The Pen and the Sword

I would never say that I am an expert on the English language, but after 54 years of hearing it, 53 years of speaking it, 48 years of reading it, 12 years of learning it, 6 years of studying it, and 24 years of teaching it, I might call myself an experienced practitioner.

Even so, my spell check just told me to correct that last word from practionor. It happens! In fact, although I am able to address almost all of the grammatical and vocabulary needs of my sixth graders, I am unfamiliar with at least a third of my word-of-the-day calendar entries, and sometimes, when researching resources to use in my class I find myself in a little bit of deep water.

Oh, I can tread away, dear reader, but one must recognize her deficits if one expects to improve. Take the term synecdoche, for example. The first time I came across it on a list of figurative language devices, I had no idea how to pronounce it (sin-eck'-doh-key), much less what it meant. Once I learned that it was the practice of representing something by one of its a parts, like Washington, for the U.S. government, John Hancock for a signature, or suits for guys in charge, I understood the term, but I'll be darned if I can remember it to use in conversation.

It's on the tip of my tongue, though.

I Just Called to Say...

My phone rang unexpectedly at around 4:30 this afternoon. It was my 8-year-old niece on facetime, and I punched the accept button right away.

"Hey!" I said. "What's going on?"

"I called you..." she paused, "well, just because I wanted to!" she told me.

"That's awesome!" I said. "I'm still at school," I sighed, looking at the stack of papers I was going through to put in my gradebook. "How are you? How was school for you today?"

"I'm fine!" she answered. "It was good!"

"How's the puppy?" I asked.

"Good!" she smiled.

"What about the weather?"

"Really nice!" she nodded. "Oh well, if you're at work, I'll let you go!"

"Okay," I agreed. "Thank you so much for calling! I miss you!"

"I miss you too!" she said. "I'll talk to you soon!"

"Love you!" we both said as she hung up.

No Purchase Necessary

I confess that at times I dream of striking it rich in some implausible, the-odds-are-totally-against-me, kind of way. That's why I opened the email from PCH tonight. I'll just scroll-click scroll-click scroll-click right through, I told myself. And who knows? In a month or so? I may have 10,000 bucks a week coming in. Wouldn't that be fun for Christmas?

But that's where those marketing geniuses see me coming! On the very first page I had to stop and take a closer look at an item.

      Transform your toilet into a soft, gentle night light!

      Bowl Light™
      Fits most toilets!
      Adjustable Brightness/Adjustable Dimmer
      Say goodbye to glaring bathroom lights in the middle of the night!

      Motion-activated LED light automatically casts a soft glow
      The soft light doesn’t wake you up and turns off automatically after 45 seconds!
      Set to one of your 7 favorite colors — red, green, purple, aqua, yellow, white and blue
      Color-Cycle Mode automatically changes to next color for each use!

      Requires 3 "AAA" batteries, not included. Made of abs plastic, polyethylene,
      pvc, tpr rubber, silicone, wiring. Measures 2.05" L x 2.56" W x 4.13" H.
      Bowl light™ will only turn on when in a dark room. Please consult instructions prior to use.

      4 PAYMENTS EACH ONLY$3

No way! I thought.

And no way! it was as well for the Bacon Boss, the Handy Heater, and the Angry Mama Microwave Cleaner. In fact, the more I saw, the easier it got it to just scroll and click. 

And now? 

I am in it to win it!

Flipping Out

Over the years a lot of crazes have swept the sixth grade. Back in 1973, when I was in sixth grade, everybody wanted Duncan yo-yo's and Wacky Package stickers. Twenty years later, when I first started teaching, it was baggy pants, slap bracelets, and gigapets. Ten years after that there were heelys, iPods, and silly bandz. Today? Flipping water bottles is the go-to.

Why not? We encourage kids to stay hydrated, and that means a water bottle in every hand. Drink half, and then accept the challenge to land that baby upright on...

the floor,
the desk,
your binder,
the floor, through your pants
and so forth

What's a teacher to do?

Just walk the dog, pull up your pants, roll on over to that group of kids, grab the water bottle, flip it into the trash can, and start your class.

Phantom Dog Pain

Our neighbor's away this weekend and we are caring for her dog. Lady is a little temperamental: for example, she chose not to stay at our house last night. Instead she stood by the door and beamed us a message through her one good eye, something like, Why would I sleep in this house? I can practically smell my bed from here. 

To be honest, that makes her even easier to look after, especially since she and our cat are not on speaking terms. I just walked through the courtyard to take her out this morning, and as I opened the front door, she hopped down from the couch and stretched. I clipped her collar and leash on and we headed up the stairs and across the parking lot to the wooded hill. I had made the same trip a thousand times with Isabel, but this was the first time I had made it with a dog since we lost her.

And that made me really sad.

Problem Solved

Give a kid an iPad, and he'll be able to catch his own dinner.

That's pretty much the theory behind our district's one to one initiative. For the last three years every 2nd and 6th grader has received an ipad, and every 9th grader has been issued a Macbook Air. As teachers? Our instructions have pretty much been, Use the devices to enhance instruction, but be sure to give the students some latitude to innovate.

I get that philosophy. I may be an immigrant to this brave new digital world, but I like to think I have assimilated quite well. And although it's tempting to focus on the inappropriate of the innovations (accessing non-school material during class, airdropping all manner of things to other people within Bluetooth range, and finding several ingenious ways around our school restrictions, to name a very few), let me tell you: those kids impress me with their creative uses of their devices all the time.

Why just today, a group of students was doing a skit for reading. "Do you have a speaker?" one of them asked me.

"You can hook up to that one," I told her, but one of the other girls in the group waved me off. "Never mind," she said, "we can use our iPads."

And what they did next was kind of amazing. Their sketch took place in the woods, so all three students pulled up audio of birds and then placed their devices in different places in the room. The skit was pretty good, but the surround sound was stunning.

I Don't Know

Student after student raised a hand in my reading class this morning. They were working on a standard read-and-answer-the-questions assignment from a text book (Oh! I know what you're thinking! BUT we will do something cool with it tomorrow!), and the same question was stumping reader after reader:

Why does the author use the pronoun I throughout the story? 

I was shocked to discover that none of them was familiar with the term pronoun, but I made a note to return to that concern later and quickly explained what a pronoun is so that they could answer the question.

One guy was even more confused by my explanation, though. Wait!" he interrupted me. "How is backslash a pronoun?"