On the Loose

I went shopping with a friend from work yesterday. We needed to pick up some snacks for a few upcoming club meetings and other school activities so we headed to the big warehouse store not far from our school. At 1:30 on a Friday afternoon, the place was packed. "Who are all these people?" I wondered aloud as we entered the parking lot.

"It's lunch time," my friend reminded me.

Such a detail is easy to overlook when you have eaten lunch at 10:35 for the last 20 years. My job usually keeps me in my classroom or at my desk, and so it can be disorienting when I leave our massive bunker-like building in the middle of the day, much like being in a different setting with someone you have known primarily at work.

I was trolling the parking lot for a space, any space, when to our right we saw someone leaning over to load his car. As I slowed to see how much more stuff he had and whether it was worth waiting for his spot, my friend shouted out, "Hey! I can see your back AND your crack!" and although her remark was accurate, I was appalled. She laughed uproariously as I zoomed away.

"Hmmm. Maybe not such a good idea." I said.

"I know, right? He totally shouldn't have worn that!" she laughed.

"Oh no," I told her, "I meant you and me shopping together!"

At Least She Asked

I've been teaching sixth grade a long time, and every year the kids really enjoy writing fictional short stories. We use the writing process: they plan, compose, confer, and revise until their pieces are as polished as possible. Today I had the following conversation with a student as she worked on her first draft:

Student: Will you read this part of my story and tell me if it's okay?

Me (regarding the look on her face with a bit of concern): Sure.

We hold hands as we get to his house.  He tells me to come to his house, and I follow him to his room.  We have a lot of fun and then we fall asleep in his bed.

Me (with eyebrows raised quite high): If you're asking me if it's appropriate for the characters in your story to have sex, I'm going to have to say no.

Another student (overhearing our conversation): Ewwww! Who wants to read that?

First student: Fine! I'll change it.

In the interest of engaging them in writing they really care about, I give my students a lot of freedom, choice, and leeway when it comes to topic and content, and to be honest, there have certainly been times when I have had to address inappropriate themes and action, but that was definitely a first.

Raising Awareness

Five kids came up to me today to ask if I had ever heard of Joseph Kony. When the first student asked, the name sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it.

"Is he on the other sixth grade team?" I frowned.

"No!" my student answered with barely veiled frustration. "He's this really bad guy in Africa."

My confusion must have been obvious. This was not a student I would ordinarily expect to show an interest in international issues. "Just YouTube it," he told me, "and I'll talk to you tomorrow."

Variations of this scene played out over the course of the day ending with a couple of former students stopping by after the bell. "I know, I know," I said. I promise I'll watch it tonight."

"Good!" one girl told me, "because we want to do something! I'll come talk to you in the morning."

Perhaps many of my readers are already aware of what these kids were talking about. There is a 29 minute video that has gone viral on all the social networks about Ugandan rebel Joseph Kony whose group, the LRS (Lord's Resistance Army) has been kidnapping children for the last 25 years to fight the government. Once I looked it up, I realized that I had indeed heard of him and his atrocities many times over the years.

As I told my students I would, I watched the film tonight, and I too was moved by its message-- I highly recommend it to all-- but more than that, I was impressed by the kids who really got it, enough so that they wanted to do something, and honored that they came to me for help.

Take a look for yourself if you haven't already: Kony 2012. You won't be sorry.

I Asked For It

My students are writing fiction and over the last couple of days they have been experimenting with techniques to develop their characters. As a starting point, we use a list of strategies from Nancie Atwell's Lessons That Change Writers. She suggests Reflection, Dialog, Letters and Journal Entries, Action, Reaction, Other Characters, Quirks, Setting, and Beloved Object as ways to reveal important details about the character to your reader.

As a mini-lesson, I gave the students three short paragraphs from a fiction piece that I am working on and asked them to identify the strategies I had used to help develop the two characters.

Here's the passage:

It was his grandfather who had taught Ned to ride a bike. One evening after dinner when the sky was that watery blue-before-pink, and Ned could tell that his grandfather was tired— he had been working at the waterfront all day— they went out to the quiet side street and up the gentle hill a little ways from his grandparents’ house.

He loved his grandfather and trusted, him, too, but Ned was scared and put his feet down every time. It was so hard to believe that he and his new blue bike could defy gravity and avoid the hard, cold pavement. “Have faith in yourself, Neddy!” his grandfather told him. “Falling and flying are shipmates. Embrace the sweet fall forward.”

When the fireflies came out, there was only time for one more run. The armpits of his grandfather’s shirt were wet, and the old man was breathing hard, and Ned felt that huge, steady hand on his back pulling away like the gangway from a clipper, and this time he wobbled but stayed upright, finally underway, with a fresh breeze at his back. That night, as he rode away from his grandfather who had eased to a stop and was clapping and laughing in his wake, Ned caught a balance he felt that he would never lose.

The number one comment? The grandfather should use more deodorant.

Totally Worth It

Maybe it's a little sentimental, but since I have spent the last six days replying my proverbial butt off to all my students who are participating in the SOLSC challenge, you'll forgive me if I paused a bit longer at this particular post today:

A Big Slice of Me

Ms.S- your reply to my post from yesterday got me thinking about what is important to me and I see that you're right. My family is very important to me and I don't often think of it like that. I mean, how many people in the world think that I am super special? Almost all of them are my family so they are really important. Lots of people say stuff about how evil someone in their family is, or how they hate a sibling. I may be angry at them sometimes, expecially my little sister, but I could never hate her or anyone else in my family. They make me who I am and I need them.

Yes, family is very imporant to me and they are so special that I have decided to spend a whole slice tellling you about how much I love them- too much to fit in this little tiny post. <3 -abby=")</i">

Love it!

So They Do Listen

As I mentioned, my students are doing their own SOLSC this month. I introduced it last week and they started it on Thursday, but Friday was conference day and so today was my first chance to touch base with them about the first few days. I had some technical notes about the logistics of the challenge and posting to our class website, and I had a few suggestions about the content of their posts as well.

My commitment to them this month is that I will read and reply to every post, every day. It can become consuming to be sure, but to be able to talk to them knowledgeably about the topics they've chosen to write on is invaluable both in terms of writing instruction and relationship building.

Today my advice was mostly to avoid the bed-to-bed narrative that can be so tempting when no idea immediately presents itself. "Pick something and focus on it!" I encouraged them, and over the course of the day, I tried to point out possibilities when I heard them.

In education, immediate gratification is rare. So often we teach our hearts out knowing that our advice and guidance might not kick in for weeks, months, or even years. Still, we understand and hold on to the frequently immeasurable value of our effort.

You can imagine how I laughed tonight when I was reading through today's posts and found the following two:

The Skate Disastor
By Rania

"Does anybody have any comments or questions about The slice of life challenge?" 
I raised my hand up high. "Yes,Rania?" 
"Well can you right about anything that hapenned before?" 
"Yes you can. Do you mean skate night?" 
"Oh yeah."I said outloud. 
Ms. S. gave me a puzzled look. Then began to tell her my story. "So I was at skate night and i was having the time of my life there and the next thing you know I was on the ground because I bumped into this little girl and once I said sorry, she got up and looked at me like I was crazy. My friend Annabella was their to witness what happened and of course she started laughing!" 
"Ok then Rania you could write about what you were saying," Said Ms.S. 
After that I was so excited to write about my skate night discussion with Ms. S.

 My Reading Log
By Adrita

"Okay everybody get your reading logs out, get your English binder out, write down the homework and put your big binder on the floor!" Ms. S. said in one big breath. I grabbed the home made log from my binder, skipped writing down the homework as always. Wait I wasn't supposed to say that, oh well! Ms.S. stared at my reading log.

 "What!" I said breaking out the silence

 "Your reading log, it's so unusual!" She said Then I gave her this whole story on how i lost my reading log.

  "Well I went with Camilla to the um... movies and the log was in my north face pocket all folded up. So when I went to grab popcorn the log had dropped but I never noticed." In all of my explanation she had just said...

 "Well you should write about this for the slice of life challenge!" And here I am writing about it!

THIS STORY MAY BE SLIGHTLY EXAGGERATED!

The Obvious, Child

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and found it nearly impossible to go back to sleep. At my age, like Paul Simon said, I don't expect to sleep through the night, but I don't expect to lay awake for hours, either. For me, there's always a tipping point when I can tell that I might be up a while. It usually happens when specific things I mean to do both at home and at work start seeping into my consciousness. After that, all the meditation and relaxation breathing in the world won't let me drift off.

In our recent economic downtrend, I've often heard it said that one of the bright spots is an increase in worker productivity; companies are able to do much more with fewer employees. While that looks great on the balance book and sounds even better on the stump in this election year, I can't help wonder about the toll it's taking on the human beings involved in all that production. What is the objective?

This year, for the second in a row, my sixth grade students are participating in our own Slice of Life Challenge, and over the last four days, I've noticed a couple of bothersome trends in their posts. The first is boredom. So many of them write about being chronically bored. Ironically, the second is stress. They feel anxious and over-extended.

I don't think the two are unrelated. It's hard to feel engaged in anything with so much hanging over your head.

At least they're sleeping, though.

Pack Animals

Back when our dog was just a puppy, we took her to the dog park almost every single day because we wanted to make sure she was getting enough exercise, especially considering the fact that she stayed home alone most days in our modestly-sized condo. At any rate, the dog park had a social structure of its own. Not only were the dogs trying to decide who was alpha, some of the people seemed engaged in the same kind of contest. After a while though, we were accepted as regular members of the pack. It was rare that we went and didn't know several people, and in a true sign of belonging, almost everyone called our dog by name.

As she grew older, we opted for different forms of exercise, mostly walking, running, or hiking, as well as swimming in the summer, and visiting the dog park became a rare occasion. A few years later, we happened to stop in one evening, maybe because we were in the area, maybe for old time's sake. I guess the relatively short lifespan of dogs accelerates social turnover, because although the place and the culture had not changed, the pack members were all different.

How odd it was to be in such a familiar location and yet treated as a total newcomer. The clear feeling that we would have to find our place in the community all over again was irritating. Frankly, we had other butts to sniff, and as we pushed our way out into the real world, the double gate clanged with finality behind us.

Wrestling

Today was student-led conference day for us. We have a student on the team who has stopped doing most of his work. He seems apathetic, and his effort has declined to nearly nothing. In the conference, the father explained that it was because his son is convinced that the world will end on December 21 of this year. This boy has seen several television documentaries about the Mayan calendar and he is convinced that there is no point in doing anything.

I was not in that particular conference, but I laughed when my colleague shared the story: it seemed so absurd and so easy to dismiss as a rational adult. It wasn't too long though before I remembered how crushing it can be to carry such a burden of fear and hopelessness.

One night, when I was 9 or 10 years old, I overheard the adults talking. Our neighbor, Vlad, was telling a story about a time he wrestled the devil in his motel room.

A man in a business suit knocked on the door and asked to come in. Vlad gestured to the two chairs by the window and offered the man a drink. Over the course of the conversation, it became clear to Vlad who he was speaking to."Go away," he told the man. "I'm stronger than you." That's when the devil laughed and challenged him to a wrestling match. They struggled there in the middle of the room, arms locked, each one's fingers digging into the other's shoulders. It was a draw until the devil pushed him away and disappeared.

The next thing Vlad remembered was waking up in the morning."But I knew it wasn't a dream," he said, "because there were two vodka glasses on the nightstand."

"Time for bed," my mother declared when she saw my wide-eyed stare. She hadn't known I was listening, but who could have failed to be riveted by the image of our burly neighbor physically grappling with the prince of darkness?

That night, I couldn't sleep. I was sure that the devil was going to come visit me, too. The next day, my mother did all she could to reassure me that no matter what he said, Vlad had been dreaming, and I was safe. I tried to believe her, but I felt that fear wrapped around me for weeks, and it seemed like a long time before the persistent love and happiness of my family and friends helped me get out of its hold.

As for our student, we referred him to the counselor, and now that we know what's bothering him, we'll do our best to convince him to at least have a contingency plan, just in case 12/22/12 dawns with all the promise it should for a twelve-year-old boy.

We all wrestle, but fortunately wrestling is a team sport.

Psst... Hey Coach

This morning I heard a piece on the radio about how Virgin Atlantic has hired a "whispering coach" to teach their staff in the "Upper Class" how to speak at between 20 and 30 decibels, a level chosen for both its calming effect and its unlikeliness to disturb other passengers.

I think there might be a place in middle school for such a professional.

Milestones

This blog came about in response to a writing challenge I accepted on a whim. It was March 1, 2009, and The Two Writing Teachers website was hosting their second annual Slice-of-Life Story Challenge. The idea was essentially to write  "a small sliver of your ordinary life. It’s not the whole, but a slice. The only point to it is sharing a piece of your writing every day." That seemed do-able to me, and here's what I wrote:

We're preparing for a big snow storm here. The timing and conditions seem perfect for a day or two off from school-- the snow is supposed to start this afternoon and accumulate 4-8 inches (or more!) throughout the night, the temperature is predicted to stay below freezing all day tomorrow-- not all that common in Virginia. The other teachers I've talked to today are making a point of not getting their hopes up, for fear of not only having to rise before dawn tomorrow, but of doing so with the extra burden of disappointment.

I won't mind going to school tomorrow, but I wouldn't mind an extra day off, either. When I was a little girl, my mother made sally lunn and spiced tea for us when it snowed. Sally lunn is a yeast bread, enriched with eggs and butter, and the tea was mixed with orange juice, sugar, and cinnamon. I have my sally lunn rising in the kitchen right now.

A few things have changed over the last three years. Heidi's vegan, so sally lunn is rarely on the menu. That's kind of a non-issue though, because the forecast for tomorrow is a sunny 70 degrees.

Today I introduced my students to our own second annual Slice-of-Life Story Challenge. Last year I adapted the premise from TWT, and it turned out to be a hit with the kids. My fingers are crossed for another successful season of slicing.

Headin' South

What a day, what a day! Taking a day off is always a treat, but a teacher pays for it on both ends, first by investing the time to make explicit sub plans so that someone else can guide your charges through their educational day, and then by picking up the pieces when you get back: someone's always in trouble; someone's always mad; someone didn't "get" the assignment (be it literally or figuratively), and no one understands why anyone's upset.

As if that wasn't enough, beyond the door of my classroom there are big changes afoot: a new principal for our school, a very large increase in enrollment for the sixth grade, and a new state-mandated teacher evaluation system. To be honest, my school year began with an earthquake, and it's like the ground is still moving.

Still, you have to find fun where you can. An hour after the last bell had rung, a couple of colleagues and I were griping and grappling with the future. We bantered about what opportunity might be found in all of this upheaval, and the best we could come up with was a change in name for the sixth grade teams. "Bluebirds and Canaries?" I suggested. "It would be cool to have one team for each of the school colors."

And then the conversation quickly flew south (as such conversations held at the end of a long day in the middle of a long year have the tendency to do) to that tropical place where sixth grade teams bask in the glory of their mascots the Blue Peeps and the Twinkie d'Oros.

Winter Break

A happy confluence of events today: our annual post-Oscar night holiday and 66 degrees in February made the beach an irresistible destination. Sometimes it's easy to forget how close we live to the Chesapeake Bay and its fascinating, fossil-filled western shore, but at 10:30 on a regular Monday morning, believe me, you can get there in waaaay under an hour.

We started our day at Brownie's Beach, a little public park that at this time of the year has free parking. We had the place all to ourselves as we beachcombed and boardwalked our way up and back to the town of Chesapeake Beach, with a wet and happy dog and a couple of pieces of sea glass to show for it. Next it was on to North Beach, a classic shore town that, although most places were shuttered for the season, had quite a few happy people playing by the water and strolling on the boardwalk.

It was one of those days I know I'll look back on for the rest of my life and remember the literally golden glow of the winter sun as it warmed the sand and the water.

Integrity

Here it is, our annual Oscar bash and time to make my picks for the pool. Along with the fun comes a yearly dilemma-- do you choose the ones you like or choose the ones you think will win?

Drive

I remember once when I was 11 or 12, my cousins had a minibike. They lived on a pretty big piece of land, and so they rode it all over their yard. The first time I was on it, I panicked and rode straight into a lilac bush, and that was actually the last time I ever piloted any kind of motorcycle.

Driving a car was a whole different thing, though. Living on a college campus in the middle of nowhere, I couldn't wait to learn, and once I did? I always felt confident at the wheel. Even today, I love me a road trip, and on any such outing I will always volunteer to drive.

Over the years I've noticed, with surprise, that not everyone shares my enthusiasm. First of all, there are the people I know who do not drive at all. Next, there are those who avoid it whenever they can. But then, there are also plenty of folks like me and Cindy Lauper who will drive all night.

I get that driving can be scary at first, and is always dangerous. Experience helps (in fact, now that I've been driving for 30 years or so, I'm ready to revisit that minibike thing: sometimes I think a Vespa or some other scooter or moped might be a good way for me to get to work. I do, after all, have a very short commute.), but that information is not comforting to a new driver.

I have three teen-aged nephews who did not embrace driving, but to be honest, they didn't have to. They live within easy distance of subway and other public transportation, and they have friends who are usually willing to drive them where they want to go. They also had a grandmother who lived her entire 72 years without driving.

I also have a godson around the same age as those other guys, and he can't wait to get his license and buy a car. Of course, he lives in a place where that is really the only way around, and his dad is definitely a king of the road-- that guy will drive anywhere, anytime.

Nature, nurture? Who can say?

 A few months ago, I heard a piece on the radio about how driverless cars might just be a reality in the not so distant future. In such a scenario, nobody would own their own vehicle, rather we would reserve or order one to take us where ever we needed to be. These cars would be guided by a central computer, and so not only would they eliminate traffic fatalities, but they would also be able to route all vehicles efficiently, thus avoiding congestion. Presumably, we would receive accurate travel time information as well, which would make planning trips much easier.

I want to go on record right now: It sounds very reasonable. Yes, it does, but...

 I don't like it.

Border Patrol

So my students are writing fiction, and one of the unintended consequences of the activity is that this year, like every year, I have to police that fine line between creative license and what's appropriate for school. It's no secret that freedom and choice are key components in engaging students, but what about those kids who want to write about pregnant teens, drug abuse, incest, and cannibalism? For some reason, the topics that this group has chosen feel more challenging than those of the recent past.

Why does this not surprise me?

Fall Guy

We suffered an annoying snafu at school today when as the result of poor planning we were directed to have all of our homeroom students phone home to schedule their parent-teacher-student conference for next Friday. Unaware that anything was out of the ordinary with this plan, my sixth graders were game to call their folks, but a little confused as to what to say. "Just say that we got the materials this morning and we want to let people know as soon as possible," I suggested somewhat disingenuously.

The first guy picked up the receiver and dialed confidently, probably because I often ask him to call home and ask his parents to remind him to bring in all manner of signed things from report cards to field trip slips. His mother answered, and although I could not understand the conversation word for word (it was in Tigre), I did understand that it wasn't going as planned. "What time does she want?" I asked after he hung up with a sigh.

"She didn't say a time," he answered. "She was mad."

"Why?" I asked.

"She told me I should have asked her about this yesterday, and we'll talk about it tonight," he said.

I nodded sympathetically. Right sentiment, wrong target.

On Walden Pond

Year by year the number of field trips and special activities we plan for our students is eroded by the time teachers feel they need to prepare kids for the tests they must take. It's hard to convince colleagues that this or that activity is worth the loss of instructional time in their classes, especially when they are being held accountable for their students performance on all manner of standard assessments.

As much as I sympathize, I just can't get on board with that kind of thinking. Maybe it's because as a writing teacher, I am reminded of Thoreau's observation: How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Isn't it our job to show the kids how to stand up to live, too?

Teacher's Dilemma Number 221

There was word today that a very challenging student is moving. Do we feel relieved? If so, do we feel guilty?

Words for Snow

We put the dog in the station wagon and headed over the bridge for a walk around the Tidal Basin on this sunny President's Day. It was busy but not crowded as we circled by the new MLK memorial, through the FDR, and past the Jefferson on the newly re-opened promenade. As warm as it has been, the cherry trees showed no sign of abnormally early blossoming, and for that I was glad. I don't know exactly what mankind is doing to the climate, but I worry.

Of the four short documentaries we saw yesterday the one that stayed with me most was called The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossoms. The film opened with horrific footage of a black wave relentlessly pushing inland, scouring away every car, every building, and every person in its way and tumbling them along as it moved toward the camera. The movie continued as a story about the unimaginable loss incurred by the survivors of the March 2011 tsunami until it took a rather skillful turn to the tradition and symbolism surrounding the cherry blossoms.

Who knew that the Japanese have identified ten separate phases of bloom and have a word for each? That the annual return of the blossoms is a treasured symbol of both renewal and endurance? That the countless petals that combine to create such a wondrous spectacle are considered representative of the innumerable and anonymous citizens whose efforts make Japan the nation it is?

In light of such awareness, it can't be a surprise that there are thousands of haikus written about sakura, or the cherry blossom season. Here is one by Issa:

Live in simple faith...
just as this simple cherry
flowers, fades, and falls.

Long Weekend Short

The best consequence of the continuing commercialization the Academy Awards is the release of 15 films we might never see otherwise. Animated, Live Action, and Documentary-- going to the theater to watch the Oscar-nominated shorts is always a highlight of our February. It is the antidote to all those big-budget blockbusters (as much as I love 'em), and a reminder that there is so much more to the art than the industry of the movies.

Gentleman Where Am I?

I love my iPad... except when I don't. An errant keystroke just deleted three paragraphs of tonight's post. It was good stuff, too, all about crazy right-wing novels, time traveling, and various ways of bringing Abraham Lincoln back from the dead, but now it belongs to the ages.

Spinning

A little after noon yesterday our school lost all phone and network connectivity. At first it was a minor nuisance, for example we could not produce grade reports for the parent conference we had scheduled at 1:30, but we apologized and made it through without any trouble. As the outage persisted, though, we were reminded again and again of how dependent we are on technology, mostly because we could not access most of the instructional materials and information that we have come to rely on.

Late in the afternoon, a couple of my colleagues who were going to be out today were trying to make sub plans. One wrote everything by hand, which took several hours, and the other made arrangements to email everything so that it could be printed out this morning. Imagine the frantic phone call I got after he tried to contact school and realized that everything was still down. He was on his way to California and there were no student rosters, no printable copy of the vocabulary quiz he was giving, and the computer labs he had booked for his classes were useless.

Of course we improvised and everything turned out fine. But as the network was slowly restored throughout the day, it was uncomfortable and a little disturbing to realize just how critical this fragile web we have woven is.

View From Below

One of the occupational hazards of teaching younger kids is developing an inflated view of yourself. Such a skewed perspective can be difficult to avoid after spending years being the smartest (not to mention usually the biggest and the strongest) one in the room. Oh, there are always those who will test you, but most of us adults can best an eleven-year-old in any battle of wits. (Once a student asked a colleague of mine if it was Idaho or Udaho. "You tell me," my friend answered. See what I mean?) Such a professional life might at least explain, if not excuse, the arrogance of some teachers. (OK, me.)

Aaaah, but this Writing Club I co-sponsor could just be the antidote to this condition. Thursday after Thursday for an hour after school, I get totally outwritten by those kids, and today was no exception. They are funny, bold, creative, and really, really good writers. They are definitely serving up some humble pie, but I kind of like it.

Thank goodness they're still shorter than I am.

Ode to the Ode

I had a guest poet scheduled to visit my class yesterday. The timing was perfect-- poetry and Valentine's Day?-- and this particular poet and I have worked together for the last 4 years. Even so, I still had a nagging feeling that something was going to go wrong.

Later when I told the story, a colleague of mine said, "I'm going to start asking you for lottery numbers! You were right about this; you're usually right about the snow..." and she continued with a list of other accurate predictions I've made over the years. I liked that. I like thinking I have a little bit of a sixth sense, but as far as the lottery goes? I predict I'm not going to win it anytime soon.

At any rate, prescience is of no value unless you act upon it, and in this particular case, I did not. 8:15 AM found me desperately texting my poet buddy while making small talk with my first period class about how great our visiting artist was going to be. At 8:20 I kicked into emergency mode and began improvising a lesson about odes. Who knows where that came from? It certainly helped that I own a copy of Neruda's Odes to Common Things, and the Valentine's Day angle made things easier, too, but I truly believe that the key ingredient to what turned out to be a very successful activity was our collective focus on the positive.

For me this has been a tough year with a challenging group of kids, so the opportunity for each of us to express our appreciation for those things, both large and small, that make us happy, that make our lives a little easier, was priceless. Yesterday was a very good day.

Post Script: The poet overslept. He called at 9:30 to apologize profusely, and we rescheduled for tomorrow. I do have a back-up plan, but I don't think I'll need it.

That Was Then; This Is Now

It has long been our tradition to have heart-shaped pizza on Valentine's Day:

But, since she's been vegan, pizza just hasn't been the same for Heidi. So tonight's menu is heart-healthy rather than heart-shaped:

I don't care what we have, as long as she likes it and it makes her happy. Happy Valentine's Day!

I Wish it Was Sunday

It was a groggy Monday this morning, maybe because a bunch of the students had stayed up to watch the Grammys, or maybe because I had. At any rate, there was a bit of sluggish discussion about the events of the weekend as my homeroom students organized their binders in super slo-mo. Not surprisingly, the topic of Whitney Houston's death kind of meandered around the classroom. At the age of eleven and twelve, most of the kids knew the name, but were generally unfamiliar with her work. "You know what I hate?" one of them said in reference to her passing. "I hate it when people get rich after they die! My brother told me all her songs are number one on iTunes."

His comment prompted confused looks from his classmates, but as it was Monday morning, they let it go, and so did I.

Quiet

There's been a lot of press lately about Susan Cain's introvert's manifesto, Quiet. An off the charts 'I' myself, I downloaded and read the free preview as soon as I heard about the book. It's received mixed reviews, from both introverts and extroverts alike, but I think that its premise that being outgoing may be erroneously perceived as superior has some merit.

I have a friend and colleague with whom I have worked for almost 15 years who is an extreme extrovert. We eat lunch together every day, and our relationship works in part because she willingly initiates the conversation on a daily basis. Over the years we've become close enough to laugh at just how introverted I am, and I know that she accepts me.

She is a special education teacher, and a good one, and she and I agree that the best approach is to meet the needs of the individual students where they are, whether they have been identified formally or not, and often I turn to her for advice in making accommodations in my class. I like to think that my own experience makes me a good resource, too, and not surprisingly, our lunchtime conversation frequently revolves around the challenges we're facing on the team.

Not long ago she was describing a situation where a certain student neither wanted to work in a group nor make a presentation in the social studies class she pushed in to. Based on our knowledge of the kid, the other teacher, the class, and the assignment, we bandied strategies to get that student on board with the activity. This was before I had heard of Cain's book, but as we were talking it occurred to me that maybe, since this child was an introvert, we were asking too much. "Why should he have to do that if it's against his nature?" I asked.

This was new ground for both of us, and my friend reacted as if I was being less than serious (which of course I often am in these conversations-- after all, it's lunch time). "No really," I said, "why do we force kids who are uncomfortable with interpersonal stuff to do it anyway?"

"Um, because they're going to need those skills in the future?" my friend answered.

And all of a sudden I glimpsed a grand extrovert bias that has permeated education and society for my entire life. I realized that as much as my friend liked and respected me that she considered my reserve to be a deficit. I thought of all the books about winning friends and influencing people and mastering the art of small talk, and I remembered all the times my mom and my brother talked about forcing themselves out of their comfort zones in order to do their jobs.

"Why?" I repeated, and the incredulity on my friend's face just made me want to mess with her a little. I gasped in mock horror. "You are prejudiced!" I accused her. "You think there's something wrong with being an introvert that needs to be fixed." I shook my head. "Why?" I asked again.

We left it at that; the end of our 35 minute lunch period was near, and our students were returning to class. It was never a serious conversation, but the implications stayed with me. In a world of increasing noise, do we really want to encourage all of our students to add to it?

Didn't She Almost Have it All

We were at a "girls only brown bag wine tasting" tonight at the home of one of our neighbors. There was 80's music playing all evening, and our memories of the songs threaded in and out of each conversation as the guests grouped and regrouped. Cutting Crew, Bon Jovi, Journey, Madonna, and Cindy Lauper were all remembered fondly.

Of course Whitney Houston was bound to come up and she did. "Look where she is now," someone said. "She's a mess."

"But I loved the song I Want to Dance With Somebody," somebody else added wistfully. There were nods of agreement, and then the conversation moved on.

Not for me, though. For a moment I conjured that younger Whitney: gorgeous, and with that voice! and all her energy and charisma and how really really great she was, and I hoped for a come back. She can totally do it! I thought. It's not too late.

Countability

So often teachers of subjects other than language arts report that one reason they don't require much writing is because they are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with some of the finer points of grammar and usage. We did a couple of quick little exercises in my Writing Across the Curriculum workshop today where the objective was to show that that type of incorrectness does not usually impede communication and also that those errors are usually the easiest thing to fix in a writing piece. One task the participants had to do was choose between "fewer" and "less" when the terms were applied to the word "people," as in There were fewer/less people at the park than there were at the movies.

The rule with "fewer" or "less" is countability-- you use "fewer" when you can count the individual items and "less" when you can't, like fewer pennies, less change. The tricky part of the above question is that "people" was not originally used as the plural of "person" (that would have been "persons"), so there was a time when you couldn't actually count the people in a room, and therefore "less people" was the correct usage.

Today that is not the case, people is the commonly accepted plural form of person. The topic certainly made for a lively discussion in our session today, though, and who do you think brought it up?

The math teachers, of course. Count on them!

Billable Hours

Last July I stood with pearly white cavity-free teeth and scheduled my next six-month checkup at the gleaming front desk of my dentist. It was only the second time I had been to the office and the only reason I was there at all was because my long-time dentist had retired. Oh he played it well-- sending postcards to all of his clients informing us that he was cutting back on his hours. I knew then that, seeing as how he was a single practitioner, it could only mean one thing: he was selling us to another practice.

Even so, I decided to go along and see how the new dentist was. My first visit was like time traveling-- the office, the equipment, and the staff seemed at least thirty years ahead of the old-fashioned approach I was used to, and nobody from the old practice was anywhere in sight. It wasn't great, and it wasn't terrible, but it was really really different, yet not so much to make me go out and find myself a new tooth guy.

The second visit was also fine. I found myself building a bit of a rapport with my new hygienist, and the efficiency of everything in this oh so 21st century practice was beginning to win me over. I liked the email reminders and the convenient online confirmation, and I could almost picture myself stopping at the Starbucks a few doors down every six months from now to infinity.

Until today. I awoke this morning with the leaden knowledge that I had slept poorly. The idea of busting out the door right after school to get my teeth cleaned, on top of everything else I needed to do today was overwhelming, and in an effort to prioritize, I resolved to reschedule. I called the office at lunch to politely explain the situation and get another date on the calendar. There was a pause, and then the receptionist told me that ordinarily it's a hundred dollar charge to cancel within four business days. They were waiving it for me this time, but I needed to make a note of the policy.

And I did make a note, right away.  

Find a new dentist.

(Not) My Job

In the memoir unit I ask kids to choose a memorable event from their lives and think about how it shaped them, and that can be a challenging task for a sixth grader (or anyone, really). Of course, I don't expect perfection, and in the end I read several under-developed anecdotes about bike crashes, roller coasters, pranks, and beach mishaps. There are poignant tales as well, and usually one or two that I pass along to the counselor. Overall, this writing assignment gives me a lot of insight into my students, and for that it is priceless.

I thought about that tonight as I worked on a presentation I have been asked to make for my colleagues on our staff development day on Friday. The topic is writing across the curriculum, but the subtext is so much more. Middle school is where discipline-based departments begin, and so writing sometimes becomes a "language arts" thing. Part of my job on Friday will be to convince the other subject teachers otherwise.

Stay tuned.

Head Injuries, PANDAS, and Butt Cracks, Oh My

That was my day today. You'll forgive me for not writing more?

A Good Deed Unpunished

Today we had a rare frigid morning in this balmy El Nina winter of ours, and like I usually do on such frosty days, I started the cars and scraped the windshields. Our '01 Jeep Wrangler is a fun kind of buggy, loved by Heidi and the nephews, especially in top-down weather.

Of course it has a manual transmission to go with its rugged take-the-top-off attitude, and so the emergency brake was on this morning when I popped it in neutral to warm it up. When my scraping was done, I turned it off and took the keys inside so that Heidi would have them to lock up when she left.

Then, with a cheery good-bye and full confidence in my good partner status, I headed toward the station wagon with my back pack, lunch bag, and coffee cup. I was loading those items in their customary positions in the back seat when I heard an alarming crunch, and looked up to see the Jeep crashed into our neighbor's car next to me.

It was so confusing at first. Nobody was at the wheel of either vehicle, and yet there they were in a rear-end collision. The Jeep had been parked up the hill and across the way, so it wasn't too long before I realized what had happened, sprinted into the house for the keys, and pulled it back into its space.

This time I left it in gear when I climbed out to inspect the damage. Our neighbor's car had been running to defrost it, too, so I knew she would be out any moment. There was a melon-sized dent in her rear bumper, and a bit of a tell-tale dark blue smudge. I ran inside to tell Heidi, and we emerged from our house a minute later, just as our neighbor came from hers.

Wide-eyed and breathlessly I told the tale of the calamity, but she remained calm. "Oh give me the insurance info later," she said. "After all," she laughed, "I know where you live." We followed her around to the back of the cars to look at the damage, and I gasped. The whole dent had popped out! All that was left was a tiny smear of navy blue. Our neighbor shrugged. "I wouldn't have even known if you didn't tell me."

Choosing Sides

I listened with half an ear as a couple of kids bickered good-naturedly at the end of class on Friday. As the bell rang, they came to me to settle their dispute. "Do you like the Patriots?" one asked.

I shrugged. "Nope."

"Are you American, or what?" he said indignantly.

"Yeah," I said."I'm American. So? The Giants were my dad's team. I'm rooting for them."

They laughed.

"We were talking about social studies," he explained, "We're having a debate and I'm Thomas Paine. Who do you like better? The Patriots or the Loyalists?"

"Tschoo! Patriots all the way!" I said. "I'm American aren't I? Who likes the Loyalists?"

"Me," said the second student, "because I'm King George."

I See

My glasses broke about six months ago. They were trifocals and I'm pretty sure the prescription needed updating, because I was getting headaches after wearing them sometimes. An inveterate procrastinator, I've been able to make do with only reading glasses since then, but I think it might be time to go in. I'm suffering from frame envy.

I've been noticing eye wear everywhere. This afternoon it was in the movies. We saw Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Gary Oldman plays 1970's era spy George Smiley in a tale that flashes back and forth over a period of several years. It can be confusing, too, except that he gets an eye exam early in the picture and chooses new frames. Of course I was all over that, and as a result? I could always tell the past and present from the glasses he was wearing.

For the record-- I liked his first frames better, but the next pair was really authentic to the time period.

Spoiler Alert: He gets yet another pair at the end of the movie. Do you think that might mean something symbolic?

A Million Little Pieces

My students are working on memoirs and their second drafts were due today. The following message was in my email inbox this morning.

We read J's story which is due today. There were a few sections with inappropriate content, we have discussed this with him and he will make necessary changes. He can stay after school today to complete or use time this weekend. Thank you for understanding.

Uh oh. The last I had seen of the piece was a little silly, but not too far out of bounds for a sixth grade boy. I talked to him first thing. "What's going on?" I asked.

"My parents are totally over-reacting," he sighed.

I asked to see the draft, and there were a few things that I knew I would suggest editing out. I replied to his mom at lunch.

The drafts that were due today were not intended to be in final form. I encourage the students to take creative risks in their writing, but I agree that J's piece was not appropriate for school as it was written. One of the objectives of the assignment is for students to choose a memorable event from their lives and to consider how it shaped them and what their actions and reactions in that situation reveal about them. When I talked to J about his story, he explained that he had only presented the perspective of his eight-year-old self. Today he worked on adding what he learned from the experience, what he thinks now, and making clear that he and the boy mentioned are still friends. He should continue working on it over the weekend.

He can also start a new piece on another topic if your family would prefer. Please contact me with any further questions.

A little later I found out that J the author had been taking liberties with the facts.

Thank you for your quick response to our concerns. The content of the story did not reflect the incident as it occurred or how J has felt when similar situations have occurred in the past. He is struggling a bit with his identity recently and I understand he would like others to see him with a different bravado. Thank you for providing the specifics of the assignment, I see he still needs to address the other points of the assignment as well.

It looks like J is going to be doing some revising this weekend.

Will Write for Donuts

We had 12 students attend our little writing club today. Their challenge was to write in second person, and they wrote some pretty good stuff. I like to think it was for more than the chocolate frosted chocolate donuts, but who cares if it was?

This was one of my favorites:

You grinned and laughed as they flew around, glowed and disappeared, on and off. You would grab them out of the air and hold them, staring at them in awe. You would always let your fireflies go. You didn’t want to hurt them, but letting them go would make you so sad. You were so little and so happy, then. This story will be our secret.

I remember you at every age and I know that one day you will be someone extremely important. There are so many people around who will help you on your journey. I am sorry that I am not going to be there to help you along the way.

Oopsie

Was that me who said "irregardless" at a meeting of English teachers?

Oh my.

Found Poetry

We have a neighbor who goes by the name of Peach. I've never been formally introduced to her, but I know her well from the rather loud conversations she has at the pool with anyone who will engage with her. I know, for example, that she was devastated when Tim Russert died, she is feuding with her sister, and she doesn't care too much for cats.

Who knew she was a post-modernist stream-of-consciousness poet, though? Take a look:

their are rules in condo living one is Noise and another is Trash when to bring it out when not to tonight a bag of trash was left outside all broken up i kicked it over found a letter with address on it walked it back to its owner . the owner of the trash came out and looked at me like a deer in headlights and said Oh i was going to walk it down later when i get the baby to sleep i handed her Her Trash

I like it.

Goldilocks and the Three Balloons

We had our school-wide science fair last week. The way we run it, all students create a project and all staff members are judges. Even though the event is ultimately a very positive and successful one for the majority of our school community, this policy can create some conflicts, too.

For example, one of the projects I judged was a blank board. I honestly did not even notice until I picked up the evaluation sheet and fastened it to my clipboard. When I looked up, I laughed. The student smiled and shrugged. "So, tell me about your science fair project," I said. She didn't even bother to explain the absence of the Introduction, Materials and Procedures, Results, Graph, Pictures, and Conclusion. She simply plunged in with a description of her experiment which involved balloons filled with different amounts of helium, static electricity, and hang time on the wall.

And she almost had me. I could imagine a situation where she had not been able to produce the required elements for her display, and the experiment itself seemed fun and interesting-- the benefit of the doubt was all hers. "But why?" I asked when she told me her results, "why do you think the middle one stayed up there the longest?"

She shrugged. "Who knows?"

"Could it have been the helium in the bigger one pulling up?" I tried.

She looked at me blankly.

"Or the weight of the smaller one pulling it down?"

"Maybe," She looked bored. "Or the other one was probably just right."

Take It Easy

It's always fun to browse through iTunes and look for the holes in your music collection. For a couple of bucks here and there, you can wile away the hours lost in nostalgia. Sometimes it's shocking to realize what you don't own, especially given its prominence in your past. Such was the case today when I downloaded the Eagles Greatest Hits.

When we were teenagers my mom used to blast that album on the 8-Track player and let it loop endlessly while she cleaned the house on weekend mornings. That and the vacuum were kind of hard to sleep through, but we did our best.

To Market

We are down to the last 6 quarts of tomatoes that we canned last summer, so today seemed like a perfect time to shop for seeds. Each packet that I added electronically to my virtual cart came along with a thumbnail photo of what it would eventually yield, so that I could practically envision my garden as I checked out. I've got to hand it to the company-- that colorful column of herbs, tomatoes, eggplant, okra, peppers, squash, pumpkins, and daisies certainly made parting with my money a lot more palatable.

Enough Rope

We have a student this year who is totally invested in being "bad". He's a smart kid, smart enough to have figured out that grades lower than a C get you the kind of trouble he doesn't want to deal with, and smart enough to know that an unending series of annoyances may get you isolated temporarily from the class but rarely will result in a referral to the administration. Still, he is eleven, and so a miscalculation here and there is inevitable.

Today was team t-shirt day. This is an annual tradition: the front is always designed by a student and voted on by all the kids, and the back has their names written in their own handwriting, so it's pretty cool. This year they were extra awesome given the fact that students had the choice of two tie-dye shades, and it was with a lot of excitement that they received their shirts this morning.

I was prepared for a bit of distraction in each class, but when I walked over to see what this guy was doing instead of the assignment, I was surprised to see him blacking out names with a permanent marker. "Are those the kids you don't like?" I asked in a bit of disbelief.

"Yeah!" he answered me enthusiastically (remorse is really not his thing), "and I've highlighted the names of the kids I like!"

"Yeah, I''m going to have to take that from you," I told him.

"OK, but don't look at the names of the people I like," he said cheerfully. "That would be embarrassing."

I assured him I wasn't really interested in that information, and then continued on with the lesson. After class he asked for his shirt back, but I told him I was going to have to hang on to it for a while.

It was much later in the day when I looked at his handiwork. I was on my way to speak to the principal about him, and grabbed the shirt as one more example of his inappropriate behavior as I headed to the office. My jaw dropped as I walked. Not only had he marked other kids, but he had also applied his system to the faculty names. Oh, I was highlighted (lord knows why), but the principal was crossed out.

I'm pretty sure there are going to be some consequences for that.

Duty Done

The courtroom was silent when I entered this morning, despite the ten people scattered about on the polished wooden benches. I checked in with the juror coordinator and then took a seat near the back, near the wall. I was impressed by the room. Ten stories up, it had 30 foot ceilings and a blockbuster view from the full-length windows behind the jury box. It was way nicer than anything I've ever seen on TV or in the movies.

It turned out that I did know someone there, the clerk of the court. I met him at a couple of parties almost 20 years ago, and our paths have crossed here and there, at restaurants, meetings, and dog parks since then. He was on the county board for several years, and I had forgotten about his more recent appointment.

Anyway, after our orientation, we moved to the jury assembly room, more high ceilings and awesome views, but the squeakiest door I ever heard-- after a while, anytime someone went for water or coffee, it was excruciating. They gave each of us three crisp ten dollar bills and then at 11 announced that the only case for the day had been settled and we were free to go, ineligible to return for three years.

So that was it. My big experience with our justice system kind of slowed to a halt like a roller coaster on a steep hill, and for a moment, my day hung there motionless until I realized what I could do with such unexpected free time. And then I was racing down the track-- lunch at my favorite sandwich place, grocery shopping, picking up the CSA share, a hair cut, and back to school for writing club and a wrestling match, then on to the gym, and home to cook dinner.

I Am Number Eight

I was talking to a colleague in the hall this afternoon about the possibility that I may have jury duty tomorrow, when a passing parent overheard our conversation.

"Jury duty!" she interjected and I liked her enthusiasm. It had just the right mix of awe and surprise to capture my own feelings about this unprecedented experience, and when I explained to her how it works, that you never know until 5 PM, whether you have to report, her sympathetic grasp of this colossal inconvenience was also quite gratifying.

"My husband's a litigator," she confided to me. "He always says 'no teachers on the jury!'."

"Why?!" I gasped.

"Oh, it's not just him, either," she continued. "It's like a lawyer's rule of thumb."

"But why?" I asked again.

"Oh you teachers," she said. "It's your job to get up in front of people and convince them of things. He's afraid you won't be on his side, and then you'll sway the whole jury. It's too risky."

A couple of hours later I checked in with my official juror ID. Yep. This teacher is scheduled to report tomorrow at 9 AM. Look out litigators! Here I come.

Is He the One?

We live in a very small community that borders a national capital, in many ways the ideal combination of small town and world class city. So, when I told my sister-in-law I had jury duty she said, "You are definitely going to know someone else in the pool. There's no way around it."

I knew she was right; not only because she's smart about those things and had recently reported for her own duty and run into someone we both know, but also because it makes sense: as I said it's a small town, and we're both teachers who have lived here a long time. Shoot, I can't even go to Costco without seeing at least one friend or acquaintance.

Still, I wondered and even fretted a little about who it might be. What if it was someone I would rather avoid? Then, in all the will-I, won't-I uncertainty of the week, I totally forgot my concern. This afternoon after the bell rang one of my former students stopped by to visit. "You should definitely judge my science fair project tomorrow," she said.

"Oh I'd love to," I told her, "IF I'm here... I might have jury duty."

"My dad has jury duty!" she said. "He didn't have to go yesterday, but he went today. Maybe you'll see him tomorrow!"

Epilogue: I won't see him tomorrow (unless it's at the science fair). Nobody has to report; we got an email that all the pending trials were resolved today. But there's always Thursday...

Box Seat?

I was mildly alarmed when I received my jury questionnaire some months ago. I have lived and been registered to vote in this county for over 20 years with never a summons. Of course, I did my civic duty, which at that point only involved answering a few questions and dropping the envelope back in the mail.

Then, early in December I got the news. I had been selected to serve the week of January 23. Oh it sent me into a bit of a tizzy. Monday was a teacher work day. (Was that good or bad?) Wednesday was the science fair. (Was that good or... never mind.) But the more I read, the more uncertain I felt.

The way it works is that you never know until after five the night before if you will have to show up. That makes it kind of hard to plan ahead in terms of lessons. There's a big difference between what happens when I'm in the classroom and what kind of activities I leave for a sub. So far, I got my work day (yay!) and I'm not scheduled to go tomorrow.

Wednesday and Thursday are still a mystery.

Cold

Why is it that 70 degrees on the thermostat is too warm in the summer and a splurge in the winter, but still not quite warm enough?

Forget it! I'm building a fire.

She's Gotta Have It

Not long ago I passed a restaurant in the city. The day was cold and I was hurrying to my car and home, but not so fast that I couldn't hear the music when someone pushed open the door. It was as warm and light as the rush of air it came out on, and as I continued on my way I realized that I definitely need more sax in my life.