A is for Andiamo!

As a monolingual language teacher, I confess to being intrigued by the mentions a few of my students have made, both in writing and conversation before school was out, of their Duolingo Streaks. I have overheard them off-handedly compare notes about using the free app to learn Greek, Latin, Russian, and Klingon in their spare time, and I have been a bit envious.

Although I don't really speak (or read or write) any other languages fluently, I took French through college, lived in Italian and Arabic-speaking countries for several years as a teenager, been fortunate enough to travel widely, and have participated in countless Spanish-translated conferences in my years of teaching in this diverse county.

In those situations, as the conversation washes over me, I feel the meaning of these other languages just out of reach, like trying to remember a wonderful dream when I wake up. I want to understand.

And so yesterday, on a whim, I downloaded the app that the kids speak of so casually, so cooly. And friends? My streak is two! I am learning Italian. Or, perhaps I should say, Io imparo Italiano!

Life Lesson: You can teach an old dog new tricks-- with time and motivation.

Alphabetical Order

For the last few years I have assigned abecedarian poems to my students.

Pronounced A-B-C-darian, it is an ancient poetic form guided by alphabetical order. Generally each line or stanza begins with the first letter of the alphabet and is followed by the successive letter, until the final letter is reached. The form was frequently used in many cultures for sacred compositions, such as prayers, hymns, and psalms.

Some 20th century abecedarians are The Gashleycrumb Tinies, by Edward Gorey, and Alligators All Around by Maurice Sendak, both of which are works my brother and sister and I enjoyed when we were teens.

For their assignment, the students are only asked to compose something beautiful: sometimes they make sense; sometimes they are thematic; sometimes they are silly and random. This year, though, like everything the kids have written during our distance learning, the images they chose are revealing.

Here is a mashup of their poems, each line sampled from a different poet:

A is for Amsterdam a city on stilts
B is for Baker's Wife, Be More Chill and Bye Bye Birdie
C is for cool mornings and warm afternoons
D is for Dad that I wish I had
E is for eeeeeeew that’s nasty
F is for fire that lights the night
G is for good boy I am a good boy
H is for hugs lots of people love hugs
I’s for igloo as cold as ice
J’s for jumpy just like mice
K is for kids who play all day
L is for llama, the one that spits
M is for masterminds (I’m talking about you!)
N is for night dark and mysterious
O is for outside where I don’t want to go
P is for pick a card, any card
Q is for quarantine
R is for the common robin, who just had her eggs in my backyard.
S is for school because I am looking forward to going back
T is for toaster strudel
U is for us, we are animals
V is for viral
W is for waltzing silently
X’s for Xmas, that makes me laugh like a silly clown!
Y’s for yorkie, a small, but feisty little dog 🐕
Z is for Zoe who writes poetry

The poems are also a prewriting activity for the May Writing Challenge which is Alphabiography-- stay tuned for more on those soon!

Lighten Up While You Still Can

When I was a teenager, the first part of the weekend was always dedicated to cleaning the house. My mom would pop the Eagles' Greatest Hits into the 8 track player and blast it on continuous loop until our home was clean. Back then, I pulled my pillow over my head and tried to stay asleep as long as I could, but the band didn't make it easy with their breezy sing-along seventies rock, and neither did my mom.

In fact, our conflict over that very chore led to one of my more infamous occasions of disrespect. After studying Hamlet, I pulled my head from under the pillow and snarled, "Do you know what 'termagant' means?"

She did not. "Why don't you tell me?" she replied.

And I was stupid enough to do so.

As I cleaned my own house this morning, though, something there was that made me think a little loud music would lighten the labor. Of course the first sound track I considered was Eagles' Greatest Hits, followed by a couple of my mom's other favorites, John Denver and Fleetwood Mac.

And you now what? The house was scrubbed, dusted, vacuumed, and mopped in quick and easy fashion, before You Can Go Your Own Way was over.

Thanks, Ma.

Family History

Today is my grandfather's birthday. A man who married and had children a little later in life, he was born 124 years ago, in 1896. Granddaddy was 66 when I was born, and despite his energy and independence, he seemed pretty old to us when we were kids. He smoked cigars and a pipe and always wore a tie and a fedora when he left the house; he was a past commander of the local American Legion post, a big booster of youth baseball (there is a league named for him in Maryland), and he thought Archie Bunker was hilarious.

My granddad died the year I was 20, and when I think of him now it seems impossible that I could personally have known and loved someone who was born such a long time ago. He served in WWI, lost a business after the stock market crash of 1929, scrabbled hard to make a living during the depression, and moved the family to Washington, DC at the beginning of WWII, when my grandmother got a job at the Pentagon.

He was in his early twenties during the last pandemic. In fact his mother died of influenza, but not until 1928. She was only 60 then, just a couple of years older than I am now. And the 95 years that separate us in time somehow don't seem quite so unbridgeable as they might have just a few months ago.

Mayday, Mayday

The first of May rescued us from the coldest, wettest April I can ever remember. I'm sure part of the problem was that we were home with nothing to distract us from the weather, but when going outside is one of very few recreation options, you begin to take the rain a little personally. This new month dawned as gray as its predecessor, but by 3 PM blue sky was clearly visible behind and in between clouds more white than gray. And as I write, the sun is shining and a light breeze is riffling through the trees. All that rain really greened up the place, too. Tomorrow is set to be the jewel of the spring so far, temps in the high 70s and sunshine to spare, but the rain is predicted to return on Sunday, and May is actually forecast to be cooler and damper than usual. But that? Is a worry for another day.

Not Quite

My students and I celebrated Poem in Your Pocket Day safely and at a distance this year. Rather than the usual fun and revelry of everybody reading poetry for a few days before and choosing poems we love, then transcribing and decorating them to carry in our pockets and share throughout the day, this year we posted our selections on our online learning management system, and then read and commented from afar. 

It wasn't the same at all, but it was still poetry and it was still pretty moving. Here are just a few of the poems my students chose, along with part of their explanation why:

Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too, by Shel Silverstein, "because it has been a classic to me all my life, I used to have a lot of Shel Silverstein books in my home" 

Sisters by Lucille Clifton "I liked these lines because they represent a strong friendship, and because I hope that can be me and some of my friends." 

The Road Not Traveled by Robert Frost " I think it sends a message that it is ok to be different. To take a different path." 

Veils by Witter Bynner "I also chose this poem because in one of the sentence in this poem it says “And this of a purple moon ”I wish there was a purple moon it would look so pretty." 

Paul Revere's Ride by Longfellow "It’s really cool how Henry Wadsworth Longfellow makes the entire poem rhyme and how he tells the story." 

Phenomenal Women by Maya Angelou I think that sometimes people are ashamed for who they are. This poem is the opposite.

Gosh, I miss my class!

Stretching those Muscles

In an effort to use my virtual office hours a little more productively, today I planned an online quiz game to review the poetry vocabulary students have been using all month as they write their poems. It wasn't too difficult at all to use screen share so that the kids who showed up for the conference could play the game. Just as we do in school, I was able to praise the knowledge they demonstrated and take a minute to clarify after questions where there was some confusion.

I had just finished explaining the difference between literal and figurative language with a few silly examples and the observation that many people literally use the term "literally" as the opposite of what it means, which is actually using it figuratively, when I looked out at the six faces in their little boxes and smiled. "Wow!" I said. "Was it me, or was I just actually teaching?"

They nodded, and we laughed.

"That sure felt good!" I continued. "I didn't realize how much I missed it!"