Miller's best moments in lecturing this month: Top 3

1. Teaching parts of speech to remedial kids*
"If I were to say 'we hid from the principal behind the shop building,' then 'behind' is which part of speech? Yes, John?"
"It's a preposition."
"Yep, brilliant. It's a preposition. But dude, look at this: If I were to say 'the lady's behind was truly enormous,' would the part of speech remain the same?"


2. Later, teaching short stories to remedial kids:
"I will spare you the task of pointing out that our author's last name is Gurganus. Let's take a minute to laugh at him in a school-sanctioned manner. Repeat after me, everyone: ANUS! ANUS! ... Good. Now let's move on."

3. Teaching about the history of American cel-animation in Film as Lit:
"What I'm handing out to you are flipbooks created out of old cards from our library's Dewey Decimal card catalogue. I hastily stole these from the library when nobody was looking, and as luck would have it, I'm pretty sure I grabbed the 'sex education' section, so if you find the word 'syphilis' in your book, please don't take it personally or consider it a divine omen of what's to come..."
"Each flipbook has approximately 45 pages, in which you'll create 45 separate frames of animation. One word of advice. Keep your animation attempt simple: don't try to make 'Die Hard: The Flipbook,' even if you're tempted."


Sigh. I was struggling earlier in December, but am growing to like my teaching job again, mainly because my classes changed entirely at the semester mark and are now more fun to teach. My first semester was pretty hellish due to the content of the classes that I had to teach.
Of course, my reconciliation with teaching (and my excellent yearly reviews) coincide with the fact that our district has no money, and I've been told that my job might be cut because I am one of the lowest on the seniority totem pole.
I'm hunting for work again.

But I got major Valentine gifts from the kids today, which was validating at least. Embarrassing, but nice. I was serenaded, actually. And I am becoming a local grocery store celebrity. Better not be hitting up the beer section any time soon.