Sneaky Sixth-Grader Steals Report Cards!

Midterm grades just came out.  The day before they were to be sent home, all of the sixth-grade  report cards (with 12-year-old students) were stolen!  The teacher had them all in a folder, and in the space of a few minutes, they were suddenly missing!  I nbever heard of this happening in a school.  I’m sure some student who was afraid of his parents seeing his low grades thought that if the report cards got lost, that his parents wouldn’t hear about his low grades.

The entire sixth-grade class was kept after school while three faculty members searched every student’s desk, bag, and every cupboard in the class.  They were never found.  The principal came the next day and gave a very severe talk to the whole class.  As the reports in our school are still all handwritten, the result was that all the sixth-grade parents had to come in to the school to see their children’s mid-term grades. 

Our school is in the process of computerizing.  Our end-of-term grades will be done on-line.  Our computer specialist says that once we are on line, no one will be able to steal report cards again!

Has anyone else ever had their report cards stolen?

Eileen

Kids Attacking Each Other in Cyber Cafés, Over On-Line Video Games

We often have problems in my Middle Eastern country with our internet connections at home, and in offices. So sometimes we go to cyber cafés. For the past year or two, I’ve noticed that every time I go, there seem to be kids there playing games with each other, but seated at different computer posts.

Then, every so often one or two kids leap out of their chairs, and go physically attack another kid! They knock over his chair, start hitting him, and they end up in a brawl on the floor, among the computers. I’ve been wondering why. Now, I know.

According to the kids at my school, these kids are playing two games called Dofus, and World of Warcraft. Apparently both games are similar. You first create your own character. Characters can be wizards, rogues, knights elves, dwarfs, queens, fairies, kings, monsters, dragons, skeletons, mummies, and pets. They fight with magic swords and they use magic.

Here’s what’s fun for kids about this game. The fifth-graders (ten-year-olds) at my school say, “You can steal from other characters, get objects and sell them, buy things, and fight others to steal their stuff.” When I asked what kinds of stuff people would want to steal from each other, they told me, “Gold coins, swords, bones, and magic. And if you kill another character, you get their magic.”

In some of these games you have to pay about 6 Euros ($7- to create each online character. It’s not a game you win; it’s a game that just goes on and on, as long as you can keep your character alive. The machine saves your place each time. If you don’t play for two weeks, your character disappears. On another game, you just pay for a subscription.

The kids tell me that the reason people are jumping out of their chairs and attacking others is that people get mad when their characters get killed. This is because kids have to PAY again to create a new character. When the person who kills you is in the same room, it’s much easier to attack them, than if they are some unknown person on line.

If you’re interested in finding out more about these games, Wikipedia has a good page on each game, under Dofus, and World of Warcraft.

If you’re interested in trying out a free version of this game (I did), you can do it at:

http://www.miniclip.com/games/dofus/en/

Eileen

Bouganvilla in Springtime- Beautiful, Colorful Protection Against Theives in the Middle East

These Bouganvilla grow all over town where I live, and come into full bloom in April.  Bouganvilla is a bush with vine-like growth.  They grow on walls all over villas and businesses everywhere, in myriad colors.  They also have a lot of thorns–so they not only look beautiful, but help provide protection against thieves.  I love living where I do because it is so colorful.  I took these pictures at the American school where I work:

I hope you enjoyed seeing these, as much as I enjoyed taking the pictures.

Eileen

My Husband Attacked - Luckily, He Escaped with His Eyesight Intact

My husband was attacked at 3:30 this afternoon. Luckily he did not lose his eyesight in this attack. Here’s what happened.

He is an accountant, and today he went to a tax office in a residential neighborhood to pay some tax for the company he works for. Close by, there was a crazy man (my husband’s words) without a shirt on who was angry at a crowd of nearby people. The crazy man picked up a huge rock (maybe eight inches/sixteen centimeters) in diameter, and threw it toward the people. It bounced onto a road sign, then on to the windshield of our car, which my husband was driving. Small pieces of glass were shattered all over the inside of the car when he picked me up at 6:00 PM. My husband was driving us home when I got out my camera and took this picture. My husband says that if the rock had not hit the road sign first, and had been a direct hit, it would obviously have been much worse. My husband does not wear glasses, and had no eye protection–luckily his eyes were undamaged, and he was unhurt.

Here’s a picture of our car from the outside:

So, the full story on this is the man, who must be homeless, was aggressively trying to get something to eat (he must have been quite hungry) from a nearby café, or perhaps bothering patrons, when the café owner chased after him with a stick (which indicates to me that he must be causing a habitual, as this is not normal for café owners to do–and police in my country don’t normally deal with this sort of problem). Apparently a crowd of people gathered around to watch the confrontation, and the man became so incensed he picked up rocks and began throwing them at the crowd. So the attack wasn’t aimed at my husband–my husband was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

If a rock like this would have hit someone in the head, they would most likely be dead. I asked my husband what happened to the man after the rock was thrown, or what the crowd did. He said he didn’t stick around to find out, but just got quickly away. I suggested he should file a police report, so at least the insurance would cover the windshield, but he didn’t want to. He thought it would be a lot more trouble, and thought if we did get the insurance to cover it, that they would raise the rate.

Eileen

Multiplication Contest with Potato Chip Rewards

I found my class having trouble with problems like 287 x 6 = ? Most were understanding the concept, but were just making errors in their arithmetic. Some forgot to add in their cary numbers. Some forgot to multiply, and added part of the problem instead. Others, because of not knowing their times tbles well enough, made errors in multiplication. It was a bit boring going over their problems on the board, for those who students who hadn’t missed the same problems.

So I had a sudden inspiration to have a multiplication contest. I appointed the two team captains whose turn it was, and let them choose their team members. We sat down on two sides of the class. I passed out individual slates (in plastic) with a small piece of chalk. I chose ability-matched pairs of students (one from each team) to come up to the board and work the problem. Each student in the class worked the same problem on his slate.

If the team representative at the board got it right, and was first, his entire teacm would get a reward of a potato chip, each time. (Potato chips are provided by students on a rotating basis.) They all got a lot more practice this way, and in a fun way.

We do spelling bees the same way, except that if the student earns a point, it is both marked on the board, and the student gets a potato chip. Details will follow in another post.

Eileen

Chinese Teachers Report to Parents About Their Own Child in Front of ALL the Other Parents

Chinese teachers apparently have parent conferences en masse– the teacher meets with all the parents of a class together, and reports to the entire group of parents on how well each child in the class is doing.  This is according to a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine. I haven’t yet read the article myself, so I can’t cite the exact issue, but another teacher at my school was telling me about it this morning.

If this is really so, no wonder Chinese parents put a lot of pressure on their kids! They don’t want to be embarrassed. (In reality, I’m sure there is a lot more than this reason that the Chinese do so well in school.) I was thinking about how parents in the Middle East would react to this system, since here they put a lot of store in looking good in front of other parents (or their children looking good in front of others).

Has anyone reading here experienced this, or heard about it?

Eileen

How to Teach Story Writing in Elementary - Quickly and Easily

This week, our administration asked us to have ALL students participate in a story-writing contest over the next three weeks. We are to devote considerable class time to the project. I was floundering around a bit in considering where to start, when I suddenly came across a great website by the Georgia Department of Education on this very subject, with excellent lesson plans and forms that can be downloaded and attached.

I have written a page summarizing the salient points in a much shorter format, more useful to teachers who want a quick quide at their fingertips, and don’t want to wade through every last detail. Here is the location of my summary page:

http://elementaryteacher.wordpress.com/how-to-teach-story-writing-in-elementary-quickly-and-easily/

I hope some other teachers and parents will find this information as helpful as I did!

Eileen

Sharing My Good News - I Got a Raise!

Our American School is a private school, and we make substantially less money than at most American Schools overseas (some of which pay rates comparable to public schools in America). In our case, most of us can barely make ends meet, especially since the cost of living in our city has increased dramatically in recent years. For many months, I have been having to make the choice often between food and medicine.

Today I received a surprise raise (for the next school year). It was substantially more than our usual 5% cost-of-living raise. It was enough to make me feel really valued by the school. I was told that both the headmaster and elementary headmistress hear wonderful comments about me from all the parents, and have been for many years, and that they especially wanted to give me a very good raise. That made me feel really good, too.

For any parents reading this, I would like to say that one of the nicest things you can do for teachers who you appreciate, is to tell their boss how much you appreciate them. It’s really clear that a lot of parents have been doing this for me, and I didn’t even know it until recently!

Thanks for reading; thanks for sharing in my good news!

Eileen