How Could You Miss That?

One time, several years ago, the counselor came to get a student from my class, and when she returned I went over to her with concern. "Is everything all right?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I'm being bullied," she confided.

"Oh no," I said. "Who's doing that to you?" She whispered the name of another student. "When is it happening?" I asked with concern.

"In your class," she told me.

You could have knocked me over, so stunned was I. The two of them sat in the front of the room, about three feet from where I stood most of the time while teaching.

Teachers like to think that we know what's going on in our classrooms, but over the years I've learned that as much as we catch, we miss a lot, too, probably more, and so the best we can do is create an environment where the students feel safe to tell us when something goes wrong.

And as for missing things? I've come to expect it, so much so that I was barely surprised at all this afternoon when I discovered a toy soldier in my classroom. Armed and guarding a paper rocket, he was stationed in the corner of the room right below the flag and next to a sign reading Don't Touch! Bryan's Top Secret Missile Base. How long it's been there I have no idea, but Bryan is in 8th grade now.

Is that Opportunity or the Cable Guy Knocking?

When it became clear that our little network problem was neither going to resolve itself or be fixed by me, I gritted my teeth and called my Internet Service Provider. I don't like to ask for help. (Yes. I'm aware that's an issue that I should work on.) After I waited on hold for more than 10 minutes, the agent who answered my call couldn't do anything other than schedule a service appointment. The first available technician can't come out to the house until Friday. Not happy news.

Over at Mad Woman in the Forest, Laurie Halse Anderson is proposing a Blog Free February. Her point is that there is a lot of distraction on the internet, and taking a month away from it may break some bad habits. Maybe. I'll be interested to see how a week without the internet at home plays out for me. At the moment it feels more like a giant nuisance than the opportunity for positive change, but I'll let you know.

Technical Difficulties

Our home network is acting up tonight, and I’m not sure whether I’m going to be able to post my blog. It could be the weather—we’ve had an unexpected amount of snowfall— not enough to be crippling, but enough to catch most people unawares and slow everyone down a bit.

When I first realized that my internet access had been cut, I was irritated. After working unsuccessfully to resolve the problem myself, I paused, cable modem in hand, aware that for some reason, I could choose my next reaction. Would my annoyance escalate to extreme frustration, or would I calmly let go and accept my inability to go online and subsequently write and post my entry? My 335-days-in-a-row streak would end, as it must someday, and I would be free from the blame; in many ways it would be like a snow day from school. Yippee! No writing for me today!

I started writing my blog in a snowstorm last March. Sitting in front of the fire surfing the internet, I read about a month-long slice of life story challenge sponsored by the Two Writing Teachers website. Why not? I asked myself. How hard can 31 days of writing be? Since then, my blog has become so much more for me. There are days when I feel like I’ll never even find a sentence worth posting and others when the words fly from my fingers, but writing every day is something I value, mostly because I never thought I could really do it.

I know myself well enough to understand that if I want to continue, then the routine of daily practice is a must.

Give up? Not today.

Horatio's Revenge

So a big part of the class meeting yesterday was on cyber-bullying: what it is, what to do about it, how to avoid it. This morning a sixth grade student on the other team comes in with her mom, who wants to speak to the counselor and the principal. It seems her daughter got a mean and threatening email from one of our students yesterday afternoon. When confronted, our student said she had the gotten idea from the discussion in class. Wow. Talk about missing the message.

Memo to Horatio

We did a class meeting today on Internet Safety. It's an annual event, the counselors are tasked by the county to design a lesson to engage the students in a conversation about making wise choices in this cyber-era. I don't know why, but teaching the same lesson five times back-to-back is way easier than sitting through one. I'll have to ponder that fact, but it did give me the chance to consider the world that these kids are growing up in.

There are several 2-3 minute videos making the rounds in education these days about that world and how we are getting our students ready for it. Every one that I've seen has highlighted competition between the US and India and China... evidently, both of these countries have more honor students than we have students, and obviously that fact is supposed to scare the hell out of us (whoever we are) as well as motivate us into action. My God! Those Chinese and Indian honor students are going to... please fill in the blank, because really? I can't.

I guess the big question posed by all of these productions is whether or not we're adequately preparing kids for their future given how quickly the world is changing. I suppose it's natural to worry, but thirty-five years ago when I was in middle school, this world we live in now was undreamt of, too, and it seems like most of us have been able to adapt.

Note to Self

We had a modified schedule today for the all-school science fair, and as a result I ended up with a mixed group of students for about 45 minutes at the end of the day. It had been a stressful few weeks for them-- working diligently on their science fair projects, preparing for the presentation piece, and then actually displaying their board and going through the judging process. We had some academic activities planned for the last part of the day, but it was clear that such structure wasn't really appropriate, at least not for my group, and so I abandoned the Challenge-24 practice in favor of vintage cartoons, independent reading, and games.

It's not often that I get a chance to actually play with the kids, but today I could. I always forget what an effective way to build relationships it is to simply sit down at a table and play a couple of hands of Uno or a game of Bananagrams. Kids invariably love it when an adult takes the time to play with them, and it's really fun, too. 

Many Hands Make Light Work

Savannah and her mom stopped by while I was cooking dinner tonight. Savannah is three, and verrrry fond of Heidi, so Laura, her mom, asked if she could hang out for 5 minutes or so to get her Heidi-fix, and that was cool with us. The last time she was here I got to show off my mad play-doh skills, and she was hoping for a little more of that, I think, but instead, I gave her the chance to apply what she had learned.

I was making sweet potato gnocchi, and an extra pair of tiny hands was just what I needed to make the task go a little faster. We got down the pink poodle apron we keep on the hook for the little girls in our lives, and Savannah was stunned by its beauty and novelty. Dinner momentarily took a backseat to the obligatory photo-shoot.

It wasn't too long, however, before she was standing on the kitchen stool rolling the soft orange dough into snakes and using a baker's bench knife to cut it. It was my job to slip the gnocchi into the simmering water before we continued with the next batch. "Why are we doing this?" she asked.

"It's dinner," I told her.

"My dinner?" She was a little concerned.

"Not unless you want some," I said, and, completely uninterested in actually eating the product of her labor, Savannah untied her apron and headed home about 10 minutes later.