Donate Now Summer school is over. Lakeside is over. My two years are over. I know I should be taking away a million lesson from my experiences, and I know that they’ll eventually show up in my mind and I’ll say to myself sometime next year “oh right, i already know how to deal with…

Donate Now Daquam- “Ms D, you wanna challenge me to do these problems without a calculator?” Me- “Uh….sure.” Daquam- “You think I ain’t gonna do it?” Me- “No, i bet you can.” Daquam- “I’m prove you wrong!” Meanwhile, De’Vonte is doin the jerk by the door, jimmy is coloring in a net to look like…

If you can reflect back to last July, or even just anytime I posted something cryptic about my test scores this year, you may recall that my class (and thus, according to the academic impact model, myself) did not do so hot on the benchmark test last year. And by not so hot, I mean…

Wherein not 15 minutes into the day, De’Vonte chose to lick his hand. For 5 minutes. For no discernible reason.

Warning: This post is not about teaching. Today was supposed to be my last day of teaching in my 2-year commitment to Teach for America and the Mississippi Delta. Instead of in my classroom, I spent the day at the funeral services of one of my best friends that I’ve been fortunate to make here.…

Arkansas became the 25th state because we won against the Britishes. I was so excited when that happen. But it is very sad for the Britishes now. In the early 1800s, the Americans began to disagree about slavery. I mean like who wants to be a slave? Why did they even argue about slavery? There…

I just made 4 students cry by reading a poem. Not even a poem by a successful published poet, but a poem from the book Love That Dog. And when I finished, we just sat there and i kind of was very sad for a minute, then they said “is that a poem in real…

And then suddenly, we only had 11 days left. How it got from months and months and months left to suddenly, two weeks, I’m still not sure. In fact the only thing I really am sure of is that, having finished this year, I’m only slightly more confident in what I’m doing than I was…

A flawless uninterrupted Benchmark week? We had made it through Thursday with no interruptions! No crop dusters buzzing our school. No carnival setting up in the front parking lot. Not even a snafu with the booklets! Totally on schedule (on Tuesday we were 5 minutes AHEAD of schedule), I was convinced we’d make it through…

Dear not-the-delta, When I get there, please smile at me and, with a tilt of your head when you look at my license to let me by, say “I figured you weren’t from around here.” That should help. When I sit on my couch on Friday night thinking of what to do, please limit my…

I know, I know, every comparison or analogy I have revolves around baseball and statistics, curses and high hopes. This blog might as well follow my fandom as well as my teaching career. But that’s not the point. The point is that I found this amazing Whitey Ford quote that describes how I feel about…

Jorge: “I thought a chisel was where you get to relax and stuff.” Clifford: “No, that’s chill.” Jorge: “Yeah- Chizzill!” I know, I know, I owe a real entry. Give me a minute to wrap my head around my ever-changing glorious life and I’ll write you one. Ok, mom?!

“You look like a teenager for real…like you’d be working at Subway.” – Dane Two weeks until benchmark, not including the week of spring break bliss to which I am counting down the hours. What am i doing on this magical week of no students? dentist appointment, visiting schools, summer job applications, and sleep, brief…

My life has been full of changes recently, which is out of the ordinary. I guess you might say it’s a change.  I said on March 1st that this would be a good month and I stand by it 100%. Yes, I recognize that it’s only March 11th, but if it’s been this good so…

“Ms. Dilks, what does it mean when you said Henry was humping?” -Dallas (I said he was HUMMING) “So Copernicus was like…nobody wanted to be his friend, just because he was smarter?” – Ayanna “Well yeah,but how many people actually LIVE on Uranus?” -I don’t even know, but I will find it hilarious for a…

“Ms Dilks, i’m getting some information on Venus that i never knew.” BAM. KNOWLEDGE UP IN YOUR FACE. follow-up quote: “Yeah, I just feel pretty confident about Venus….”

I took Friday off for mental health purposes. It took all of January, coming home drained every day, and the cathartic watching of Ellen giving things away to brightly dressed women with no circles under their eyes, screaming their thanks on national television for the new iPod touch they had just received for me to…

“It’s something that happen with Cold Wars and that happens with countries and dominoes.” “Like if the USA was a domino and they gave up war it would fall and then other countries would fall because they were in war with the US.” Or as i like to define it: When one fifth grade boy…

My body clicks into place like gears on a bicycle. I can feel the grinding in my lungs my heart my brain like I’m going up some monumentally tall hill. January, my soul eeks outs between ragged breaths it’s… only…. Jannnnnnuuuuuaaaryyyyy! So I switch gears. Retool a little, you know? What makes a bike really…

It seems like only yesterday I was crying to myself about how much time was left in this awful two year  what was i thinking who in their right mind would ever agree to live in this godforsaken pit of a commitment. Ahhhhhhh, the memories. And now, only a semester left until they kick me…

It’s not that it hadn’t been graded. It’s that it’s been sitting here and there, around the house, in piles. Staring at me. So tonight i took it upon myself to organize these papers so I could hand them back tomorrow. An hour and a half later, all papers alphabetized and sorted, I hauled it…

Maybe all this comes about because I got my new phone. After two years of waiting, one toilet phone, one phone that only operated on speaker, I finally got it- the blackberry. Signed under my name, it was mine, and all I had to do was take it home, charge it, and dial *228 to…

October is not my least favorite month, it’s my second least favorite. I remember last year everyone telling me that October was the worst, only to discover that in November, I truly perfected the crying-in-fetal-position technique. Well October started out well, and even half-way through I wasn’t upset. By the end, I was flustered, but…

Well the votes are in, and the song “It Won’t Be Like This For Long” by Darius Rucker was recently voted (by Caitlin and myself) as the #1 most cried-to song of the 2008-2009 academic year. What’s funny if not a little awkward is that in both our minds, this song is about teaching. Listening…

I have not written in a while. I think this is because I do not…need this as much? Last year this blog served as an empty room into which I could step and then yell as loudly as possible about all the things that scared me or made me angry or confused me. This year…