Page 5 of In Her Own Way
“We didn’t know if you were here,” one of her students said.
“It’s a long walk from the cafeteria,” Jessica answered with a smile.
“Welcome to our world,” the student said with a chuckle. “Can we go in now?”
Jessica got out her key and said, “Are you that anxious for grammar review, Sophia?” She always tried to be cordial with students. You can’t build relationships by treating them as anything other than fellow human beings.Lead with kindness,one of her many mentors told her once.
She opened the door, and again they had learned to let her enter first. This had taken them a hot minute to understand, but laying out clear ground rules and enforcing them was paramount for strong classroom management. And she prided herself on that. She was a new teacher at this school but was not new to teaching. She’d been a Cincinnati Public School teacher for eleven years before desperately needing a change. She wanted to teach in a place that valued her work, where she wasn’t just a number in the system. She hoped this private school was just the ticket. Now if she could only get her personal life lined up in a similar fashion with a partner who didn’t try to mold her into their version of a submissive bottom, then—.Ack. Now was not the time. Twenty-eight hormonally-charged fourteen-year-olds sat at their desks waiting for her to wow them. Or in the least, entertain them.
She chuckled. It was hard to wow anyone with grammar reviews, but she began most classes with it. Grammar was one of the pillars of ninth-grade English at PUA, and she was taking a different approach than the other teachers in her department. Yeah, even though she was a lifelong people pleaser, she didn’t always follow the crowd. Her English Department chair hadn’t liked Jessica’s proposed approach during teacher prep week back in August. Still, Jessica said that if her ninth graders’ grammar scores were lower than the rest of the ninth grade in December when they took their assessments, she would switch to the academy’s traditional method.
She turned on the projector, filled in the attendance sheet on her laptop, and sent it to the attendance office electronically. It was a major crime at PUA to forget to send your attendance. She’d learned that the hard way early on when one of the main office assistants interrupted her class to get it. Talk about embarrassing.
She tapped the small lectern three times, and the group got quiet. Yes, that had also taken some time to train and reinforce, but she’d been patient. Reinforced rules and boundaries were kind of her thing.
“Ten minutes of knowledge—” she started.
“Gets us into college,” the students enthusiastically finished.
“Let’s do it,” Jessica said. “Josalyn, start the clock, please.” This week, it was Josalyn’s job to start the twist kitchen timer Jessica had brought in just for this purpose.
On her laptop, Jessica clicked open one of the many grammar worksheets she’d developed over the years and projected it on the front whiteboard. “Subject and Predicate.”
The students groaned, but Jessica was used to it. The most prevalent sounds from ninth graders worldwide were groans.She absolutely didn’t comment. To reward the groans simply invited more.
“The subject iswhoorwhatthe sentence is about.” She pointed to the words with her laser pointer as she read them off the board. “The predicate is theactionthe subject takes. First example. Liam?”
“‘Misty rules over her staff with iron claws,’” Liam read.
“The subject is Misty,” Jessica said, “but what is the predicate? The action?”
Hands went up. Many hands. “Emma.”
“Rules?”
“Yes, kind of,” Jessica said. “Just the verb is called thesimplepredicate, so technically you’re correct. Add the rest, and you have thecompletepredicate, which is what we want. So, the phrase ‘rules over her staff with iron claws’ is the entire predicate.”
“Who’s Misty?” one of her students asked. “And why do they have claws?”
“Misty is my cat,” Jessica answered.
“Are you her staff?” one of the boys in the back asked her with a laugh.
“Obviously,” Jessica said.
Sophia’s hand went up. Jessica nodded to her. “So basically, the predicate is what the subjectdoes.”
“Yes. You got it.” A quick glance at the analog clock in the back of the room told her she had enough time for two more examples, and then they would speed practice for the last five minutes. They would write their own sentences, pointing out the subject and predicate of each.
As the class progressed, Jessica walked around the rows making sure all the students were on task. She nudged three students to put their phones in their pockets and one more to put away her geometry homework, apparently due next period.
When the kitchen timer went off on Josalyn’s desk, everyone jumped just like they did every day.
“Make sure your names are on your papers, and then pass them up,” Jessica said. Each of the five rows passed the papers to the front, and then the row leaders passed their stacks to the left. The student holding the final stack stood up and placed the whole pile into the Period 7 bin.
“Two weeks until the first quarter ends and your first set of grades go out,” Jessica said as the groaning recommenced. She switched her laptop over to the next lesson. The groans grew louder. “Poetry unit,” she said with a teasing grin. “You’ll love it.” Wow. The Period 7 groaning was reaching Olympic-caliber levels. Jessica simply laughed and then leaned forward. “Seriously, this two-week unit is a good way to bolster grades. And some of you could use the boost.”
She outlined the many and varied ways to classify poems by structure, genre, or meter. She gave examples of each and laughed when someone muttered, “So many to remember.”
