Ten thousand thousand fruit to touch.”

Is that alliteration or hyperbole? I examined it thoroughly. “Ten” and “fruit to touch” have an alliterative sound to them. “Thousand thousand” does not. So it is a little alliterative (no pun intended), but not completely. So, hyperbole? Well, I don’t know approximately how apples can be picked in a season. On an apple-picking farm (assuming it’s a modern one) I can be pretty sure that there will be several people doing the harvest, and they will have a large farm because all farms are now, due to the fewer number of farmers but the remaining demand for food. Could they pick about 1,000,000 apples in a harvest? I think so- when you consider of how small an apple is, and how many are shipped to various grocery stores, and the sheer size of an orchard, that seems reasonable (to me). So it might be hyperbole, but I am guessing* it’s not.

*This is the problem- if I know what the term is, then it should not be a guessing contest between two answers. Hyperbole means extreme exaggeration, and alliteration is repeating ion of consonants (Sally sells seashells by the seashore). I really, really hate when there is doubt in what an answer is. This one of the reasons I would rather take a math test than an English test, because of the ambiguity of the questions. I do sympathize with the people creating the tests, because there is almost no way to truly test someone’s aptitude at a language. But the test really fails if it represents someone’s knowledge at a lower level than it truly is.

I chose alliteration.

It was hyperbole.

*sigh*

My head ached on and off through Government and Algebra II. I would have really enjoyed those classes had I been able to concentrate on them; as it was, I just wanted to lay down in a dark, quiet room and sleep. See, the thing is, I get migraines sometimes. I’m not sure what causes them yet, but I’ve had them for years. And when your head is internally combusting, it’s not pleasant to be stuck among many loud high school students.

The bus ride home was the worst. I managed to drown out all the noise of a bus filled with loud teens rattling along an interstate somehow, but it was still very unpleasant. All of this could have been avoided if I had been allowed to take some Aleve/Tylenol/whatever to get rid of the migraine. “You could just ask the nurse for some”, you might say. “Your parents can entrust the nurse with medication.” True, but that involves leaving class long enough for her to check my temperature, me to convince her I’m not lying, and, if the nurse is being stubborn, me lying down for five minutes after nibbling on crackers and sipping water. All of this could be avoided if I was allowed to slip into the bathroom, down some meds, and walk back to class- they are (usually) quiet and relaxed enough for the migraine to go away. The stress of facing the rest of the day with that pain certainly doesn’t help! I understand The Man (TM) doesn’t want us abusing substances, but there has to be some sort of compromise. If I’m old enough to ride a bus downtown then walk to school (alone) most every day, and I am to start making decisions about where I want to go to school, impacting the rest of my career, AND I am entrusted with a 700-dollar device for my studies, then surely I can be trusted with some headache medicine!

I might have some follow-up posts on this, describing possible compromises.

If a student fails to complete their homework, do not send them outside of the room to complete their work because of the reasons above. Give them incentive to do it after class (along with any further homework) by perhaps saying that they must sit through ISS or otherwise be punished. Avoid extra homework, because that could easily stack up, creating far too many worksheets to keep track of.

AP Euro: We looked at a map, and took some notes.
Band: Percussionists played games while wind players warmed up; at the end of class, she told us how to e-mail a playing quiz to her.
STEM I: After brainstorming locker designs, we looked up a few sample designs, and took pictures of potential areas for the lockers.
Chemistry: We took a quiz on the Metric system, and e-mailed it to the teacher.

So we didn’t do anything totally awesome. It’ll take time to transition to paperless; the teachers have been using paper all their lives.
I like the multitasking system the iPad has; you can double-tap the Home button to bring up a list of all the apps currently loaded. So I can leave the game I’m playing (cue World of Goo), glance at my e-mail, then go back without having to load the whole thing again, or even restart the level. I wish you could split the screen into two. Or perhaps if they sold a second screen you could just connect with Bluetooth or a cable. It could even have a bit of extra RAM to offset the extra screenspace and support the additional data.
As a tablet, it’s extremely convenient. It’s very light and compact, and it’s masterfully simple design (though personally I’d sacrifice that for more versatility). The drawbacks are that it’s very fragile and has a short battery life (depending on what you’re doing).
I think that an iPad would be a better choice for most classroom settings, excluding any but the most basic technology courses. Those need a PC or a Mac.
For my personal use, I still haven’t decided yet. It IS extremely convenient, and every app launches very quickly. As far as games go, if I’m playing a 3D game, give me a mouse & keyboard or a controller over a touch screen any day. That said, there are many, many creative apps out there that are incredibly innovative, and would not work as well on any other type of interface.

Here’s a little more info about how we’re using the iPads:
English II: We downloaded ‘Bullfinch’s Mythology’ and started reading it in iBooks. So far, it’s a good read.
Latin I: Nothing specifically. She did mention that we were going to get a Latin dictionary soon, also in iBooks. And she let us take notes on it if we wanted to.
US Gov/Contemporary Issues: We looked up certain parts of the Constitution and it’s amendments to answer questions. For homework, we wrote up a paragraph for each of a few Founding Fathers then e-mailed it to her.
Algebra II: We had the option to use a whiteboard app for our work.

That’s all for now; I’ll have four different classes tomorrow. We’re supposed to be going almost totally paperless soon. That’ll be a relief- then I can stop carrying around eight folders and a binder.

I can’t find a way to put it into words. I’ll just give you an example of a regular gym class for me.

I walk into the room. There is no teacher, or if there is, they are walking in at that moment to turn on the music. I put my bag by the bleachers, then do go to my warmups. I have to evade people standing around talking and occasionally wrestling. I have to run around a big rectangle 3 times, avoiding MORE people standing around talking or just walking. I finish that, then avoid some more people and do a stretch. Afterwards we jump and hit a wall 25 times.

Now either I jump twice as high as everyone else, or I’m the only one actually trying.*

Then (depending on the day) I go do something called a plank, in which I act like I’m going to do a pushup, but am leaning on my elbows. I keep my stomach off the ground. OR we do 15 squats. (Which is rather embarassing to do, especially in middle school.)

________________________________________

|      xxx                                     o                                                   |

|                                                 ZYX                                               |

|                                                 ZYX                                               |

|                                                 ZYX                                               |

________________________________________

I’m sorry, in the actual post this did NOT turn out so well.

The XXX is where we do the planks, with our bodies horizontal. This way the teachers can’t see if we’re doing them correctly or not. So of the few of us who DO the warmups, most cheat.

Next we have 25 jumping jacks or 25 jumprope loops. The jumprope is  pretty fun actually. Then we have 15 pushups (which most of us couldn’t do) or crunches (For the life of me, I can’t find a difference between that and sit-ups except crunches are easier *coughwimpiercough* because you only need your shoulders off the ground).

Then we walk around the gym in a big rectangle, which some apparently interpret as causing general havoc among those who are still doing warmups and going in big clumps, trudging along so those who actually walk have to maneuver through them.

Then the teachers stop the music and see what happens.

a) We stop and politely be quiet and listen. Or as politely as you could expect from middle schoolers.

b) We ignore them and continue talking amongst ourselves and walking.

If a) happens, they tell us to sit on our teacher’s lines, which if you look at my beautiful artist’s rendering above, is line X, Y and Z. They’re supposed to be vertical, as line X is Strittmatter’s class, mine, Y is Walker’s, and Z is Cofer’s. I might’ve mixed up Walker’s and Cofer’s. After sitting down, the teachers go down the line for five minutes, asking the ones they don’t trust- otherwise known as most of them- whether or not they did warmups. After this,  one of the teachers (I think they draw lots or take turns dealing with the terrible horror that we are) stands in front of us and waits for us to be quiet, only occasionally telling people to quit crawling around on the floor, or screaming.

Note that I’m trying not to criticize the teachers here. I think that they’re doing the best they can with a minimal amount of cooperation. I can easily imagine myself in their places.

When we FINALLY get quiet**, we do some activity or another. Today we did 4-square, which would’ve been fun, since we had to pick a number, and whenever we hit the ball, say the next multiple of that number in order. We couldn’t repeat a number.

As I was saying, it would’ve been fun if we didn’t have some horrible, lying, cheating piece of scum in our group who would continue to argue (and insult) even whenever everyone, including himself, obviously knew that he was out. We continue like this until the bell rings, upon which everyone flees the room as if it’s filled with the plague.

So yeah. A regular day in class. Oh wait, I forgot one important thing:

Repeat.

*I’d vote for the latter.

**By ‘we’ I mean most of the class. There’s always those that will talk the entire time and complain about doing nothing.

Got on the bus.

Went to school

Locker break.

Tcaps.

Break.

More Tcaps.

Done.

6th period.

7th.

Lunch.

Lecture from teachers because everybody else was shouting and being rude.

Play (reading for me) outside.

Band (outside).

4th period.

Locker break.

Get on the bus.

Read on bus.

Get off bus.

Go home.

Play computer.

Eat dinner.

Watch Evan.

Write this post.

Do something else.

Sleep.

Tomorrow.

Wake up.

Repeat.

SCHOOOOOOOOOOOL”S OUT! FOR! THE WEEKEND! (na na na na na na na naa naa!)

WHOOHOO!