Short Film Illustrates Oklahoma Educator’s Plight

A friend of mine brought the following short film to my attention.  It is called “The Expert”, and is representative of what teachers in the state of Oklahoma are faced with each day.  If one sees the two women in the film as our legislature, the man at the head of the table as our

2 A-Z Posts in 1: Plagiarism and “The Fantasy Novelist’s Quiz”

Yesterday I came home to post my new blog post only to find that our DSL service was out of order.  Apparently, a couple of local bumpkins had decided to build a fence and while digging post holes cut directly through the line.  I was bummed because since we live in such a remote location

Get Your Bluff In: 5 Scams Used By High School Students

I would like to begin this post by saying that I am not trying to bash students at all, but expose some of the lies that student tell teachers to either (A) get out of doing work or (B) blame their mistakes on others.  Most of my students are hard working, inquisitive, and caring people

5 Perks of Being a Public School Teacher

I’m sure there are plenty of blogs out there that have many negative things to say about being a public school teacher: from the horrible pay to the mistreatment by legislators out of touch with the classroom to the violence that could be visited upon any school.  I, however, would like to list 5 things

The Truth About Being a Public School Teacher

Sometimes former students will pop by my classroom and inform me that they are pursuing a teaching degree, and when I ask them why they usually tell me that “so-and-so” inspired them or they just want to be a positive influence on students or something along that line.  I congratulate them, and then I sit

The 90-10 Split

Yesterday I posted a blog post about my thoughts on why I assign homework.  I had some very interesting responses and some of you even suggested some rather rash (and humorous) ways to deal with the problem of students who simply choose not to do homework assignments. Today I thought I would like to offer

Common Core Writing: First Day of School Assignment

Yesterday was the first day of school for our students.  Often it is difficult to have something for students to do right out of the box on the first day, since our syllabi may not have arrived from the copy center, our room may not be 100% ready or we may not have written a