matching tracksuits

We’ve been teaching the Girl to share. With no siblings, she’s fairly accustomed to having all her toys all to herself. Yet sharing is not something you can force or even teach like tying a shoe. It’s something in which she needs to see the intrinsic value herself. And the only way to convey that — the joy of sharing, you could call it — is to model it.

“Here, Mama. Would you like some of my cake?” I ask K. She has a slice herself, but she gladly accepts. We smile, but they’re genuine smiles: it’s amusing, the whole process, and it’s difficult to do it with a straight face.

L is beginning to catch on. The other day, she brought me a bit of candy she’d tried, saying, ”Tata, I’m sharing this with you. I don’t like it.”

Photo by wili_hybrid (Flickr)

“Shhh! There’s a monster in there!” says L as we walk toward her room. She’s at that age where she sees monsters, tigers, and bears everywhere. A “smoky, smoky dragon” is a common visitor at night, and right after a bath, an alligator — simply named Alligator — comes looking for her as she hides under her big bath towel. Saturday mornings she likes to jump in our bed (even if it’s made up — she’ll willingly unmake it) and hide under the covers.

“Shhh, shhh, shhh!” she’ll proclaim. “Monster’s coming!”

I play along sometimes, but it creates a problem: she gets genuinely scared sometimes, and it’s because there’s an alligator under her bed or a dragon right over there, in the corner. I reassure here that there’s no such thing is monsters, but it’s difficult to do if I’ve just been playing along with her imagination earlier in the evening.

It’s difficult to balance her developing imagination with her developing fear.

Will she learn there’s no such thing as dragons before she learns Santa doesn’t exist? I’m helping create both illusions, feeling slight pangs of guilt about it, and wondering if it’s all avoidable.

A daily game of Candy Land has wiggled its way into our routine. L has mastered the concepts: she knows what the cards are for and she generally knows which direction her piece needs to move.

The problem is that Candy Land is unimaginably dull: draw a card, move your piece, wait. Repeat. While L was learning, it was a pleasant game: actually playing the game was not the objective, and as I love teaching, any educational activity is enjoyable.

Now that she knows how to play the game, though, it can drag.

I feel a little guilty about that. I should adore every single moment with her, but let’s face it: there are only so many times you can feign surprise at having to go back to the Gingerbread House.

When I was working with autistic children, Candy Land was a popular free time choice. I got so utterly sick of it that I — and I am somewhat ashamed to admit it — stacked the deck to make sure the kid I was sitting opposite got all the good cards.

“What!? Another double-purple? Well, you’re well on your way, aren’t you?”

I haven’t done that with L yet. In the truest sense of “stacking the deck.” I might have switched the top two cards after a quick peek at my own, making sure she got another double-purple, but that’s not really stacking the deck. That’s helping.

I work in a time machine. Each and every day, I’m transported to my middle school days as I see bits and pieces of my eighth grade year reflected by my students. Times have changed — there’s certainly a lot more hugging going on these days, for one — but the gravity-bending, end-of-the-world trials of thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds remain. Students charge up and down the hall, furious about this or that, certain it’s the end of the world. Love blooms and the infatuation they’re now experiencing is the one to see the young lovers through the rest of their natural days.

I see myself in this or that student. I see peers in his peers. I watch experiences that I had, and I wonder if they will shape the young people in the same way the events shaped me. Broken hearts, unjust accusations, careless comments — I look back on these things with calmness now, though I felt nothing but anguish then.

Occasionally this gets me to wondering about how I would handle middle school differently were I suddenly to return. Would I have been calmer? Would I have realized that this or that disaster was nothing of the sort? Certainly, but then, twenty-some years later, I’d be wondering the same thing again. “Knowing what I know now, after two times through, would I…”

Part of growing up is growing out of this kind of thinking. Yet spending seven hours a day with thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds makes it easy to wallow in the nostalgia. For about three seconds.

Photo by Hannibal Poenaru

We’ve started a poetry unit; as I always do, I began by asking students to do some free writing to answer a simple question: “What is poetry?” Inevitably, the first or second response mentions “feelings.” If I’m lucky — as I was today — they make broader connections, such as “music” or “enlightenment.”

Teaching poetry to adolescents is a trick. Boys don’t like it because, at this age, “feelings” are not something they generally care to delve into. Poetry has to seem alive and less academic. Today I rediscovered that a poem that is strongly rhythmic and filled with fun sound devices (onomatopoeia, alliteration, a bit of assonance) combined with some choral reading makes for a great start to a poetry unit.

“Cat!” by Eleanor Farjeon fit the bill perfectly.

Cat!
Scat!
After her, after her,
Sleeky flatterer,
Spitfire chatterer,
Scatter her, scatter her
Off her mat!
Wuff!
Wuff!
Treat her rough!
Git her, git her,
Whiskery spitter!
Catch her, catch her,
Green-eyed scratcher!
Slathery
Slithery
Hisser,
Don’t miss her!
Run till you’re dithery,
Hithery
Thithery
Pftts! pftts!
How she spits!
Spitch! Spatch!
Can’t she scratch!
Scritching the bark
Of the sycamore tree,
She’s reached her ark
And’s hissing at me
Pftts! pftts!
Wuff! wuff!
Scat,
Cat!
That’s
That!

Starting with an animated reading, we moved to a semi-choral reading, with students reading the italicized portions. Then a few students took a try at reading this verbally challenging poem. By then, it was easy slide into a discussion of onomatopoeia and verbal rhythm.

A successful lesson that leaves me eager to return tomorrow.

Photo by Hannibal Poenaru

It’s still a cliche love-hate relationship: L still loves, the cat still hates. Or perhaps “the cat fears” would be more accurate.

In my pre-parenthood thoughts of what fatherhood would be like, I never realized that literally everything must be taught — even how to show love. It’s a given when we look at the dysfunctional relationships that are everywhere (most commonly on the covers of magazines in the checkout line). Still, I thought that if we taught by example, L would learn how to express affection.

We teach by example; we illustrate by experience (“See? We’re gentle with the cat and she comes to us.”); we instruct directly (“Hitting the cat is not a good way to show affection.”). Sometimes it works. Generally, Bida continues to head the other way whenever L enters the room.

Teaching writing means reading things like this

• The crowd looks like a box of crayons with their colorful shirts on to support their favorite school.
• The most magnificent and wonderful part of day is the night that takes us within. It gives you your dreams and time to think about the day that trailed behind you.
• I ask my mom. “I’m too busy at the moment. How about later?” Knowing that later will be near 7 PM, I slither back to my room.

How can you not smile when gems like this are scattered through student writing? Evaluating each assignment becomes a treasure hunt.

To love one’s job truly and deeply, so much so that one can hardly wait to return as one is walking out the door at the end of the day, is a great and wondrous gift.

I sat in my room, doing paperwork during a planning period, and I was excited by the fact that class began in ten minutes; I walked out of school this afternoon eager to return the next day.

Only two days have passed and I know I have the kids. I see in their eyes, “This year is going to be different.” One hundred minutes with students (two fifty-minute classes) and I already have a better relationship with them than I’ve probably ever had with students, definitely the best relationship with students in America. I have their complete attention, and they enjoy being there. There’s eye contact; there’s smiling; there’s thoughtfulness — and we’ve just been talking as a class about how this year will be.

In short, I finally have the classroom I always knew I could: mutual respect with a common sense of purpose and an excitement about the year.

What’s different this year? It seems so obvious now, but I’ve simply rejected the common “wisdom” about creating a first impression in the classroom. That so-called wisdom is based on a Hobbesian view that humans are inherently bad and respond only to coercion. “Scare them.” “Make them know who’s boss.” “Don’t smile before Christmas.” That’s fine if you want a seemingly well-behaved class that jumps when you require it. It doesn’t do much for relationships, though. Students tend to think the teacher is simply flexing his district-given power. No one responds well when being “put in their place.” No one works well in an environment based ultimately on fear.

Instead, I’ve taken Rousseauian approach. I don’t believe everyone is inherently good — I believe we’re inherently rather neutral — but I do believe that people treat us the way we treat them: if we treat people well, they will respond well. If we establish from the beginning, unquestionably, that we respect people, they will return that respect.

This is critical when working with middle schools, and even more important with working with middle schools who might have grown up in an environment almost completely lacking in adults who behave in a way that inspires respect.

The upshot of all of this is that I simply can’t wait to get into the classroom tomorrow, which makes it infinitely easier to plan lessons tonight.

In the Hall, Final Day

They enter the classroom in August and they’re strangers. I struggle for a couple of weeks to learn everyone’s name; the energetic talkative ones I get down by the end of the first day. Slowly, I learn their personalities: their passions, their quirks, their fears. By mid-October, I know a group of 80-100 thirteen-year-olds fairly well; by mid-May, I can almost predict their every move.

This is what keeps me hooked on teaching: the relationships. A picture of a group of students is a fairly meaningless thing to anyone but the students’ teacher, but to that teacher, it’s a thousand stories about 180 days spent working, laughing, and sometimes arguing together.

And this is why I consider it a privilege to teach. Between 160 and 200 parents trust me with their children for almost an entire year. In some ways, I know their children better than they do. This can be problematic — “Oh no! My child would never do that!” — but only rarely.

Yesterday, I said goodbye to the kids I spent 180 days with. In a few, short weeks, I’ll begin again, with a new group of strangers in my room.

At the Lockers

It is a testimony to how well the year went that I am as excited about starting next year as I’ve ever been. Last year was a tough year, with a tough group of kids. Many teachers on the eighth grade hall said it was the most challenging group they’ve ever taught. “Baptism by fire,” one laughed when I commented it had been my first year teaching there. Last year, the goodbyes were a formality, and I was relieved to have the year behind me; this year, the goodbyes were touchingly sincere, and I was a bit saddened to see the year come to a close.

One young man was terribly upset. I saw him and smiled; he thought I was mocking him. “Mr. S, don’t laugh!” he begged. I went quickly to him, trying my best to smile warmly. “I’m not laughing,” I reassured him, telling him-probably vainly-that the sadness of this ending will transform itself into joy at a new beginning. I didn’t tell him how difficult it was for me to go through endings, how it’s still difficult. Perhaps I should have, but I was afraid I would upset him more. On his own, he will learn to recognize the sweet in the seemingly bitter moments.

If I’m fortunate, he’ll come back to tell me about it.

I’ve been playing with xtranormal.com, the site that allows you to create a movie merely from text. I’m thinking I might use it somehow next year with my English I Honors class when we work on Shakespeare.

Something like this:

The pronunciation is a bit off at times, but otherwise, a potentially useful tool.

I’m just not quite sure how to use it…