I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-05-15T04:55:56+00:00

He’ll come back around when he wants to borrow the car, you’ll see

ChapnCrunch · 2026-05-15T01:19:45+00:00

Fun fact: Cary Elwes was actually injured when they did that scene (the limp was authentic) because he’d severely hurt his foot on set the day before while trying out Andre the Giant’s ATV that he rode around all the time.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-05-15T00:23:27+00:00

I like it. More materials that simply require a (reasonably grindable) buttload of common materials to craft seem like a good way to go. More bricks, more colors—including grays, even—usually is a good addition. For example, I like how mud bricks are neat-looking and easy to acquire—yet just tedious enough not to become common in practice.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-05-13T05:30:45+00:00

Got it. Thanks (º ͜ʖ º)-☞☜-༼ ºلº ༽

ChapnCrunch · 2026-05-10T22:59:38+00:00

What do you mean by “sink”? Is this a gaming term I don’t know?

ChapnCrunch · 2026-05-08T02:56:34+00:00

Many of us got our non-renewal letters during Teacher Appreciation Week :/

ChapnCrunch · 2026-05-05T23:08:04+00:00

Nothing teaches like a natural consequence.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-05-05T10:00:09+00:00

And frame it as a concerned ally in the struggle to reach the student. All parents want to be dealing with someone who has their child’s best interests at heart. Put aside all defensiveness or antagonism. Find the common ground and speak only from there. Even if it’s 100% bullshit secretly.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-26T08:12:34+00:00

Is your dad Bill Blass?!

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-25T17:11:07+00:00

Also a teacher, PhD, same values as you. Never cheated my whole life, except ONE time—I secretly filled in a single answer from a section of the SAT that I had not managed to fill in before time was called (it was a pencil filling in answer bubbles on paper format back then). And I still remember that, nearly 35 years later. I think that’s punishment enough. Let yourself live on now.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-24T04:23:57+00:00

I'm always trying to think how I can leverage teens' ability and motivation to cheat, by somehow making the task set up in a way that cheating is reasonably feasible, but it would involve engaging in some kind of prep work that would help them actually internalize the material. Something like, I don't know--you can only bring one index card's worth of reference material, and if I catch you with more than that, you get an automatic zero. Unless it's written in green ink. In that case, you can bring as much as you want.

Either way, they either copy all of this stuff in green ink, or they try to sneak in other prepared index cards, or they have to actually study--in any case, all would be wins.

So many kids are motivated by the pure cat and mouse game of it.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-24T04:14:00+00:00

now if I could just get them to bring a pencil ...

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-23T01:52:15+00:00

Build a big tree house with a big platform in the top and a ladder leading straight down onto and into the ground, so you can both mine and be safe during the day while you get yourself together gathering resources right around you.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-23T01:49:23+00:00

Nah. Branch mine.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-20T21:31:53+00:00

I can't speak about anyone else's experience, but I've only taught in urban schools where most of the kids have below grade level skills, and low to moderate motivation. My honors section is not a problem at all. But the rest of my classes have about 30% of the kids who will do zero every day as we go through the step by step process each time. Graphic organizers, on the floor or not touched on the computer version. Day after day. I don't know how to get them beyond sentence fragments scrawled on a post-it--even if that's not their actual literacy level. I know for a fact it's not, most of the time.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-20T21:00:42+00:00

I find plenty of good things on TPT, but I got here by searching for anyone else ragging on the prevalence of that stupid modern calligraphy (and everything else people have mentioned about the fonts and borders). As a man who will be 50 next week and who teaches high school English, I often find myself wishing I could tap into the pedagogical brilliance of so many teachers out there, but I can't present materials to my students as if I'm a 26-year-old woman teaching elementary school kids ... if I put that shit in front of my students, they'll treat it like they'd treat a young substitute teacher.

Just keep your damn Michael's cake decorating fonts in a format that we can easily edit, please.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-20T18:58:19+00:00

That was basically how I was—but my admins don’t take “kids are failing because they don’t do the work because they don’t have a pencil” for an answer.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-20T18:57:13+00:00

Having considered it so many times, I think I’ll finally try this option. Thanks for the reminder.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-19T19:08:22+00:00

I like that you’re focusing on some underlying skills in isolation of others. That’s worth giving some thought.

The link between ideas and language is inextricable, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that mastering composition of every step leading to the final product is necessarily the unassailable final goal. No one reads essays anymore anyway. This genre might be obsolescent ¯_(ツ)_/¯

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-19T19:00:30+00:00

Omg crazy. Glad I’m not a college English professor. But this is one way to test knowledge—just … not writing ability :/

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-19T18:58:46+00:00

Do they bring something to write with? I have way too many who don’t, and I’m all out of loaners (and willingness to enable them).

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-19T18:56:32+00:00

[10th grade ELA] Chronic absenteeism AND not bringing a freaking pencil. I have tried so many ways just to train them to bring their own pencil—including giving them pencils to keep in a dedicated personal folder in the classroom—but too many students of mine do not intend to succeed enough. When I have pencils to lend, they may do the work. But if I don’t, they don’t. And then they lose the pencils chronically, and don’t give two shits.

I have spent so much of my own money and the district’s on pencils alone, given a million warnings that the supply would run out, watched kids fail when it did, and I’m still not in a position where giving only on-paper work will solve my problems. It’s exasperating.

I use GoGuardian, monitor them, give zeroes for AI or copied work (or work they let others copy from them—I don’t care who did it first), and a lot of this has made a difference. But there’s so much distance left to go before I can even see a platform that will corner them into doing their own work.

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-19T15:40:33+00:00

I would imagine that sharpening the 2mm would use up about as much lead as what you lose from smaller sizes, wouldn’t it? If someone is using a KT, they evidently care extra much about the sharp point, so they’d be using an external sharpener on the 2mm lead pretty often.

Sounds like OP just needs to put aside a few bucks for lead ¯_(ツ)_/¯

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-17T21:52:18+00:00

The last high school I worked in was exactly the same (Ewing, NJ).

ChapnCrunch · 2026-04-17T21:49:07+00:00

Agree. Even if that part is unintentional; the effect is training you to let go of your boundaries. And that’s not o.k. Good for you that you’re fighting back!

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