Just Another Day at the Office

"Do I have something on my head?" a student asked the other morning.

"Besides your hair?" I joked. "I don't see anything."

"Look," he insisted, turning around and pointing to the back of his closely shorn head. I saw what he meant. There was a swoosh of green marker a little below and to the left of his ear.

"How did that get there?" I wondered out loud.

He spat the name of another student like a curse and added that she had done it on their way out of their homeroom.

I promised to speak to her about the incident and asked if he wanted to go to the bathroom and wash it off.

"Can't you just get it off?" he pleaded. "I can't even see it!"

I'm sure my brow furrowed, but I looked around the room and then grabbed some hand sanitizer. With a little squirt and a quick rub, the offending mark disappeared. Just then, the bell rang, and the student went off to his seat to record his homework as I started the class.

I Beg Your Pardon?

This morning, as my homeroom students were organizing their binders to prepare for the day and the week ahead, I overheard one of them use what sounded like inappropriate language. "What did you say?" I asked him sternly from across the room where I was assisting someone else.

He repeated himself with no remorse what so ever. I was confused, and certain that I must have heard him wrong, so I stepped over there and asked him again. "What did you say?"

He said it again, and then I said it. "Did you say 'Oh shit'?" I asked.

"Yeah," he told me, still with no sign of distress.

Of course our conversation had drawn the attention of everyone in the room, and there were several stares and a few giggles. It took me a minute, but I finally considered that this student, a second language learner who has only been in the country a little over a year, might not understand what he was saying.

"Do you know what that means?" I asked him, watching closely for any indication that his response might be dishonest.

"No," he answered, finally with some alarm, and I believed him.

"Well," I told the class, "I guess this is a good example of why we should make sure we know what we're saying."

There were nods of agreement as they turned back to their binders.

Great Idea, Mar

The other day I was gathering the materials to make corn husk dolls with my students. The information that the husks were available in most area supermarkets was met with skepticism from several colleagues, until I explained that they were in the Latin food section, because you need them for tamales. "Are you going to make tamales, too?" my friend Mary asked.

"No," I answered in a tone of voice that clearly expressed the absurdity of the idea, but even as I was verbally dismissing the concept out of hand, the wheels of my cooking brain were turning. "Maybe," I amended my reply almost immediately, and before Mary could say a word, I said, "Yes! I am going to make tamales! Vegan tamales!"

So, even though I have never made tamales before, that is what we are having for dinner tonight, and it was a lot of fun to adapt the recipe, too.

Thanks, Mary!

With the Benefit of Time

We saw the re-make of Footloose today. You might think a generation later, we would identify with the older generation.

Nope. That no dancing law is still totally bogus.

By the Seat of My Pants

Today our team was supposed to go on a field trip to a corn maze, but our plans were dashed at the eleventh hour when the farmers called and said the place was flooded. They had been up since 1 AM digging trenches to drain the labyrinth in time for 130 sixth graders to attempt to navigate, but at 8:45 Am, they knew it was, literally, a wash and called the school. The young teacher who had coordinated the trip appeared at my door white-faced. I excused myself from the group of kids industriously making corn husk dolls in my room and stepped into the hallway to receive the bad news. What could we do? It was back to a normal schedule for the disappointed students and some serious improvisation for their teachers.

I chose Jeopardy as my fall-back activity, and it went pretty well. Here are the categories and questions if you want to play along at home:

Parts of Speech
100 a person, place, or thing
200 an action
300 a word that describes a noun
400 a word that modifies a verb or and adjective
500 a word that tells the relationship between nouns-- like over, under, between, in, or on.

Series and Authors:
100 Harry Potter
200 Percy Jackson
300 Diary of a Wimpy Kid
400 The Hunger Games
500 Twilight

TJ Teams:
100 the other sixth grade team
200 the 7th grade team named for a sea mammal
300 this team is named for a flightless bird
400 the only team named for a reptile
500 this team shares a name with our national bird

Pixar Movies:
100 Woody and Buzz
200 Marlin and Dory
300 Dash and Violet
400 Sully and Mike
500 Remy and Linguine

Writers Toolbox:
100 details that tell how something looks, tastes, smells, sounds, and/or feels
200 a comparison between two unlike things using the words "like" or "as"
300 a comparison between two unlike things that does not use the words "like" or "as"
400 a figure of speech which gives human qualities to inanimate, or non-living things
500 Nouns that refer to specific objects, not abstract or general things

State Capitals:
100 Richmond
200 Annapolis
300 Austin
400 Sacramento
500 Juneau

It was lots of fun, and I was surprised when in each class, some students predicted the answer and wrote it down before I asked the question, based on their knowledge of the category, and, I can only assume, their knowledge of me. Often, they were correct.

Sic Semper Tyrranis

Sickening footage today of the death of a horrible man-- Libya is at last free of its ruthless dictator of 43 years. There is evil in the world, yes there is, but I have to say that I believe that humans compound violence when they address it in turn. I will never be in the same league with Gandhi or Dr. King, but I am on the same page.

Con-cussed

I met with a parent today about a head injury her son sustained playing soccer a couple of weekends ago. Athletes with concussions have been prevalent in the news lately, but this is the first case I've had personal experience with. Coincidentally, we also saw a brief informational video on the same topic today at our monthly staff meeting.

Concussions can impact behavior, critical thinking, and learning in a variety of ways. Depending on their severity, and there is no way to definitively tell just how severe they are, their symptoms can last for months or even years. Like so many other invisible conditions, it's hard to know how best to treat someone with such a diagnosis-- the danger is in believing they could do better if only they would.