Don't Stop There

My students were taking a standardized reading test when one of them raised his hand and waved furiously. For valid results, they were supposed to read the short passages and answer the related vocabulary questions completely independently.

I walked over to him. "What is it?" I whispered.

He gestured at the screen; glancing over, I didn't see a problem.

"I'm not allowed to help you," I reminded him.

His eyes widened, and mindful of the directions to keep a quiet testing environment, he wordlessly stabbed his finger at the passage, then ran it back and forth along the screen, pantomiming a desperate need for assistance.

I looked more closely at the passage. Ask your teacher for guidance... it began. I looked at the student. He smirked in self-satisfaction; after all, he was only following the directions.

I shook my head and laughed.

...in selecting possible research paper topics, it continued. Afterall, this may be your first attempt at writing a research paper. It helps to bounce ideas around with an expert... 

"Keep reading," I advised him.

Goodwill Hunting

Yesterday our team started the day with a quick "Hot Chocolate Social". It turns out you can serve 150 cups of hot chocolate to sixth graders for about a quarter each in a minimum of time with not much trouble. After fifteen minutes spent sipping a warm beverage and socializing with their friends, our usually unruly pack of tweens was almost tame heading into the school day. Sure, there were a few naysayers, This hot chocolate is too sweet! insisted one, and a couple were suspicious, Why are they doing this for us? What do they want? another student whispered urgently to her friend, but in general, the group just relaxed and enjoyed the cocoa in a rather well-behaved way. Anecdotally, I feel like I benefited all day: the goodwill seemed tangible.

The same could not be said for today. The mid-year "Safety Assembly" where administrators admonish students for all the rules that are not being followed and all the expectations that are not being met was held first thing in the theater. Tens of powerpoint slides full of DON'Ts in tiny writing filled the screen above the stage as we all sat through a droning review of the rules. Even I, a rule-follower and an adult in the building who would greatly benefit if more students followed more rules, was ready to pull my hood up over my head. Nobody likes to be scolded.

And maybe it's a coincidence, but man! Those kids were right back to their old ways. 

Swing and a Miss

"I really like this pen," one of my students told me, grabbing it off my desk without permission. "Can I have it?"

I was hardly surprised by his impulsivity and boundary-bending, and I decided to use the situation as leverage. "Do you solemnly swear to use this pen for good?" I asked playfully. "Use it to complete your assignments thoughtfully and neatly and work hard for the rest of the class period? So help you--"

"I do!" he told me seriously.

"Then you may have it." I bestowed the pen upon him with a cheerful flourish and a smile. "Get to work! I'll check in with you in a few minutes."

As he headed back to his seat purposefully it almost seemed like the pen might do the trick, but when I touched base with him, he was off-task with nothing written.

"Hey!" I said. "You promised you were going to get some writing done!"

He looked at me, confused. "I was lying!" he explained.

I frowned, discouraged.

"I thought you knew!" he said, and handed me the pen.

Counterclaim

I moved a student's seat closer to where I was working with another student so that the first student might be less distracted. The first guy did not appreciate my support.

"I didn't do anything!" he declared indignantly.

"I promise if that were true, I would have left you where you were," I told him. "I'm too busy to bother with false accusations."

He insisted he had been doing exactly as he was expected, and to save both of us some time I outlined why I had moved him. "1, you weren't doing the assignment," I started.

"I was getting ready to," he said.

"2, you were talking to people around you, preventing them from doing their work."

"They were talking to me!" he claimed.

"3, you are argumentative. You don't listen to me when I redirect you, instead you argue with everything I say, even when you know I'm right."

He paused. He knew he shouldn't say a word, and I could see the struggle on his face. In the end it was too much for him, though. "No I don't!" he insisted.

I raised an eyebrow.

He got to work.
Briefly.

Unpredictable

The day did not go as I pictured it.

I never imagined that on the first morning back from break one of the first people I would see was that oppositional student walking down the hallway with a quart of Mountain Dew in his hand, just itching for someone to tell him it wasn't allowed in school. And I certainly didn't anticipate that my cross-century VCR-Smart Board hook-up would fail, so that my homeroom and I would be unable to watch the morning announcements. And I never saw it coming when the boy who used to refuse to take off his coat but had been quite cooperative before the winter holidays would return to his former stance: Yeah, I'm just going to have to say no to following that rule, he told me.

"Wow!" I confessed out loud to my homeroom, "This year is something else already!"

But, 18 days off does have some restorative power, and each of those snafus was resolved with patience and a little outside grace. And not all the surprises today were bad. When asked to pick one little word to capture what he wanted more of in his life, a student known for his negativity chose "kindness" because there just isn't enough of it in middle school. And he ended his paragraph with, I can be nicer and so can everyone else.

HBD Bob

The meal gets a little less time-honored over the last 30+ years: first I substituted green beans for the peas; next the mashed potatoes became just a little lighter; now, the biscuits are sweet potato; the chicken is free-range and mostly white meat, and there is even a vegan version for Heidi. Even so, tonight on what would have been my dad's 84th birthday, we will sit down to chicken with white gravy and biscuits, and I will think of him, as I have all day.

Hold Outs

Tomorrow is 12th Night, the Epiphany, and the day when many pack up and put away their holiday decorations for another year. And when the sun came out unexpectedly this afternoon after a considerable stretch of gray skies and rain, it became clear that the days are indeed growing longer, even in just the two weeks since the solstice. Holiday clearance tables have given way to streamlined aisles, bins for organization, and Valentines Day candy. It's impossible to find parking at the gym, and school is back in session on Monday.

Christmas is over.

But not at our house!

Of course, we'll return to work as scheduled, and already our meals are a little lighter, and saving is the new spending. All the cookies are gone, but taking down the tree can wait a few more days, and the candles that light each window at dusk will stay until spring. So will the lighted sign that simply reads JOY, because some things transcend the season.