How am I doing in here? What’s my grade?
Mamacita says: There will always be students who have no idea of their standing in a class; honestly, when a student says to me, “How am I doing in this class? What’s my average?” I want to scream. Even if he is computer-illiterate (and if so, he won’t make it at the college level, sowwy) all he has to do is check his folder. All graded work is supposed to be kept in there, and if he’s that anxious to know his standing, he can add up his scores and average them on paper. Sheesh. Of course, if there are no graded papers in his/her folder, I’m going to guess that he/she isn’t doing all that well. In my class, you have to show up and do the work and TURN IT IN if you want to pass. I’m unreasonable like that.
But, but, it’s so easy these days to know one’s exact class standing!
The students who are going to succeed just go online, type in their login and password, and check their grades themselves.
Besides, any good student at almost any level knows how he’s doing in any class at any given point in time. If they show up and take their quizzes and tests and turn in their homework and participate and laugh at my jokes they’re probably doing quite well. If they don’t do these things, probably not. It ain’t rocket science, except that, on some days, it is.
Dear Parents, please don’t call your child’s teacher daily and ask for an average, at least, not very often. Chances are pretty good that if you can’t find any graded papers in your kid’s backpack or notebook, he’s not doing very well. Please don’t expect that your kid will be allowed to make up all that missing or poor work. Organization and work ethic are every bit as important as an actual score. In fact, without the former, the latter will be pretty bad.
Your child’s teacher has an entire classroom of students, and if each parent asked the teacher to send home a daily report, the poor teacher might as well put up a cot and start paying rent because there isn’t going to be much of a home life. And yes, parents ask us to do that all the time. At the secondary level, one teacher might have over 200 students. Even with email, it takes a long time.
At midterm, most schools send out half-way-point standings. Check your child’s grades. If he’s doing poorly, call the school and make an appointment with the teacher. NEVER just walk in off the street and ask the teacher to give up her lunch or prep or those valuable few minutes before class starts in the morning or those hectic few minutes after the last class leaves in the late afternoon without prior notice. (Would you walk into your dentist’s office, or your doctor, or your lawyer, or your accountant’s offices without an appointment? Or at least, an emergency involving blood and bone fragments?)
Please don’t march in like a Teutonic Reichmaiden and assume that the teacher is a psychotic who hates all children and yours in particular, and that your child is innocent, totally innocent, and his straight-A work has been shredded by the teacher so the world will never see it. I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s probably more your child’s fault than anyone else’s.
Every single night, require your child to SHOW YOU the contents of his backpack. If the papers are wadded up, give your child some incentive to not ever do that again. Require your child to file papers immediately in a pocket folder because you’re going to be looking them over every night. If this interferes with television for either of you, cry me a river.
Do not even turn on that television until this has been done. If there is homework, make sure your child has it finished before the tv is touched. Ditto computer, telephone, and any other electronic gadgetry your child has been playing with instead of doing his academics. Don’t, however, deny your children who ARE doing it right just because one of them isn’t. Sometimes, the sound of a sibling enjoying tv or a computer game or a friend can light a fire under a slacker kid. If it makes him vicious, you’ve got problems that aren’t school-related. Call a shrink.
If your kid is an athlete and brings home a bad mid-term report, ask the coach to bench him. Usually, schools do that anyway; sports are games, and games are only for kids who have done the actual SCHOOL part of their kid-duties. A good coach will do that anyway.
Is your kid one of those students for whom sports are all he has going for him? Is playing ball his life’s priority? Help him change those priorities, because his are all wrong. Don’t EVER argue with a coach for benching your kid for low grades. Even the kid knows he deserves it.
I really don’t have to deal with these issues much any more, because at the college level, I don’t have many parents demanding that I change Junior’s grade, etc. I do have a few, though. It’s incredible and really quite sad that so many parents seem to be living their own lives over again vicariously, through their children. If you are the parent of a college student, you should probably also know that I am forbidden by law to discuss your child’s grades with you. In fact, I’m not even allowed to admit that I’ve ever heard of your child. All I can do is say, politely and professionally, “Thank you for calling.”
I’m not a mean teacher, in spite of what you might think. I am, however, a teacher (and a parent) who required all of my students to work, to obey, and to behave. I still can’t think of a single viable excuse for slacking off on any of those three things. Once those three things were mastered, the creativity could flow and we could use our wings. Once students learned that I would not put up with anyone who did not understand the big three, we could have fun. It did not take most of them very long to learn that it was better for all to behave in ol’ Mrs. G’s classroom, because for those who did, the rewards were many and awesome, and for those who didn’t, well, o—KAY then. . . I poisoned them and buried them on the playground, under the wood chips. Nobody missed them.
That might be an exaggeration, but will you hate me if I tell you that I thought about it on occasion? Oh, so do you. Don’t lie to me.
Where was I? Oh, yes. Some people think I’m strict when in fact I’m a pussycat for students who behave well and take education seriously. The other kind of students don’t appreciate what they’ve got while they’ve got it.
And I say things like, “Shame on you!”
Because, you see, I really do believe that people are encouraged from a very early age to believe that they have a perfect right to please themselves in all ways, whenever and wherever they are, and that their parents are the main ones who encourage it.
Perhaps if we help our children learn that some actions and words ARE shameful, our children will treat each other better, and everyone’s self-esteem (you really don’t want to get me started on that topic) will rise naturally, instead of being inflated with bullshit so it rises regardless of what the child says and does.
Also, I use a red pen. I like to think of the ink in there as BLOOOOOOD. 
I want my students’ self esteem to soar, but I want it to be genuine, which means they’ll have to work for it. That way, they’ve got a right to be proud.
Also, I like to eat Twinkies when I grade papers.
How Anne Frank Helped Me Score Free Classroom Novels
Mamacita says: Every year, for over twenty years, I taught a unit based on The Diary of Anne Frank. This title refers to the stage play; Anne’s actual diary is titled Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. Please don’t confuse the two; it makes me sad.
Our script was part of our literature textbook, and was the main reason I chose Prentice-Hall every four years; I loved the unedited, uncensored selections they chose.
Then, one year, the Political Correctness Police apparently took charge at Prentice-Hall. I unpacked my boxes of brand-new shiny wonderful-smelling books full, I assumed, of the usual wonders that would help my students learn to make connections, groove on the universe, and soar. That year, however, I made quite a different discovery.
Everything in the new edition had been polished and censored, and most of the really good stuff was either gone or sanitized into boring obscurity. The Diary of Anne Frank was one of the censored selections.
All references to underpants and neutered cats had disappeared. The spats between Anne and her mother were gone. Mr. Van Daan was still allowed to refer to his son’s “damn cat,” but any reference to the cat’s missing testicles was gone. The famous passage about the glories of menstruation was gone. Her descriptive longing to be a woman, and her confusion about boys, had been censored. A good deal of the references to the horrors going on “outside” had been removed. What was left was a cute play about emotionless people living in an attic.
I was so upset, I placed a call to Prentice-Hall and made my displeasure known.
The woman who took my call assured me that Prentice-Hall had asked and received permission from the authors of all the selections that had been dismembered. Now, the play The Diary of Anne Frank was written by Goodrich and Hackett, and is BASED on Anne’s diary, but this woman was condescending to me so I stopped caring about her feelings.
“So, are you telling me that you had permission from Anne Frank to change the words of this play?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, our editors had a lovely phone conversation with her, and later received a letter with her full permission.” she told me. I kid you not.
I hoped my straight face showed over the phone. “Are you sure?” I asked her. “Anne Frank herself spoke to your editors and gave permission for these changes?”
“Yes indeed, ma’am. We would never change an author’s words without permission from that author, directly. I assure you that Anne Frank gave us her permission.” I am still not kidding.
“You are aware that Anne Frank died in 1944.” I was still being nice.
Silence.
“We here at Prentice-Hall would like to send you some class sets of books. What would you like?”
And so I added 5 class sets of lovely, UNABRIDGED novels to my classroom. We didn’t use the new textbook that year because abridgements are the devil, and yes, I mean THAT devil.
For the record, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book is perfect for 6th grade boys who are reluctant readers. Also? The chapter about Kaa is seriously scary.
Aaaand, I found enough copies of an old book with The Diary of Anne Frank in it to go around. We just used that.
All those boxes of brand-new shiny books are, as far as I know, still stacked in the back of that classroom. They were useless. When I was there, I threw a cloth over them and used them as a table.
In that way, they became useful again.
It’s Hoosier Persimmon Pudding Time Again!
Mamacita says:
It’s beginning to edge onto autumn (translation: it will soon be autumn) and here in southern Indiana, and that means it’s time to start thinking about persimmons. It’s time to think about pawpaws, too, but this post is about the persimmons.
I bet most of you don’t even know what that is.
Persimmons don’t grow in too many places; however, southern Indiana is a persimmon tree’s favorite home, and the trees grow healthy and prolific here. In this community, most people pick the persimmons 
off the ground and run them through a special grinder to make the pulp. We can also buy commercially frozen pulp at any grocery store here, but it’s not fit to eat that way, and it’s best to use pulp you made, yourself, or that someone else just made. It keeps in the freezer for several years. My fantastic and generous Cousin C gives me persimmon pulp, fresh from her parents’ back yard, and I make homemade bread for her family. I think I get the better part of the deal.
That’s right. In southern Indiana we just go out in somebody’s back yard and pick persimmons up out of the dirt. They’re best that way, and we rinse them off before we grind them up.
You pays your money and you takes your chances.
Hoosiers use persimmon pulp for many delightful things, but the favorite by far is 
persimmon pudding. I made some just today. Come on over.
Hint: Don’t EVER taste a green persimmon, unless you like the sensation a blast of raw alum gives to your lips and tongue. Persimmons must be ripe before they can be used. VERY ripe. Asking someone you’re mad at to just “touch your tongue to this green persimmon for a second” is a fun, albeit cruel (depending on the age of the taster) trick to play on someone. Raw alum on the tongue. Yum. It’s a sensation vaguely akin to being turned inside out by the tongue.
On second thought, everybody should try that at least once. How else can you appreciate the fun of doing it to someone else? It’s scientific. Besides, until you try it, you won’t believe the sensation. It’s really not easily describable.
By request (ask, and ye shall receive) here is my very own tried-and-true persimmon pudding recipe again. I’ve tweaked it over the years until it became perfection in a pan.
Hoosiers can be very protective and possessive of their persimmon pudding recipes, but I’m not. People always ask me for it, so here it is:
Jane’s Persimmon Pudding
First of all, preheat your oven to 325 degrees. NO HOTTER.
Get out a very large bowl.
Put the following ingredients in it:
2 C. persimmon pulp (Use fresh or frozen; the canned stuff is terrible.)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 C sugar (I use Splenda)
1 C brown sugar (don’t use fake) (It’s brown sugar, so there are no calories.) (Shut up.)
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt (don’t leave it out!!!!) (don’t use fake salt, either.)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
2 C flour
2 1/2 C evaporated milk (not sweetened milk)
1/4 cup butter (not oil) (margarine works, but butter is better)
Put everything in that large bowl and mix thoroughly. Use an electric mixer if you don’t think you can get it blended by hand. Get the lumps out.
Pour mixture into a large buttered baking pan.
Put the pan in the oven. Set your timer for 60 minutes.
After the timer goes off, stick a toothpick in the center of the pudding. Clean? It’s done.
Let it cool just enough to slice. Most people like to top it with whipped cream. Non-Hoosiers often sprinkle nuts on it.
You can also add coconut or pecans or cocoa to the mixture, but then it’s not Hoosier Persimmon Pudding. Your call.
