Found Poetry

A friend's daughter posted the following on Facebook:

I want to tell a something.

I am miss my older brother,

He is moving to heading to new Colorado in today, And He is time new a chapter of his life but he will learning more a adventure new a place like beautifully, A cold in there. And I hope He will be safety in the Colorado and I know that is dangerous is big road because of ice and snow as I am sure.
I want to thank you for long time you and I are taught know many years be though we are know each other a close big brother and little sister. And also I am always love him as my brother and I know he is good guy and good rough of man. He is always used care of me because I am his little sister.

My Brother,
I hope you be safety in new Colorado and I am sure you will love photography in there a lot as more and also hope you will see visit to us again. Merry Christmas.

The author is deaf, and so perhaps her writing is shaped by ASL, but regardless, I am captivated by both the powerful prose and the surprising syntax, and I find it quite beautiful.

O, Christmas Tree

Each December the Lions Club takes over a little corner of a grocery store parking lot not far from our home. Staffed by friendly volunteers, they offer a nice selection of firs and balsams, and it is there that we usually find the perfect tree for us. Every year jolly men in parkas and boots assisted by pink-cheeked high school boys carry our find to the front of the lot, give it a nice fresh cut, bind it in plastic mesh, and tie it to the roof of our car.

This evening when we pulled up after a busy day of shopping and errands, we were greeted by a whole different staff, comprised mostly of teenaged girls in fuzzy pajamas, thermal shirts, down vests, and knit caps. Their leader was a woman of perhaps sixty with a bit of a harried air; she manned the electric saw as most of the girls chattered by the binder. As we waited to have our tree trunk trimmed, another customer called over to her. "I see you have a new crew here! Are they any good?" he asked with a wink.

She looked at the assembly maneuvering a Fraser fir toward the parking lot. "They're very," here she paused, "energetic," she finished diplomatically.

"We heard that!" The girls shouted back, and then they giggled as they hefted the tree onto the roof of the waiting car and neatly tied it in place.

Nothing You Dismay

In my years as a teacher, I have sat through many a school concert, and in general, I'm pretty impressed with what the music department at our school can do with a couple hundred novice, not to mention child, musicians.

In the last few years they have introduced short interludes played by small ensembles between acts.  It's a great concept; it gives the restless adolescent audience something to focus on as the crew resets the stage between the chorus, orchestra, and band portions of the show. These mini-numbers aren't always as strong; there a lot fewer musicians to bolster the performance, but it's impossible not to give the student musicians props for their effort.

Today I was delighted to hear a couple of former students, brothers, playing a french horn-trombone duet of O Tannenbaum, but it was the brassy, trumpet-tuba version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman that made me wish I had brought my phone along to record it...  And I mean this in the most affectionate way: it was so bad, it was awesome!

Gno Way!

A few days ago my nephew texted me a picture of his dinner.

Away at college, he had prepared the homemade sweet potato gnocchi that we made together while he was home for Thanksgiving-- how awesome is that?

Proximity

My students were doing some dictionary work for their weekly word study when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one kid slam his finger onto the page and turn wide-eyed to his partner. "Is this even allowed in school?!" he demanded.

To be honest, that type of thing happens a lot-- students are forever looking up "inappropriate" words in the dictionary and pointing them out for the entertainment of those around them. What follows is usually a brief lecture on maturity from me, and today I took a deep breath in preparation as I walked over to the two boys huddled over the giant book opened before them.

"Granny!" read the first student. "An OLD LADY!"

"That's just rude!" replied his partner, and then slid his finger down the page to graph.

Junk Fair

Today was the day when I took my classes to the school book fair. Sponsored by the PTA, it has been an annual tradition at our school since before I started. My students are always so excited to go and check out the merch in the makeshift bookstore set up in the library that it truly makes me question the fall of brick and mortar commerce. It's never the books that they want most, though-- most of their crumpled bills and sweaty coins go for posters, bookmarks, pencils, and other novelties such as this year's big seller, the chocolate calculator. For four bucks you got a little box that had either a calculator made to resemble a chocolate bar or a chocolate bar made to resemble a calculator; I'm still not sure which.

Imagine

I've noticed that my students this year are really good test-takers, and by that I mean they are very respectful of a testing environment, always quiet and quite serious. I don't mean that they are good at studying for tests, because they are not; preparing in advance for an assessment on specific material is still an emerging skill for most of them.

That's not entirely unexpected, though, managing a schedule of 7-8 different teachers is one of the ways middle school kicks it up a notch from elementary school. Unfortunately, they also seem to have another glaring weakness as well: so many times when I ask them to use their imagination they act as if their brains are breaking.

Just today in a mini-lesson on figurative language the question was "If the main character in your book was an animal what would he or she be and why?" I was astonished at how many students could not fathom how to approach this exercise. "There's no right or wrong answer," I told them, "as long as you can explain why." And that seemed to frustrate them even more.

PS Could it actually be 34 years since we lost John Lennon? Imagine that.