Straight Up Scholar.

Yesterday I had the blessed opportunity to enhance my knowledge of classroom management theories... aka: cram for my midterm. The really fun (aka: not fun) thing about the class is that it's chock full of theorists with strange names and their corresponding theories full of letters and numbers.

The three C's of discipline? The 4 dimensions of motivation? The 8 Z's of detention? Gotta know them all. (except the last one. i made it up.)

You should know that I am an extremely visual person. It gets out of hand sometimes.


I have to come up with an extremely unusual image or phrase to remember anything. It is both ridiculous and extremely enjoyable.

For example:

Remembering that Spencer Kagan developed the theory of "Win-Win Discipline" is cake when you realize that keggin' (kagan) is never a win-win.

Remembering that Thomas Gordon wrote "Discipline as Self-Control" is a no-brainer when you remember that Gordon sounds like gordo and gordo means fat in Spanish and then picture a fat person eating a donut with no self-control.

Lee and Marlene Carter's "Assertive Discipline" model is almost so easy it hurts. All you have to do is picture two elderly women named Lee and Marlene who are the assertive bullies in the nursing home. I mean, they steal pudding cups left and right, they push down people with canes, they race each other in wheelchairs. Dang Lee and Marlene. So assertive, I tell ya.

And grouping the theories by category is pretty simple too, especially when you remember that Dreikers and Albert took off their Glassers (glasses) and ditched their Nelson's custard to go Kagan (keggin') with Curwin. And Carter Skinnered a Bear, drank a Jones soda, and then went shopping at Marshall's. The imagery is both beautiful and unforgettable.

When there is a list of things to remember, I usually try to create something out of the letters. I faced some difficulty with the letters V, A, D and T (visibility, accessibility, distractability and traffic flow) until I realized that if you said it, it sounded like Vade-Teh, which is practically Vader, so I just drew Darth Vader on my paper. For studying purposes, you know.

And then I came across Friendliness, Attitude, Listening, and Compliments, which makes FALC, which is so close to millenium FALCon that the rest of the Star Wars memory aids practically wrote themselves.

It was a great afternoon of studying. I felt slightly insane.

But when I opened that test, I remembered every last thing!! A+

Being a weirdo works out sometimes.