There are a lot of things that happen in an educational setting today that didn’t happen when I was in high school. No surprise there — I’m a solidly middle-aged guy, so you’d expect that things would have changed in some way, shape, or form.
One change that has become an everyday buzzword in schools is a thing called “Bell Work.”
Practically, there’s nothing really new or groundbreaking about the idea of Bell Work; it’s just an activity or assignment that students are supposed to work on right as the bell is ringing at the start of class. The goal is to more efficiently utilize class time by having students do something immediately when they enter the room. (Because, presumably, students were doing nothing before.)
I’m guessing Bell Work became a thing because some administrator somewhere wanted to make it look like they were “improving” student and teacher performance at their school or district by shaving off those wasted minutes of class during which those same teachers and students were saying hello to each other and/or making small talk.
Anywho. There are a variety of bell work activities that I have students do throughout the year, but right now we’re doing a new kind of bell work that I’m calling “The Fight Bracket.”
Basically, I created a tournament bracket of 16 fictional characters that are going to square off in battle to discover who, ultimately, is the strongest fictional character of all. At the end of class, I give students a QR code to a Google Form that asks, “Who would win in a fight, X or Y?” and has the day’s two contestants as options. Whoever gets the most votes is crowned victorious and moves on to the next round.
The next day, I share the results and give out the next “Battle.”
ChatGPT made this. Sue me.
What does all of this have to do with English? Not a damned thing! It’s just entertaining to talk about.
No offense to the admin who thought up “Bell Work” as a way to show their boss that they were making schools better by cutting out all that “wasted class time,” but I’m going to spend a little bit of each day just doing fun stuff.
As Kurt Vonnegut said,
“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”
My students are reading The Crucible by Arthur Miller right now, which means I’m coming up on my … 25th reading of the play? I’m not entirely sure, but it’s a high enough number that my mind is numbed by it.
I don’t think Gandalf intended us to read things that many times.
Anywho, I almost never give quizzes over things we read in class, choosing instead to do project-based activities for most units. For The Crucible, though, I give a total of 4 quizzes — one over each act. They’re the only 4 quizzes I’ll give in a year, and the reason I give them is both simple and hard to believe: Variety.
Students don’t want to do acting or socratic seminars or posters all the time. Believe it or not, a lot of students will respond to a quiz more positively than they will an art-related activity. Why? Quizzes seem more serious, more “official.”
In my last class today, which is full of some very challenging students, I managed to get nearly 100% of students to give the quiz a try. Did they ace it? No, but they went along with it, they treated it seriously, and I think it’s because of all the solemnity and formality of a quiz.
Like it or not, students react to quizzes. They’ve done so many of them that they know the expectation: They’re supposed to sit quietly and complete all the questions. No phones, no talking, just a paper and a pencil and 30 minutes to do your best. It’s easy to grasp.
Are quizzes great? No. Not at all. But they are useful, and I’m not going to abandon a tool that works just because it’s boring as hell.
If we got rid of everything that was a snoozefest, then everyone in Idaho would be in a lot of trouble.
I did accidentally print about 200 of the wrong quiz, though, and I have no idea how it happened. I’m usually pretty good about this — I have about 200 students in my academic English class, so that’s the number of handouts I generally make whenever I need handouts
Somehow, I printed 400 copies of the 2nd Crucible quiz and I … well, I can’t explain it. Where did the extras come from? It’s like they just appeared in my quiz file. At first I thought I might have typed a “4” when I meant to type a “2” in the print window, but I certainly would have noticed that I’d printed twice as many when I got them from the printer. Then, I thought I might have had a bunch left over from last year, but that’s equally as unlikely, since I recycle all my leftover paper right before summer break.
Anybody out there want to take a quiz over act 2 of The Crucible? 200 times?
I quit drinking coffee a couple of months ago (in an attempt, I suppose, to suck out all the remaining bits of joy from life) and it has turned me into a tremendous tea drinker.
I’m not saying “tremendous” like “I’m getting larger” but “tremendous” like “jeez is that your sixth cup already? Take it easy big fella.” You know what I mean.
I’ve tried out a few different flavors and brands of tea since December, including this bad boy:
“Black Cask Bourbon!” I thought. “I bet that taste’s great!”
It tastes likesomeone stuck a cigar in some scotch and then threateningly waved it at a teabag.
It makes me wonder what sorts of things are going on in the avant-garde of the tea industry? I don’t mean bubble tea or any of those new-fangled gimmicky sorts of teas with thick straws and chunks, but avant-garde in the sense of tea at its purest form. Which is, I’m almost certain, “Hot water with plant-based flavoring.”
I’m planning a trip to the Asian market this weekend for some noodies and soybean paste, so I’ll just swing throughthe tea aisle and see if anything catches my eye. Any time there are cool new tea flavors, the usually come from Asia.
(Sorry, UK, you guys do tea pretty well, but Asia really gets out there with it. I’ve seen teas in Korea that are made of dried corn husks and grave dirt.)
In unrelated news, there was no school yesterday thanks to this storm that’s hitting a whole swath of the US. I stayed home and napped for most of the day while poor Sarah had to drive all the way across town in -25 degree temperatures to work her shift at the library. “It really wasn’t that bad,” Sarah told me. “There was hardly any traffic at all.”
We haven’t had much snow yet, but it is coooold. People are saying that trees are exploding in parts of the country, but I think that’s all just a bunch of hype.
