Words from a Teacher's Past: 1995-96

The academic year 1995-96 was my final full year of public-school teaching. I retired from the Harmon Middle School (Aurora, Ohio) in January 1997. The other day I came across the vocabulary list I used that final full year and decided it would be fun--for me, if not for you!--to write some silly poems with all of those words, two per day.

As it says at the bottom of the list, all of the words came from the reading we would do during the year, and a lot of them were from The Call of the Wild, which we read the final marking period.

Anyway, here we go ... with a little introductory ditty first ...

“Words, words, words.”

—    Hamlet (2.2)

A List and a Trip

And now a different kind of trip—

Not places, no, but words.

But not a dictionary jaunt—

Where words appear in herds!

No, this is through a certain list—

A list I used in class—

Mid-90s as I cruised along

Throughout that year—my last.

My 8^th grade students learned these words

In that, my final year.

So lets review them all again—

We’ll do it all right here!