Alex Sharp's Blog

Posted by Alex Sharp

One of the best parts of owning an Amazon Kindle is being able to read anywhere. This December marks the anniversary of when my dad and I first became Kindle fans, and I have amassed such a huge collection of books on it that I carry a whole library with me.

Through the Kindle, I have been mesmerized by the luxurious world of 17th century France, and I have shared a teenager's become overpowered by the Versaille of teen literature: Easton Academy. Cold weather and good books are a brilliant combination for the holidays. Like a lot of teachers, I plan to spend a lot of my winter break reading, and like a lot of writers, I find inspiration in what I read. My whole family is full of readers, and as we spent last night with our fireplace on, reading and listening to Christmas music, I realized how nice it is to be together in a room with good books and a Christmas tree. I hope everyone is able to get away from the business of the holiday season and spend some time indulging in personal amusements.

Merry Christmas!

Posted by Alex Sharp

Yesterday was our school's last day before releasing for the holidays, and I was as bouncy as my students, even though I like to think I kept the bounciness inside me a little better. We ended our unit and shared our work with parents, who were up at school for a variety of end of semester activities. The only hard part of getting ready for break is that there are students who move away over break, and it is always a sad to know a student will not be in my classroom when we return from the holidays.

Teachers have a lot of end of semester work, like getting grades recorded and turning them in, cleaning and organizing the room for the start of the year, and all the various little holiday duties, such as writing thank you cards. I am looking forward to having time with my family, and I am already planning some new semester activities, which of course I will post on Suite 101!

Posted by Alex Sharp

This year I want to honor someone important to me, and I wanted my Christmas cards to (quietly) reflect that, without seeming overbearing. Also, I send a lot of cards to a lot of people, so I wanted to make sure that cards could apply to people from a variety of relationships.

I found a great website called "Cards That Give". I searched for the area of charitable interest, and the site provided several options. I really wanted to find a site where I could upload photos and donate to the specific cause I have in mind, and I did find that, but, through cardsthatgive.org I also found CardsDirect.com, and they had really easy ways to personalize cards, cute pictures, and different fonts and different colors available. However, in order to get the donation made to the organization, it is important to go through the right links.

Start at cardsthatgive.org, pick your charity, find your cards, and do some good.

Posted by Alex Sharp

Daylight Savings Time and Classroom

I used to have a great trivia question for my classes that I saved for the first Monday after Daylight Savings Time: " What is the longest month of the year?" It was October, because of the extra hour given from DST clock changes. Thanks to an act of Congress, the answer to the question is December, because it gets any leap seconds needed to adjust the clock.

At any rate, tomorrow is one of the few days I know everyone will be rested and ready to go. Working with teenagers eventually leads to an understanding of the general sleep habits of teens. Kids adjust to the time change in different ways, so I thought I would highlight some of the tips I have learned over the years for parents who want to help their kids get used to daylight savings time.

Elections and Classroom Discussions

Of course, the big topic this week in my classes will be the election. I am very pleased that my students seem to know so much about the different candidates and issues. Having multiple sources of information and different presentations of information has made it easier to be an informed citizen.

We had a mock election in class last week, and so I will be practicing what I preach when I go to work on Tuesday wearing my "I Voted" sticker. When my students ask me who I voted for, I am usually cryptic in my response. In 2000, I said, "The man I voted for has four letters in his last name." I enjoyed watching my students guess one candidate, and then realize - wait, they both had four letters (Bush and Gore). In 2004, I couldn't figure out anything as clever, so I just said I voted for "a candidate." This year, I haven't been able to figure out anything as tricky, so when a student asks which candidate I voted for, I might say, "The senator."

Posted by Alex Sharp

I never thought I would meet parents when I taught 11th and 12th grade; very few parents came to Open House, and an even fewer number came to parent-teacher conferences. I got to know parents at football and basketball games, at assemblies, and on field trips. Sometimes parents would come up and ask me for letters of recommendations for college, but usually I just met them during chance encounters.

During those times, parents would almost always talk about their sons and daughters as children. They would point out other teenagers and say, "We've known them since pre-school!" or "I remember when...". Parents seem in awe at how much their children have grown, and how independent their children have become as they prepare to join the adult world.

What I took away from many of those conversations is that parents see their kids with a sort of triple-vision: they see the child of the past, the teenager of the present, and they look for hints of the adult of the future. In some ways, this complicates the relationship of the parent and the teenager, because to the teenager, the parent is a static character; always the same mom and dad.

One time, I watched a teenager act ugly and speak with exasperation toward his mother, who was a teacher in our school. She listened patiently, and then when he calmed down, said, "Thanks for telling me everything I've done wrong. Good thing we both know I've done a lot of things right."

To me, that is the most important thing I know about parenting teenagers: parents do a lot of things right. Don't let teenagers say otherwise.