Hey Daylight Savings Time I Still Hate You

Listen, I did my best to give the curtailing of my weekend and the need to rise an hour earlier in the pitch black a fair shake. I approached it with hardly a whimper. I prudently went to bed early not just last night, but Saturday night, too. I adjusted my clocks and my schedule to accommodate the loss of an hour, stayed positive all day, maybe this won't be so bad, I told myself, maybe I'm finally learning to cope successfully with the inevitable, maybe I won't need to resent everyone who makes this happen, maybe, maybe, blah, blah, blah, today still sucked!  And I doubt tomorrow is going to be any better.

A Walk in the Rain

Rather than allow the soggy weather to keep us prisoners, we decided to embrace the dampness and take the dog for a walk on the river. When we arrived at the park, it was closed due to flooding, and so we headed upstream to the falls-- with the river so high, we were guaranteed some dramatic scenery. To our disappointment, the national park was also closed because of dangerous water levels.

There was one more place to walk on the way home, and we pulled into the parking lot looking apprehensively around for any Trail Closed signs, but the coast was clear. The air was damp, but there was not a drop of rain as we followed the run toward the small falls at its confluence with the river. There was plenty of mud, but we were prepared for that, and the stream was swollen but not impassable, even in the two places where you have to hop across on round pavers set as stepping stones.

The trail we took led us down to the river and then back up to the ridge and through the woods. No one else was around this late in the wet afternoon, but it was that time of day when animals actively prepare for the night, and the forest was full of bright blue flashes in the gloom. We must have seen twenty bluebirds or more darting from branch to branch, high to low, and then back to the bare canopy so far above our heads, leaving that proverbial happiness behind.

What Time May Teach

When I was a boy of fourteen my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one I was astounded at how much the old man learned in seven years. –Mark Twain

I confess that when I was 21, and even 24, I still thought my father was hard to have around. Twenty-three years ago tonight I stood by his bedside as he drew his last breath, and these days I wonder how much the old man might have learned had he been able to stick around.

Getting the 4-1-1

Today my students took a diagnostic test that is designed to show their strengths and weaknesses in reading and writing. Our state standardized test is only a couple of months away, and I was feeling some heat. Not about the real test, mind you, but about administering this practice exam. The reading specialist in the building really wanted me to do it, and so finally I just caved.

The test itself is on online thing, and I already had the lap tops reserved for some other activities, so I figured I could snag an extra day with the computers and then just casually slide this 40 question diagnostic onto our to-do list...

Oh the disbelief and outrage my students expressed at me, a workshop-committed reading and writing teacher, requiring such an inside-the-box task of them. "How will this make us better writers?" one asked, echoing my guiding question for the year.

Touché, I thought, but then answered him. "It won't," I said. "It will just show us what kind of readers and writers you are. It's what we do with that information that might help you."

He was mollified, but I really wasn't. In any event, they took the test, and most of them did fine. I was amused at some of their questions, though. One kid raised his hand about halfway through. "How am I supposed to answer this?" he wanted to know. "It's an opinion question! It says What do you think would be the best way to end this passage?" He scoffed. "You could end it lots of ways!"

Before he got any further worked up about his right as an author to finish his piece any way he saw fit, I tried to quiet him. "But which of those answers would be the best ending?" I asked him.

"Oh," he tsked. "What a dumb question. Like anyone's going to give you that choice."

Some Things Never Change

It's always interesting to be present when former students meet current members of my class. It most often happens for me at swim meets. In between their events, sixth, seventh and eighth graders have the chance to compare notes about what it was like to have me as their teacher. I don't mean to be egotistical, these conversations are fleeting, and typically go something like, "Oh my god! She made you do that, too?" But they are often affectionate and even a little nostalgic, too. (I think they appreciate that I cheer for their swimming.) It's warm fuzzies all around.

This year they have a high school senior, who was also in my class in sixth grade, helping to coach the team, and so when I arrived at the first meet of the season this afternoon, I was pleased to have a chance to catch up with her. As we stood next to the pool chatting, a group of middle school kids gathered around us, eager to join our conversation. "You were on the Dolphins, too?" one asked her.

She rolled her eyes and made a sour face. "Don't remind me," she said, "sixth grade was horrible!" Their eyes widened, and I'm sure mine did too, although I knew exactly what she was talking about. She turned to me. "Do you even remember how many times you had to meet with my parents?"

I nodded.

"What did you do?" one of the younger kids asked.

"Nothing," I said, "she was bullied."

"A lot of kids were mean to me," she confirmed.

"What did they say to you?" a seventh grade girl wanted to know, but just then a cheer went up, and the events of the swim meet redirected our attention.

We never returned to the conversation, and in a way, I was relieved. The older girl had been a smart and serious child, both an engaged and engaging student, but also somewhat of a tomboy, and she had been harassed mercilessly throughout middle school about her sexuality. "How would you like to be surrounded by a group of girls in the locker room singing Ring Around the Lesbian?" she had asked me once.

Four years later, the pain of middle school is still fresh for her. I have to think that part of the problem is the way we approach sexuality for kids that age. "Gay" is one of the most common middle school epithets, and while we don't tolerate its use, we allow it to be a slur. By comparison, we condone and even guide students as they experiment socially with non-sexual heterosexual activity. It's not considered unusual at all for boys and girls  to "like" each other, even in sixth grade, but any conversation of supporting kids who may be gay or bisexual usually meets opposition from adults who believe that they are too young to be "that." Unfortunately, the end result is that we send the message that there's something wrong with those kids, both to them and to their peers.

Story Time

I'm not sure what it is with kids and fiction, but my students are writing short stories right now, and they couldn't be happier.  Composing fiction is not mentioned specifically in either my state writing standards or in the draft of the new National Standards that was released today, although both include objectives addressing kids writing narratives, and of course that includes fiction.

I've found that many middle school teachers hesitate to include fiction assignments in their writing programs; I used to be one of them. I guess it didn't seem quite rigorous enough to me, either that or it could be that such assignments usually produced such sprawling tales teeming with ill-defined characters who wandered about without ever resolving anything that I had no idea what to do with them.

In her foreword to Ted DeMille's book, Making Believe on Paper, Nancie Atwell recounts a conversation she had with the educational researcher Nancy Martin on this very topic. Like many of us, Atwell was explaining why she didn't teach fiction, despite the fact that it is what most kids love to read best. She considered her students' fiction "daydreams on paper."

But Atwell tells how Nancy Martin convinced her otherwise. In Martin's opinion, fiction gives young writers the chance to compose fluently and at length. Martin also makes the point that fiction "gives children access to the hypothetical" so that "they can begin to see how to improvise on their own experiences." She understood children's stories to be fables where they reimagine their lives and mix them with the stories they've read or heard.

That is an accurate description of what my students do with their fiction, although they are influenced also by the stories they see on TV and, more and more, in games. Humans have always used storytelling to make meaning of our lives, and I think it's important to give kids the opportunity and the tools to do that. More importantly, though, writing fiction is motivating to my students: with few exceptions, they write cheerfully and at length. For that I'm glad, because I can't teach writing craft, conventions, or skills to someone who won't write.

Can You Smell That?

I was greeted this morning by the sharp odor of mothballs or something close to it wafting out of our team's teacher-workroom. The refrigerator is in there, and as I put my lunch away, I scanned the windowless room for the source of that pungent aroma. Nothing seemed amiss, and there was nobody nearby to ask, so with a shrug I returned to my classroom one door down, but the scent was strong enough that I could smell it there, too.

It wasn't long before I heard the tale of all I had missed the day before.  Evidently, that antiseptic smell had only recently replaced the stench of death. When, on Monday morning, they were confronted with the unmistakable odor of decay, the other teachers on my team did the sensible thing: They closed the door and called maintenance.

It turned out that four mice had perished under the refrigerator over the weekend. The custodians  removed them, but unfortunately, the odor lingered longer than their remnants remained. The solution? Pink urinal cakes hidden strategically throughout the team room, and it was that smell that welcomed me back to work this morning. Seriously. Urinal cakes.