She Got my Goat

I have a student who insists on re-reading books for her independent reading requirement. In theory, I don't have a problem with her practice, because I know that's what some readers do. An extremely able student, she reads far beyond the minimum requirement every week, but a lot of it is one Harry Potter book or another.  Despite the Potter fixation, she's read widely, and so it's rare she ever has a book that she's reading for the first time. I've worked hard to find other things she would like, but my suggestions hold no interest for her; they're like vagabonds asking for a handout-- she pretends not to hear them.
In fact, I think she likes to let me know that my opinion doesn't count, and so I've pretty much let it go, other than to gently tease her every now and then.

Last week, I was pushing her to engage a little more with a writing assignment that she was working on; I encouraged her to brainstorm several options before composing her draft, but she wanted to just write it and be done. In an uncharacteristically open show of defiance, she sighed in exasperation. "Why are we doing this anyway?" she snapped.

Despite myself, I felt irritated, but I kept my voice level. "If you go through the process, you might surprise yourself as a writer," I told her. "You may find an astonishing revelation." And then I made a mistake: "Trust me," I continued. "Do I usually give you just busy work?"

I had miscalculated the depth of her disaffection. "Yeah," she answered flatly, "sometimes."

"When?" I asked, a little less evenly.

She named an assignment and added, "We do that every week. It gets boring."

What she didn't mention was that the focus and the questions change every week, and the small groups they meet in are routinely re-shuffled as well. I took a deep breath and narrowed my eyes, ready to plunge in and defend my practice in a heated discussion with a disgruntled twelve-year-old, until I remembered who I was talking to.

"This from the kid who reads everything ten times," I shrugged. "You're going to have to dig a little deeper than that."

Famous

Today my classes read the poem Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye. Before we read, I asked the kids to name some ways people get famous. Not surprisingly, they focused on entertainment and sports celebrities. We took a vagabond's side trip into infamy before we ever made it to political leaders, social activists, inventors, artists, and plain old heroes.  

Would you like to be famous? I asked them, and their replies were mixed. They were aware of the downside of fame, but they wanted the associated fortune. "I want to be recognized for my accomplishments," one sensible child said, "and rich," she added, "but I don't want paparazzi following me around."

After we read the poem, I asked them to add some lines of their own. Here are a few:

The principal is famous to the bad kid.

The cleat is famous to the soccer ball.

The dandruff is famous to the shoulder.

The hands are famous to the clock.

The pencil is famous to the page, as is the eraser to the pencil. 

The home run is famous to the fans, but not as famous as the home run hitter.

I want to be famous like a blanket is famous to the bed--
covering it softly and keeping it warm.

Kids Today

Those few minutes before lunch time are always a little hectic. The bell rings, but inevitably there are two or three kids who are rushing to finish this or that, clip everything into their binder, and then put it away. There were a couple of kids left in the room when one other student made a particularly dramatic exit today. "OMG! I have to go! I have lunch detention because my friend decided to pop a juice!" and she left in a flurry.

"What does that even mean, 'pop a juice'?"

You might think that it was me who asked this question, but honestly, I was preoccupied with other things. It was another student. "Kids today and their crazy slang," he continued without irony. "What could juice even stand for?"

I looked up in bemusement. He is not what anyone would consider a nerdy kid, but he is a pretty metacognitive thinker. "I think it was really juice," I said, "but I hear what you're saying about the slang. It's hard to keep up with sometimes."

He turned to me solemnly. "It's been said, and I agree, that every generation is just slightly less intelligent than the one before."

I wondered whose grandpa he was channeling. "Why do you think that is?" I asked him.

"Oh I know exactly what it is," he told me. "Technology. It makes us lazy. My father still knows his phone number from when he was a teenager."

Unbidden, the ten digits of my own childhood number scrolled across my memory.

"Today, we store numbers on our phone," he continued in genuine anguish. "Memory is like a muscle: it gets weak if you don't use it."

He seemed so despondent; I wanted to help. "Maybe you use your brain in other ways, or remember other things," I suggested. "How about old passwords? I'll bet you remember those."

I, myself, am constantly in need of password assistance and forever requesting hints; most of my passwords are vagabonds on the express train to amnesia.

The other student in the room chimed in then. "Oh yes," she said rapturously, "I still remember my Club Penguin password, and my webkinz, and my..." she listed several mmorpg sites for kids as she, too, headed dreamily off to lunch.

"See what I mean?" the first student said shaking his head. "Kids today."

Humility and Comfort

It's not often that I do things that are unfamiliar and hard. By this point in my life, I know what I like and what I'm good at, and many comfortable routines have developed. I'm not saying that I don't appreciate novelty-- I do; I actually get bored pretty easily-- but I prefer it within a familiar context. Is that a paradox? I don't think so. What's so wrong with staying in your comfort zone?

Isn't that what we try to do in our classrooms, create safe environments where students feel comfortable taking positive risks?

Anyway, the point of all of this is, once again, the garden: it all goes back to the garden. I want to do this, have a vegetable garden, but I don't know how. I have to humbly ask for and accept advice and help from others to accomplish what I want. That's a challenge for me, but I'm recognizing that it's good for me, too.

Look, I'll never be a comfort zone vagabond roaming merrily into the untested, or even a comfort zone tourist gleefully exploring the untried, but I've realized that each time I successfully step out of my comfort zone, I expand it. So, yay! More comfort zone for me.

Bill's Birthday Dinner

roasted red peppers
mixed olives
oil-poached tuna nicoise

lobster boulliabaise
ciabata croutons with aioli

rosemary roasted chicken thighs
with yukon gold new potatoes

vagabond spring greens,
haricot verts, tomatoes,
and lemon-mustard vinaigrette

cream puffs

served with a rose of malbec

A Few Friday Favorites

Here are some of the riddle poems my students wrote this week:

i hold a face.
i make blackNess luminous.
i circle green and blue.
i Am Sometimes brimful, sometimes empty, sometimes in between.
imprints Are made, but not removed.
i spend almost all of my time in solitude.
i can be auroral during witching hour,
and vague during breakfast time.
i never make a sound, and neither can anything around me.
i am heavenly, but not made of anything special.
what am i?
(noom eht)

I have plenty of energy but can not run
Every body is spinning around me put I can't move
I make everything sizzle and sizzle
I am not the biggest and not the smallest
And I am hot but no one likes me
And I am the survival of life
So when I die you will too
Who am I?
(nus eht)

I speak not for the sky,
and not for the sea,
nor for the palace of eternity.
I speak for the land of withered stone,
and for the lands where the cacti roam.
I roll to the side to show my back,
I slide left and right,
to slither on home to an old rock stack.
What am I?
(redniwedis a)

And here's one of mine:

I  hit the road, ride the rails,
or travel along the open trails.
I've set up camp at Walking the Dog,
but when May comes I'll leave this blog.
(dnobagav a)

Three for Thursday

I.
There was a package at my door when I got home tonight. For participating in the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge in March, my name was drawn to receive the Carl Hiassen trio. The package was sent from Random House, Broadway, NY, NY, and contained hardback editions of Hoot, Flush, and Scat. My students love these books; they are consistent favorites on the independent reading log, and I know they will be hot items in the classroom library.

II.
Short attention span theater: my class is doing a series of mini-units. Last week we looked at humor, next it was a quick little fly by on why on earth a sane writer would ever bother with semicolons, colons, dashes, and ellipses, and we're rounding it out with riddle poems. Here's an example of the third:

I am inside you,
and I am underground.
I am thrown and broken.
I am a protector.
If you see me, you will cry.

(senob ruoy)

III.
Last night I woke up at 3:30. Unfortunately, that's not as uncommon as it was when I was younger. Usually, I fall back to sleep within thirty minutes or so, but not this time. I have a lot going on right now, but unlike other nights when I lay awake as one vagabond worry after another tightened its grip on my gut, I felt no anxiety. Neither could I sleep though, and my to-do list was indeed present, if not actively stressing me out. It was around 4:15 that I realized I had forgotten a promised birthday cake, and at 4:30, with no hope for sleep in sight, I rose to bake same. It's been a long day.