Act of Attrition

It's been a cool May in these parts, and the arrival of the 17 year cicadas was so delayed that many folks who were either too young or too far away to recall 2004 were beginning to doubt that anything out of the ordinary involving large, flying insects was actually going to happen. "I just don't believe it," I heard from several, but after a week in the 80s and 90s, they understand the fuss. An eerie hum straight out of any UFO episode of vintage TV fills the air, and there are so many smushed cicadas all over the street and sidewalks, that it seems impossible that very many of the brood are fulfilling their life's purpose to get up a tree, mate, and lay some eggs. But that is the cicada's survival strategy: defeating predators and pavement with their sheer number. Even when the ground is littered with fallen members of the brood and every bird and squirrel and rat and whatnot has had its fill of protein-rich biomass, they keep coming, and hundreds of millions make it aloft and find an arboreal perch and a willing partner to spin the lifecycle wheel forward for another 17 years.

Priceless

The second day of the millionaire question did not go like the first. Most of these students wanted stuff, all the stuff, or even more money, and spending for college was a rare consideration. Of course, there was the random awesome reply like buy a tarantula ranch or have my own Chipotle, and one student said he just didn't think it was right for anyone to have a million dollars. And I guess that was kind of the crux of the situation-- 12 year old kids don't really have any idea what a million dollars is, even the brightest of them. Take for instance this exchange:

Student: Tax evasion.

Me: What do you mean?

Him: All millionaires evade taxes. 

Me: No they don't. 

Him: How do you know?

Me: There are a lot more people who have a million dollars than you might think. Especially here where real estate is so valuable.

Him: If it's so easy to be a millionaire, then how come you aren't one?

Audible gasps from the other students both on the call and in the room.

Me: How do you know I'm not?

Other students: Oooooooooooh (Now there's a sound I haven't heard in a year or so.)

Him: You're a teacher. Teachers can't be millionaires.

Me; Oh, we can, too. Now what would you buy with that million bucks?

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.