TAKS essay prompt: A time you were encouraged by someone

Yesterday evening, a couple colleagues and I met up at Starbucks to go over our copies of the students' TAKS essays. While that may not seem like the most exciting activity for a Saturday night (ok fine, who am I kidding...I have no life), it actually ended up being a really enjoyable chat - mainly because it was a lot of gossip. Things that I found out included: unethical strategies (like failing all the students) that will make that teacher look better later on; a lot of married teachers are having affairs; another English teacher (who obviously wasn't there) dated a student's older brother and then took out her anger over the break-up by failing the student; insight into a lottttt of politics. Also, apparently the math department has this big beef with the English department, for a lot of petty reasons, and are just waiting for us to fail. Wait a second, isn't this job supposed to be about the STUDENTS...?

Besides the gossip, I just have to say I am really lucky to be working with these two women. Mrs. H. is like that really caring mother-figure who takes care of everybody. She also has this great vision of how the department should be organized and is also genuinely there to TEACH the STUDENTS. Ms. M., my department chair, is this wonderfully blunt Caribbean girl with a hilariously dry sense of humor and fierce attitude. She's like my really cool big sister that enlightens me to the "real" stuff, and isn't afraid to speak her mind.

While my kids' TAKS essays still do not necessarily live up to the expectations of a 10th grader's writing, I have to say...I was impressed. I have never seen so many paragraph indentations, proper usages of punctuation, correct uses of subject-verb agreement, and examples of figurative language. Ha, that's the one message I realized my students took to heart: use figurative language to make your writing more interesting!

Some hilarious examples to come....

Excerpt from Andrew's essay:

"A time someone encouraged me was six weeks ago. When I was getting ready for my TAKS test. My teacher Ms. Chen keep me going in class with the work so I could pass the test with flying colors.

I had started to hate going to her class because of all the work she started to give us. but it was paying off because I was getting better at writting and better going my stories. it was just going good. I was going to Saturday scoool and after school work with Ms. Chen nothing could stop me from passing that test. I just knew I was gone pass because I worked so hard and many of my teachers were pushing me and the other kids in the school."

Spring has sprung

Spring break has come and gone. I was able to go back to LA for 5 days. Ahh, California...

How I miss the city! More pictures here.

The best love note I ever got

What I found on my desk this morning (name has been edited out to protect the innocent...):

Celebrate

...because TAKS reading & writing is done with!

Too bad there are three more months left to get them through.

My kids surprised me today. Instead of ungrateful comments about the snacks I so painstakingly personalized for them, they thanked me. "You spent money to stick these notes on every granola bar, Ms. Chen?" Marco asked incredulously. "Yep," I replied. "Oh."

Quan and Marco helping me set up.

Demarkie rockin' those stickers.

He looks worried...

Essentially, I was on potty duty from 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM (teaching is such a glamorous job) since I wasn't allowed to monitor the test. When I walked my 10th graders down, they would tell me things like "Ms. Chen, I think I just wrote a four." (As in an essay with a score of 4, the highest score.) "Ms. Chen, I'm trying my best." "Ms. Chen, I'm gonna pass this test."

Some moments that warmed the cockles of my heart:

Every time I stuck a star sticker on a student's face and told them they were a superstar, a genuine grin would spread across their face. A lot of them kept the stars on proudly for the rest of the day. Toshanna stuck my note from her granola bar across her chest the whole day.

Herbert aka Fat Daddy, who wrote about how his baby Victoria encouraged him not to rob a house during writing bootcamp, who cussed me out at the beginning and middle of first semester, was actually trying really hard on his test(I think), since he wasn't even done when school was over (they have all day long to work on it...no time limit). He went downstairs with about 8 other kids to finish it up after school.

Gustavo, one of my favorites, who requested to sit outside to work by himself, held up his packet to show me all the writing he did for his rough draft. The whole page was filled up.

Dernard, as he walked to the bathroom, said, "Ms. Chen, Imma do this, then I'm goin' home, ok? I wrote two pages, and I'm writing one more, then I'm goin' HOME." Said in a happy/relieved/non-antagonizing tone.

So after all that TAKS prep, we're going to start Julius Caesar tomorrow...by watch Mean Girls. Woo hoo!

"Ms. Chen, this treat sucks. Where are the doughnuts?"

1 trip to Costco, 12 packs of Capri Suns, 2 boxes gummy snacks, 2 boxes of Chewy bars and a lot of tape later...




Unfortunately, I can already predict their responses. See title of post.

Dernard returns

Dernard came back to school today! His grandma came to talk to the school, and they allowed him back on Monday. He came into after school tutoring! We went over his essay, he told me I could expect him to fail, I reassured him he would not, and I think that was exactly what he was looking for. He needs someone to believe in him, I know it.

We went over his practice TAKS (which he got 29% on), and he got most of the questions we went over correct. He told me he guessed.

"Are you going to do that on Wednesday?"

"No, Ms. Chen! I'm going to be focused. I promise. I'm going to be focused."