12th grade

ohmygoodness everyone: you are in for a surprise.  today's post was written by a guest blogger - becky!  last year, i wrote about visiting her school, so i asked her if she would write about visiting mine.  here you go!  note all the capitalization and, like, actually well constructed sentences.  do it, beck.


There are many differences between a 12th grader at a private Atlanta high school and a 4th grader at a public school in East Harlem. The former do not walk in lines to or from class, do not need permission to use the restroom, and take notes on their laptops instead of their Hannah Montana composition notebooks. But beyond those obvious differences, I’ve found a few more worth sharing (and some similarities, too).

1. If you are in 12th grade and class has just barely started, it is acceptable (or perhaps just accepted) to prance across the classroom to take a cookie from your friend. If you are in 4th grade, you are subject to a strict “no getting up without permission” policy. Should you choose to disobey this policy, your Velcro name tag will move down the behavior stoplight from green (I’m doing great!) to yellow (warning!).

2. If you teach 12th grade government, a random sampling of your office bookshelf yields the following: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement; Government in America; Simple Justice: A History of Brown v. Board of Education; The Studs Terkel Reader. If you teach 4th grade, favorite texts include: Good-Bye Round Robin: 25 Effective Oral Reading Strategies; Gooney Bird Greene; Strategies that Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement; and Because of Winn-Dixie.

3. Both 12th graders and 4th graders love to tell stories. The problem is, those stories are often not very interesting to the listener. Furthermore, both groups often begin stories they have no intention (or perhaps ability) to finish.
12th grade example: “Oh, I want to say something about that [the Florida church that plans to burn the Quran]! Um, I forget. Well, it was something about a mosque on September 11. Does anyone know about that?” Well, since you gave us so much to go on…
Or this recent 4th grade example: “My partner Brian said he likes different colors. Either colors that are dark or ones that are light.” Thank you for sharing that. It was certainly enlightening.