt if you do), please send me an email ([email protected]) and say, "I'm in," or "I'll help," or, "I'd love to have your quintuplets." 

I'll send out further details through email later.

Thank you in advance!

Did you ever find yourself telling the kids, " Please throw your trash IN the trash can, not NEAR the trash can."

I got an email the other day asking me to become an affiliate for this new science program for elementary school kids. I took a look, and it looks pretty good! I think it's definitely something that parents of grade schoolers would be interested in, especially those with kids who have truly scientific and curious minds.

Check it out and see what you think.
Click Here!



“The Amazing Science Discovery Series”
– How Science Should Be Taught To Our Kids

Science is one of those subjects that have so much potential to captivate our imagination. It’s sad that a lot of people think of Science as a difficult subject. It’s especially disheartening to see kids giving up on it as they mature.
Science is a subject that comes naturally to kids. Who knows of a child who isn’t fascinated by dinosaurs or space travel? Questions such as “Why do rainbows appear in the sky?” or “How do airplanes fly?” are just some of the science-related wonders that kids ask about.
As parents, we exert a lot of influence over our children’s preferences. That’s why as early as possible, getting children involved and interested in science can make a big difference in how they perform in school and their overall confidence in their ability to learn and apply scientific concepts. You shouldn’t wait till your child shows poor grades in school. By then, it could be too late. The earlier you can plant the seeds of love for science, the more vibrantly it will flourish.
If you are a parent who would like to help your children discover how fascinating the world of science is, check out the book “The Amazing Science Discovery Series”. This series is composed of 5 eBooks and deals with the Science subjects that are the standard fare for children in the first to fifth grade levels.
The great thing about this book is the easy language it uses to discuss the various concepts that children will be learning in school. It also goes into anecdotes and interesting historical stories about how scientists were able to establish the concepts in the first place. I love these stories because they really allow kids to see Science and scientific discovery as something that they, too, are capable of. The eBooks also go on to give easy and simple experiments and projects that you can do together, at home, to interact further with the concepts that are being discussed.
It’s a treasure for any family to have, and a must-read for every parent who would like to raise kids who enjoy science and are confident in their abilities to excel in this subject. It’s never too late to start, and there’s no such thing as too much encouragement when it comes to science. Our kids need all the help they can get.
If you want to learn more about it, you can do so by visiting the series’ website here:
http://www.amazingsciencediscovery.com

Now that the big Summer Comedy Event is up and running, it's my turn to take it for a spin!

Finish the line I've provided with something funny, witty, provocative, or bat-s crazy. Do it the best, and you could win a copy of one of my books!

This contest runs from today through this Friday so you have plenty of time to get those creative juices flowing.

If you have a Twitter account, please post your line with the hash tags #finishtheline and #humorcontest.

If you don't have a Twitter account, post your line here on the blog as a comment OR on the learnmegood Facebook page.

Earlier this week, Joel of So You Want to Teach? put up a post titled "10 Things I have Learned in 10 Years."

This is definitely worth a read! While there are certainly other truths to teaching, Joel's 10 are right up there in terms of importance.  Even if we don't ALWAYS love EVERY student (per rule #1)...

Happy summer, everyone!!! Maybe it's just me, but this was an incredibly long and difficult school year, and I am exceptionally happy to be done with it and on to a bit of a break!

Or at least as much of a break as one can have with a less-than-a-month old son in the house. :)

So I've been collaborating recently with some other humor writers, and we've come up with a plan to hold an ongoing humor contest over the course of the summer.

Here's how it will work. One of us will post the beginning of a line on Twitter, maybe something along the lines of "I hate it when my pet lizard..." and you take a shot at finishing the line.

The entry judged to be the best by that week's author will win a copy of that author's book!

Each contest will run from Monday through Friday, with judging happening over the weekend. The majority of the contest will take place on Twitter and Facebook, and ideally, you will be exposed to some great new writers!

The first contest will begin this Monday, June 4th, so check back soon for the #humorcontest news!

Yesterday, I began to teach the kids how to do a 2-digit by 2-digit multiplication problem. I began by writing 43X32 on the board and asking the kids to just try to answer it.
The ONE kid who got it right and knew how to do this kind of problem already was the girl who didn't know how old she was, who told me that 5 + 3 was "so very hard," and who often forgets things over a long weekend.
Go figure.

When kids come running down the hall and I shout, "STOP RUNNING!" it has just about zero effect on them. So I'm thinking about seeing how they react to something totally random, like, "NO SMOKING!!" or, "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!!"
The sheer confusion alone should stop them in their tracks.

My day was pretty lively today.  Here were a few bullet points... 

I have a set of liquid measurement containers that fit into one another much like Russian nesting dolls. Today, as I was pulling them out one at a time, much to the amazement of my kids, I kept hearing one of them say, "You gotta be kidding me."
Cracked me up!!

This was how my statement was intended to go: "When we get back from specials, I'm going to introduce you to Gallon Man."
Instead, I got as far as, "I'm going to introduce you to..." when I was interrupted by a boy saying, "Mr. Snowflakes!"

I had a sub for the last hour of class today. I asked her to have the kids take a big piece of paper, create their own word problem, solve it, and illustrate it. I even drew an example of what it would look like.
Just got back to my classroom, and I have 10 products that all have exactly the same word problem--my example problem.  Aaarrrgghh! 

Really don't think I can do this one justice in print, but here goes...
At recess, my kids swarmed around me to ask about the baby. Our schedule was mixed up because of ITBS in the lower grades, so some of the kids hadn't seen me yet.
Someone asked what the baby's name was, and I answered, "Andrew Warren Pearson."
My little muppet excitedly shouted, "Oooh, PEARSON!"

Yes, we opted to go with the non-traditional practice of giving our baby OUR last name...

After a couple of nights with hardly any sleep due to a baby who screams and cries all the time (except when he's feeding, when he falls asleep), I have a greater understanding of why a parent might name their kid that name pronounced "Sha-theed" (spelled like you-know-what).

My son was born today! And I feel like Mustafa looking upon Simba (but without all the hyenas).

My only disappointment today was that I didn't actually get to use the Baby-Time drill with my kids. But my next door neighbor teacher said that she would do it for me. She told me that she went out into the hall this morning and told the kids, "Boys and girls, Mister Teacher won't be here this morning. Can anybody guess why!"
She said that they all smiled and said, "Baby Time!" and cheered.
These will be good kids to loop up with next year.

So it sounds like I will be moved to 4th grade next year. Not entirely sure how I feel about that yet. I did share the news with a small handful of kids as we were walking out to buses, and they were excited at the prospect of having me as their teacher again.

The much anticipated Field Trip was today!  HOORAY!!

There was a teensy tiny problem at the beginning of our trip.  We were outside waiting for the buses at 8:30, when another teacher came out and told us that we had actually planned the trip for 11-2 and that the buses would not be arriving until 10:30.  Wondering who the shmuck was who got the timing wrong?  Yeah, let's just say the name rhymes with Sister Reacher.

The teachers conferred, and with a 4-3 vote, we decided NOT to have the kids just sit where they were for 2 hours.  Instead, we went back inside and worked on the science projects a bit.

We had planned on being back at school in time for our lunch, but with our new time frame, we were in a bit of a quandry as to when we would get to eat lunch.  Miraculously, even though I had never asked for portable lunches, somehow the cafeteria ladies had prepared sack lunches anyway, and that was a saving grace.  We ate outside at 10, then headed off to meet the buses again.

Once we were there, it was a blast.  Another teacher did not have quite the same fun experience as me, saying her kids would not behave and gave our school a really bad name.  But the kids that were in my group were, for the most part, pretty well behaved, especially after my colleague and I came down on them hard at the beginning for running and screaming.  They did well to walk and talk with inside voices after that.

We saw turtles.  We saw Angel Fish.  We saw an albino crocodile.  We saw sharks sitting at the bottom of the tank.  This was odd, because I thought sharks HAD to keep moving, or they would die.  One of the other teachers suggested that there was a current at the bottom of the tank, and that satisfied the sharks' oxygen intake.

The neatest part, though, was the stingray tank.  All of the kids, and teachers of course, got to dip their hands into the tank and actually "pet" the sting rays.  If you've never touched a sting ray (or manta, they're similar), it's a very interesting feel.  Their backs are kind of oily and slimy, and it was like touching one of my student's gelled up hair.

It was a lot of fun watching the kids yelp with fear-tinged excitement when they first touched the rays, and then became used to it and started petting them in earnest.  A few of the rays even swam right up against the glass and came considerably out of the water!

I get to take a field trip by myself tomorrow, as I've been summoned downtown for jury duty.  I don't think I'll have to serve, as I loudly advocate tarring and feathering for even the slightest crime.  Jaywalking, not using blinkers when changing lanes, littering.

Justice will be served!

During tutoring today, several of the boys told me that they were writers. Good for them! When I asked what they wrote about, it seems that most of the stories involve Justin Beiber being pushed off mountains, out of airplanes, and off tall buildings.
Good for them, indeed!

As I was passing out folders at the end of the day, I called one boy's name, and he replied, "Right here, my good man!"

I asked him, "What did you say?" because I wasn't sure if he had really said what I thought I had heard! He repeated it and then added, "I learned that from tv! A spy movie!"

Today we gave the very first ever 3rd grade STAAR test. (The extra A is for Avocado!)  Today's test was the Math test, so I was pretty understandably stressed and worried about how it would go.  One of the few changes that teachers actually KNEW of was that children would NOT be allowed to have all day to take it (4 hour time limit for most).  We also had heard that it would be much more rigorous (read, ridiculously harder) than the old TAKS, but since nobody had ever actually seen any true STAAR questions, we didn't really know what to expect.

I certainly wasn't expecting to see the level of difficulty that I saw today.  Without going into specifics, because I don't want to get in trouble, I'll just say that there were LOTS of questions that involved 2, 3, and even 4 steps before arriving at the correct answer.

I can't directly quote any of the questions, but I'm going to write my own problem below that generally sums up what most of the questions were like today on this THIRD GRADE test given to mostly ENGLISH as a SECOND LANGUAGE students..


Talukadiah arrived home at 4:55, after a long day of planting magic beans on his 449 square foot plot of property in Northern Gnome, Alaska.  He read that there had been 13 inches of snow fall that night, following twice as much the week before!  His 3 brothers and 5 sisters each had planted 45 magic beans, with one of those sisters, Groznzk, then planting 12 more.  After a nice 3 course meal, Talukadiah and his family, minus one brother, compared their earnings.  In all, they had made $450.  The older brother got to keep 1/9 of this, while the older sister got to keep 1/10 of the remaining money.  Talukadiah normally put away all but $5 of his earnings in a bag under his mattress, but only weeks ending in an even-numbered day.  He looked at the calendar and saw that it was Wednesday, December 4, that it was 14 degrees F outside, and that 25 minutes had passed since his arrival home.  If Talukadiah is 8 inches taller than his younger brother, how much money is in the bag underneath his mattress?  Also, Symmetry.


Tomorrow is round 2, the STAAR Reading test, and hopefully there won't be any stories like The Hare and the Pineapple.

For some time now, I've been trying to think of a valid analogy to use that expresses to my kids the importance of showing their work BEFORE choosing an answer and the ridiculousness of going back and circling words and showing work AFTER they've already filled in an answer bubble.

An AGE-APPROPRIATE analogy.  While I love Tim Allen's stand-up line, "What, do you wipe your A-- THEN take a S---?" -- it's hardly safe for the classroom.

A couple of weeks, it finally came to me, right in the middle of a small speech reiterating the comments made in my first paragraph.  I've shared it with both classes now, got laughs from both, and it's a keeper.  So here it is...

You wouldn't spend all day playing or swimming out in the sun and THEN come home and put on sunscreen, would you?  No, that's backwards!

Then of course I relate the sunscreen to work shown, playing or swimming to taking the test, and turning a lobsteriffic shade of crimson to getting the question wrong.

Yesterday, one of my girls told me that 5+3=7, and when I asked her to try again, she moaned, "It is so hard..."
With only one school day left until the STAAR Math test, I was just too exhausted to even reply to that, other than to hang my head...

The rush for science projects has begun, and despite my insistence that a project has to be based on a testable question, I have a class full of kids who still believe that merely saying the word "Volcano!" will fit the bill and give them an A.

I just passed some kids putting up a bulletin board display in the hall. One of them asked me, "Does this look good?"
I replied, "Yeah! It does!"
As I walked away, he told the others, "Yes! We got a compliment!"
And I heard a girl respond, "Yeah, because you ASKED for one!"

There's been a big deal at my school lately over some newly painted assigned parking spots. One of them, brand new, reads "Employee of the Month."
I parked there today and will again tomorrow. I mean, until someone tells me otherwise, I see no reason not to assume that I AM the Employee of the Month.

The newest Carnival of Education is out on Bellringers, and I am honored to have a post listed. Thanks to Carol for continuing to put this together! Go check it out!

One of my kids copied the homework from someone else.

Literally. He took her homework, took it to a copy machine, copied the front and back, slapped his name on it, and turned it in.

Sheesh.

Picture Day was today. After the events of yesterday, I almost wanted the kids to be photographed in the duck and cover position.

Well, THAT was a new one!

I experienced something today that I hadn't experienced in 9 years of teaching (or all the years of schooling, as far as I can remember). We had a tornado "drill" that wasn't really just a drill...

Last Friday, we had a scheduled tornado drill, which is always a major pain in the buttocks because we have to cram about 250 kids into a hallway and then convince them all to put their noses on the floor, their butts in the air, and in many cases, their heads right behind another's butt. Very few of the kids take these drills seriously, instead seeing it as an opportunity to yell into the floor, giggle uncontrollably, and play the part of the mole in whack-a-mole, constantly popping up from the "assumed position."

I told a buddy and colleague on Friday that if they ever did a remake of the movie Twister, they should have a scene set in an elementary school with the kids ducking and covering during a tornado. The iconic scene of the movie would be where the class nitwit tries to make everybody laugh by making a huge farting sound -- and then gets taken out by a falling tree branch.

Well today was NOT a scheduled drill. Third grade had come in from a truncated recess due to a light rain beginning. About ten minutes later, my next door neighbor came into my room to show me a message she had gotten from a friend saying that 3 tornadoes had been spotted in the Dallas area. Soon after, the "drill" began in earnest.

At first, the kids were their usual silly selves. We had to keep telling them that there HAD been tornadoes spotted and that they needed to take it seriously. All the while, wondering ourselves where WE would duck and cover if the need arose. And all the while the administrator in the hall saying again and again that we needed to have our grade books with us.

I almost committed a CLM (Career Limiting Move) by saying out loud my thoughts that if indeed a real tornado hit, that grade book would be the FIRST thing I rid myself of.

So the kids ducked and covered. And ducked some more. And covered even more. And ducked. And covered. And in what seemed like 3 hours, an hour had passed. (at about the 40 minute mark, it was decided that the kids could sit on their rumps -- though the punishment for fooling around was going back into the prone position).

At 2:45, we were finally allowed to go back into our window-laden classrooms. But then a little after 3, we were told to stay away from the windows but to assume the position again INSIDE the classroom. I don't understand the point of this, as it seems to fly against all practice and previous drilling. Nevertheless, my group of 21 kids was perfect during the 15-20 minutes that they ducked and covered again.

After awhile, when even the sound of the rain had subsided and it seemed to me like the imminent threat had passed (and knowing that no announcement would EVER be made that the kids could UNassume the position), I let the kids grab their books again and (staying away from the windows) read quietly. By this time it was almost 4, and one of the girls asked, "Are we going to have to sleep here?"

I told her, "I sure hope not, because this floor is very uncomfortable, and I didn't bring my pajamas."

Interestingly enough, one of my kids was still assuming the position at this point in time, because he HAD fallen asleep.

To make a very long, torturous story shorter, the last bus carried the last kid away at 5:15. This, after a mind-numbing litany of kids being called over the loudspeaker to come meet their parents at the front office.

Like I've said before, there is never a dull moment in teaching...

Several kids asked me sincerely this morning if today was April Fool's Day. I told them that YESTERDAY was their day to be a fool, not today.

After I witnessed one of my kid's get up and walk closer to the board to look at a problem for about the fourth time today, I had this conversation with him:
Me: Have you ever gone to the nurse to get your vision checked? To see if you maybe need glasses?
Student: Yes.
Me: Oh, well, did they say that you needed glasses?
Student: Yes.
Me: I see. Did you ever GET glasses?
Student: Yes.
Me: So do you have glasses here at school?
Student: Yes.
Me: Can you put them on??
Student: Yes.

This is of course a TAG student!

This was a conversation in my class today...

Me: We live in Texas, but Texas is not the biggest state in the United States. Do you know which state IS the biggest?
Kid: The world!
Me: No, the biggest STATE.
Kid: The planet!
Me: No. The whole planet is not a state.
Kid: The earth!
Me: You can say it all the different ways that you want, but it's still wrong!

When I was grading my kids "Ready to STAAR" test over Spring Break (and yes, I hate that name as much as you do), I noticed that one of my little angels had not shown a single lick of work on her test. She had answer choices circled, and that was it. No pictures labeled. No addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division shown. Nothing circled or underlined. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Needless to say, I was not particularly pleased with this child.

Today, I asked her why on God's green earth she would choose to show absolutely no work whatsoever. She started with, "You said..." as I thought, "Oh, this should be good. Exactly what did I say that gave you the idea this would be ok?"

"You said that we couldn't make any marks on the test, or the machine would count it wrong."

GROAN. I had told the kids not to make any stray marks on their BUBBLE SHEET - the answer document, completely separate from the test booklet.

This is why this girl did NOT get high marks from me on the TELPAS listening ratings!!!

Ho hum, it's that depressing time of year. The end of Spring Break. Yuck. It's been so nice to have time off to get stuff done, stay up late (check the time code on this post), sleep in late, watch basketball all day long (even if your team DOES majorly choke on the national stage), and generally be a lazy bum.

Last weekend, I was highly productive. I painted the baby's room (twice, since I didn't like the original color!), mowed the yard, and did some cleaning around the house. Earlier in the week, I graded tests, rated TELPAS writing samples, and did some lesson plans. Then the tournament began, and I was pretty much a lump on the couch for a couple of days.

Attended a wedding this evening, and my wife and I have a "Baby basics" class to attend tomorrow afternoon.

And then suddenly, it will be time to go to bed early for classes the next morning! Yikes!!

Anybody else got some Spring Break stories to share? Feel free in the comments section!

It's college tournament time, bay-bee!!

I invite everyone to join my ESPN tournament challenge bracket site and make your picks. It doesn't matter whether you want to make your picks based on research, talent, records, uniform color, or mascot (does a "Bonnie" beat a "Billicken?") -- in the end, it's all a random guess anyway! So come join the fun with a little March Mathness!


And speaking of fun, here's a re-seeding that Jonathan Grant of Chain Gang Elementary put together. He took the 68 teams in this year's tourney and put them in order of average SAT score. Go Harvard!

Hope to see you there!

So at my school, there's a huge hubub about Dr. Seuss' birthday on Friday. Seriously, more precedence has been given to this event than any standardized test in recent memory. I won't go into all the details, but what really irked me today was that we were sent an email that had an attachment, a certificate saying ___________ from __________'s class participated in Read across America.

In that email, we were asked to pass out one of these certificates to each student on Friday after reading a Dr. Seuss book (oh, and it HAS to be done at 10:00; no other time is acceptable -- but that's another matter).

I don't know if the intention was that each teacher would use their own personal computers to print out the required number of certificates, or if the thought was that we would all bum rush Kinko's to get the copies made, but most of us turn in our copies to the work room to be made. (We used to have the power and authority to make our own copies on the school copier -- but that's another matter.)

So, thinking to myself that it was pretty ridiculous for every teacher in the school to turn in the same copy request for the same certificate, I took it upon myself to respond to the email (and of course, I replied to "ALL" because that's just how I roll).

This is the email I sent:

The certificates will be copied and provided to our classes, right? I imagine that Dr. Seuss himself would have said something like:

It makes no sense that I can see
To have each teacher come say, "Please?"
You know the numbers that we need,
To pass out so that we can read.

Thank you,

JP


I then sat back and waited to be congratulated on my wit and/or reprimanded for my insolence.

Towards the end of the day, our principal sent out an email saying that teachers did not need to worry about submitting copy requests because the suggestion would be taken that the office print everything out for us.

YAY!!

This was followed ten minutes later by a correction email saying that because a couple of teachers had already submitted their copy request, we would all be required to submit our own copy request.

BOOO!!!!

And THIS, I think, is why Dr. Seuss never wrote a story about a duck. Too tempting to use a child-unfriendly rhyme...

Here was an actual conversation in my room today...

Me: What are the types of energy that we talked about yesterday?
Student 1: Light!
Me: Good one!
Student 2: Sound!
Me: YES!!
Student 3: Energy!
Student 4: Heat!
Me: Heat!
Student 3: ENERGY!
Me: Are you really answering with that, or are you just cheering on everybody else?

We had Monday off (President's Day), and I took yesterday off for my birthday. So today was my first day to go to school this week. Thankfully, my room was not in shambles, my supplies were not all gone, and no animals had been sacrificed (at least not visibly).

However, a mystery presented itself early on in the morning, and I'm doing it the honor of calling it a mystery ONLY because I had to painstakingly piece together exactly what had happened in my absence, and it took way longer than necessary.

Friday, I had assigned science homework, and so there was a stack of papers on my desk this morning. As I went through them to see who had not turned one in, I took note of the missing papers. I called about 6 kids up to my desk to ask why they hadn't turned anything in. One of those kids told me that he HAD turned something in. I let him look through the stack, and he pulled out one that had a girl's name on it. When I looked REALLY REALLY closely, I could see that this boy's name had indeed been written at the top of the paper and then erased.

Having already said my piece to the non-submitters, I kept the boy with me and called for the girl whose name appeared on the paper, wondering if it was worse that she had tried to cheat or that she had done it so lazily. She looked at it and informed me, "I didn't do that, that's not how I write my name."

Thus began the long, arduous detective work. I sent the girl back to her desk, figuring she was innocent of forgery (if not neglecting her homework). I asked the boy who could have done this, and he told me that he had passed his work in to a girl that sits at another table. So I called HER over to talk to her, and she told me that she had not picked up his paper, it was 2 OTHER kids.

It really muddles the water when your "eye-witness" doesn't have all of his facts straight.

I then had to call the 2 new suspects over and have a big pow-wow about who really HAD picked up the papers. Ironically enough, neither of these two kids were this week's "Administrative Assistants" (we can't call them "Helpers" anymore) whose names are written nice and large on the board.

These two kids confirmed that the other girl had NOT picked up any papers (while the forgery victim just looked perplexed -- is there an equivalency to racism going on here? He thinks all third graders look like one another?), and they also admitted to erasing the boy's name and writing a new name.

As far as crimes went, this one had the perpetrators and the opportunity, but there didn't seem to be a motive. Just random foolishness, something that seems wildly rampant in my class this year.

As to where the time disappears to and why we never seem to have any time for FUN stuff this year... well, that's no mystery.

Hey everyone, it's my birthday! WOOHOO!!

And for this special day, I have done a few things. Number 1, I have taken the day off from school. Yes, my neighbor down the street said he was going to picket my house because of this, but even teachers need a mental day off occasionally.

Secondly, it is my quest to finish the 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew before tomorrow, when Lent begins, and I give up soda for 40-some days.

Thirdly, I am using my final 2 days of FREENESS from the Amazon Kindle program to set the price of Learn Me Good down to $0.00. I know that many of you have already read my book, but please please please pass this on to everyone you know who might be interested in having a free Kindle copy.

Now, I'm off to swig some soda!

Last Friday, as a brief prelude to our upcoming unit in science, I gave the kids a paper that had 2 claims on it.

#1: The surface of the earth IS constantly changing.

#2: The surface of the earth IS NOT constantly changing.

They had to choose a claim and then support their claim by writing evidence and examples. Reasoning and justification -- NOT two of my students' strong suits.

I was looking through their responses and just had to share. I should note that before I turned them loose, we did talk a bit about what "surface" meant, and how that applied to the earth. How the earth was a sphere (even though many said circle) and that the surface of the sphere was the outside, the ground, the part we walked on and could see. This may have influenced some of the answers...

Here is a sampling from those who chose Claim 2 (NOT changing):

- I have seen the seasons and there is always grass and dirt every year.

- Yes, because there are not new stuff around the earth.

- Because it is not moving it is not changing colors and the earth it's not going up and down.

- The earth is a sphere and never going to change to another shape.

- The earth is not changing because it just stays on the same place it never does something different. It doesn't spin around the sun the sun is the one spinning around the earth because the earth doesn't move. (Galileo opponents would be so proud!)

And a few from those who chose Claim 1 (Surface IS changing):

- The surface of the earth is changing by the different people that are coming to the united states of America.

- Yes, because the grass is green and it changes to brown sometimes.

- Where we live is on a circle (Not reasoning AND totally opposite to what we talked about beforehand)

- In earth all the days some people start inventing new things like the scientists invent things by doing experiments in the museum.

- Changes from the outside of the earth some are night some is day that changes the earth.

- The earth is changing because they building new apartments.

And ONE kid who actually explained it properly:

- New plants form and the ground cracks when there is an earthquake. When an ocean dries up it turns into a desert changing earth's surface.

There seems to be a LOT of room for learning in this unit! Can't wait!

Yet another "not quite full" week of school this past week. We did go Monday through Friday, but Tuesday was a "Horizontal Planning" day, so our classes had subs while we planned and analyzed data (JOY!). Then Friday was an early release day.

This upcoming week will be the first true five full day week in a while.

Interestingly enough, the half day (Friday) was the most packed of them all, in terms of "events."

My day started with a kid from another 3rd grade class coming to talk to me before school started, to tell me that a boy in ANOTHER 3rd grade class "had pictures of naked women in his backpack!"

Being a collector myself, I felt it was my duty to check out what he had. No, actually, I did my job and took the contraband away from the kid and reported him to his actual teacher. The "pictures of naked women" turned out to be a lingerie calendar, featuring women who, while attractive, could not have been any younger than 40. Not sure exactly where this kid got this calendar (since I didn't for a moment believe his story that his older brother slipped it into his backpack while he was in the shower), but it was hardly high quality.

Later, I gave a fractions test, and at one point I saw one of my more distractible students intently studying his pencil instead of his test. I whispered to him, "Please focus!" He looked up at me, nodded his head, then went back to staring at his pencil even more intensely. I had to follow up my comment with, "Focus on your TEST, not on your pencil!"

Oh, and this happened this week, too.

I have a confession to make. I used the "s-word" in class yesterday. Repeatedly.

Fed up with seeing the same kids coasting through class, eyes fixed on the floor, the wall, or their pencil while we read through instructions for an upcoming activity, I decided to say something about it.

I told the kids that I felt that some very Stupid decisions were being made. I told them that there were lots and lots of Stupid adults in the world. That I knew some of them and that they were no fun to be around. That Stupid adults made Stupid choices as kids and decided to be Stupid students.

I then made it clear to the kids that I wasn't calling any of them Stupid, but that some very Stupid decisions were being made. That if they didn't want to become Stupid adults, they needed to make sure that they did NOT turn into Stupid students.

After that, the hands-on, small group activity went REALLY well!

Well whadda ya know? Out of the blue, I received an email saying that my blog had been nominated for a "Fascination Award" under the category Teaching Blogs. Apparently, this post called Pimp My Name from all the way back in 2007 earned me a nod for best blog.

So starting Saturday, Jan 21, the polls will be open for voting, and I sure would appreciate it if you would click on the badge below and vote for Learn Me Good!

Over the Christmas break, I finally read a review copy of a book that I had been sent by Jonathan Grant, a former newsman in Georgia. The book is called Chain Gang Elementary, and in a nutshell, it describes an all-out war between the head of a PTA (PTO actually) organization and the principal of his son's school.

I told Jonathan that I would recommend it here on the blog and post my review as well, so here it is:

I was contacted by Jonathan Grant a few months ago and asked if I would like a copy of his new book, Chain Gang Elementary, in order to review and share with the readers of my blog. Being a teacher myself, I got a bit bogged down in the intervening time period and didn't get a chance to read it, but here in the middle of our Christmas break, I was really able to get into it.

I highly enjoyed this novel. It was exceptionally well-written, the dialogue was crisp, and the characters were completely believable. I found only a couple of formatting errors, and most importantly, once I got into it, it had me enthralled.

The hero, Richard Gray, is a parent at the school, who winds up falling into the position of Parent Teacher Organization president. Since this is his story, most of the people on his side (the protagonists) are fellow parents and PTO members. Many of the ANtagonists are teachers and administrators at the school. Believe me when I say, the LAST thing I want to read is another round of teacher-bashing (which seems to be getting way too prevalent nowadays), and I will admit that I was a bit anxious when I started getting into the "battle mode" of the story. However, this is not at all a work of teacher-bashing. There was a very heroic teacher (who was of course labeled "the worst teacher at the school"), along with several other common-sense, cause-friendly teachers at the school. The teachers and administrators who were "enemy combatants" were truly idiots and awful people. I found myself getting angry at their actions, thinking that if I or anyone I knew did those sorts of things (putting in a cartoon then lying down in the teacher's lounge, while kids got into fights in the classroom, for instance), I would want to take legal action myself.

I have worked with my share of kids like Devonious, Alicia, and Nick. Obviously, Jonathan Grant has had some experience as well, because the characterizations were authentic.

Well done, Mr. Grant, and best of luck with the promotion of this great work.

****************
In other book news, I just noticed the other day that Carl Ashmore has FINALLY released the second book in his Time Hunters series -- The Time Hunters and the Box of Eternity. I really enjoyed the original Time Hunters book, and this one already has 6 glowing reviews, all of them 5-stars. Looking forward to getting a copy and devouring it!

Lastly, Vicki Lieski, another popular indie writer, has started up her own book site, called Addicted to ebooks. This is a place to go and look for reviews, genres, descriptions, and links to all the sites that sell the book. Check it out!

I received a new review on the Amazon page for Learn Me Good last night, and it kind of stunned me. It wasn't that it was a 1-star rating (though that's never music to my eyes); it wasn't that the lady ended it by saying that she regretted recommending it to some teacher friends before she read it.

What floored me was that she gave it a 1-star and said the book was total crap because of one story in the book where I taught the kids estimation.

Here is an excerpt from her review:
***********
But in the middle of the story, I began to suspect his identity, and doubt his credibility as a teacher. He wrote of teaching his third graders estimation ... he claimed to have a strong background in his subjects, having gone to college to complete teacher licensure classes ... yet there he was, using a metaphor of "punching" a number up (which no third grade teacher would willingly use, being wary of accusations of encouraging physical harassment.)

To seal his fate with me, he then proceeded to write of the difference, within his metaphor, or punching a number up vs letting it fall down. He was teaching them to round up or round down. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ROUNDING DOWN!A teacher would know that. Teachers spend years clarifying that for students and their parents.
*************

Forget the fact that the punch it up method is something I learned FROM a teacher and have passed on TO many other teachers, all of whom use it and love it. What concerned me was that I am a teacher, and I did NOT in fact know that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ROUNDING DOWN!

I don't normally respond to bad reviews, but I had to ask for clarification. 34 does not round down to 30? 125 does not round down to 100?

In the meantime, I posted about it on Facebook and got a ton of responses. One of my friends posted a link: http://www.jimloy.com/arith/rounding.htm
On this page, Jim Loy seems to agree with the Amazon reviewer:
"Rounding down" is ambiguous, and is not an expression used by mathematicians, nor is it found in arithmetic text books in grade school. It shows a small misunderstanding of the term "rounding."

He then goes on to talk about rounding and estimation, but every one of his examples uses integers and decimals. Not exactly what we're talking about in 3rd grade.

I figured that this was probably a matter of semantics, and that the reviewer somehow thought that I was teaching the kids to drop 34 to 20 -- actually subtracting 1 from the tens place. Sure enough, she did reply to my reply today, and confirmed that this was her understanding from what she had read. She went on to tell me that visual number lines and manipulatives are a must and gave a mini-lesson on how she would teach estimation.

I'm not exactly sure why she would think that a short, funny anecdote in a humor novel would go into detail about every single step used in the classroom (obviously, she thought punch it up/drop it down was my single verbal instruction to the kids), or even why this one detail would totally derail the book, or heck what the phrase, "I began to suspect his identity" even MEANS!

I'm pretty sure now, though, that I'm not leading America's future generation astray. I had my doubts last night, wondering if I was totally missing something, teaching the kids the mathematical equivalent of "E before I, except after C."

And maybe the phrase "rounding down" really ISN'T found in any grade school math books. I doubt phrases like, "Go next door and get ten more," "Subtract the neighbors in a pattern," or "The alligator eats the bigger number" are to be found anywhere in a grade school math book, either.

Doesn't mean us teachers (and, um, those of us who only play a teacher on television?) don't use them all the time to help the kids remember their steps and strategies.

Oh, and just between you and me...

Check out Step 2 in this 3rd grade STAAR Readiness manual I found today...

I had a really good day today, with both classes. I showed them how to use the "Part-Part-Whole" strategy to write fractions. The kids caught on really quickly, and most of them really took to it as something that they might use on a regular basis now. We'll see what kind of results I get back on tonight's homework, where I told them that they could use part-part-whole if they wanted to, but that they didn't have to.

So for this week's INTERACTIVE MONDAY, I'm asking: What is a lesson you've done recently that has worked really well? And if you can't think of one, then tell us one you've done recently that just backfired horrifically!

So I just spent about half an hour writing some variation of the same theme on 18 notecards. The main idea was "We saw in our experiment that gravity pulls things down at the same time." 18 out of 19 notecards in my afternoon class.

This week, the science focus has been gravity. I started by showing the kids three water bottles of the same size but different mass. One was empty, one had wet paper towels in it, and one had sand in it. They were labeled, respectively, lightest, medium, and heaviest.

I had them write a prediction for what order in which they would hit the ground if they were dropped at the same time and from the same height. Most of them said the heaviest would hit the ground first. This seems intuitive at that age. Some of them said the lightest would hit the ground first, and qualified that by saying that since it didn't weigh as much, it could move faster. OK, there are no wrong hypotheses, after all.

But then the kids did their own experiment involving three different items of varying mass. They dropped the items repeatedly at the same time and saw that they all hit the ground at the same time. We discussed afterwards how items hit the ground at the same time due to gravity. I told them that if we went up to the top of the school and dropped a bowling ball and a grape at the same time, they would hit the ground at the same time. I even held up a tiny eraser and the big thick math textbook and dropped them, and (GASP) they hit the ground at the same time.

So yesterday, for their test (AKA "Reflection"), I showed them 3 items with varying masses. A big heavy Baby Care book that a fellow teacher had loaned me (the kids found this hilarious; one girl even snorted, "HA! BABY!"), a mostly empty water bottle, and a little binder clip. I identified them as heaviest, medium, and lightest. I then asked them to write, on the index card, what order the items would hit the ground in if dropped at the same time, and to explain their reasoning.

One girl, out of nineteen students, wrote that they would hit at the same time because that's how gravity works. The other eighteen wrote some staggered order, most of the explanations being that the more mass an object has, the faster it will fall.

Wow.

I really hope a lesson on magnetism is coming up soon, because at least then SOMETHING has a chance of "sticking" in my class.

On January 1st, I did accomplish something. I took a song that I had made back in 2009 and put it up on YouTube. This song is called Chili Mac, and it's a parody of the Justin Timberlake song, Sexy Back. I really did have aspirations of making a video to go along with it; an SNL-esque type deal with me in fake beard and ridiculous glasses. But I finally realized that I would never get around to that, so I just threw a bunch of random pictures into a slide show and put the song to picture.

Enjoy!

Ladies and gentlemen -- I present to you -- INTERACTIVE MONDAY! (On Tuesday, yes; I'm a little behind.)

So my question today is How was your first day back? This might have been yesterday, it might have been today, it might not be till NEXT Monday. At any rate, once it's over, come back here and answer the question!

As for me, it was a really good first day back. Sure, I didn't do anything that I had on my lesson plan. This was because our copies hadn't been made, so I couldn't give the new unit pre-test as planed. However, it made it possible for me to hold a fun little review game that let the kids work in teams to refresh their memories on concepts like polygons, congruency, and estimating.

I'm going to try to encourage the kids to start looking for and sharing real-world examples of math usage, so I started today by telling the kids about how my wife is pregnant and that when we went to the doctor we learned that it usually takes about 40 weeks for the baby to come, and we've already passed 21 weeks. Then I asked them how I could have figured out how many weeks we still had before the baby's arrival. Many of them of course said ADD!

I had to inform them that if anyone told my wife that she still had 61 weeks of pregnancy, she would chop my head off.

We're starting a unit on fractions, so this should be an interesting few weeks.

Looking forward to hearing how YOUR first day back went!

Happy New Year, everyone!! Have a fabulous 2012!

To kick off the new year, I am putting Learn Me Good (Kindle version) on sale for --- FREE, starting tomorrow, January 2. The sale will end Wednesday, January 4.

Even if you've already read it, please do me a favor and one-click Learn Me Good and/or tell everyone you know to do the same.

Thanks!

It's almost the end of 2011, and as has become tradition, I've put together a little year-end wrap-up. Enjoy, and be safe during the remaining holidays!

January –

Mrs. Teacher and I kicked off the new year in downtown Dallas, first celebrating a good friend’s birthday then watching the fireworks from Victory Plaza outside of the American Airlines Center.

Grades for the evening – Company: A+ Dinner: B+ Fireworks: A Smell of the DART Rail System return ride home: C-

I surprised Mrs. Teacher by taking her to a quaint little bed and breakfast for her birthday. Unfortunately, to get TO the B&B, we had to drive through the seediest part of Ft. Worth, leading Mrs. T to think I had “scored” something else entirely.

Later in the month, the world was rocked when the Astrological Grand Poobahs declared that there would now be THIRTEEN horoscope signs instead of twelve. Suddenly, I went from not knowing or caring what my sign was to not knowing or caring what an Ophiucus was.

February –

The first day of February was also the first of an unprecedented FIVE days of inclement weather and no school. We played in the snow, we built a snowman, and we cultivated a four-foot long icicle. We were both reminded of WHY you don’t eat the yellow snow.

For Valentine’s Day, I went online, taught myself a new recipe, and served Mrs. T a lovely Italian dinner of chicken parmigiana, spaghetti, and white wine. Proud of my new trick, we had chicken parm three times a week for the next 6 months until Mrs. T finally screamed, “ENOUGH!!”

Mid-month, I took the online Jeopardy! contestant test (for roughly the 13^th time). Once again, even through a mere digital avatar, Alex Trebek someone made me feel like a complete idiot.

March –

March is the month of Spring Break, and this year we took a trip down to scenic Glen Rose, TX to witness some good friends get married. The weather was incredible for a lovely outdoor reception by the river, and Mrs. Teacher and I even began a heart-warming new tradition, one which didn’t include cigarettes, swamp water, OR small mammals.

We came home one day to find our front yard torn up and our sprinkler system disarrayed, all courtesy of city workers. Turns out they were pouring a new incline at the curb corners for handicap accessibility. I haven’t seen too many people in wheel chairs use these inclines since, but I sure do get sweet air whenever I jump my Huffy now.

Self-proclaimed Warlock Charlie Sheen told everyone who would listen that he was “WINNING,” but the real winners were college basketball fans. After years and years of getting it wrong, CBS finally got it right and aired every minute of every single March Madness tournament game. The world may end in 2012, but Heaven had arrived in 2011. Still getting it wrong – Billy “Fudge” Packer, who insisted that without being TOLD which game to watch, the general populace would fall into chaos.

April –

Once again, the dreaded TAKS reared its ugly head, like a door-to-door salesman who just won’t take, “Not interested,” “No thank you,” or, “My gecko has knocked the lamp over and now my baby is on fire!” for an answer. To the relief of some, it was announced that this would be the last year for the TAKS. Next year, it will be replaced by the STAAR test, proving that spelling will most definitely not be a major factor during testing.

Having made it through most of the school year without catching anything major, in April, I contracted Strep Throat not once, but TWICE in a row. One of my friends jokingly compared this to someone winning the lottery twice in a row and how lucky that made me. I promptly licked that friend’s fork and coughed in his face.

On a seasonably warm evening in late April, it suddenly occurred to me how simple it would be to develop a low-cost, environmentally-friendly, renewable power source for future automobiles. But right then, an episode of Wipe Out came on, and the big red balls completely wiped the idea from my mind. Oh well.

May –

In early May, Mrs. Teacher made a major life decision and changed her hair color from blonde to brunette. Her students were not fooled for a second, and they continued to give her hell. Several of our more distant, less observant acquaintances, however, did think that I had traded in one wife for another.

It was perfect weather on the day we attended the Wildflower Festival in Richardson with some friends. The headliner of the evening was REO Speed Wagon (just one stop on their “Remember us? PLEASE!” Tour), but we bypassed those geriatric crooners to take in a truly awesome Bee Gees cover band. We were staying alive with ridiculous falsettos all night long.

Over Memorial Day, with less than a week to go in the school year, I decided to invest in red pen stock. My reasoning (from experience) being that there will ALWAYS be kids whose tests scream to be canvases for red ink.

June –

The end of the school year finally came, but Mrs. T and I did something very different this year. We actually worked summer school. Well, not truly summer school, but each of our schools had a short summer camp, and we both signed on. It’s unbelievable how refreshing it is to work with kids when there are no standardized tests looming ominously in the distance.

After summer camp and as the summer vacation began, we had a wildly successful garage sale. Clothes, kitchenware, movies, and more flew out of our carport, finally allowing me to park my car indoors as well. The chances of my remaining three hubcaps being stolen immediately decreased significantly.

Midway through the month, we FINALLY met our neighbors from the house two doors down. Not that we had Google Earthed the neighborhood when we moved in to see which houses had pools and then stalked them for months to get on their good side or anything…

July –

On July 2, Mrs. Teacher and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary. To everyone who said we wouldn’t last a year – SUCK IT!! We spent the night in the same hotel where we stayed our wedding night, and a few days later celebrated Independence Day with a really cool air show and fireworks display in Addison. We also managed to survive random fireworks set off for the length of that week by our new neighbor friends with the pool.

Proving once and for all that she truly loves me, Mrs. T agreed to undergo a road trip with me. During the last two weeks of July, we visited Charleston, Durham, Ashville, and DC. We caught up with old friends, and even made new ones during a two-hour stop down on I-95. To the lady in the blue halter-top, standing up through your sunroof while honking incessantly the whole time – stay classy, tiger.

While in DC, we saw the final performance of Rock of Ages, featuring Mrs. Teacher’s crush – Constantine Mariachiopolis. She even got to meet him after the show, and somehow her glazed eyes and ear-to-ear smile didn’t make him run away in fear for his life.

August –

The heat in Texas continued to rise, and while we missed setting a record string of 100+ degree days by a single day, we most definitely set a record for FaceBook pictures showing car thermometers with triple digits. Good times, good times.

On the first day of the new school year, I released my second book – Learn Me Gooder. My older nephew, Ethan, graciously agreed to appear on the cover with me, and upon seeing the cover for the first time, my younger nephew, Josh, noted, “That’s Ethan, and that’s Uncle John – with a RED face!”

School year ’11-’12 began, and Mrs. Teacher and I both worked hard to get to know our new classes and bond with our new kids. Days later, we worked even harder to keep getting up and going to work and not cause bodily harm to those new kids.

September –

While I was watching Monday Night Football, Mrs. T came into the living room and handed me something that looked like a blue highlighter. I took it, realized it was a pregnancy test, quickly taught myself how to READ a pregnancy test, and discovered that we were going to have a baby! The names “Krzyzewski,” “Boba Fett,” “Snake Eyes,” and “Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged” were quickly suggested and summarily rejected.

(I did some quick math and ruled on the possibility of it being Constantine Marigoldilalaland’s child.)

This exciting news did put just a LITTLE bit of a damper on our September tradition of wine sampling at Grapefest. However, we had already paid for it, so we still went, and while Mrs. Teacher did not drink, she WAS able to get samples at each booth and pass them over to me. Therefore, BEST. GRAPEFEST. EVER!! We ran into some old Grapefest friends and made some new ones, and nobody puked on anybody else.

Someone passed on an article that described some people who had a fear of ketchup. Good thing they don’t have a fear of being mocked mercilessly, because that would be a nasty double whammy.

October –

Midway through the month, we attended a Murder Mystery Dinner with a group of friends, one of whom was having a birthday. Though it took a while to warm to the prospect of “interrogating” fellow guests for clues, we eventually lost our shyness and grilled a few suspects. Unfortunately, the first guy I probed for answers turned out not to even be one of the main characters. Our guess for the murderer ultimately proved incorrect, but after loudly arguing and haranguing the host for 45 minutes, the fact that we were thrown out and ordered never to return proves that deep down, they knew our scenario was better than theirs.

At the end of the month, our neighbors threw a Halloween party, and we all went dressed as Justice League characters. Mrs. Teacher and I were Supergirl and the Flash, and neighbors included Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman. Conspicuously absent – Gleek and the Wonder Twins.

October marked a new life experience for me as, one day while bored, I cut through a tin can AND a tomato in the same setting.

November –

After having Mrs. Teacher’s old condo on the market for nearly a year, we FINALLY had a buyer in November. Sure, the guy whittled the price down so much so that we metaphorically had to sit crying in the shower for an hour afterwards, but the money pit was finally off our hands. The day before closing, I left a special housewarming gift in the condo for the new owner. Wonder if he’s discovered where that smell is coming from yet.

We celebrated Thanksgiving with Mrs. Teacher’s parents down in Blanco (now with TWO stoplights!). We all drove in to Fredericksburg the evening after for a musical performance at the Rock Box Theater, which was highly enjoyable. On the way home, several suicidal deer jumped out in front of me, but thanks to my lightning-fast reflexes and my inherent dislike of venison, those deer did not meet their maker that night. I may have crushed a careless turtle, though.

Two days after Thanksgiving, I was visited by the 69-year-old version of myself, using a time machine that I will apparently co-create with Mark Cuban, Papa John, and The Situation. I told myself that the Kardashians WOULD eventually go away, and I was very relieved.

December –

Choosing to be surprised earlier than later, we learned that our growing “quark” was a boy! Mrs. Teacher was just a little disappointed at first, as she really wanted to be the one to break the “Pearson curse,” while I breathed a sigh of relief that our child would never appear on an episode of Toddlers and Tiaras.

Mrs. Teacher and I once again split the Christmas holiday with our families, spending Christmas Eve in Arlington with my folks, Christmas Day in Blanco with her folks, and roughly 3 hours on I-35 with random folks. Upon arriving in Blanco, we found a rifle laid out on the bed. I think that if my father-in-law did that to send a message, he is the worst procrastinator in the universe.

We plan on finishing out the year by having a nice, laid-back, quiet evening at home, relaxing and enjoying each other’s company. Oh, and finishing off the 2 gallons of blue drinks left over from our Christmas party. Well, ONE of us will be drinking them, anyway.

Friday was our last day of school before the Christmas Break, and there were SEVERAL stand-out moments from the day to last in memory for some time to come. I thought I'd take a minute and list some of them...

- I wrote the daily word problem on the board to include the name of 3 of Santa's reindeer -- Blitzen, Comet, and Dasher. The kids had no earthly idea who these were, and to my amazement, there was only one kid in each class who had even heard of RUDOLPH!!

- A little girl gave me a candy bar, something called a Bubu Jubu or Lubee Boobee or something. It was a chocolate covered, marshmallow and jelly candy. Pretty tasty. When we left the room to walk to PE, I told the little girl that it was tasty and thanked her. The little girl in front of her heard me and said, "I gave that candy to her this morning." RE-GIFTER!!

- Before our party started, I asked the kids to write one thing they had learned about Force (our science focus for the past few weeks) on a notecard. One boy wrote, "I lern Force is so good to hos." Somehow managing not to bust out laughing, I asked him to read his sentence to me, and he said, "I learned Force is good to us." Someone really needs to focus on their spelling.

- The holiday party time was very clearly set at 1:00 - 2:45, according to mandate by our principal. Why then, was there a fire drill at 1:30???

- During our party time, my room was where the games were being played. One group was playing a money-related game that apparently was missing some coins. A student came up and told me, "We don't have any sense!" (cents)

- Another boy asked if he could have an empty bottle to play truth or dare. When I asked (for my own curiosity) how one played such a game, he basically explained the game of Spin the Bottle (minus the kissing) to me. Needless to say, I did NOT provide a bottle.

- At 3:05, right as I started calling kids to line up at the door, a child handed me about 20 envelopes with kids' names on them. He told me that another child had brought them and wanted to pass them out. Way to not wait till the last minute. And no, I didn't even get an envelope myself...

Enjoy your time off, and Merry Christmas, everyone!!

'Twas the night before Christmas (Break), and all through the house,
Just one creature was blogging, while using his mouse.

Tomorrow is our last school day before break, day 77 for anyone who is counting. You would think 77 days would be a long enough time period to establish a routine or two, but my kids seem to take the adage "Every day is a NEW day" QUITE literally. Still, we will be having a little bit of a party after lunch tomorrow. Nothing major, just some fun time for games and snacks.

On the way out the door, one girl asked if she could bring Twister. I told her that she could, but not to expect me to play. My body doesn't contort like that anymore -- not that it ever did.

I know that some teachers are still teaching through mid or even ALL of next week. I feel for you, I really do. But hey, at least you will be out of school for longer than I am at the beginning of 2012.

Lastly, please be sure to check out Carol's latest Carnival of Education, where she's listed her 12 favorite bloggers. Look who scored the "Golden Rings" position! WOOT!!

The good folks at Worth Ave. Group are sponsoring a contest to give away a few nice hefty technology grants to America's favorite teachers. Check out their Giveaway page, and see how you can vote for your favorite teacher (or even get yourself nominated!).

We frequently do word problems in class. And the method that we enforce is called UPSC, which stands for Understand, Plan, Solve, and Check. (We actually say U-P-S-Check) Not that any of the kids will actually USE UPSC on a test, when I'm not physically in the room with them, but it's a pretty darn good solving model.

Today, I was midway through walking the kids through the solution of our word problem, when lunch time arrived. We had already filled out the Understand box, and we had reasoned out whether our initial Plan should be to add or subtract.

In the Plan box, I wrote "Add," followed by the usuals -- "Draw a picture," and "Number sentence." Then I wrote, "Go to lunch," as I announced it was time to eat.

Let's just hope none of the kids actually ever write "Go to lunch" as their plan during a test!