Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
I’m experiencing the second Great Thrill of my teaching career* and I’m both exhausted and about to implode with satisfaction. We’re reading (finishing, actually) A Christmas Carol in my classes, and they love it. Love it? They adore it. In one class, there was a happy sigh after the last sentence, and then they asked me to read the Afterward. Success!
I got permission from my principal to read it with them (it’s not in the city curriculum, which puts me off the reservation) and was very up front with the kids at the outset: this book is not required at other schools, and it’s old, probably more dense than anything they’ve ever read before, infinitely more difficult to understand than anything else we’ve read together. Not an abridged version or kid’s version, because I don’t believe in those kinds of shenanigans. In short: A Challenge.
I would have bet cash money that they’d hate it: these are the same kids who cry and moan because I make them write out a-n-d instead of using a plus sign, because “it takes so much longer”.
It’s an unexpected and unlooked for delight, really. What a real luxury to teach students who are such good readers that they can understand Dickens (with plentiful explanations, mind you- but still). I did all the voices with as much gusto as I could muster but I didn’t attempt any accents.
Here are some highlights from the reading experience:
-audible gasps in the room as they realized that the charwoman had stolen shroud and shirt off dead Future Scrooge.
-they lurved the goofy ending: Scrooge dancing around while shaving, Scrooge putting his clothes on upside down, Scrooge patting the door knocker, the various hallooooos and whooopses.
- the red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose. They didn’t get this one at first (“Does he have an icicle on his nose?) till I had them think about what a pendulums. (“GAH! A booger! That moves! That’s so wrong!!!”)
- the Cratchit’s Christmas pudding, described as both “speckled like a cannonball” and “hard and shiny”. We could have easily looked this up using Google, but I want no rival to the disgusting image in my mind I have from years of reading about (but never witnessing) English puddings.
Under the category of “ooooh, that’s so cold, Mrs. C!”:
- “If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with a “Merry Christmas” on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.” this hooked them
- Belle, jilting young Scrooge.
(going to sleep, more tomorrow)
sidenote 1: I was teaching from photocopies I made of copy from Project Gutenberg. Those copies (double sides, hole punched and stapled) took me TWO HOURS to make, and just a day after I made those (barely enough for a class set, and I’ve got 120 kiddos) the whole school ran out of copy paper. One of the students mentioned to a librarian at another school (where her sibling attends) that she was reading the book but that the teacher only had photocopies, and the librarian – who I’ve never met – sent over twenty eight brand new paperbacks, along with astonishment that my class was taking it on. The kids surprised me in their graciousness. They were so excited (these are brand new! We’re the first to use them!) and made – with no prompting- a giant thank you card which they all signed.
sidenote 2: While cramming for one of the several very silly exams I had to take on pedagogy for my certification, I remember reading about somebody or other who had a theory on something to do with learning zones or some such. Only one part stuck with me – the idea that there’s a didactic sweet spot for learning: not so far over your head that it flies over your head without being absorbed, but requiring some explanation. If you can understand it on your own without elucidation, then you’re not stretching.
The bilingual ed class I taught didn’t have reading or computational skills anywhere near the level needed to understand their textbooks (no judgement on them. That illustrated the first part on that concept to me: if you have very average or bright learners (in some cases, extremely bright) and you read over them, they don’t learn anything. In fact, you might as well be talking in Charlie Brown’s teachers wah-wah voice. (ie, if you try to teach reducing fractions to a crowd that doesn’t know their times tables).
Sadly, most of the time I’m on the other extreme these days: the school district doesn’t assign any books published more than fifteen years ago, and my kids are by and large very strong readers. Sure, I point out the odd figure of speech and teach them about things like conflict and theme and whatnot, but there’s depressingly little discussion going on. And how could there be? If characters are shallow and the plot is straightforward, there’s only so much opinion that can be expressed.
* the first being the trip to the opera last year, which I wrote about in my journal and shamefully never posted about.
Since the other post was such a downer, I thought I’d also mention what a lovely Day of the Dead I had this year. One of my students is in a Ballet Folklorico group (which you know that I lurve) and she invited me to go to her performance at a local theatre for Day of the Dead.
Now, in general if a kid asks me to come to something, I try and go, so I have logged in some serious hours at various choir concerts and dance recitals.
So I went, and a couple of lovely things happened: first, I ran into another student and her family. They explained that the dancing was just one element of the evening: first was a procession with candles and bit papier mache puppets from a local park down a big avenue to theatre, then the dancing, then hot chocolate and pan dulce. Win!
So, I walked in the procession with the second student, clutching my candle. A crowd gathered on either side of the avenue to watch, and amongst them I spotted- a third student! I shouted his name and he jumped about three feet in the air. He ran over to join for a bit. Then we all enjoyed the ballet folklorico. The group was quite wonderful!
It was a lovely way to celebrate. Mostly, I love that even though I don’t teach at a neighborhood school – all our students are bused in – teaching keeps me plugged into the community. I never would have heard of this event, much less gone and participated in it.
It’s nice.
Last weekend, I went to visit my grandmother in Mexico. She lives on the border (her house is about two blocks from the bridge) and I’ve periodically written here about the town. I’ve crossed that bridged a million times, but I’ve never had such a degrading experience as I did last weekend. Since my faithful car is not up to the trip and there’s no train or plane service there, I took the bus (The closest big cities are several hours away on either side of the border).
This is no Greyhound or hipster Bolt Bus – from the second you arrive at the bus station in Dallas, you may as well already be in Mexico. Several bus lines specialize in visiting smaller towns that aren’t served by other types of transportation, and they are filled with grandparents and grandkids going to visit each other. It’s also much more formal than I’m used to – the drivers wear a suit and tie and speak formally – “usted” rather than “tu”.
The trip itself was fine, but the border crossing was pretty humiliating. We were herded off the bus and lay all of our belongings in a long line on the sidewalk, from purses to suitcases. Then we lined up against a wall. An officer from the border patrol went by with a drug sniffing dog who checked every bag. Then another officer came with another dog who checked the bags again. Then we all filed inside and presented documents, then queued up to have all of our bags opened and searched.
All the officers were efficient and polite, but —-!!!!! I’m not the most well travelled person, but I’ve flown internationally a number of times and I’ve crossed international borders by car into five different countries. In fact, I’ve crossed that exact checkpoint into Mexico countless times – it’s about two blocks from my grandmother’s house. I’ve never been subjected to that level of scrutiny before.
As I was standing against the wall watching my purse being sniffed by the second dog, I could feel the red creeping up my neck as I watched the cars creep through the line – very few cars get searched relative to the long lines. It started dawning on me that this experience - being treated like a poor immigrant- is the kind of thing I’m usually shielded from by my blue passport, accentless English, and light skin.
I didn’t like it one bit.
short version:
….heard during a class debate on whether our school should have single sex classes for core subjects next year: “Well, since girls are naturally better at English and History, and boys are better at Science and Math…..”
This from the girl who is at the top of all of her classes *and* got one of the -if not the highest grades on the state standardized test in Math.
*sigh*
long version:
My first period class was in an uproar this morning because they heard a rumor that we are considering having single sex English, Math, History and Science classes next year.
I was drinking my morning coffee when they brought it up, but derisive laughter caused me to spray it out of my nose.
If you have any kind of memory, it won’t be a surprise when I say that seventh graders have a hard time concentrating in class because of their HORMONES. I have to shout it in all caps because that’s what hormones are like in the seventh grade: distracting and awkward. While I am talking about Literature, red faced glances are being exchanged, relationships are starting and ending, sneakers are furtively frolicking under the tables and names are lovingly being joined together in glitter – pen monograms.
…………except in my first period class. Arranging tables and desks in a classroom is like a giant tangram puzzle, and mine has undergone countless transmutations over the course of the school year. There was the Fortress of Solitude (an isolated single desk in a back corner), which we phased out after Spring Break. Alcatraz – a lone round table floating apart from clusters of rectangular table was a punishment for some classes and a coveted resort in others. Months ago I snatched up a desk that I’d long coveted from another teacher: a big crescent. We call it the Half Moon, and it inspired the most lasting table configuration: The Circle of Trust. I managed it by wedging trapezoidal tables among the long, rectangular tables. (The kids pointed out that it’s really just a Half Circle of Trust, but that’s just semantics).
Whatever the arrangement has been, first period has managed to segregate genders as much as possible. If I didn’t force them into the Circle of Trust, they’d be clustered in opposing corners of the room. There’s a forced civility that has skirted just this side of hostility. Communication is mostly through me: “Ms. Plainy, would you please tell Them that They are taking up too much space?”, etc.
I’ve tried to force a little interaction for the same reasons that I limit the vampire/manga/zombie loving kids to books about kittens and rainbows: they need to stretch a little bit.
So, this morning when this group went up in arms over the possibility of having classes with only boys or only girls, it just cracked me up. Hence the more formal debate: I was all ears about why they are so keen on being able to take classes with a group they’ve been actively avoiding all year, at least in my class.
And then they come at me with the Science and Math comment.
Oh, Larry Summers.
Today I drove out to Caddo Lake in East Texas with a troop of new and newish friends. It’s been pretty fantastic. I’ve been making mental notes all day about Things to Write About, but I find that I just don’t have the energy now before going off to blissful sleep.
I took pictures all day, manically, but the one that sticks out in my mind is The One I Didn’t Take.We took a steamboat ride on the lake and left from a tiny dock in Uncertain, Texas, next to the most adorable cafe I’ve ever experienced in my life. Parked outside the cafe was a white church van with the name of the church in big lettering all over it: THE CHURCH OF UNCERTAIN.
This op-ed in the NY Times caught my eye just now. It’s all about how we’ve lost the art of reading out loud. Most of my classroom persona is a crustier version of my real self- I’ve always been theatric and sarcastic, but at school I also police gum chewing. I have to admit that the pleasure I take in reading out loud to my students is one thing that I feel sheepish about.
I’ve always loved reading out loud and being read to – who doesn’t? It’s why I listen so obsessively to the radio. In college a bunch of my friends had a kid’s radio show where we acted out folk tales – it was probably ten times more fun to put together than it was to hear, I’m sure. All of my art projects are executed while listening to This American Life. I just love listening to stories, much more than watching them. Even when I watch TV shows or movies online, I generally have another window open and play a repetitive game at the same time.
All this to say that I love reading out loud to the kids. I feel guilty because I should be pushing them more to practice reading out loud themselves so that they don’t sound like affect-less robots. And while I have no qualms in forcing them to listen to opera, I worry all the time that I’m the only one having fun when I read. Not only that- when they do read out loud, I save the good scenes for myself. It gets painful to read for all classes – I’ve got six – and when we’re in the middle of a novel I usually lose my voice for a day or two.
I’m so good at it that by the fifth class I can modulate the pitch and dynamics of my voice (high, fast and loud just before an important part- then slower, lower and softer for Dramatic Effect) while only glancing at the page every two sentences or so. This while using my facial expression to control the class. I can tell someone to spit out their gum, give someone else permission to go to the bathroom and admonish a third for not paying attention with my eyebrows while not missing a beat.
So there it is – I take an inordinate amount of pride in my reading -out – loud skills, and am probably forcing them to sit through something they’d much rather do themselves.
Then again, it does make them laugh.
I know that There Have Been Deaths, and that the swine flu Situation is a Grave Situation, but last evening my school district decided to shut down all schools until at least 11 May, and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel like a snow day.
I finally saved up enough for a new mac, so I bought one today. AND, I found a decent independent coffee shop, and they finally have evening hours. So, I’m sitting here at a coffee shop typing on my new compu after months of typing abstinence and it’s just hard for me to feel the full Gravity of the Situation.
So, hello, all! I’m back! I don’t have Swine Flu! I’m not technically under a quarantine!
The last week has been overwhelming at school- more on this later.
Among some academic concerns I’ve got, the wastefulness in the classroom has been driving me cuckoo nuts. Everyday I’m rescuing piles of paper from the trash to put in the recycle bin, or our clean paper pile. New packages of pencils disappear within hours, to be found in pieces around the floor. I only get one dry erase marker from the office at a time, because as soon as I lay it on the tray, the end gets jammed in.
Paradoxically, the same kids who have no qualms about turning in their work in slovenly handwriting on crumpled up paper turn their noses up at reusing any paper that might “have something on it”, say a stray mark in pencil that might easily be erased.
Waste, waste, waste and destroy.
SO. Yesterday I tried something new.
On Monday, we’re going to have a big vocabulary test. Their assignment yesterday and today is to come up with a game to help them remember the meaning of the words. They had to turn in an instruction sheet and materials list, and most groups got pretty far along in putting their game together. I told them that extra points would be awarded for either re-using materials that would otherwise be thrown out, or coming up with a game that required few new resources to be used.
About twenty minutes into the class period the light seemed to go off, and they started looking at the room in a new way. Empty cardboard box? Gameboard! Stack of tattered manila folders in teh recycle bin? Cardstock!
A baby step, but hopefully one in the right direction.
I’m excited to see what the finished product- after they’re all turned in, each class will vote on the best game, and we’ll use that to review for the next test.
Yesterday I told a child that if she continued to use multiple exclamation points to end sentences and all caps for emphasis, that it might end in drug and alcohol use and possibly make the difference between a life spent drifting in and out of jail or a stellar career.
I was only twenty per cent kidding.
I will be glad when grades and portfolios are in next week, and I can get some sleep.
Recent Comments