So Much For That

We’ve been reading this novel in language arts, and today my students were supposed to pull out one significant thing from the story and explain why it’s important in the book and how it relates to their own lives. I explained that they could pick something one of the characters said in the book (quote), something one of the characters actually did in the book (action), or something that happened to the characters (event). My first class seemed to struggle with what to choose, so I went further and told them to think about the stuff that I made a big deal about while we were reading the book together. I figured this was a good way to work in a little self-depracation while jogging their memories, and it worked. One of my students raised his hand and said, “You mean like when you stop the reading to ask a bunch of questions about what just happened?” This was exactly what I meant, and the rest of the class started volunteering things that I had apparently pointed out during the reading.

This worked so well that I used the same explanation again in my other two classes. My second class did well, like the first, and came up with several ideas. It was my last class that presented the problem. I went through my explanation, and when they gave me the usual blank looks, I used the same line about ideas from the book that I made a big deal of when we were reading. As I looked out at my class, I could see that there were no light bulbs going on, no “ah has” happening. So I used what the student in my first class had said to try to help them – “You know, when I stop the reading to ask you a bunch of questions about what just happened?” I could see some recognition in a few faces, and I thought maybe they were finally getting it. Then the student who typically sits closest to me during class said, in a loud and soul-crushing manner, “Wait… You mean we were supposed to be paying attention to you when you do that?”

*Before posting this, I went back and read my previous post in which my students actually remembered things I'd taught them. Argh... It makes this post even more aggravating (hence the title).

Reading Rainbow

We started a book in language arts at the end of October, and we’ve been deconstructing some interesting pieces of it. I made the students highlight every color word on copies of the first four chapters (red, green, turquoise, etc.), and we’ve been keeping track of the sensory details the author uses to describe the setting. The students have come up with some interesting insights, and I always like it when they draw conclusions that I haven’t heard before. We tracked all of the scent and sound words in one chapter and then made a chart for each of them, and the students noticed immediately that there were far more sound words than scent words. I asked them why they thought that was, and they decided it was because of the setting. The book is set in the Cholistan desert of Pakistan, close to India, and the setting details make it clear that this truly is life in the harsh desert. So when we got to the scent and sound words, the kids concluded that the author was being real with people about the setting since the desert is a harsh environment in which the wind would probably blow away most of the scents that we’re used to. They pointed out that sand doesn’t really smell and might absorb other smells, but that the desert could still be full of sounds that would carry – blowing sand on sand, people shuffling their feet in the sand, camel sounds, etc. I don’t know how scientifically accurate we were being, but I LOVED how deeply they were thinking about this.

We also used the color words on a mood chart. The students kept track of how many color words were used on a given page, and we recorded them on a poster chart. (If you’re not familiar with poster chart paper, then you are either not a teacher or not an Office Depot junkie. I am both, and, as such, I use poster charts profusely.) Then I hid the chart for a day so that they’d sort of forget about it – which, of course, they did (because who needs to remember what colors are used in a school book when there is middle school gossip to listen to?). Then we assigned mood words to each page in that chapter. The students chose the mood words themselves, and they did a good job with it. (No surprise there… Who better to interpret moods than a bunch of moody adolescents?) Then we made another poster chart for the mood words. Finally, I pulled out the color chart and put the two charts side by side. The students themselves immediately noticed the trend – the author uses lots of colors when the mood is positive, but drops all the color words when the mood turns negative.

The high school English teacher in me (which is what I was in my former, non-middle-school life) loved these conversations and the in-depth literature analysis. I adore literature analysis! I’m not sure the students adore it, but they tolerated it well enough. And I heard them joking about the color of their moods in the hallway later that day. One girl actually turned around to another and said, “I feel rainbow today.” And the boy at the locker next to her replied, “Oh, lots of colors means you’re happy.” (Okay, I know we need to talk about how literature is not necessarily reality, but at least they’re paying attention!)

Does Our Insurance Cover Personality Transplants?

Ack… This is still upsetting to me. I have no idea how this happened, but Big Dog did something weird and painful to his back this morning and ended up in horrible pain, all twisted and crumply on the bed. I can’t stand it when my dogs are in pain; it absolutely rips my heart out. The punch line of this story is actually funny, but in order to understand the incredulity we felt upon hearing that punch line, you have to know how upsetting and traumatic our morning was. So Big Dog was quivering in a crumply heap, with a racing heartbeat and shallow breathing. Mr. Chandler immediately called the vet, and – miraculously – they were open this morning. He took Big Dog to the vet, where they pumped the dog full of painkillers and sedatives in order to examine and X-ray him. The vet said they thought Big Dog had ruptured the cushion (cartilage?) between some of his lower back vertebrae. It sounded a lot like a slipped disc to me, but I may have been mentally trying to understand by associating it with something familiar. No surgery required, fortunately, and as long as we take some precautions, Big Dog’s back should heal on its own.

Now, if I haven’t explained this clearly before now, let me paint a picture of Big Dog’s personality for you: Big Dog can be a very sweet, very cuddly dog, and he likes a good ear-scratch as much as the next canine. He likes to sleep under the covers, draped across my feet, and if I move my legs in the night, he follows and makes sure he’s still in contact with me by scooting over to lie up against my legs and feet again. He likes everyone and every thing he meets. (Seriously, he would make a terrible guard dog. He’d make friends with the burglar.) HOWEVER… Big Dog also has a wild-and-crazy side. He is a Harrier Beagle, and Harriers are bred to chase (and catch) wild rabbits. The breed is known for their running stamina and will often chase for so long that their prey eventually gives up from exhaustion. (No joke. It’s in the breed description.) Around our house, we’ve always been amused by the way he “exercises” himself. He’ll run around in circles or run laps around the living room or the backyard if he doesn’t get enough activity on our walks. As I’ve said before, he considers Little Dog to be his personal chew toy and takes great pleasure in goading Little Dog into wrestling with him. And, holy cow, this dog can JUMP. He’s both impressive and a little scary in his ability to jump over things or jump to reach things. He’s like the mutant offspring of Road Runner and a Gummy Bear. (That’s a Gummy Bear from the cartoon show, not the candy. They had a song and everything: “Gummy Bears… bouncing here and there and everywhere…” Never mind. You had to be a kid watching cartoons in the 1980's to understand.)

Anyway, this is my dog. He’s crazy. And the vet says to Mr. Chandler, “He needs to take it easy for 3 weeks. No wild-and-crazy running around.” Seriously?!

He’s going to give us sedatives, right? Oh, and can we get something for the dog, too?

Pepperoni and Pen-Spinning

Mr. Chandler and I spent a couple hours at our favorite deli/pizza restaurant this evening. We regularly frequent this restaurant. (Is that redundant -- regularly frequent?) They make fantastic sandwiches and amazingly good pizza, and the family that owns it is extremely supportive of local teachers. Plus, they have free wireless internet, so it’s a nice place to get some work done. Because there was no school today (Veterans Day), I was really thinking of it like a Saturday. So I was surprised to see two of my students walking past the windows. They saw me and ran inside and came to talk to me. They were with their friend and his parents and were the first of many to arrive for a celebratory soccer-team dinner. I introduced my students Vi and Raleigh to Mr. Chandler, and they introduced me to their friend Tommy and to Tommy’s parents. We chatted for a moment, and then they ordered pizza and found a booth. The parents sat on one side of the booth, while the three boys sat on the opposite side. They were funny to watch – arguing over who got to sit by the window and generally acting more like 5th graders than 8th graders. I like the fact that they were so comfortable with the two adults and didn’t mind spending time with them. Most 8th graders these days just want to AVOID their parents. It was encouraging to see them spending wholesome time together. Another 8th grade student of mine showed up with his family as we were getting ready to leave. They were part of the incoming soccer group as well. His mom said hi to me and pointed out that I obviously can’t escape the students even on my days off, and I laughed and told her that I didn’t mind because they’re such great kids. She smiled and said, “Oh good, I’m glad you think that… because I’m ready to send them back to school now!”

While they waited for their pizza, all three boys were spinning pens. This pen-spinning is a trend that began last spring, and it drives me crazy. They used to spin pens and pencils during class until I outlawed it. I told my students that they weren’t allowed to spin anything because they weren’t very good at it, and that their pens and pencils made too much noise when they got dropped onto a desk. The students even purchase special spinning pens with flexible rings on the end; I assume the rings act as weights of some kind, as well as decorations and possibly cushions when the pen is dropped accidentally. The two boys in the pizza place tonight are probably my two best pen-spinners, and it's not hard to see why. Apparently, when they are outside my classroom, they practice incessantly. They sat across the booth from the adults spinning non-stop. Even when the pizza arrived, one of them continued to spin his pen while trying to take a bite of his piece of pizza!

Pay No Attention to the Dog Behind the Curtain

Our dogs are frequent sources of amusement for us, mostly because they’re adorable and hilarious. Little Dog likes to climb up on the bed and bury his face in the pillows, while the rest of him is still exposed to the cold air. Big Dog likes to burrow down under the covers and allow only his nose to stick out into the room. If you scratch his belly, Little Dog will give you a high-five. Big Dog likes to play with his treats before eating them; he tosses them in the air and chases them when they bounce.

Big Dog generally regards Little Dog as his personal little-brother-punching-bag-chew-toy. He tends to chase Little Dog around the house, jumping on him, play-biting him, and trying to goad Little Dog into biting back so he can consider it a mutual wrestling game. Today, Little Dog attempted to escape the usual barrage of brotherly love by running around to the far side of the bed by the bedroom windows. He ducked his head under the curtain closest to him and sat down against the wall, hiding only his head under the curtain. Big Dog stepped back and barked at him in protest, but Little Dog just sat there. Our bedroom curtains are cream-colored sheers, so he was still visible under the curtain. He just sat there and stared out at us as if he really believed that he was successfully hidden. The weirdest part was that Big Dog sat back and waited until Little Dog came out from under the curtain before going after him again! Could the curtain actually be some kind of strange canine invisibility shield?

SUPPLIES!

(If you understand the title reference, you’re probably a kindred spirit of Mr. Chandler’s… Also, you’re probably not one of my students.)

This is one of the most random things that has ever happened to me. At the end of October, I was with Mr. Chandler and my dear friend Army Girl walking around the picturesque main street of a small town. As we walked along the last block and the daylight waned, we noticed three people jogging toward us. They were dressed as ninjas in black leggings, tunics, sashes, hoods, and partial facemasks. Each ninja carried a substantial branch of bamboo. This group of street ninjas was comprised of a tall young man and two girls, one wearing glasses with red frames. They appeared to be around 20 years old. They jogged up to us and stopped, holding their bamboo in front of their faces and peering at us through the leaves. We stopped and stared at them. They stared at us. Even Army Girl, who normally laughs at everything, paused mid-laugh to stare. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, the shortest female ninja said, “Raaahhh…” in a strange part-growl, part-battle-cry sort of noise, and the street ninjas ran off into the night, jumping and yelling and brandishing their bamboo. We watched them run off, and then turned to stare at each other incredulously. Then, of course, we all started laughing… because, really, what else can you do when you’ve been accosted by random street ninjas?

The Great Pumpkin

Mr. Chandler bought a white pumpkin. I have no idea what makes white pumpkins white, but this pumpkin is really, really white. There has to be a variety of pumpkin that comes out white as a rule, but I’ve never heard of it. I’ve only had one other experience with an albino vegetable. I remember digging in the rose garden once when I was in middle school and finding what looked like a white carrot. It was rather thick for a carrot and tasted a little off… but at least my mother let us cut into it and taste it to find out. This September, I actually discovered a white “carrot” at my favorite produce store, and they called it by some other name – a name that made me think the white carrot was not actually a white carrot after all.

I’ve always liked pumpkins. When I was in elementary school, my brother and I had a strange accident with a pumpkin. There was a flowerbed next to our front porch and sidewalk at our house in Gresham, and one year, around Halloween, my brother kicked over a pumpkin that still had seeds inside it. The pumpkin and the seeds spilled into the flowerbed. The following year, our flowerbed was full of pumpkin vines. The vines yielded at least two full-sized pumpkins, which we made good use of for Halloween – free carving pumpkins!

This year, we have a small pumpkin – purely because it was too adorable to resist when we were at the produce store. It even has the tiny little curly vines attached to its stem. We also bought a small squash that looks like a mini-pumpkin, and now we have the albino pumpkin as well. Mr. Chandler has been calling it a ghost pumpkin, which might be more appropriate for Halloween. Our kitchen table looks like a pumpkin patch for mutant midget pumpkins.

Blue Light Special

It’s the weirdest thing… Today, as we were writing in our student planners (or, more accurately, while I was taking attendance and the students were writing in their planners), a student said, “Oh, it’s Yom Kippur today!” I gave him a weird look, and he laughed and said, “What? It’s an important celebration day for my people.” I said, “Are you Jewish?” to which he responded, “I’m a ginger.” …as if that explained everything. This was new to me; I hadn’t heard of orange hair and pale, freckled skin as a common genetic pattern for Jewish people. Out of curiosity, I asked if he was Irish, and he said, “I’ll be Irish tomorrow.” (…again, as if that explained everything. This student has a fantastic dead-pan delivery.) But for today, he was content to stay Jewish. I asked him how he would celebrate Yom Kippur, and he said he would, and I quote, “Party down with my goats and yaks.” (And after all, isn’t that what Yom Kippur is for?) Yes, he said yaks. He informed me that yaks are very popular these days.

As if that weren’t strange enough, in a later class period, another student noticed the same holiday in the planner and then made a similar comment about it. When I looked at him askance, he laughed and asked if he could bring a yak to school for a class party. I can’t imagine that this was a coincidence – two different boys talking about yaks on the same day? I responded to this second student (who is not a ginger, in case you were wondering) by asking, “Why does everyone have yaks all of a sudden?” By way of a response, the second student said to me, “I think there was a yak sale at K-Mart.”

It's Like a Mosh Pit in Here

So we made it through the first week of school unscathed – mostly. Schedules are mostly settled, lockers are mostly assigned, and students mostly know how to open them, the kids are mostly behaving themselves… And I’m mostly exhausted. I have the largest homeroom class in the 7th and 8th grades with 34 students. When I walk into my class in the morning, passing the silent 28 kids next door, I walk into chatter. My regular classes are the same. After homeroom, I have a class of 31. After lunch, I have a class of 34. And after prep, I have a class of (*gulp*) 36. I spend most of my time shushing them. Okay, maybe not most of my time, but it certainly feels like it! I’m not exaggerating when I say that I have to shush them every 5 minutes, if not before. Every time there’s a break or a shift in the lesson, they start talking. Every time there is a transition or they have to get something out or put something away, they start talking. Every time I so much as PAUSE in what I’m saying, someone starts talking! (Seriously. They would make mincemeat of William Shatner.) In the middle of class on Friday, I was trying to give the instructions for a group activity that required them to move around in the classroom, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the impossibility of the plan. There are just SO MANY of them…

Sometimes people seem surprised that I work during my summers. I spend my summer running summer day camps with my husband and three other leaders. We have 35 kids every week, and we organize field trips, lead games and activities, manage behavior, make them wash their hands a lot, etc. People seem so surprised that I would eat up my summer vacation time working, but it really is a vacation for me. All those kids, and FIVE leaders… It’s heaven. Now, back in my classroom, I keep looking around for some other leader to handle something on the other side of the room while I manage whatever crisis is closest to me. Tell me again why I’m supposed to be opposed to robot teachers taking over my profession?

Here We Go Again

It’s time to dust off the bookshelves and line up the desks and clean out the clutter left behind in June’s hasty exit. It’s time to crack open the textbook and make plans and curriculum maps and assignments and units and tests. It’s time to sit in meetings, itching to have more time in the classroom, desperately wishing that the speaker/principal/teacher/district office administrator would finish this part of the inservice so you can all get back to prepping for the school year. It’s time to fire up the desk computer and root around in electronic storage closets for documents you swear you saved because you just knew you’d use them again (hopefully today!), but just cannot seem to locate now, as you can’t remember what any of the cleverly-named files on your flash drive/server/desktop are actually for. It’s time to wade through a daunting mountain of emails in your inbox, to chuckle over the emails that were so crucial in June but no longer matter, and to grumble in frustration when the important email about the first day of school/locker assignments/teacher contract/building security schedule/whatever won’t print because the printer in your pod isn’t back from it’s imaginary vacation yet.

It’s an exciting and aggravating time of year. Back to the classroom… and back to the blog.

I had lofty goals at the start of the break about continuing to blog all summer long, but somewhere in June I decided to do myself a favor and take the non-school months off. If my blog is a window into my classroom and into my life as a teacher, then I probably don’t need to keep the window open when no one is home, so to speak. (I seem to have a serious thing for analogies… I’ll have to monitor that.) At any rate, taking the summer off proved to be a wise choice for me as a blogger, as my graduate classes took up most of my time, and the rest was filled by my summer job. (Note to self: do NOT try to double up on 5-week, 3-credit classes again. It might actually kill you.) But I’ve survived the crazy summer and feel NO need to tell the tale, so I will be settling back into teaching, a school schedule, and my odd little blog.

Today is the first day of school for 6th graders, although 7th and 8th graders don’t start until tomorrow. Yesterday was sunny and warm and lovely, but somewhere in the night, the weather figured out that today is a school day in September and that we live in Portland… so today it’s raining. A lot. Today’s rain features heavy, wet drops falling straight down – guaranteed to soak you on your short trek from car to school doors. The 6th graders are trudging in with a weird aura of excitement and despair surrounding them… (As I notice these things, I catch myself thinking, “This job is SO WEIRD.”) I have to go down to the gym to help the little 6th graders find their homeroom classes now. As I say in class (more times than I want to admit) -- onward and upward!