October 14, 2005
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The Daily News
1 Friday.
2 I LOVE Fridays. Especially Fridays when we had an entire WEEK of two-hour classes. I had thought about doing a fundraiser for the Drama Workshop by simply walking from class to class and selling Milk Duds, popcorn, and Junior Mints.
3 It’s funny, but true. A LOT of teachers are simply not used to the two-hour block, and find it hard to simply put two lesson plans together, back to back. Instead, the natural default in a situation like this is to find a video that could take up half the period.
4 In my case, it’s Hitchcock’s The Birds, a classic if ever there was one. It works perfectly, because it’s the third story in our lit book, and it works perfectly well in mid-October, pre-Halloween lessons.
5 The only challenge with doing a film on a block schedule day is the unlikely event of a blackout.
6 Which is EXACTLY what happened yesterday!! I had just finished doing this stellar introduciton to Hitchcock, to Norman Bates, to Vertigo, Rope, Pscho, and finally, The Birds, when the lights went out, the computers turned off, the air conditioners shut down, and all the alarms went off.
7 You lose, teach.
8 I had like an hour and forty-five minutes to fill, and NO lesson plan. So I just READ the story aloud. I actually THINK people were listening, but who knows? In that situation, it’s the same as when a dog walks in your room, the lesson’s over. Can’t beat dogs, hamsters, or blackouts.
9 Ah, we got through it. As soon as those birds started ripping the hair and faces off the school children, the students got reeled in.
10 Thank goodness for gratuitous violence!
11 I got home late last night, a relatively new habit that I picked up on like three years ago. So I really think I need to get some sleep, so I can wake up and have a little coffee.
12 Or I COULD do an ”all-nighter”.
13 Or not.
14 Howzbout, it’s FRIDAY?
15 Long week. Time to push play and walk away.
16 See ya later.
17 Peace.
~h~
