Tough All Over

Our sixth grade god-daughter is in town from New Jersey for the weekend, and she and I have spent the last few hours commiserating about school. "I use to like school before they made us get up so early!" she said.

"Tell me about it!" I answered.

"When we ask to go to the bathroom our math teacher always sighs and says, Is now really the best time?" she told me at dinner. 

"I know, but look at it from her point of view," I said. "A kid goes to the bathroom and then comes back and says, What are we doing? I was in the bathroom."

She laughed. "Well whose fault is that?" she admitted, and so we went on. 

And to be honest? It's been helpful and refreshing to hear the student side of the kind of sixth grade drama that seems to be fairly universal.

Slowhand

"So did you practice a lot of ukulele the last couple of weeks?" my instructor inquired this evening.

"Uh. No," I confessed. " I haven't even picked my ukulele up in at least a week."

"Busy, eh?" he shrugged. "What? Do you have a full time job or something?"

He laughed. I felt better.

"Why don't we do a little rockin' out?" he suggested. "This song has two chords and then it uses the blues scale."

I expected him to pull out some sheet music, but he didn't. Instead he demonstrated, bar by bar, and then had me try it. He was right-- it wasn't too hard.

"I'm going to play the chords," he said, "and you just go ahead and play the scales up and down, any way you want."

I did what he said: I listened to the music and just tried to keep up, jamming along. It sounded pretty good! And I was smiling a couple of minutes later when we stopped.

"That was a nice solo!" he told me, "Just like Clapton!"

I laughed as he pulled out the sheet music so that we could keep working on The Sunshine of Your Love. "This is so much fun, I don't think I'll practice next week either!"

More than Enough

In a week where consistent frustration at work has led me to question both human nature and our culture at large, a welcome commercial transaction today:

Shout out to chewy.com, a web-based pet supply company from whom I ordered several items a couple weeks ago! Most of the stuff was great, but a couple things just did not work for us. When I went online to return the too-small collar and tiny food bowl I was irritated at first that there was no simple return form. And so it was in foul humor that I clicked the "Chat Now" button.

A few minutes later I had copied and pasted the items and order number into the dialog window and was busy grading papers when  customer service replied to me.

We will refund you the full amount right away, but there is no need to return the items to us. We hope you will find an animal shelter or other organization who will give your items to animals who need them. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

For goodness' sake, no! 

What He Could Do

Today I gave my students a poetry challenge based on Naomi Shihab Nye's poem, Famous. After reading, I asked them to come up with their own examples of fame and also to tell what they wish to be famous for.

On the surface? We were reviewing what a stanza was, but I hoped for a little bit more, and I was not disappointed. Here's a great example:

The run down hut
is famous to it's family.

I want to be famous in the way a parent is,
to his children.
Not because he did something
out of the ordinary,
but because
he pushed on,
through fights and work,
still keeping responsibility
for his children's happiness,
and because,
he never
gave up.

~Anuj

Yo-yo

With exactly 20 days left in the April writing challenge and 20 days required to win a prize, I casually pulled out a big gun today. As my students checked their reading logs and reviewed for the word parts quiz I circulated through the room flicking my wrist to deploy and retrieve my blue Duncan butterfly. Here and there I let it sleep at the end of its string before calling it into the safety of my palm; a couple of times I flipped it around the world, and once or twice I even tried to walk the dog. For a brief moment I was back in sixth grade myself: it was 1973 and, just like all the other kids,  I had a classic yellow and red butterfly threaded around my finger.

"You have a yo-yo?" my students exclaimed.

"Oh yeah," I shrugged. "Don't you?"

"No!" they answered, followed by a chorus of Can I try it?

"You can if you win one in the writing challenge!" I said. "Let me remind you how it works..."

It's nice to know that I did actually learn something valuable in sixth grade! I wish the same for my students.

Not Quite

The poetry challenge for my sixth grade students today was to write a limerick, and I thought the directions were pretty clear:

A limerick is a silly poem with five lines. They are often funny or nonsensical. Limericks were made famous by Edward Lear, a famous author who wrote the Book of Nonsense in the 1800's. This was an entire book of silly limericks.

How to write a limerick:

The first, second and fifth lines all have 8 or 9 syllables.
The third and fourth lines have 5 or 6 syllables
The rhyme scheme is AABBA
Limericks often start with the line "There once was a..." or "There was a..."

First of all, bless their hearts, all 25 kids who took time out of their Sunday to try and compose a limerick, which is not an easy task at all. Some were really good, and some were just a little off. This one, though? Was my favorite:

There once were golden ducks
which loved to smuggle old bananas
but when they were caught
they quack and grunt
" but we are innocents!" With mistakes

Reteach?

You bet! And I can't wait for the conference to see where my directions went so wrong!

If at First

"Hey Mom! I have a new favorite color! Guess what it is?" we overheard a little boy ask this afternoon.

"Chartreuse?" his mom suggested playfully.

"I don't even know what that is," he dismissed her answer. "But you have two more guesses!"