Year by Year

My students started the second annual poetry challenge today. In support of our 100 Days of Writing and National Poetry Month, a different poetry assignment is revealed to students every morning. The first one is called Hello Haiku! and after a quick look at the form and some examples, (and a review of syllables), each student must write and share three haikus.

When I looked back at the sample haiku I had composed last year at this time, I realized that this persistent of winter of ours demanded a little revision.

2013:
Ask the wind that blows
the pink cherry blossoms when
they will fall to earth.

2014:
Ask the bare branches
that blow in the April wind
when they will blossom.

Be Afraid

If my students are any indication, this April Fool's Day is going to be eventful! Here, in their own words, is a sampling of their schemes and dreams, plots and plans, conniving and contriving:

April also means april fools day!! Which means sugar and salt switching, fake rat on the pillowing, ketchup for blood clinic pass getting (haha i wish) and much more.

This year I'm planning in doing something really sneaky. I might change the clock by an hour, or change something to something else I guess.

TOMORROW IS APRIL FOOLS DAY! My favorite "bring your family together" day of the year! I can already feel my evil-ness coming through.

When I go to bed tonight, I will tell my family to watch their back. April Fools Day will be so much fun.
1. Wake up my mom by shooting her with my nerf gun.
2. Wake up my sister by spraying her with an unknown substance.

Tomorrow is April Fool's day! I'm going to trick my parents and my brother, but not my baby brother and sister. They wouldn't get it. Anyway, our family has a "Prank Week" every year, so I have a document on google docs with all the pranks I use. It's going to be so much fun!

The Frozen Bubble Gum Trick:
Blow a bubble.
Freeze the bubble in the freezer.
Take the bubble out of freezer after 15-20 minutes.
Stick the bubble in your mouth.
Then, tell people you just blew the strongest most unpoppable bubble in the history of the world. This one is my favorite.

The only thing I know I'm going to do is prank someone. Hopefully it will turn out successfully and no one will get hurt

Good plan.

Solving for X

People are sometimes surprised to learn that math was my favorite class in school. While I love the romance of ideas that is the humanities, particularly the artistry of expression in literature, it was always the unequivocal absolute of mathematics that I enjoyed most. Math was easy for me, too, and perhaps that is why I spurned it in favor of what I perceived as more complex. It is for that reason that I understand completely why the vast majority of students turns first to math when it comes to homework. They, too, are drawn to its clear-cut expectations and right or wrong answers.

I always enjoy helping them after school or in TA when they need it. Although teaching strategies have changed, the answers are still the same. And when the daily math challenge is presented on the morning announcements, I can barely contain myself from shouting out the answer. "Come on guys! Math WOW with me!" I exclaimed just the other day, when my homeroom seemed completely indifferent to determining the volume of a cube.

The last couple of weeks I have been tutoring a friend of ours who has gone back to college to finish her degree. She's taking algebra, and the hours we have spent solving and graphing equations have been so much fun that I actually thank her at the end of the session.

Hm. 

For the Best

There was a wait of an hour fifteen minutes at the restaurant where we hoped to have dinner after the movie tonight. We gave them our name and number and headed back outside into the quiet rain to consider our options. Right across the plaza was another place that we had never heard of and they didn't look too crowded at all.

It could have gone either way. The place was more of a tavern, with a huge bar, high wooden booths, lots of basketball-filled flat screens, and some thumping nineties tunes on the sound system. I ordered the usual Saturday night dinner from when I was a kid-- steak, french fries, and salad-- and washed it down with a cold pint of draft beer, and when the first place texted, I replied with a satisfied Thanks anyway.

Selfie

There were five minutes left before lunch when a small group of students gathered around my desk. They were finished their work and excitedly looking at some of the writing challenge prizes that they might win next week. They were also examining the interesting doodads I have. They love my word a day calendar, my twenty year egg, my Zen wishes box.

I was paying a little less attention to them, perhaps than I should, caught up as I was, in monitoring and commenting on their classmates' fiction pieces in progress. I heard a roar of laughter and then a guilty giggle. "We took a selfie with your phone!" one student immediately confessed. "Sorry."

Yes, my phone, too, had been sitting on my desk, and no, it wasn't locked.

My first reaction was to be annoyed, very annoyed. "Give me that!" I demanded. They handed me the phone. I looked at the screen.

How could anyone stay mad at that? What an epic portrait of exuberance!

Also-- how did that even happen without my noticing?

AND, they promised it would never happen again.

The Romance

"It just makes me so sad," a friend of mine said yesterday. She had just finished a story about her sister who had confided that she was no longer in love with her husband; she wasn't really unhappy, and she had no plans to leave, she simply accepted that the passion was gone.

Certainly relationships change over time, and of course it can be worrisome. Just this evening Heidi came downstairs in the outfit she plans to wear to school tomorrow. "How does this look?" she asked. 

I glanced up from the cutting board. "Great!" I assured her.

"What would you think if you didn't know me?" she asked. It is a question I have answered many times before.

"Well, the blue in your sweater really makes your eyes pop," I answered, "so I would think, who is that with those pretty blue eyes and that great smile?"

"What would you do to get me?" she said.

I didn't hesitate. "I would find you the perfect dog, cook you all the vegan food you wanted, make fresh juice every morning, and pack your lunch every day," I replied.

She hugged me. "That would do it!" 

Auotbiography of a Student

When she wakes up in the morning, she is excited to go to class, mainly because she will spend the day with her friends. Lunch and the other breaks are definitely her favorite part of the day. In class, she is alert when she knows she might be called on and could probably answer a few questions correctly, and she participates good-naturedly in the group activities, but she is somewhat distracted by what she has to do once she leaves for the afternoon. To be honest? Next week most of the content covered will be a hazy memory.