Quote of the day...

During our first Zone Conference following the border/mission change, my companion said something that has always stuck with me and cheered me up. "I don't kiss no booty, and I don't shake my booty neither." For some reason it was the quote stuck in my head today.

Looks like my sister might be coming for Christmas after all. Yippee!

My IB students had their first in-class timed essay test. They have been taught by teachers who are also AP teachers - so they have done lots of DBQ's, what IB students call documents tests. (It's kind of funny, I call them documents tests, and the students sometimes automatically correct me with "DBQ" - because they don't differentiate between AP and IB lingo). I let them have an index card - only two of them remembered and prepared one ahead of time - to write an outline or notes. But they were a little thrown because I didn't provide any documents or quotes for them to respond to. I just told them to write me an essay explaining Marxism or an aspect of Marxism. Also, they asked how long of a paper I was expecting - like 1 - 1.5 pages? (I let them use the computer lab). I responded that when I took the same test myself, I wrote 4-5 pages hand written. After the 60 minute test, I explained to them that only one of their IB essay tests was going to be document based, the other two would be a list of questions based on different topics. I told them that I want them to be comfortable with a timed test so that they won't be pysched out when it's the real deal. That got their attention. I'm not just being mean - I want them to be ready. I promised them I would write up a description of the format for each of the three IB tests.