Go Ahead and JUMP!

After writing letters asking for advice at the end of last week, yesterday it was time for my students to offer advice. The letters were coded and handed out to kids in other sections so that they might remain anonymous. We read a few examples and broke the art of writing an advice letter down in to three parts:

First offer sympathy and support. Next show that you understand the situation by rephrasing it and then giving your ideas to solve and/or resolve it. Finally, express your hope that you have been helpful and invite them to write again should they need further support.

In general the letters are super cute-- the students took their task very seriously and most offered the best advice they could. My favorite was this letter written in response to a student who felt he wasn't a good enough jumper to play soccer well:

I am sorry this is happening to you. I play football and in that sport you have to jump, just like soccer.

If you want to jump well, then I suggest that every time you walk by a doorway try to jump and touch the top of it. Every time you leave a room touch the top of the doorway. When you walk, try to skip or hop to the place instead. Last advice I have for you is before any practice or game try jumping side to side, forward and backward. 

I hope my advice helps you. Jump well and stay fit!

Thin Green Line

Whoa! Even the Girl Scouts are offering Vegan options now!

Enjoy your thin mints, plant eaters.

Honeymoon Period

"Do you feel any different now that you're married?" a colleague asked me today.

"Not really," I laughed. "Do you?" She, too, had recently married her longtime partner, a man she had been with for over 15 years and had two children with.

"No, but kind of," she answered. "I feel a little more..." she trailed off, looking for the right adjective.

"Kindly?" I supplied.

"Exactly!" she said. "I feel much more affectionate and patient. You would think that now that we're married I'd take a lot more for granted, or something."

"I know what you mean," I told her, "I feel it, too."

A friend of ours who had just celebrated her 21st wedding anniversary listened in amusement. "Just wait," she shook her head, "just wait."

Oh, Tolerance Club!

Today our conversation centered on stereotypes and privilege, and inevitably perhaps, given recent events, it circled round to Muslims and terrorism. "Just because the attackers on 9-11 were Muslim, doesn't necessarily mean all Muslims will attack us," one of the adults said.

There was an audible snort. Just because some people come to Tolerance Club doesn't mean they're tolerant, I thought.

"What about ISIS?" demanded the snorter. "They're Muslim."

I decided to take an indirect approach to his question. "Before September 11, 2001, the worst terrorist attack in the US was carried out in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, a white man who didn't like the government. Nobody thinks we should be suspicious of all white guys because of that."

"Of course not!" snorted the snorter, "That would be ridiculous. The whole government is practically white guys."

And so it goes.

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

After a fun and productive weekend the conversation around here has turned to the weather: specifically whether or not it will be icy enough in the morning to give us a delayed opening for school. Oh, it's a squeaker... after days of below-freezing temperatures, today it nearly reached 40, but as the sun went down, so did the mercury. Precipitation is predicted to begin around 2 AM, when it will be cold, but how cold?

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Personally, I can't get emotionally invested in this one, and I said as much to Heidi. "Yeah!" she replied, "I get that. But I have a practical concern; what clothes should I get ready?"

I understood her dilemma even though I did not share it. An old saw came to mind. "Expect the best and prepare for the worst?" I suggested.

She nodded. "But in this case," she wondered, "which is which?"

Maybe I Will

And there came that moment while taking down our Christmas tree today, just before we passed the point of no return, where I actually considered putting all the ornaments right back on and just leaving it up.

Dear Abby

Back when I started teaching, I ambitiously founded a student newspaper for my 6th grade team. Published 4-5 times per year, it was a product of the hard work of about a dozen kids and me. At our first editorial staff meeting I asked what sort of features they might like to include, and by far and away the top of their list was an advice column. They decided to call it "Dear Kitty" partially because "Abby" was already taken, and partially because that's what Anne Frank called her diary.

Flash forward a couple of decades, and with a unit whose guiding question is How can we use writing to solve problems? an advice letter activity seemed like a natural. "Can anyone tell me who Dear Abby is?" I started the lesson, but there were blank looks all around. Surprised, I took a step back and explained the concept of writing anonymously to a newspaper for advice.

At a meeting yesterday, someone asked me if the students had been thrown off by our crazy weather-related schedule this week. "Not really," I replied. "When you're in sixth grade? Nothing is a surprise, basically because everything is new." They laughed because they knew it was true, especially for middle school kids.

It took me a while to realize it, but I'm pretty sure eleven and twelve are the most resilient ages of humans-- you're young enough to have very fluid expectations, but old enough to appreciate novelty. At that age, the phrase roll with it was invented for you.

And as a long time sixth grade teacher, it was invented for me, too, because adjusting and improvising are often what I have to do to reach my students, despite the amount of data I may have on them. And so today I found myself describing a cultural pillar of 20th century America to a class full of kids with iPads in their hands.

"Is it kind of like ask.com?" one wanted to know.

"Not really," I said.

"That century was, like, 20 years ago!" added another.

"Fifteen," I corrected her.

"Whatever!" she replied. "We weren't even born, yet."

However... Once they saw an example and were asked to write, on paper, with a silly pseudonym, for some free advice, you would be amazed at what a cool idea it was, and they totally rolled with it.