A Royal Tea Party

The Royal Wedding -- how exciting! The prince is getting married, and a lovely normal girl will become a princess. It’s the stuff of fairy tales… unless you’re a modern 8th grader carrying all of the typical cynicism and self-focus of 21st century teenagers. While my students have the attitude that the royal wedding is no big deal, I think it’s a rare opportunity that they are not likely to see again for many years. (Does anyone really see Harry settling down any time soon? And when’s the last time a president’s offspring was married while his/her father was still in office?) Such a thing hasn’t happened during my own lifetime since Charles and Diana’s wedding in the early 1980’s. I don’t remember watching that one, but I DVR’d a couple different broadcasts of Friday's royal wedding to watch when I got home from school.

To be honest, I didn’t really care that much about the wedding itself. It’s more about the event, and for my students, I want them to understand how important the events of other countries can be in the world, even if they don’t register on American teenagers’ radars. It’s the idea that American events don’t define world news – although we certainly act as if they do. Making a big deal about the wedding in class allowed me the perfect social studies opportunity to talk about international events and royal families and several other sorts of topics that don’t apply to the U.S. Furthermore, because I talked about it in class, I was also able to talk about another difference between the U.S. and the U.K. -- the conduct of the spectators. After I watched the wedding itself, I was so struck by the behavior of the British people at the event that it was vital to point this out to my students. When the wedding party was safely inside Buckingham Palace, the police constables slowly allowed the crowd to move up to the high fence surrounding the property. As they moved forward, the British citizens walked calmly, peacefully, even politely. They did not push or shove, they did not scream, and they were not out of control in any way, although they were cheering and obviously happy. It was amazing, and my students thought so as well when I told them.

There were several other pieces that stuck out to me, on which I pontificated to my students the following Monday, but that was the biggest and the one by which they were most surprised. At any rate, my making a big deal out of the wedding provided the open door for the other lessons and conversations, so I consider it a worthy effort. And, as a treat, one of my classes decided to have a tea party to celebrate. We had no idea where to procure crumpets, so one of my students brought English muffins (which, of course, are not at all English, but since they have “English” in the name, we decided they could count just this once). I brought jam, and we borrowed a toaster oven from another teacher. I brewed tea in my coffee pot, and another student provided sugar cubes (so that we could say to each other, “one lump, or two?” in our terrible British accents). And while we discussed what books we’ve been reading, we had tea and jam and English muffins and looked out the windows at the rain and spoke in incredibly bad fake accents and had a jolly time.

Teamwork

So I walked out into the pod area this morning in time to see Whitney – my tallest female student (and one of my tallest students of either gender) – with her foot up on a chair, while Brent – one of my shortest students – worked on tying her shoe. When I asked what they were doing, Whitney explained by saying, “What? He’s closer to the ground than I am,” while Brent nodded his agreement and grinned at me.

I do not claim to understand the inner workings of this particular friendship… but it made me laugh.

April Showers

Good grief. It’s like July and November all at once, all in the same day. I can’t keep this straight. And holy crap, how in the world is one supposed to get dressed in the morning? Sunglasses and umbrellas, short sleeves and close-toed shoes… The nursery rhyme I learned in grade school was about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb, but our Portland March went out like a dinosaur. …And not one of those happy, dying-out-in-their-sleep herbivores, either. Now April is showing us both the little lamb who frolics in the morning sunshine AND the roar of the angry, stormy lion. I really hope the May flowers are on their way.

One Day I May Ask You For a Favor...

I have this one student who has spent his eighth grade year doing as little as possible. It drives me crazy, mostly because I saw some interesting and insightful work from him last year. When you have a conversation with him, he can speak quite thoughtfully. And the books he chooses to read – when he actually chooses to read – are mainstream adult fiction books. Currently, he’s reading The Godfather. He’s about 150 pages into it and has been working on it for several weeks. (I sometimes get the feeling that the first 10 minutes of my class are the only chance he gets to read.)

Every quarter in my language arts class, I assign the students a reading project. They have 9 weeks to read 4 books and talk about them in front of the class. My do-nothing student reading The Godfather has avoided doing any "book chats," as we call them, for… well, for as long as I can remember. As I was working on grades on Friday, I was frustrated by his lack of initiative. I KNOW he’s reading; I’ve WATCHED him. He BEGS me for more time to read! He’ll even talk about his book if I sit down next to him while he's reading it. So I decided to trick him into earning a grade.

When he arrived in 6th period the next day, I waited until his back was turned and then grabbed his book off his desk. I walked to the front and set the book on the whiteboard tray. When he finally noticed, predictably because another “helpful” student pointed it out to him, he walked up to the front to get the book. While he was still at the front (before he could make the move to go back to his seat), I asked him, “So, what’s that book about?” He froze and stared at me.
“You don’t know about the Godfather??!!” he asked incredulously.
“I’ve never seen the movie. What’s it about?” I asked nonchalantly.
“That’s crazy. I can’t believe you’ve never seen it or read it. It’s a great book,” he said, and promptly launched into a description of the story, making sure to tell me how the movie and the book are different. While he paced and talked, several students turned to look at me with smiles or questions on their faces. I merely motioned for them to stay quiet and give him their attention again, and they smiled and nodded knowingly and let him go on. Finally, after several minutes of talking, my normally non-participatory student stopped and turned to look at me.
“Wait a minute…” he said, holding up his finger and shaking it at me. “What is this? Is this one of those things you do where you talk about a book and get points for it?!”
"You mean a book chat?" I said with a smile.
"Yeah," he said accusingly, "a book chat. Is this a book chat?!" He sounded SO offended by it that the rest of the class started laughing.
"It was a sneak attack," I answered, and mercilessly ruined his streak of F’s by giving him the points for his surprise book chat.

Later he thanked me -- quietly, so as not to ruin his reputation as a slacker, but still... I said to him, "one day I may ask you for a favor..." and waited to see if he recognized the quote. Fortunately he did. (He really has read the book!) His response was, "As long as you don't put a horse head in my locker..."