Punchy Protagonist

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. I was talking to a fellow teacher friend of mine recently and we were reflecting on the past school year. The craziness, some funny stories, and the sheer chaos of it all. We discussed teacher shortages and how disrespectful students can be. I repeated something to her that I have said to other family and friends of mine, "when I was in high school, I would not DARE talk to a teacher the way some of these kids talk to me." My friend agreed.  She, I, and many others that I know have come to a conclusion that I am sure is not new...so many of the adolescent attitudes we are seeing, whether good or bad, stem from what they see outside of school and, more importantly, what their home lives teach them.  From what I can tell, we have a society of children, adolescents, and adults that need to listen to a little bit more Aretha Franklin. Maybe on repeat. Our pastor gave a sermon a few Sundays ago about resetting different things in our lives. One was our mouth. I defi...

I haven’t posted lately, and honestly I haven’t known quite what to post. Every day I wake up with a new feeling about the current situation we all seem to be in. I have trouble getting all those thoughts and feelings into something coherent that I can actually write out with any remanence of finesse. Tonight, however, I went to my classroom. I just went to get some things to bring home. It is a different situation than the last time I was in there. The last time I was there, I was frantically trying to print off AMI work and was still in the dark about whether or not my classroom would get any use before the end of the term. Tonight, my classroom was the same as ever but now the situation is completely different. When I say that my classroom was the same as ever, I mean it looks the same as the day I left it in March. Chromebooks were still out on the tables, abandoned for weeks, just like my students set them on the table to go to their next classes not 5 minutes prior. Notebooks...