On Friday my 4th period class was officially crowned the champions of this year’s class competition for our fundraiser benefiting the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Their class raised $700 and won the right to shave my head during class on Friday…here’s how it went down.

In phase one you can see that I started with a nice head of hair. I had been working on this particular harvest of hair since March and was feeling pretty good about it. I had my combing gelling methods down to an art and then 4th period had to ruin it.

In phase two, or half time, you can see that my hair started to resemble a dog with mange. While this group of students did earn style points for my half time do, they did manage to make me look at terrible as possible…on a side note, notice my smile is starting to fade.

In past years I never really gave much thought to being bald after this fundraiser and even thought that it was a “good look” for me to sport for a short time. However, this year the fluorescent of my head after a long track season has made me realize that this is and never will be a good look for me. I am very much ready for my hair to grow back so that my doom can go back into hiding.

Mr. McClung

Jack White, often credited as Jack White III, is an American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, multi-instrumentalist and occasional actor. He was best known as the guitarist, pianist and lead vocalist of The White Stripes until they split in February 2011, as well as a member of The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather.
He is ranked No. 70 on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. White’s popular and critical success with The White Stripes enabled him to collaborate as a solo artist with other renowned musicians, such as Beck, The Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck, Alicia Keys, Bob Dylan, Electric Six, Insane Clown Posse, and Loretta Lynn, whose 2004 album Van Lear Rose he produced and performed on. In 2006, White became a founding member of the rock band The Raconteurs. In 2009, he became a founding member and drummer of his third commercially successful group, The Dead Weather. He was awarded the title of “Nashville Music City Ambassador” by the Nashville mayor Karl Dean in 2011. White released his debut solo album Blunderbuss on April 24, 2012. You can hear the song “I’m Shakin’” from that album by clicking on the player below.

Mr. McClung

I felt like it was important to write a finale blog post giving proper thanks to all those that have helped us reach the total of $1,645 that has been donated to Susan G. Komen for The Cure. Although we did not meet our goal of $2,500 but it is still an incredible amount of money and I am very grateful for all of the help. So after a long fundraising effort and watching class totals raise, we need to recognize our parents, relatives, students, and friends that have helped us reach our fundraising goal:

Adam Moody
Austin Bittinger
Betty Pendleton
Breeland Bryant
Cameron Churchill
Carly Page
Carter Hoffman
Chase Arnold
Cora Watson
Giovanni Becerra
Heather Spaine
Jack Norys
John Mark Otten
Jordan Pilkington
Junior Quiroz
Katherine Litaker
Leslie Roye
Maddie Burks
Mason Martin
Max Hendrycy
Michael Paschal
Rick & Maggie Ternes
Brandy Veteto
Laura Lindsey
Jack Lindsey
Mate Schumacher
Patrick Sugrue
Amandra Sugrue
Ryan Davis
Sarah Barnes
Seth Keller
Tarron Fields
Garrett Owens
Turner Hurley
Tyler Davis
Jesse Cox
Wendy Martin…Mason’s mom

When I first decided to follow through with this fundraiser, I was a little bit hesitant about it because I was unsure of what type of support I would receive from parents. However, I had no reason to worry at all because my students parents responded in an impressive way. Thank you to all the parents involved.

Putting all the head shaving and all the games that we have associated with this fundraiser, at the end of the day the most important thing is that were were able to raise $1,645 for an organization that is very deserving and I am so proud of the positive response I received from parents, students, teachers, friends and everyone else involved in this process…and the fact that we were able to raise that much money is pretty awesome, and I have to give thanks to Jarrod Lamshed for motivating me to follow through with this whole experience.

So once again, thank you to everyone involved.

Mr. McClung

Mr. McClung

Lesson One – Ridiculously Photogenic Guy

A few weeks back I ran my 2nd half marathon ever…while I am not fast at all, I was proud of my performance that day. Right about that time I had a student telling me that I looked like this photogenic guy that has been on the news lately. At the time I didn’t pay this much attention until I saw him and realized that this student must suffer from extreme vision impairment. Apparently this guy has been all over the guys because he has an incredible ability to run and still pretty much look like the man…a trait very few have. I now fully understand how hard it is to look as good as he does while running when I received the proofs back from the photographer that was working my particular half marathon. Upon sharing the pictures with my wife her immediate response was “you look like death”…which I did not take offense to, because I second the motion myself.

Lesson Two – Black Out

Friday is the culmination of our month long fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen Foundation and it will conclude with my winning class getting the opportunity to shave my head. To celebrate this event I am asking my students to wear their matching race for the cure shirts tomorrow for our second annual “black out”. The idea is that the kids how up to school in our black t-shirts and raise awareness for the effort we are putting in with this fundraiser…there will be plenty of updates to come.

Lesson Three – Boozehounds

For the majority of the week we have been discussing the topic of booze…specifically we have been discussing the prohibition movement in the early 1900′s and how government still controls alcohol consumption to some extent in our present day. Today we will continue this conversation by discussing the wet v. dry county debate.

Mr. McClung

As we continue our conversations about prohibition and the current day configuration we have with wet and dry counties in Arkansas, we will discuss a study that was conducted by the University of Arkansas over the economic value liquor sales would have in Benton County.

Mr. McClung

Watch Roots of PROHIBITION A Nation of Drunkards on PBS. See more from Ken Burns.

Today in class we will be discussing the prohibition and temperance movement that took place in the US in the early 1900′s. To guide our conversations we will be using a PBS program about prohibition to help lead our discussions. We will talk about both the pros and cons of this movement and whether or not the the US government create more trouble by banning alcohol.

Mr. McClung

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. is an American indie-pop band from Detroit consisting of Daniel Zott and Joshua Epstein. Zott and Epstein met each other while playing in other Detroit music projects and began recording in Zott’s basement in Royal Oak, MI. The group is known for high energy live performances and for placing harmonic vocals over electronic and organic instruments. You can hear their song “Simple Girl” by clicking on the player below.

Mr. McClung

Lesson One – The McClungs are Coming…

Consider yourself notified, the McClungs will be here on May 18th. If you do not know what they are, ask around and act like you know.

Lesson Two – One Man Relay Team

This is Blake. He has been recognized several times this year as being an excellent thrower. However, at our conference track meet he was recognized for something totally different. He did win the shot put event, but when it came time to receive his metal he received a first place metal for the girls 4×800 team. Which raises many questions in mind…how did he do the entire relay by himself? How did he manage to beat the other relay teams on his own? Why would anyone ever confuse him as a girl…or as a team of girls? Nevertheless, he has been crowned champion of women’s distance relays. Congratulations Blake.

Lesson Three – One Week

With only one week left in our fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, I am pushing my students harder than ever. Despite getting off to a slow start we are nearly half way to our goal of $2,500. I’m hoping that things continue to heat up as we come down the final stretch and hopefully we will make it 3 years in a row to hit our desired goal. Stay tuned.

Mr. McClung

Today in class we will be using an interactive map that is produced by PBS that discusses the banishment of African Americans starting in the post-civil war era and the effect that it has had on our current population today. To visit the website click here.

Mr. McClung

Today we will be discussing North Korea and an athletic partiicpation rule in Michigan for this week’s edition of Three Two Things Thursday.

Mr. McClung

…for t-shirt orders. The proof of the shirt design can be seen above, if you would like to order one make sure to do so by the end of the day today.

Mr. McClung

Today in AVID we will be using a website put on the College Board called Big Future. This website helps students find information about a college’s admission standards and basic information. We will be using this website as we conduct research on perspective colleges.

Mr. McClung

Esperanza Spalding (born October 18, 1984) is an American multi-instrumentalist best known as a jazz bassist and singer, who draws upon many genres in her own compositions. In 2011, she won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist at the 53rd Grammy Awards, making her the first jazz artist to win the award. You can hear her song “Radio Song” by clicking on the player below.

Mr. McClung

Lesson One – Three Cheers for Testing

It’s over, thank God it’s finally over. This week in the state of Arkansas schools across the state took part in the madness that is benchmark testing. For four days we subjected our students to mind numbing testing in the hopes that when the scores come back that our school will be seen as adequate. The system has never made since to me at all, we take a test that is designed and graded by individuals that have likely never been to our school, but we rely on them to tell us if we are doing a good job or not. Makes about as much sense as a basketball cleat. It’s a terrible system, I hate it, and I wish we could find a better method of assessment that is more accurate and doesn’t pound our students into submission through four days of pointless testing.

Lesson Two – That’s Embarrassing…

Going into this spring I had really high hopes for our annual fundraiser for Susan G. Komen Foundation…however, we are currently falling short on our goal of fundraising. For some reason or another this year has not been as successful as years past. However, there is good news. We do still have two weeks left in order to meet our goal, but it’s going to take a lot of work. Today I want to challenge my students to donate as much as possible to this worthy cause.

Lesson Three – Picture Day

Jealous?

It’s back again, next Friday we will be taking our spring pictures here at Woodland. Picture day is a very polarizing topic, either you really had picture day or you enjoy the entire process of getting dressed up nice and posing for a picture and awaiting the the proofs to come back. At the risk of sounding even more cynical in this blog post, I would say that I am not a fan of school pictures…especially at the age that I teach. 8th grade is a very awkward stage in your life and keeping documentation of how awkward that stage is seem a bit unnecessary to me. Nevertheless, we will continue to have them and the cycle will continue.

Mr. McClung

Mr. McClung

After a long week of testing, I think it’s appropriate to sail into the weekend with a Friday edition of Three Things Thursday.

Mr. McClung

In class today my students took the 1965 Alabama literacy test for voting. At the time of taking the test my students were not aware that what they were taking was a literacy test for voting but after they found out they were very surprised to find out that people were subjected to such a test to simply vote. The slide show is the 10 question sample test that my students took today…how smart are you?

Mr. McClung