Teacher: Year One

My Phonetic Alphabet

2008-01-24T18:01:00.000-08:00

I used to work at a shop that used the phonetic alphabet like it was going out of style. Everything was Golf Alpha Yankee. In my spare time I created my own alphabet designed specifically to confuse everyone in the world. Here it is:

A: air
B: Bjork
C: czar
D: duel
E: Ewe
F: fjord
G: gnat
H: heir
I: eye
J: Jew
K: knight
L: llama
M: mnemonic
N: Nat
O: Opossum
P: Possum
Q: queue
R: right
S: see
T: tzar
U: Uwe Bole
V: view
W: won
X: Xavier
Y: you
Z: zebra ('cause some things never change)

Strategery, Part 2

2008-01-24T15:08:00.000-08:00

Well, here I sit. 5 o'clock on a Thursday. Usually I'm almost home by now but today, once again, I have my club meeting. Strategy club is an excuse for kids to get together and pretend to play strategy games but wind up playing Halo, Call of Duty 4 and Gears of War.

Luckily I like video games.

I just got through schooling this kid on how things are done in my 'hood. When the kids have to play split screen they forget that Mr. Rugen was playing Goldeneye on split screen ten years ago. They've been playing on wide screen HD's while I learned on a fuzzy Magnavox in my friends bedroom. Put on the split screen and my instincts take over. They're toast. I'm watching their screen, figuring out where they are, sneaking up behind them and putting one bullet in their virtual head.

8:30 can't get here fast enough. Even though I like the games, I like my family more.

The Number One Problem Facing Parents Today

2008-01-21T09:45:00.000-08:00

I took a parenting class at church a few weeks ago and it ended with a lesson titled "The New Goliath". That lesson went on to describe the internet and media as "Goliath" i.e. the biggest problem parents face today. I don't believe that for a second.

If you live in a cave or are mentally retarded then you may not have heard of Myspace or Facebook. You may not know that TV shows contain sex, violence and disrespectful children. You may not even know that the main goal of most television commercials is to get you to buy a product, and they're very good at speaking to children. If that is the case, then the internet and "the media" are a problem you may face, but the bigger problem is you. It's easy to blame the internet or "the media" but you need to look in the mirror first. That's why I'm going to start my own parenting class aimed at the real "Goliath" that parents really have to face. That Goliath is...other parents.

A few weeks ago my cellphone got stolen from my classroom. It happens. I was stupid enough to leave it out and even stupider to trust that it would be there at the end of class. All my fault and something I have no problem accepting responsibility for. Part of that responsibility, unfortunately, was going to the Sprint store to buy a new phone. While at the Sprint store I parked at the same time as a mom, her two kids and her Chevy Suburban. The five year-old boy seemed starved for attention. He was running around, banging into his mom, pulling his sisters arm and causing general havoc. The sister, no more than 14, was acting like she was the boy's mom while the actual mom was making super important phone calls in between sessions of yelling at her 5 year-old, pushing him away and telling him she's "had it with him", which always makes people feel better about themselves.

I heard things from the mom that I just hate to hear. Not only was she yelling at her son, but she was yelling at whoever she was on the phone with, as well. I heard that the whoever was on the phone was "incredibly selfish" and was "ruining Christmas".

I was surprised, in that way that you're not surprised at all, when the mother bought for her 14 year-old child a $500 cell phone. I was similarly surprised that my prediction of behavior and attitude came true when I saw them get out of the poorly parked Suburban.

The trip ended when the 5 year0old ran out of the store only to be chased by the 14 year-old and told he was being a spoiled brat. I thought to myself that we tend to ape the behavior we see most often.

Why are these other parents the biggest challenge facing parents today? Because these are the kids my children will spend their day with. Like I said, we tend to ape the behavior we see most often and I fear the day when my kids spend more time with these kids than with me. I can model appropriate behavior for my child until I'm blue in the face, but if I haven't instilled a sense of individuality, courage and humility then it may all be for naught.

I'm bleeding Sivler and Blue today.

2008-01-14T12:11:00.003-08:00

I was awake for almost an hour before I remembered that my heart is broken.

Finals, finally.

2008-01-11T07:45:00.000-08:00

I teach a class that is only a semester long, which means I get to teach the same thing twice a year. So the time has come for my kids to present their final speeches. They are persuasive speeches designed to make the audience change their beliefs on a fundamental level. So far I've had kids tell me that meat is murder, illegal aliens should be rounded up and shipped back to Mexico (usually with several children of illegals in the classroom) and I've even had a kid come out of the closet. My how times have changed.

Since it takes so long to do speeches we started last week and will finish up on the 14th, leaving the actual finals day open. That's when I'm going to show the Charlie Chaplin film The Gold Rush to all my classes.

I had to make the movie relate, somehow, to communications, so I went the non-verbal communication route. Nothing more non-verbal than a silent movie. My kids are not looking forward to the movie, but I told them that I wasn't looking forward to the movie the first time I saw it, either. Now The Gold Rush is one of my all-time favorites.

I hope some of the kids give it a chance.

Back to School

2008-01-07T07:36:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not Rodney Dangerfield, I'm Mr. Rugen
and I am now back at school. When I worked in
television I never took two consecutive weeks off
work, unless I was unemployed. As a teacher I
took a full week off for Thanksgiving and one
month later I took two weeks off for Christmas. Like I said earlier, this is the time of year that it really pays to be a teacher.

Being a teacher is strange, though. I didn't expect it to be so much like the real world. There are teachers that don't give a crap about anything and are just there for the paycheck (which in itself is strange considering the salary) and there are teachers that love what they do and put 100% effort into every day. I get discouraged when I walk the halls and see teachers dressed in sweat pants complaining about the school while students pass by and hear them.

So anyway, being a teacher is just like being anything else, except for some reason people expect you to be okay with making less money.

Clubs and some such.

2007-12-06T06:30:00.000-08:00

Being a first year teacher has many challenges. Mostly, no one thinks you're going to be able to last. But there are others. When you're the new guy at a school, new teacher or not, you get the short end of the stick. You don't get your own classroom so you have to float, you have a crappy computer, you don't get the computer lab when you request it, you get the lunch period that dissects your fourth period class rather than the lunch before or after fourth period and most of all when a bunch of kids want to start a club featuring games like Risk, Stratego and Chess, guess who they ask to sponsor it.

So far I've managed to escape most of those traps. I have my own room, for the most part. I have a good computer, I am one of a few teachers with a flat screen monitor and I have the computer lab all to myself for four of the last five days of school prior to Christmas break. However, I have B lunch, which sucks, and I am the sponsor of the brand new Strategy Club.

Once a week I sit in a classroom that isn't my own and listen to a bunch of kids play Risk and try to cuss without my hearing it. Good fun, right? Tonight is our kickoff party, which means I get to sit in a room, thankfully my own, for four hours while kids that I haven't even met yet eat pizza, play Risk and don't care if I hear them cuss or not. At least I'll get ahead on my lesson plans tonight.

Strategy Club, it's not just for nerds, it's also for people that want free pizza.

Resumes, Cover Letters, Job Interviews. What is this, the real world?

2007-12-03T14:37:00.000-08:00

I am beginning to figure out that most people in the school system do not consider what I teach to be very important. A kid needs TAKS tutoring? Pull him out of Comm Apps. A kid needs to see a principal? Comm Apps, again. Just about anytime a kid needs to be somewhere other than class they get pulled from mine. I, on the other hand, consider my class invaluable to high school students.

What's more important than learning how to talk to people, learning how to evaluate communication situations or how to communicate in a business setting? Those are all great skills to have and having them as a high school student gives the kids an edge in life.

The most important part of my class, though, is the section I am currently teaching. How to fill out a job application, write a resume, write a cover letter and interview for a job. Can you imagine a better skill for a high school student looking for that summer job? When my kids leave school for the summer they are going to be armed with a resume, cover letter and the skills to impress during their job interview. That's huge. I wish I had something like that when I was a kid.

I'm starting to see my job as preparation for the real world. I know that you need to know literature, math and science in order to be well-rounded, but I feel what I'm doing is much more essential to the overall success a child experiences later in life. One kid said, "Mr. Rugen when I get a job as CEO of GE I'm going to send you a thank you note for helping fill out the application." It's good to shoot for the stars.

Sneaky Teaching

2007-11-27T07:23:00.000-08:00

Today my kids my kids think I've given them a free day. That couldn't be any further from the truth. After teaching a lesson on the art of conversation yesterday I decided today might be a good opportunity to test their knowledge on the subject.

I started my first period class by giving the kids an option. They could do a reading activity, where they answer questions about a certain section of their textbook as they read that section, or they could have a free day. Of course they overwhelmingly picked the free day. Before the free day began, though, I required them to write a journal about five small talk topics and five scenarios in which those conversations could occur. When they were done with the journal they could spend the rest of the day quietly talking.

I walked around the classroom as the kids wrote their topics and scenarios to see what kind of stuff they were writing. I found, as I knew I would, that the conversations occurring during the "free-time" closely resemble the small talk topics and scenarios written by my students. Thus, once again, the students learn on their own with me only facilitating the process.

Tomorrow we're going to play vocabulary catch where each person throws my nerf style soccer ball to another person and gets to ask that student to define a word, any word.

Teaching be all crazy.

By the way, some of my kids told me that they added one of my quotes from yesterday to their MySpace page. Here's the quote:
People are valuable. They're more than just extras in movie that is your life. Treat them that way.
- Mr. Rugen

Not a Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

This Thanksgiving I am hosting 16 people at my home. I am cooking a 20 pound bird, a broccoli-rice casserole, a sweet potato casserole, fresh green beans with orange zest and bacon, homemade mashed potatoes, three dozen dinner roles and a pan of fudge. Others are bringing a ham, cornbread stuffing, chocolate cake, cookies and various other festive dishes. Why am I not happy? These pictures should explain:

Those are the four wisdom teeth the doctor pulled out of my head on Monday.
Here's the one that caused me so much pain I'm working on a full-fledged Vicodin addiction:

On Monday I asked the nurse if I was going to be able to enjoy my Thanksgiving dinner. She said sure, through a straw. I didn't laugh.

So this Thursday when you're enjoying a great big thanksgiving dinner and watching the Cowboys pummel the Jets think of the most unselfish man you know, Mr. Rugen, the guy who cooked a meal for 16 people and enjoyed not a single bite.

Screw everyone.

The benefit of being a teacher.

2007-11-19T08:16:00.000-08:00

Today is the Monday before Thanksgiving. If I still worked in TV I'd be working today. If I still worked in TV I'd be working everyday this week. Instead I'm sitting at home today, getting psyched up for my dentist's appointment later today.

"This is the time of year that it really pays to be a teacher" my wife told me the other day. She is right. It's the most fulfilling job I've ever done and it has great benefits. Not only is the insurance awesome, I'm paying a little over $200 to get four wisdom teeth pulled, but the time off can't be beat. A week at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, a week at spring break and two solid months over the summer. That's nice. I say it's only two months during the summer because teachers spend quite a bit of time over the summer at different training seminars and what not.

This summer I'm going to spend ten days at two different trainings. The first is for a program called AVID, which stands for Achievement Via Individual Determination. AVID is a program that takes kids that fall right in the middle of achievement and could, with a little help, go to college and be quite successful. The second training is for a class called Teen Leadership. It's a class where kids talk about the problems facing teens and how to overcome them. Both are very worthwhile and both are the reason I became a teacher, to inspire kids like me that receive very little attention because they're neither special ed nor gifted and talented.

Wish me luck on my dentist appointment. I hope I get good painkillers. I hate pain.

Freshmen and Seniors

2007-11-13T08:10:00.000-08:00

As a communications teacher I get a wide variety of students in my classes. In one class I could have 20 freshmen, 10 seniors and 10 sophomores. In another class there could be 5 freshmen, 10 seniors, 5 sophomores and a junior. The trouble I find with this is keeping things level for all students.
A freshmen is much more immature than a senior. Most seniors only need to hear things once while I have to tell a freshmen the same thing over and over again. I have yet to give a test where at least one freshmen hasn't come into class on test day and say, in despair, "We have a test today?" my usual reply is "what do you think we were reviewing for yesterday?". Sarcsm doesn't help, but it makes me feel better.
The freshmen are called everything but stupid by the seniors in class. The sarcasm I dish out at the "we have a test today question" is nothing compared to what the seniors give. During notes if I have to wait for a freshmen to finish writing notes before moving on it's the seniors that give the big, sarcastic sighs and often times will tell me to just move on. I won't do it, but don't think it hasn't crossed my mind.
Overall I would say that many freshmen are still playing to their invisible audience. They tend to see themselves as the star of a great big movie about their lives. The idolize Youtube stars and MTV shows like "The Hills" while the seniors are thinking about college or getting a job after high school.
The funniest part of the whole mess is that those seniors were the same way only 3 short years ago. They're giving the same harassment they once got and don't seem to realize it. I remind them quite often but they respond with "Mr. Rugen, I was never that bad." I'll find out in 3 years if that's true or not.

Vocabulary

2007-11-09T06:46:00.001-08:00

Should a freshman in high school know what conscientious means? Maybe. Should they know what stable means? Probably. Should they know what blunt means? Abso-freakin-lutely.

I recently gave my students a survey over their communication style. They could be steady style (a word they didn't know), influencing style (another word they didn't know), dominant style (a word they knew but misused) or conscientious style (a word I didn't really expect them to know.) The survey was brutal. Not only did they have to know the words that described the style they also had to know the words surveyed in order to determine their style.

Polished. Receptive. Determined. Forceful. Cordial. They didn't know any of them. The degree to which they mis-pronounced the word "cordial" cannot be measured with existing technology.

I still love them, but they really need to get a dictionary.

My Favorite Class

2007-10-23T20:26:00.000-07:00

The end of the first nine week period is coming to an end soon. I wanted to blog more this year but, as I am finding out, finding the time to get things done for class often takes priority over what I want to do for myself.
Something happened a few weeks ago that I wanted to blog about but I just haven't had the time until now, if you count staying up past my bedtime as "time".
I asked my kids to prepare some impromptu speeches taken from a list of topics. Things like "My favorite movie" or "my favorite childhood memory". I've found these types of exercises to be a lot of fun because I get to know the kids a little better and the kids get to talk about themselves with everyone else forced to listen. A lot of kids talked about the latest rap song that will soon go away by a guy named "Souldja Boy". Some talked about their favorite movie, which was "Blood in Blood Out" for the Hispanic wannabe gang members and "Menace 2 Society" for the wanna be black gang members. That was all quite a bit of fun.
In my last class of the day I have a girl who talks incessantly in class about everything but Communications. She talks to her friends. When I move her she makes new friends. When I move her next to my desk she talks to me. It would be frustrating if she were a distraction, but for some reason it doesn't bother me or the other kids. When it's time to be quiet she manages to stay relatively quiet and pay attention and when it's time to talk she gives every kid in class a lesson on how it's done. She's definitely a favorite student.
What was really touching was when she stood up to give her speech. A lot of kids said that my class was their favorite class, but they didn't give very good reasons other than it's easy or we get to talk about stuff. Miss Super Talker 16 in my 7th period class also said that my class was her favorite, but the reason why really took me by surprise. "In this class it's like our opinions really matter," she said, "when I come in here it feels like it's My class, not just Communications class."
She got an A.

The one two punch

2007-09-12T17:23:00.000-07:00

I probably shouldn't talk about punching in my blog about being a first-year teacher, but I definitely felt like punching something today. Luckily my seventh period class came to the rescue.

When you're teaching High School kids you have a certain expectation of maturity. Nothing like what you expect but never find in the corporate world, but maturity none-the-less. I did not find that maturity in most of my classes today. By fifth period I had had it with the incessant talking and misbehaving. I finally took my biggest offender out into the hall and told him, point blank, "my class is not a class about Dustin. It's about every person in that room. When you refuse to follow the rules I'm forced to stop class and focus on you, ignoring every other student in the class." I then told "Dustin" to leave and think real hard if he wanted to come back to my class tomorrow. Within the hour his name was removed from my online class roster.

After the confrontation I told my team teacher that I could really stand to get out of the classroom and take care of some administrative stuff during sixth period. I was glad to find out that the problem wasn't me, as my team teacher, "Kelly", had problems with sixth period and had given out a detention by the time I returned. The trouble child in that class was also removed from the roster by days end. It's good to have support from administration.

By the time I got to my seventh period class, which is in a room different from my normal classroom, I was mentally drained and didn't know how I would get through class. The kids could sense as they walked in the door that I was pretty upset. They sat down quietly and began asking "are you okay, Mr. Rugen?" to which I replied, "I'm fine, I just need things to go well right now." Without a word the kids began running class themselves. They came up and told me who was absent and my class leader, "Lonnie", started getting everyone organized to give their speeches for the day. Before I knew it not only was every kid in the class engaged and actively participating in class, but I found myself, as drained as I was, drawn into their energy and teaching a class that was both informative and fun.

The thing that ended my day with me, once again, walking on a cloud was when one of the quietest kids in class stood up to give his impromptu speech. It was about his favorite class. Seventh period speech.

I have yet ot end a day as a teacher without being surprised at the maturity a teenager can have when he chooses.

Colors...Colors

2007-09-02T08:20:00.000-07:00

I have found that over the first week of my teaching experience colors are very important. Educators call them Sub-Pops. My particular school is 60% white and then an even split of brown and black. We've also got a few yellows and one red (native American). I've become very aware of certain sub-pops. The reason being that my school was only a few minority students away from being a recognized campus according to the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) test guidelines. Now, I don't want to place all of my emphasis on the TAKS test but it is very important that you receive a good rating because if you don't the government will cut your funding. Now, this is my first year as a teacher, but I've been around teachers and schools for the majority of my adult life and I have learned two very important things.
1. Teachers don't like standardized testing. It's too removed from the situation. Too many kids that don't speak English have to take the test, in English.
2. The very worst thing you can do to a struggling school is cut it's funding. It's hard to teach struggling kids, I don't think anyone would argue with that. It's even harder when you can't copy worksheets because there's no paper.

But white, brown, black, yellow and red aren't the colors I wanted to talk about. Well, red and white are two of the colors. My school, located in a moderately wealthy district in a suburb outside Dallas, Texas sure does have a lot of gang members. One black gang wears red, the Hispanic gang wears white and the other black gang wears blue. If they could ever join forces they'd be the most patriotic gang in history. Don't these kids realize they're one step away from shopping at Abercrombie and Fitch? Seriously. This is a wealthy suburb of a wealthy city. When you're getting ready to start your gang fight you pass by no less then seven Starbucks. The local mall has a Baby Gap, a Gap Kids and a plain old Gap and you probably got your "gang" t-shirt there. The local Cheesecake Factory is to die for, but that doesn't justify your paintball gun drive-by. I have had minor confrontation with several of these kids, and they're about as scary as Tinkie Winkie petting a fluffy kitten named Snowball.

I have three gang kids in one class. On Friday two of the kids skipped leaving just one lone gang kid. The change was amazing. Suddenly, with the other two out of the room, my final gang kid was engaged, interested and willfully participating in class discussion. It was like night and day. As a teacher seeing that kind of turn around means a lot, even though he'll probably be back to his old tricks next week.

I have a threesome of kids in another class who were stepping dangerously close to the line with their behavior. My team teacher finally told them that if they couldn't stop talking they would be serving multiple detentions. The kid in the middle asked if he could move away from the others in order to avoid the detention. That's my kind of maturity. Later in the class period I asked the mature one if he'd like to move to a recently vacated seat at the front of the class. He was happy to oblige.

Even though I've got some kids that think they're tough, it's days like Friday that remind me that they're all just kids. They've got a long way to go and I'm very happy to be part of their lives.

New Teacher Training to the First Day of School

2007-08-27T18:14:00.000-07:00

I found my teacher training to actually be pretty fun. You got to be a little goofy while simultaneously making fun of the elementary school teachers that REALLY love this goofy stuff. You also got neat little bags full of school supplies. That really had me reminiscing to my childhood. I love a nice new set of school supplies. It's all the tools you need to create something anywhere from remarkable to hateful. School supplies are the tools and it's going to be my job to inspire the remarkable.

I have a tendency to be pretty romantic when I talk about teaching. The other teachers are starting to sense it a little. The older ones are telling me to just wait, I'll lose that sparkle, while the all of the new teachers are feeding off each other's excitement. I held that excitement until the first day of school, whether or not I would retain it following the first day was pretty up in the air.

The first day of school came and went, like many said it would, at warp speed. There were syllabuses to discuss. Rules and procedures to explain. Names to learn, yes, I'll be learning upwards of 150 names over the next few days. There was a lot going on and things started off pretty smooth, until 4th period. My fourth period class had me as the lead teacher with a coach in to assist with classroom management and a role of almost 50 kids. This is my first time to ever be in a public school classroom and I've got 50 kids staring at me with at least one confirmed gang member and several of his buddies giving me a go to hell look. Things got pretty bad, until my mentor teacher showed up to save the day. There was no way I was going to lead teach a class of 50 kids my first time out. Thank goodness there was a schedule change available to save me from that class. That may have been the first time in my life I've been in over my head. I knew it from the moment the bell rang, and I'm afraid the kids knew it as well.

After that I decided I'd better kick some tail the rest of the day or else the stink of inadequacy would follow me home. 5th, 6th and 7th period was a dream. Great kids that were willing to listen. I quickly established a culture that it was the kid who is "to Kool for Skool" that will be the outcast in my classes. Suddenly it became cool to answer questions and offer opinions and the "cool" guys quickly jumped into the game. One of my biggest contributors of the day decided to play the "no ingles" game for the first part of 5th period. I ignored his many claims that he didn't speak the language and soon he was offering his own thoughts on the subject of respect in the classroom and what kind of jobs require good communication skills.

The biggest lesson I learned today, and as a teacher I am ALWAYS learning, was that in order to command respect in my classrooms I have to treat the classroom as a community. It has it's jokers, it's kings and it's criminals, but they all need to have a sense of ownership. "After all", I told each class, "it's your education. I'm just here to help you find it".

Year One: Day One

2007-07-26T17:59:00.000-07:00

I guess I found out I was going to be a teacher pretty much like everyone else does.

I was driving to the place I was previously employed, talking on the phone to my old boss. He was telling me what a great reference he gave me to my future ISD and that he was glad to fill out another reference form to another ISD. While the old Boss decided to get a little chatty I heard my call waiting chime in and knew it was a principal calling to tell me either they didn't want to employ me or that they wanted to employ me. So at this time I'm driving down the road, talking on my cellphone while another call is ringing in that I care about more but can't answer because I don't want to be rude. While that's going on my 6 year old daughter and 16 month old son are in the back seat playing my daughter's favorite game: Mess with Jack until he either starts screaming in frustration or crying. If they ever decide to make that game an olympic sport there is no question my daughter will bring home the gold, especially now that communism is all but dead.

Anyway, about the time I get off the phone with the person who is easily my favorite former boss I get the familiar sound of hard core gangster rap coming from my phone indicating that I've recently received a voice mail. I thought about changing the sound of my voice mail indicator, but to me that hard core gangster rap lets people know that I mean business bout my mobile communications, so they better come correct. It's my future vice-Principal leaving a very simple message. "Call me, we need to talk." That always means that I have somehow failed to hold up to my end of the marriage bargain. It's never anything so sinister as infidelity or physical abuse, but it most certainly can involve my failure to mow the yard regularly or my ability to completely ignore any and all dishwashers containing clean dishes.

I don't have the correct number for her in my cellphone. She called from one number and wanted me to call back at another number, so it's time to pull off my favorite all-time driving maneuver: Driving while listening to a phone number and writing it down. Some people can accomplish this feat with hardly a swerve of the vehicle, as a matter of fact, our real estate agent filled out our entire buyers contract on a house while driving his Lincoln Towncar and eating a plate of spaghetti, but for me this maneuver almost always ends in loss of life. As I'm attempting to complete this feat without taking another life I hear my wife's calm, yet stern voice in my head. "Why don't you just pull over and write the number down?" She's pretty smart.

So I make the call. You have to understand that I started working towards becoming a teacher in March and it's now July 23 and I haven't gotten a single call about a teaching job and I've recently been told that jobs in my subject area are extremely difficult to come by. I'm really starting to feel the pressure. I've only been working part-time all summer in order to have the time to pursue teaching and it's getting crunch time. I know it's noble to be a teacher and that's one of the reasons I want to do it, but I've got to put food on the table, as well. Part-time Avid editors can make pretty good money, but not enough to justify $800 a month in daycare. As my future vice-Principal starts talking my body goes pretty much numb, which is bad because I'm back on the road now. She gets to the point pretty quickly, though. "We'd like to offer you the position in our speech department if you're still willing to accept". I played it real cool. I said no. then I realized that was probably a little too cool, so I said yes.

So now it's off to new teacher training. I've heard horror stories of "get to know you" activities and trust building exercises. Oh well, teaching is what I want to do and, like all things in life, I'll have to take the bad with the good.