Overhead

* Ms. L's habit of adding the /uh/ sound to her phonemes becomes particularly egregious when she blends consonants, magically and surely incomprehensibly combining /tuh/ and /wuh/ into the single sound /tw/.

* I did a math transparency on the overhead. I'd never done that before, so I didn't have a good sense of whether the pacing was appropriate or not. Ms. L very helpfully went around the room while I stood up at the front, so probably not too many kids were lost. The big question with overhead work is whether the kids are thinking along with you as you explain strategies and steps, or if they're just unthinkingly copying what you write onto their own sheets.

* I was struck numb today by the dragging, infuriating bureaucracy that public school teachers have to deal with. Someone at the top doesn't have the slightest concept of what it's like to be in a classroom, but that's not stopping them from adding more and more helpful (read: required) tips for teachers.

* Some kids are like the elements in binary chemical weapons. They're inert, harmless, by themselves, but combine the two, and you get a lot of explosions. I note that the day after I mentioned that no one had ever gotten on the red section of the behavior chart, a boy did today. I don't know what impact a note home does. Probably none, except to the kind of child who wants to be a success and so isn't a behavioral problem anyway.

* Think good thoughts for me Thursday morning, internet friends.