ELA The Miss M Way

Tomorrow is the first day of school.   Your body is flooded with a mixture of equal parts nerves and excitement.   You scramble semi-productively around your home checking and double-checking that all the supplies you need is packed. You simultaneously review the physical checklist in front of you and the mental checklist running through your overworked brain. You envision your classroom, as you left it hours ago.   Everything seemed to be in the perfect spot earlier today.   You hope that is still the case. Your eyes nearly bulge out of your noggin when you read the time on the clock.   You drag yourself to bed.   You channel an optimistic mantra to overshadow the anxious thoughts residing in your mind.   You have a symphony of positive messages and negative messages colliding in your thoughts.   It is unclear which side is winning. You force yourself to take a deep breath and close your eyes, wondering, hoping, that you have everything prepared before you drift off to sle

Heads tilt and lean into palms.   Eyes repeatedly glance to the clock on the wall. Some pencils dance on notebooks.   Some pencils tap on desks.   Some pencils remain motionless. Sporadic yawns and intermittent exhales of breath serve as the background noise to the too-maintained lecturer voice. Occasional hands are raised by the few eager students in the classroom.   These new voices break up the monotony, though only for a few moments. Several students let out low-volume groans as homework is assigned that once again entails answering questions about today’s reading. Have you lived this painful scenario? Are you beginning to panic as you silently answer “yes”? There’s no shame in that. Many new teachers fall into this trap now and then of delivering a painfully boring lesson.   This does not mean that you have failed as an educator. There is good news.   That mind-numbing scenario can be prevented with choice activities.   These activities can be done in class and a