Finding Us Working

Inspiration exists, but it must find you working. ~Pablo Picasso

Anyone who teaches young writers has heard the complaints: I don't have anything to write about. Nothing ever happened to me. My life is not exciting.

Sometimes, kids are so committed to the notion that they have nothing to say that it's nearly impossible to help them find inspiration and meaning in their experiences, but usually it only takes a conversation or two to guide them toward a topic. 

That's kind of how it was today, and I heard a few great stories from my students as they worked. One boy told me that when his mother was a kid, her father was stationed in Taiwan and couldn't be with the family for Christmas. So he made a cassette recording of himself reading The Night Before Christmas which was a tradition for them. To this day, the family still listens to that recording when they get together at the holidays. "I never even met my grandfather," the boy told me, "but I hear his voice every year."

Another student was stuck for an idea until we started talking about spirit days in school. Then she remembered the time in kindergarten when she got her days mixed up and was the only one who went to school with crazy hair. To her credit, she could laugh about it, but she's always very careful about her spirit days now.

And then there was the kid who told me he was starting a new trend. "What do you mean?" I asked and he pointed to the floor. He was wearing his shoes on the wrong feet. "Why would you do that?" I asked him.

"I like it!" he told me.

I could see his big toes poking the sides of his shoes. "Isn't it uncomfortable?" I said.

"Only if you can't take a little tightness," he replied, "but it's worth it to be different."

"Can I write about that?" another student asked.

I'd Buy You a Monkey

Today is National Be-a-Millionaire Day. The premise of the occasion is to encourage people to start saving and investing now, so that one day they might have a million bucks or more. 

If, at the age they are now, the sixth graders in my class could somehow save a couple of hundred dollars a month, they would be millionaires by age 50 (assuming an average 10% return on their investments), but the question of the day today was, What would you do with a million bucks? 

We listened to The Barenaked Ladies singing If I Had a Million Dollars for inspiration as they considered their replies, and I was a little bit surprised and moved at the number of kids who would give a lot of the cash away to charity or people in need. Many would choose to save it for college, or give it to their parents or family. Of course some would use it for games or clothes or cars, but in general, it seemed like that amount of money was too large for most kids to even imagine spending it all on themselves. 

"I really wish a million dollars would fall into my lap!" one student sighed at the end of our conversation.

"Yeah, but it would probably break your legs," said his buddy, not really joking. "Especially if it was in coins."

Getting the Layout

One of the question I have been asked the most since students have returned to the building is, Who carved their initials into this desk?

It's a question I cannot answer. "The desks aren't mine," I tell the students. "They were moved into my room for social distancing. In a regular year, I have tables."

"What do you mean?" asked someone yesterday. "What kind of tables? Cafeteria tables?"

"No," I shook my head. "Classroom tables." I swept my arm in an arc across the room. "You know, like school tables, where students sit together and work and learn and share their ideas." 

"Oh!" the kid nodded. "I get it! You're a table teacher."

"Right!" I nodded. "I sure am."

May I Just Say

I spent a big chunk of the day wrangling errant students and compelling them to finish incomplete assignments from the last 4 weeks. It can be maddening work in the best of circumstances: trying to catch kids up without letting them fall too far behind or holding up the rest of the class requires planning and coordination, even when 3/4 of the class aren't physically present. But, we do what we can.

For the most part, the kids willingly obliged, and when they had rectified their missing work situation, they even seemed relieved. And one kid even put some gratitude right into his assignment. 

Answering the last question of his unit reflection, What questions or comments do you have for me? he wrote, "You are very patient with me. Thank you."

Which made the tribulation totally worth it. 

Maybe Monopoly?

For some unknown reason, the testing schedule this year has teachers proctoring exams in classrooms other than our own, even when our rooms are empty. As such, I have spent the past 2 Monday mornings in a science classroom down the hall from my own. 

Since we are not really supposed to be doing anything other than roaming the classroom watching the test-takers take their test (proctor is a verb, after all!), I have become rather familiar with the contents of my colleague's room in thew hours I have spent there. She teaches life science, and in the cross-curricular spirit of our school, her bookshelves are full of novels and trade books that are related to that discipline. Michael Crichton is especially well-represented, and there are copies of that non-fiction classic The Hot Zone as well. 

But it was the stack of board games tucked in the corner that caught my eye. She has about 10 copies of a cooperative board game called Pandemic. The premise? Players are skilled members of a disease fighting team, and it is your job to keep the world safe from, well, a pandemic. Along the way there are politicians and panic and people who do not follow the guidelines. 

Now, I love a good game, and I don't know about you, but that does not sound fun to me.

As the Case May Be

 I was helping my 7th grade niece catch up on some of her math assignments. "We can work on this tomorrow, too," she suggested. "I have until 11:59."

"Okay," I said, "But I have to go to school tomorrow."

"But it's asynchronous!" she said. Yeah, she knows that even though she lives in Georgia.

"Not for me," I shook my head sadly. "I have to give the SOL."

"Which one?" she asked.

"Believe it or not?" I told her, "it's 7th grade math!"

If I May

News today that most mask mandates have been eased or lifted for those who are fully vaccinated. The latest data reports that a little less than 48 percent of the US population has had at least one dose of a vaccine, and here where we live the number is 60%, which is actually closer to 80% of those who are eligible. And just as Pfizer has received approval to administer their vaccine to anyone 12 or older, several students told me yesterday of their weekend plans to be vaccinated. 

Living in a bubble of like-minded people makes it hard to understand why anyone would remain unprotected from the virus, but a conversation I overheard between two kids at school yesterday showed me of why we are not further along in vaccinations. 

"I'm not getting it!" one girl told a classmate.

"What??" the other student was stunned. "Why?"

"I haven't gotten COVID yet, and I don't think I will. I think I'm resistant."

"Won't your parents make you?" the other girl wondered.

"No!" she said. "They won't get it either."

I looked over from my desk. She had her mask pulled down to her mouth.

"Cover your nose, please," I reminded her.

She sighed and with a little roll of the eyes adjusted her mask.