The kids are reading a book in which an English teacher reads kids' journals out loud to the class. My students were appalled. One of them wrote: I think Mr. Birkway is a horrible teacher because some people use their journals as a diary and write private stuff in them. I know my teacher would never do any stuff like that because she cares about the students and knows our personalities. I think she knows every one of us and what we do by heart. Mr. Birkway did have a point about what the students write about. he says this person is expressing their feelings and getting it off their chest. But I still don't like the fact that Mr. Birkway read those journals. On another note, many of my students need extra credit. I told them that they could get partial credit if they wrote me a letter about why they weren't doing homework. One kid, "Francisco," said that his reasons were boring - could he make up a fictional reason? This is h...
Author of Literally Unbelievable: Stories of an East Oakland Classroom