{"id":3232,"date":"2012-09-24T09:19:09","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T14:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/?p=3232"},"modified":"2012-09-24T09:25:18","modified_gmt":"2012-09-24T14:25:18","slug":"repeating-8th-grade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/?p=3232","title":{"rendered":"Repeating 8th Grade"},"content":{"rendered":"

So there I was,\u00a0a few nights ago, in the 8th Grade classrooms of the Human Tape Recorder.\u00a0 It’s “Back to School” time, that annual opportunity for parents\u00a0to relive their most horrifying nightmares of middle school directly, instead of through the usual vicarious viciousness we absorb from our unfortunate offspring.\u00a0 SOBUMD went to this one last year, so it was my turn.\u00a0 This was particularly excruciating<\/del> horrifying<\/del> poignant for me, since the HTR is attending the same secondary school from which I escaped<\/del> matriculated in 1987<\/del> a long damn time ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First up, Spanish.\u00a0 First time back in a classroom in this benighted school since 1987, and I’m late.\u00a0 (Who’s surprised? \u00a0Not this dad.)\u00a0 OK, so, Spanish.\u00a0 At least I’m not having flashbacks; I speak about as much Spanish as the man in the moon, assuming the man in the moon can order a beer and ask about the bathroom in Spanish. \u00a0Since el SOBUMD\u00a0can habla Espanol pretty well and the HTR is learning, I think I’m going to need to learn to habla as well.\u00a0 Hey, not like I had anything else to work on, right?\u00a0 The teacher is, shall we say, not what I expected.\u00a0 And by not what I expected, let’s just say I was looking for Sofia Vergara and found Paula Dean.\u00a0 But hey, I guess she’s a good teacher.\u00a0 De nada, right?<\/p>\n

The other thing I noticed was the extent to which this and most of the rest of the classes are less focused on cramming everything into the classroom and more on guiding and shaping what is becoming a self-guided study session off-line.\u00a0 Welcome to the electronic classroom, and god help you if you don’t have a computer and a decent Internet connection at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Next up, Theater!\u00a0\u00a0 There are certain advantages to living in this area that the local\u00a0schools take full advantage of.\u00a0 The HTR’s Shakespeare class – and it’s listed as theater, somewhat generically, but it’s a full-on Shakespeare course\u00a0– is going to have a field trip to the Folger Shakespeare theater.\u00a0 And by “field trip,” they mean “you will perform on stage at the Folger” for a local Shakespeare competition.\u00a0 The class has picked A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which while often overdone is still probably a better choice for 8th Grade than, say, Titus Andronicus, which is what I would have picked.\u00a0 They’ll also be learning Sonnet 65, breathing their hot\u00a0summer’s honey breath, while studying blocking and yoga.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whoops, your 12 minutes are up – time for Health and Gym!\u00a0 The gym teacher seems like a nice guy –\u00a0now drop and give me 20.\u00a0 What do they study in gym these days?\u00a0 Ping pong, Ultimate frisbee, and something called Alcohol Ball – this is not your father’s gym class, if they’re busying learning why Daddy shouldn’t drive after that 3rd Scotch.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A bright note in this story:\u00a0\u00a0 Switching between classes, I got a cheery hello and a hug from an old\u00a0friend who was the prettiest girl in the school when I was in 11th Grade.\u00a0 Since I no longer even really remember 11th Grade, this is definitely better.<\/p>\n

But enough reminiscing, it’s time\u00a0for\u00a0math!\u00a0 There’s a big sign at the top of this room:\u00a0\u00a0“Fractions are your friends.”\u00a0 It’s not quite “Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” but\u00a0it’s close.\u00a0 This is applied algebra through geometry.\u00a0 The description of the big project left me a little shaken – they need to build a full multi-dimensional\u00a0tesseract for an A.\u00a0 Trust me that if you have to derive the area of the convex hull of the vertex-first parallel-projection, this is not your father’s math class.<\/p>\n

Next up,\u00a0Civics!\u00a0 I don’t know about you, but my high school civics teacher didn’t sport undergrad degrees in Economics and PoliSci from Yale and a Masters in Business from Wharton.\u00a0 This woman is hard core smart, but comes across as highly accessible as well – she seems passionate about getting these kids ready for not just high school but life, making them resourceful.\u00a0 I was impressed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now back off, man, we’re going to do\u00a0Science!\u00a0 This poor woman’s name is Divya, and while she’s\u00a0really probably not a\u00a0Diva, I’m sure she hears that all the time.\u00a0\u00a0This is the standard Matter, Energy, and Motion class that will introduce kids to physics, chemistry, and how to blow stuff up that we all remember.\u00a0 What’s new is that as part of the grade, these kids will have to enter a national science contest; it’s a yearlong exercise in choosing a partner, choosing a topic, and beating every other 8th grader in the country for an A.\u00a0 But hey, after winning the Tony award in\u00a0your Theater class and building a functioning\u00a0matrix for Time And Relative Dimension In Space\u00a0through all of space and time in\u00a0Math, just winning an International Science contest should be a piece of cake.<\/p>\n

Finally, it’s time for English!\u00a0 This former Peace Corps ESOL teacher is teaching the kids to think through literary analysis.\u00a0 While she’s focusing more heavily\u00a0on non-fiction, she assured us that research and poetry are embedded throughout all the lessons. \u00a0Mind you, these\u00a0lessons are embedded throughout the students’ wikis and blogs – once again, this is\u00a0not your father’s English course.\u00a0\u00a0At least they\u00a0don’t need to win this year’s Pulitzer for an A in the class.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I left school with a sense that technology is creeping ever more quickly into the classroom, a sense that the classroom is creeping ever more quickly into the real world, and a sense that I’d forgotten my assignment notebook and left my gym shorts at home again.\u00a0 I’m sure it will be a great year for the Human Tape Recorder, but I wouldn’t go back to 8th Grade for all the cardboard cafeteria pizzas in the world.\u00a0 Not even if my Spanish teach looked like Sofia Vergara.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Technology is creeping ever more quickly into the classroom, which is creeping ever more quickly into the real world. Still, I wouldn’t go back to 8th Grade for all the cardboard cafeteria pizzas in the world, no matter how much my Spanish teacher looked like Sofia Vergara.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[61,47,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3232"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3242,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232\/revisions\/3242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}