On the Same Side

The other evening was Back to School Night and it's always kind of interesting to meet the parents after knowing their kids for a couple of weeks. Sometimes there are surprises, but generally it's nice to put a face to the moms and dads. As for myself, in the very short time we have, I try to give an overview of my course and leave them with a good impression along with my contact information.

The next morning, one of my students was insisting that he hates writing. I asked him to give our class some time to change his mind, and then I mentioned  that I had met his parents the night before. He rolled his eyes and sighed. "I know," he told me. "My mom said she liked you."

"Uh oh," I answered. "I liked her too. Guess you're in trouble now."

He went back to his desk and started to write.

Battle of the Sexes

By some random act of computer-generated scheduling I have one class this year that has 13 boys and three girls and another one with 12 girls and four boys. They meet back-to-back, immediately after lunch, first the boys, then the girls.

For a variety of reasons I won't go into, there's been a lot of contention surrounding the master schedule this year, and at first I didn't think that my little disproportion was enough to request a change over. It was true that neither of those classes ran quite as I expected, even after I had taught the exact same lesson three times before I ever saw them. The boys were silly and rowdy: they didn't keep their hands, feet, or even their shoulders to themselves, and they took at least ten minutes to wind down from being outside at lunch. The girls, on the other hand, were constantly minding someone else's business-- questioning, directing, and correcting, and openly competing with me for the class's attention. Because I didn't have these issues in my other classes, I was pretty sure it might have something to do with the gender imbalance. Duh.

Still, I felt like it was somehow wrong to complain, that it showed some kind of teaching weakness and might even be considered to be whining. I thought that a veteran educator such as myself should easily be able to accommodate these different group dynamics, so I decided to approach it from a research perspective, noting the differences and varying my instructional strategies to address them. Well...

Let me state for the record that all of my English classes are heterogeneously grouped, by my choice. I have found that diversity of all kinds is a strength in our reading and writing groups, and maybe that's why I'm still struggling with these classes. Those guys are still pretty goofy and those girls are still really bossy, and all that social energy is beginning to impact the amount of work those classes get through.

I haven't decided exactly what I want to do next, but I will confess that I pulled up the schedules for every child in each of those sections, and it was pretty easy to find a two-for-two switch with a couple of other teachers that will create a little more gender diversity in my 5th and 6th periods.

Should we do it?

Second Annual RSVP

Like we do each year, we gave the students a writing prompt today to get a baseline of their writing skills. Their pieces will be scored holistically by the whole staff using the state rubric. We'll give them another prompt in early June to measure their progress for the year.

The topic today was the same as last year:  Your principal wants to invite a celebrity speaker to your school. Think about the celebrity you would choose to speak; then write a letter to persuade your principal to invite this person. Be sure to include convincing reasons and details to support your choice.

Here's who the kids chose to invite, in loose order of popularity:

President Obama
Lady Gaga
Justin Bieber
Michelle Obama
JKRowling
Fred
Taylor Swift
Ronaldinho
Selena Gomez
Rick Riordan
Michael Jackson
Elmo
Katy Perry
Bruce Lee
Taylor Lautner
John Cena
Michael Phelps
Mia Hamm
The "Head of the Nutritious Department"
Phineas
Brandon Mull
Steve Carrell
Thomas Jefferson
Alex Ovechkin
Andrew Clements
Avi
RL Stine
Martin Luther King, Jr.
LeBron James
Tom Brady
Jeff Kinney
David Bowie
Adam Sandler
Neil Armstrong
Mr. T
Kurt Cobain
James Cameron
Donovan McNabb
Muhammad Ali
Lionel Messi
Jon Scieszka
Billy Joe Armstrong
Seth McFarlane
Oprah
The Rock
Paul Langan
Lea Michelle
Ellen Degeneres

Brainstormin'

When the Tolerance Club met this afternoon one of our tasks was to frame our mission statement. The process required the assembled group to answer four questions:

Who are we?
What do we stand for?
Why is that important?
What are we going to do to accomplish our goals?

In order to gather our thoughts, we used the tried and true technique of collective brainstorming. Members of the group called out their thoughts and responses to our guiding questions and we wrote them on the board. Here's what the kids came up with:

Who are we?

The Tolerance Club

What do we stand for?

• Helping people make friends
• Building self-esteem
• Spreading peace
• Helping people feel accepted
• Helping people accept others
• Making school a safer, happier place

Why is that important?

• It's not fun being lonely
• People should feel good about coming to school
• There should be a positive atmosphere for everyone to learn and grow
• If you're not helping, you're part of the problem
• Prejudice is wrong

What are we going to do to accomplish our goals?

• Invite people to join us
• Spread the word
• Reach out 
• Talk to your friends about how they act
• Accept responsibility for our school
• Stand up for victims of bullies
• Look at yourself and your actions and choices

 And here's our mission statement:

We the members of the Tolerance Club pledge to spread peace through our school by helping people feel accepted and encouraging people to accept others, because it’s important for everyone to feel good about coming to school so that we can learn and grow. We understand that if you’re not helping then you’re part of the problem, and we invite everyone to join us and to take responsibility for your part in making our school a safer, more positive place by talking to your friends about their choices and actions and by looking at your own behavior, too. Stand up, reach out, and spread the word. Prejudice is wrong. 

Ruh Roh

It's that time of year when the days grow crisper and more colorful and pumpkins and mums are on every front porch. And that can only mean one thing... it's time for the new Scooby Doo straight to video release! This rite of autumn started for us when my oldest nephew was six. He and I were shopping at one of those big box stores when his eye fell upon a huge stack of VHS boxes, and he literally gasped. It was Scooby Doo and Zombie Island. "Aunt Tracey," he told me earnestly, "this time the monsters are real."

I did a double take myself at this nugget of information; child of the 70s that I am, it was hard for me to believe that the mystery wouldn't be resolved by the yank of a mask from the face of a bound bad guy revealing the all-too-human culprit. And what would that villain's response be? "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids."

My nephew's enthusiasm along with this intriguing premise of real monsters landed that movie right into our cart, but not for long. He insisted on carrying it for the rest of the time we shopped. At the check-out line I noticed another little boy watching us enviously. As his dad pulled him forward to the cash register he pointed at the box my nephew eagerly clutched. "Can we get that?" he asked. His father brushed him off by saying that they already had lots of movies at home. "But Daddy," he told him, "this time the monsters are real!" His dad looked at me, and I nodded and pointed to the display.

"Stay here," he told his son and headed over to grab the video.

After that, the annual release of the feature length Scooby became a fall institution: October always included the corn maze, the pumpkin patch, and the Mystery Inc gang.

Twelve years later my nephew is a freshman in college and this weekend we're putting together a care package for him-- homemade cookies, a Starbucks card, and what else? The latest Scooby Doo, 'cause, like, you're never too old for tradition.

Happy Accident

I find that Saturday mornings are a good time to get lost on the internet. With a little of that extra weekend time, I'll follow this link or that like so many bread crumbs and I usually end up in some pretty interesting places. This morning was a good example. I actually started out on facebook marveling at the juxtaposition of my libertarian tea party friend's status with those of my much more liberal-leaning buddies and wondering how I became the fulcrum that balances such opposing views when I noticed that one of these characters had liked something called Coiled Comics.

Did I click on the button to get out of the sticky middle or was there genuine interest there? It was a little of both, to be honest. Over the last few years, I have been working to introduce more opportunities to create graphic pieces in my class and so I do have an interest in comics. Plus, kids love reading them-- In my experience, both the Bone and Diary of a Wimpy Kid series can be classified as genuine gateways to more text-based selections for many kids.

Anyway, I was not disappointed this morning. Coiled is a weekly serialized web-based comic that has a sixth grade boy as its protagonist. It looked like something my students would like as readers, but also something that I could use as a model text for them as writers. I was only concerned that, since it isn't finished, the series might take a turn for the inappropriate either in terms of violence, language, or even sex.

With that in mind I promptly e-mailed the co-authors. It was only a few hours later that I received Peter Gruenbaum's reply: My personal philosophy is that people should be able to tell good, exciting stories without the level of violence that are found in many young adult novels. The prologue is as violent as it will get, and the story will have no sexuality or swear words in it -- they just aren't relevant to the plot. He also invited me to stay in touch as to how the kids like it.

How cool is that?

Learning Curve

This year on our team we have some students with disabilities with which I do not have much experience. We have triplets who are all blind and a girl with cerebral palsy who is confined to a wheelchair. Working with these kids offers a new lesson in perspective almost every day; I never realized how much I take my sight and mobility for granted until we started figuring out how to include these students in all of our lessons and activities. As challenging as it is for us, I am continually impressed by the independence and tenacity of these four children. They are amazing.

In support of the triplets we have a vision-impairment specialist assigned to our school who is blind himself. I have never had the opportunity to spend much time with a blind person, and I'm afraid it shows. The other day at lunch he asked me where the trash can was. "It's over there," I told him.

"Um, that's not very helpful," he said, and we laughed at my mistake.

"Well," I replied, "I pointed, too!"