Ode to the Ode

I had a guest poet scheduled to visit my class yesterday. The timing was perfect-- poetry and Valentine's Day?-- and this particular poet and I have worked together for the last 4 years. Even so, I still had a nagging feeling that something was going to go wrong.

Later when I told the story, a colleague of mine said, "I'm going to start asking you for lottery numbers! You were right about this; you're usually right about the snow..." and she continued with a list of other accurate predictions I've made over the years. I liked that. I like thinking I have a little bit of a sixth sense, but as far as the lottery goes? I predict I'm not going to win it anytime soon.

At any rate, prescience is of no value unless you act upon it, and in this particular case, I did not. 8:15 AM found me desperately texting my poet buddy while making small talk with my first period class about how great our visiting artist was going to be. At 8:20 I kicked into emergency mode and began improvising a lesson about odes. Who knows where that came from? It certainly helped that I own a copy of Neruda's Odes to Common Things, and the Valentine's Day angle made things easier, too, but I truly believe that the key ingredient to what turned out to be a very successful activity was our collective focus on the positive.

For me this has been a tough year with a challenging group of kids, so the opportunity for each of us to express our appreciation for those things, both large and small, that make us happy, that make our lives a little easier, was priceless. Yesterday was a very good day.

Post Script: The poet overslept. He called at 9:30 to apologize profusely, and we rescheduled for tomorrow. I do have a back-up plan, but I don't think I'll need it.

That Was Then; This Is Now

It has long been our tradition to have heart-shaped pizza on Valentine's Day:

But, since she's been vegan, pizza just hasn't been the same for Heidi. So tonight's menu is heart-healthy rather than heart-shaped:

I don't care what we have, as long as she likes it and it makes her happy. Happy Valentine's Day!

I Wish it Was Sunday

It was a groggy Monday this morning, maybe because a bunch of the students had stayed up to watch the Grammys, or maybe because I had. At any rate, there was a bit of sluggish discussion about the events of the weekend as my homeroom students organized their binders in super slo-mo. Not surprisingly, the topic of Whitney Houston's death kind of meandered around the classroom. At the age of eleven and twelve, most of the kids knew the name, but were generally unfamiliar with her work. "You know what I hate?" one of them said in reference to her passing. "I hate it when people get rich after they die! My brother told me all her songs are number one on iTunes."

His comment prompted confused looks from his classmates, but as it was Monday morning, they let it go, and so did I.

Quiet

There's been a lot of press lately about Susan Cain's introvert's manifesto, Quiet. An off the charts 'I' myself, I downloaded and read the free preview as soon as I heard about the book. It's received mixed reviews, from both introverts and extroverts alike, but I think that its premise that being outgoing may be erroneously perceived as superior has some merit.

I have a friend and colleague with whom I have worked for almost 15 years who is an extreme extrovert. We eat lunch together every day, and our relationship works in part because she willingly initiates the conversation on a daily basis. Over the years we've become close enough to laugh at just how introverted I am, and I know that she accepts me.

She is a special education teacher, and a good one, and she and I agree that the best approach is to meet the needs of the individual students where they are, whether they have been identified formally or not, and often I turn to her for advice in making accommodations in my class. I like to think that my own experience makes me a good resource, too, and not surprisingly, our lunchtime conversation frequently revolves around the challenges we're facing on the team.

Not long ago she was describing a situation where a certain student neither wanted to work in a group nor make a presentation in the social studies class she pushed in to. Based on our knowledge of the kid, the other teacher, the class, and the assignment, we bandied strategies to get that student on board with the activity. This was before I had heard of Cain's book, but as we were talking it occurred to me that maybe, since this child was an introvert, we were asking too much. "Why should he have to do that if it's against his nature?" I asked.

This was new ground for both of us, and my friend reacted as if I was being less than serious (which of course I often am in these conversations-- after all, it's lunch time). "No really," I said, "why do we force kids who are uncomfortable with interpersonal stuff to do it anyway?"

"Um, because they're going to need those skills in the future?" my friend answered.

And all of a sudden I glimpsed a grand extrovert bias that has permeated education and society for my entire life. I realized that as much as my friend liked and respected me that she considered my reserve to be a deficit. I thought of all the books about winning friends and influencing people and mastering the art of small talk, and I remembered all the times my mom and my brother talked about forcing themselves out of their comfort zones in order to do their jobs.

"Why?" I repeated, and the incredulity on my friend's face just made me want to mess with her a little. I gasped in mock horror. "You are prejudiced!" I accused her. "You think there's something wrong with being an introvert that needs to be fixed." I shook my head. "Why?" I asked again.

We left it at that; the end of our 35 minute lunch period was near, and our students were returning to class. It was never a serious conversation, but the implications stayed with me. In a world of increasing noise, do we really want to encourage all of our students to add to it?

Didn't She Almost Have it All

We were at a "girls only brown bag wine tasting" tonight at the home of one of our neighbors. There was 80's music playing all evening, and our memories of the songs threaded in and out of each conversation as the guests grouped and regrouped. Cutting Crew, Bon Jovi, Journey, Madonna, and Cindy Lauper were all remembered fondly.

Of course Whitney Houston was bound to come up and she did. "Look where she is now," someone said. "She's a mess."

"But I loved the song I Want to Dance With Somebody," somebody else added wistfully. There were nods of agreement, and then the conversation moved on.

Not for me, though. For a moment I conjured that younger Whitney: gorgeous, and with that voice! and all her energy and charisma and how really really great she was, and I hoped for a come back. She can totally do it! I thought. It's not too late.

Countability

So often teachers of subjects other than language arts report that one reason they don't require much writing is because they are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with some of the finer points of grammar and usage. We did a couple of quick little exercises in my Writing Across the Curriculum workshop today where the objective was to show that that type of incorrectness does not usually impede communication and also that those errors are usually the easiest thing to fix in a writing piece. One task the participants had to do was choose between "fewer" and "less" when the terms were applied to the word "people," as in There were fewer/less people at the park than there were at the movies.

The rule with "fewer" or "less" is countability-- you use "fewer" when you can count the individual items and "less" when you can't, like fewer pennies, less change. The tricky part of the above question is that "people" was not originally used as the plural of "person" (that would have been "persons"), so there was a time when you couldn't actually count the people in a room, and therefore "less people" was the correct usage.

Today that is not the case, people is the commonly accepted plural form of person. The topic certainly made for a lively discussion in our session today, though, and who do you think brought it up?

The math teachers, of course. Count on them!

Billable Hours

Last July I stood with pearly white cavity-free teeth and scheduled my next six-month checkup at the gleaming front desk of my dentist. It was only the second time I had been to the office and the only reason I was there at all was because my long-time dentist had retired. Oh he played it well-- sending postcards to all of his clients informing us that he was cutting back on his hours. I knew then that, seeing as how he was a single practitioner, it could only mean one thing: he was selling us to another practice.

Even so, I decided to go along and see how the new dentist was. My first visit was like time traveling-- the office, the equipment, and the staff seemed at least thirty years ahead of the old-fashioned approach I was used to, and nobody from the old practice was anywhere in sight. It wasn't great, and it wasn't terrible, but it was really really different, yet not so much to make me go out and find myself a new tooth guy.

The second visit was also fine. I found myself building a bit of a rapport with my new hygienist, and the efficiency of everything in this oh so 21st century practice was beginning to win me over. I liked the email reminders and the convenient online confirmation, and I could almost picture myself stopping at the Starbucks a few doors down every six months from now to infinity.

Until today. I awoke this morning with the leaden knowledge that I had slept poorly. The idea of busting out the door right after school to get my teeth cleaned, on top of everything else I needed to do today was overwhelming, and in an effort to prioritize, I resolved to reschedule. I called the office at lunch to politely explain the situation and get another date on the calendar. There was a pause, and then the receptionist told me that ordinarily it's a hundred dollar charge to cancel within four business days. They were waiving it for me this time, but I needed to make a note of the policy.

And I did make a note, right away.  

Find a new dentist.