Reckoning

Today was the day when my students added up the pages and counted all the books that they had read this year. It's always pretty impressive-- even the minimum hundred pages a week for thirty-six weeks translates to 20-25 books on the average. They do a little reflection on their accomplishment, and one girl wrote, This is ridiculous-- I read more this year than in third, fourth, and fifth grade combined! Those who hadn't read as consistently as they should have showed some remorse and vowed to do better next year. A couple of kids recognized that this was a break-through year for them: I didn't use to like it, but now I'm a reader, one wrote.

Here are the numbers:

Average pages per student: 8,488
(That's over half a million total pages.)
Average number of books completed per student: 40
Most avid reader: 41,104 pages and 136 books
Reader most in need of acceleration and encouragement: 723 pages and 8 books

I also asked them to pick their top three books of the year. Most popular? The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Other favorites were the Maximum Ride series and the first two books in The Hunger Games trilogy, and of course, many vampire books were mentioned as well.

Mulch

Our county collects all sorts of lawn clippings, fallen leaves, and Christmas trees and grinds them into a gigantic pile of mulch which we then distribute for free to residents who request it. Our community garden always has a ready supply of the stuff-- a huge mound of it lays not thirty feet south of our plot. Today as I forked load after load into my wheelbarrow, I thought of all the yards and homes that had contributed to this blanket which I placed so hopefully and protectively around the plants in my garden, and I felt a tug on that deeply-buried root that connects us all.

Still Working On It

Twice in the last two days I have attended performances put on by kids. The first was the talent show at our school and the second was my nephews' final school of rock performance, this one a tribute to the Doors. I struggled with being an appreciative audience member for both of these events; I really admire the kids for getting up there on the stage, and there were undeniable moments of entertainment and, yes, brilliance in both shows, but in the end they were flawed at best.

You might think that as a teacher I would have made peace with the predictable weaknesses of such presentations and even come to enjoy them in spite of their blemishes.

You would be wrong.

(My nephews were great, though.)

Last Words on the Slam

This week I gave my students the opportunity to post their competition slam poem and a reflection about the experience for their classmates to read and respond to. I asked them to think about their writing process, their performance, and what it was like to be in the audience. By far, the comments were positive, and here's one that expresses some of what I hoped the students would get out of it all:

Personally I'm not a huge fan of writing poetry at all, but I like slam poetry a little better then regular poetry. The reason I like writing slam poetry better is because I know that I will be performing it for people, so if it can mean more then one thing then my actions will explain it. Performing was kind of fun when it was in the classroom, because I knew that it was only a practice round and that everyone there would be fine with what I do because they were just as scared as I am. That gave me more confidence so I could go on. But when I was performing in the auditorium I did not have that confidence because I knew that not everyone was performing like I was, but still I got up there and did what I needed to do. When I was in the audience I loved watching other people get up there and read some of the most funny poems ever. 

Not everyone was quite so affirmative about the slam, though. Here is what the most discontented of my students had to say:

I didn't like writing all the poems.  It just wasn't fun and we wrote about nonsense.  It also sucked even more because it was boring to listen to all the poems for a couple hours. Not only was there only one good poem, the other ones just plain sucked.  I would have rather done school work.  Plus I wasn't near anyone cool to talk to in the audience.  I think that it was a waste of time.

I don't take what he says personally, but I do take it seriously. I hate to shrug off any student criticism, because I haven't given up on the notion that it's possible to engage all of my students most, if not all, of the time. Obviously, I didn't quite reach him, and I'll keep his perspective in mind next time as I plan.

Dualities

We had the Tolerance Club kids do the "Harvard Bias Test" today. For those who are unfamiliar, it's an online exercise that measures your sub-conscious preference between two disparate types of people, for example Americans of African descent and Americans of European descent, old people-young people, abled-disabled, etc. Before you even take the test, you must agree to the disclaimer that you may receive an interpretation you disagree with.

The test is careful to tell you who you have a preference for, leaving unspoken the fact that by default, you also have one against the other group. In addition, the literature points out that most people have a bias toward the familiar, which of course means that the aggregate results are consistent with general demographics.

The kids were game; we allowed them to choose their bias test, and of course some were surprised by what the results revealed (Wrong! I do NOT have a preference for light-skinned people, one girl told us emphatically), while others were not (a sixth grade boy across the room announced his own results matter-of-factly: I have a slight preference for abled people... I have a preference for European people).

Yes, as heartbreaking as it is, there are times when people take the test and find that they are biased against themselves.

What Crosses Your Path

When I was a kid, spaying and neutering were only then becoming the responsible thing to do for your pet, and so our family presided over the birth of five litters of kittens and ten puppies before our cats and dogs went under the knife. Thankfully, my mom found homes for them all, but they were so cute and adorable, it was always hard for us kids to say good-bye.

Today I heard from a friend who adopted a cat that turned out to be pregnant, and so now my friend has four newborn kittens. Despite the fact that they're all jet black, I still think she's pretty lucky.

Run, Lead, Head, Control, Manage, Direct...

When I first started teaching there was a large rolling cabinet in my room. About 3 1/2 feet tall, 3 1/2 feet wide, and probably 3 feet deep, it had four giant drawers and a little pull out shelf on the top. I used it as the teacher before me had, as a massive teaching podium/desk, and made it the focal point of the classroom. I sat on a tall stool behind it and in front of the chalkboards and from that height and vantage point presided with great authority over the edification of my students.

A few years ago, I pushed it off into a corner in favor of an Adirondack chair over by a bookcase, and today it stands empty, ready to be rolled out of here forever. After the move out and back in, I realized that I don't need most of the stuff that was tossed into those big drawers, and I could really use the floor space for some pillows or another comfy chair for the kids to read and write in.

Oh, I still preside, probably more than I should, but I certainly don't need any furniture to help me.