Where I'm From

My students are using George Ella Lyon's poem, Where I'm From as a mentor text this week. Lyons uses a montage of images to create a strong picture of her roots. The assignment allows the sixth graders to gather and select concrete details from their families' past and present and craft them into poems of their own.

As concrete as I try to make the task, it is extremely abstract at its core. "Where am I from?" students often ask in confusion. "My parents? The hospital? I don't get it!" We muddle through, though, and by the end, most get the idea.

This afternoon, we had a bit of excitement in the building. One of my student's mom went into labor in the girls room around the corner. Everything turned out okay-- the ambulance arrived before the baby was born-- but given the many conversations I had today, I laughed to think where that child might think she is from.

May You Live in Interesting Times

Some of my students from last year came back to pay me a visit. "How are the sixth graders this year?" they wanted to know.

"Oh they're really nice," I answered.

"But not as nice as we were, right?"

"Oh, they're pretty nice," I said, and they looked disappointed. "But I can promise you this," I added. "I don't have one single class that is quite as exciting as yours was."

They took it as a compliment.

Bueller? Anyone?

Here's how it is:

 Me: I'm having trouble scheduling the field trip for the day we wanted.

Colleague: Yay! Does that mean we can go somewhere else?

Me: Sure. We can go anywhere you want if you're willing to make some calls and set it up.

Colleague: So, what was the problem with the first place?

Revolving Door

I have no illusions that TV networks are working very hard to get my viewership. I have been marginalized all my life. First I was a child, then when I was 18-35, I wasn't male, and now? I'm just an old fogey who likes to watch one show a night before retiring early.

Perhaps it's my advanced age, but sometimes it can be jarring to see an actor who was formerly a regular on one of your favorite shows cast as a new character on another. It happened last season on Law and Order: SVU-- when Christopher Meloni left (and joined the cast of True Blood, which I don't watch) Danny Pino from Cold Case and Kelli Giddish from Chase (both of which I did watch, until they were canceled) joined the show.

Then, just the other night on this season's premier who should appear but Paget Brewster, whose character Emily Prentiss just left Criminal Minds, and Adam Baldwin who was Casey on Chuck.

Ay yi yi! "This can't continue," I said to Heidi. "One of those two is the culprit. The other might stay."

And, may I say? I was correct.

But I still don't like it.

Feeling Left Out

I'm not a big football fan. Don't get me wrong-- I don't hate the game, but my interest is casual at best. I keep up with the local team more to know what my students are talking about than anything else. Still, as I sat here enjoying the final hours of the weekend, my windows open to the cool early-autumn evening, I could hear the cheers and groans of my neighbors drifting through the complex on the night air.  

What on earth IS going on? I wondered, but then I remembered-- the game is on. It must be good, I thought and promptly turned it on. With 9 minutes left in the 4th quarter, the opposing team had just scored to pull within 2.

And the rest was pretty dramatic: Our team fell behind with a little more than a minute left. They moved the ball down the gridiron to within field goal range, and then their kicker, who had been driven out of our neighboring city when he missed a field goal that would have won the championship and was 0-3 in this game, with 3 seconds left on the clock nailed it for a one point win.

Great stuff! I'll be sure to use it at the proverbial water cooler tomorrow. Even so, I'm kind of sorry that once I turned on my own TV,  I couldn't hear my neighbors' reactions anymore.

I'm sure they were happy.

Exercise Discipline Affection and Inspiration

We went down to the Second Annual National Family Pack Walk this morning. Organized by Cesar Millan's foundation to promote animal rescue and rehabilitation, the Dog Whisperer himself was present along with his co-host Scooby Doo. This event has been on our calendar for months, ever since Heidi saw a commercial for it during her favorite show, yes, The Dog Whisperer.

For those who are unfamiliar, Millan visits the homes of troubled dogs and rehabilitates them and their owners by breaking negative behavior cycles. His argument that dogs need calm assertive leadership from their owners is very compelling and especially convincing when you watch the show and witness the turn-arounds he is able to facilitate in case after case.

We were there bright and early, and Cesar (and his security detail) passed us within feet three times. In person he is an unassuming figure, but his speech was inspiring, and most impressive of all? You should have seen the dogs in the crowd. There was not an aggressive pooch in sight, and as thousands of people and their dogs walked a mile behind the ultimate pack leader, I did not hear a single growl.

Location Location Location

For the last week or so, we have been working on sensory details in my English classes. I have some good mentor texts; the kids looked in their independent reading books for examples; we went outside to gather some, and they did a little sense poem exercise.

That particular assignment asks writers to imagine a specific place and then conjure a descriptive detail for each of the senses. Most kids pick the beach or the woods, the pool or New York City; this year some wrote about Paris and Ethiopia, but there are always a few that think outside the box (the future, Candyland), and one or two who want to test the limits.

Case in point:

Student: Can I write about the bathroom?
Me: Sure.
Student (surprised): I can?
Me, shrugging: If you want to and you think it's a good idea. Try it.

A little while later he was kind of stuck. There was always a chance that he could have pulled it off with humor or irony, but he was taking a pretty literal approach-- he had a lot of farting and stinking in his poem and couldn't think of too much else. My advice is always that in a piece this short, it's a mistake to repeat a word or image because it weakens the impact of it, and that's definitely what was going on.

Still, he was committed to the poem, eventhough any negative attention he might have gotten from his peers was diffused by my matter-of-fact treatment of his topic. I looked over his shoulder to see if I could help. We back-and-forthed out a few possibilities, and then he wondered if he could try another topic.

"Sure," I said, "that's what writers do."