Third Week of April

Monday
Today was another workday. I spent the morning planning a project for the last month of the school year with a friend of mine from my former school. I missed this! I have been starved for collaboration, and even though she’s at a different school and has to teach a slightly different version of the project, I’m so excited that we’re even close to teaching to the same thing. We talked through different book options, grading rubrics, and final student presentations. Then, in the afternoon, we met again at her school to look at book options. (She has no financial filter, so she purchases books prolifically. She owns more book sets than I can find in the book storeroom at my school.) I came back with three different options, although I’m not sure how to choose. Maybe I’ll ask the students tomorrow.


Tuesday
My mission for today is to choose a novel to use with my students in language arts. I’m not excited about asking the students for their opinion; I generally discount the literature preferences of thirteen year olds. But I’m finding myself at a loss to choose the right book.

Here are my three options:
Boy by Roald Dahl – autobiography of the author’s school days (includes a headmaster spanking kids, younger boys serving as gophers for older boys, and other awkwardness that 21st century middle schoolers might not handle appropriately)
The Wild Children by Felice Holman – historical fiction about homeless children in Moscow following the Bolshevik revolution (includes homeless kids whose families were arrested, street gangs, stealing food, escaping from wretched conditions in an orphanage, sneaking out of the country; lovely book but not necessarily enough action to keep my modern kids interested)
Shabanu by Suzanne Fisher Staples -- modern fiction about a thirteen-year-old girl in Pakistan who resists when her parents try to marry her off to a rich man (needs careful handling to keep the puberty-related content from being inappropriate, but the themes of teenagers struggling against tradition would hook my students easily)

In my last class, I let the students look over the book options and vote on them. They were so careful with it! They would come up in pairs and look at the covers, the summaries on the back, flip through the pages, and then set the books down and point to their choice, saying, “That one.” (I found that funny. Every kid said that.) I asked each student about the reason for his/her choice, and the majority of them decided that The Wild Children sounded the most interesting. I’m surprised, but pleased. That’s the easiest book for me to teach (for the fifth or sixth time). It’s also the book with the least amount of questionable content, so that’s a relief as well. I love the themes in the book, and they’re applicable even now.


Wednesday
As I handed out copies of The Wild Children to my students today, one of them raised his hand and showed me the open book in front of him. It had notes written in red ink all over the page he was showing me. His initial comment of, “Mrs. Chandler, someone wrote in my book…” made me think a student had drawn something or written “Joe was here” or some other middle school nonsense. Instead, I discovered the copy of the novel that my good friend, now retired, used as her own copy for many years. I’ll admit it; I got a little teary-eyed. She was such a fabulous teacher and a good friend, and it was a lovely discovery. I decided to use her book as my own, so I’ve been transferring all of my notes into her copy. Now I’ll have my own notes AND hers. I know my students’ experience with this novel will be better because of her influence.


Thursday
Today in social studies, I used an activity to illustrate the medieval Chinese version of bureaucracy. I don’t normally do activities with my students. There’s so many of them, and they are so noisy… But in a moment of lesson-planning weakness, I went ahead and prepped for it. This one worked quite well. My first class was a little too noisy, but we used that to keep the groups quiet in the other two classes. I was impressed with how well they did, and with the conclusions they came to. It’s almost enough to make me want to plan more activity-based lessons… Almost!

I think I get more relaxed as a school week progresses. Tonight, after a "standing-in-Home-Depot" phone call from Mr. Chandler's brother about what kind of adhesive to use on art glass, we piled into the car and drove over to his brother's house, even though it was 10 p.m. There's no way I would have agreed to that on a Monday or a Tuesday night. Anyway, we stood around in his garage while he showed us his kitchen cabinet project and I showed him how to use tile nippers on his art glass and talked through using adhesive as he places his glass pieces. He's creating a glass mosaic top for a coffee table as a present for his wife. (Truly, he is a man of many talents.) So we were there for about 30 minutes visiting with him before we went home. I believe this lax attitude of mine signifies that a weekend is coming soon...


Friday
I was sitting at my desk after school working on updating grades in the computer. On a Friday afternoon, most of the staff checks out pretty quickly, so there weren’t very many people still in the building. Around 4:10 p.m., the power went out. The lights went out, and my computer made a worrisome “blip” sound while the screen went black. I sat in the dark for a moment, wondering if the power would come back on. The auxiliary generator kicked in, and one solitary light came on in the pod outside my room. I could hear alarms going off in other parts of the building, and adult voices calling to each other as they responded to the alarms. I continued to sit at my desk for a few minutes, staring at the darkened room. (I don’t know why. I was tired, I guess.) I decided that it was stupid to keep sitting there, and that the universe was telling me to go home. So I packed up and walked out in the dark.

Outside, there was a bit of chaos in the southwest corner of peaceful Troutdale. The electricity had been knocked out from 257th to 223rd (and beyond). It took me 45 minutes to get home, and the power was out at my house as well. The house was dark, the dogs were barking at the sirens, and the ham in my freezer was defrosting against my will. So I took some iced tea and my dogs and we went outside to sit in the sun. They sniffed things and dug holes in my lawn, and I read my book and ignored grades, defrosting hams, etc. This may be the start of a very relaxing weekend.