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Month: September 2012

Saturday Break

Saturday 29 September 2012

We woke up to rain today. “We probably won’t be going for soccer,” I think as I poured my first cup of coffee. And the thought didn’t break my heart. Still, knowing the Girl had the second game of the day, I decided to drive over to the field, only four or five miles from out house, to see if there were indeed games. I’d heard somewhere that the general rule for determining whether or not to play a soccer game is if the ball bounces when dropped from the waist. If it bounces, the game begins. But I wasn’t sure what it would be like for four- and five-year-olds. I arrived at the field in a drizzle to find everyone playing as if nothing were happening. Still, the Girl has a way of getting a nasty cough very easily, so K and I decided it would be best not to go.

We were fairly certain the Girl would be a little disappointed. I saw the patch of dry pavement on the road and thought L would surely see that and certainly use that as justification. “See? It’s drying.” And so I was a little surprised when the reaction to “Sweetie, we’re not going to be able to go play soccer today” was “Yippeee!”

We ended up staying home most of the morning, with Nana and Papa coming for a visit and then L going to spend the afternoon at their place — after a math lesson in the kitchen.

For E, there were very few changes in the routine. Eating, giggling, pooping, sleeping. Repeat.

After some weeks, such a Saturday is just fine.

Punctuation

Friday 28 September 2012

As a teacher, I see all kinds of creative use of punctuation. Some of it makes me smile at its novelty; some of it makes me groan. Each punctuation mark has its own difficulties.

The semicolon is something mysterious: students are a little in awe with its presence and slightly intimidated. The more ambitious students want to use it, and indeed try to use it, to varying degrees ofÂ proficiency. “It’s a bit like a super-comma,” I sometimes explain, “and kind of like a weak period.” We do some work with it every now and then, but it’s a little like taking young divers to the 10 meter platform when they’re still nervous at 3 meters.

The comma is exhausted. It pops up in places where one never expects it. Sometimes, it appears after a form of be, lingering there to reflect the writer’s reflective pause: “The problem is, I don’t know what to say.” And in between “is” and “I,” the tell-tale comma lets us know what went through the writer’s mind: “WhatÂ isÂ the problem? I’m not quite sure how to express it, or I’m not even sure what it might actually be.”

The period is unreliable. Sometimes it goes AWOL for thought after thought, with a comma occasionally taking up the slack. Often it disappears without a trace. Every now and then, it gets over eager, jumping in at the end of prepositional phrases or subordinate clauses to create fragments.

The colon really is a phantom, a boogie man only rumored to exist and used to scare children into grammatical submission. “It’s like a big arrow, a big pointer,” I sometimes try to explain.

Quotation marks occasionally hang around, apostrophes are overly possessive, em- and en-dashes run about, and silly jokes abound. But most days a properly placed punctuation mark can make my day.

Over the Shoulder

Wednesday 26 September 2012

It used to be something of an obsession. “What was I doing around this time X years ago?” I’d ask before opening up my journal for that month some years earlier and reading to see what happened. Yet what if I’d had a way to thumb through pictures the way I thumbed through my journal entries? For most of my life, I had about as much interest in photography as I had in basket weaving. Then I moved to Poland. And a couple of years after returning to the States, I moved back to Poland, then armed with a digital camera. And so I can open up a photo viewer and easily look over my shoulder.

September 2001: I’d just moved back, and I was still taking daily walks in the fields behind the house where I rented a room. Such pictures now seem almost unreal: did I really live there?

September 2002: The fascination remained. I was still talking almost daily walks in the fields, heading up to a small patch of trees known to locals as “Cats’ Castle”, watching the sunset from various locations, impressed that the church was visible from almost every point in the central part of the village.

And then an empty year. Did my computer crash? Did I not take many pictures? Whatever the cause, September 2003 is void of pictures.

September 2004: K and I had just gotten married. We’d brought all our lovely wedding gifts — the glass paintings and various prints — to my apartment which was then our apartment. We looked through pictures of our wedding and spent lovely afternoons creating photo albums.

September 2005: Back to the States, to Asheville. “This is where I want to live,” K said the moment she saw the small town surrounded by mountains. It was understandable: it looked so much like her own home. And have a few lovely parks about didn’t hurt either.

September 2006: The Girl was just a few months away. We’d heard all the stories, but who can really prepare for how a child is going to change one’s life?

September 2007: The Girl was with us, and already showing her precocious nature. She sat only to roll; she crawled only to crash; she lived only to giggle and fuss.

September 2008: L, able to walk, began asserting her independence. The innocence would surely linger?

September 2009: Independence increased.

September 2010: We learned quickly that owning a house is owning a project. A never-ending, always-bank-account-draining, eternally-exhausting project.

September 2011: Where did that baby go? Certainly she’s somewhere around here?

September 2012: If I could have glanced forward in time from 2001, surely a wife, two children, a house, and a cat on a tired Wednesday night would seem just as unrealistic as the fields of Lipnica Wielka seem to me now?

Down

Tuesday 25 September 2012

Routine is everything. Naps come like the tide: they’re regular and predictable, and there’s no stopping them. We come home for the day, and fairly soon, the fussing starts. The tired fussing.

And soon enough…

Homework with the Girl

Monday 24 September 2012

She sits at the table — fewer distractions — and draws. “Draw three pictures each of things that begin with the letters P, Q, R, S, and T.” It’s getting close to the Girl’s bedtime, and as we know she is a perfectionist, we encourage her to choose examples that are easily drawn.

For “P” she settles on pot, pencil, and potato. “Q” seems tricky, but the Girl thinks of quilt, question mark, and Q-tip. “R” yields red (my own idea that got the Girl giggling), ring, and rain. For “S” she ends up with snake, sun, and star. At three objects per letter and twenty-six letters in the alphabet, we’re looking at more than seventy-five drawings over the next few days.

A bit much?

Autumn Sunday

Sunday 23 September 2012

The sky always seems somehow a little richer, a little deeper blue in autumn. I suppose it has to do with angles and refraction as the Earth tilts the northern hemisphere away from the sun and the southern hemisphere toward it.

Somehow, though, the light just feels more relaxed.

We in the south finally begin coming out to play at this point in the year. Triple digit heat indexes don’t do much to encourage the average South Carolinian to spend time in the park, kicking a soccer ball around or playing on the jungle gym. (And even if one wanted to, the equipment would be much to hot to touch, and forget about the sliding board.)

So today, with temperatures only in the mid-seventies, the four of us went to a favorite park for some swinging, sliding, and soccer practice.

The Boy sat briefly in a swing for the first time. The seat seemed still to swallow him, and his general inability to support himself combined with his love of peering forward made the prospect short-term at best.

But there was always the grass. Fascinatingly green,Â unfamiliarly scratchy, generally puzzling for the Boy. He’d likely have put some in his mouth if he’d realized how easily it could be done. The whole world would go in his mouth if it could fit, piece my piece, chunk by chunk.

L and I, though, were ready for some practice. With her speed, she can easily outrun most of the players on the field in her Saturday soccer games, so we worked on a new tactic: running as fast as possible while still kicking the ball.

“Just kick it out in front asÂ far as you can,” I explained, “then run — run as fast as possible. You’ll beat everyone to the ball. Then just do it again.”

We also worked a bit on defense.

And the Boy finally got a closer look at that grass.

First Loss

Saturday 22 September 2012

It had to happen. And perhaps it was good that it did: L’s team lost their first match today, 8-2. With a point difference like that, it was a stinging first loss. Things just weren’t going as they usually do.

“That team was the best team we played,” L explained. Three young men in yellow managed consistently to stop red team’s offensive charges while also proving themselves to be exceptional ball handlers when on the attack.

“There were some boys on that team that were really good,” L explained later in the day. It gave her, I hope, a view of what’s possible.

Boosterthon

Wednesday 19 September 2012

It’s half bet, half bribe. It’s a fundraiser, an exercise event, and certainly for some, a bit of a pain.

I suppose one might argue that it’s an exercise in school spirit and self-confidence. Elementary school activities, we’re finding, tend to combine several elements like that. Show, exercise, fundraising, dance party — I suppose it covers several state educational standards.

For “the biggest fundraiser for the year” at her school — so it was explained at a recent PTA meeting — L had to gather pledges for a run around a small, 1/16th of a mile route set up in the field behind the school. Nana and Papa pledged a significant amount per lap, adding a cap as assurance of not having to mortgage the house to pay their commitment.

Sure enough, when it came time to run — and hop, skip, walk, dance — through the boosterthon, the Girl did the maximum 35 laps.

Which amounts to just over two miles, which is fairly impressive for a five-year-old.

Ritual

Monday 17 September 2012

It is late, and K is trying to get the Boy to sleep. He tosses and moans, turns and groans, rolls over — his newest trick — and seems reluctant to cooperate.

“If I feed him one more time,” she asks, “will you be able to hold him?”I stop grading papers.

“Of course,” I say.

Soon after, I’m making laps, walking a now-well-worn path through our living room, past our front door, through our kitchen, past the carport door, and looping back into living room. Repeat.

The Boy’s head rests on my shoulder. His arms dangle to the side. When the Boy was a newborn, K or I walked this lap every night, every morning. Eleven PM. One AM. Sometimes three AM. Five AM. Still shuttered in sleep, our consciousness had difficulty doing little more than counting the steps in the hopes that we could ultimately transform the exercise into a variant of sleepwalking. It has grown easier though he has grown heavier: the body grows accustomed to less sleep with time.

Now, all nineteen pounds rest in the crook of my left arm while my right hand holds an iPod into which I whisper this evening’s post. These solitary laps in near-darkness with a sleeping child on my shoulder lead to contemplation unlike anything else I know.

The floor creaks at a certain point and as the summer as progressed, the area which creeks seems to have expanded deeper and deeper into the living room. Every night when I make my rounds, I think to myself, “I need to look on the internet how to fix a creaking floor,” but I’m afraid the job will require more work and time than I am able to devote to it now. And so I simply keep walking, listening to the creak grow quieter, counting the steps it takes to reach silence, wondering if I’ll ever be able to fix it, doubting that the time will ever come. It’s just one of the countless projects that hangs over my head like Damacles’ sword. I know I must get there are some point. I know that while I’m building up the life of my son, I’m allowing other parts of life deteriorate. But it’s easier to fix a squeaking floor that has overtaken the entire downstairs area.

On the kitchen side of the round, where the floor doesn’t squeak and squak, E’s shallow, slow breathing marks a counterpoint to the padding of my feet. Perhaps we are establishing a rhythm between us, the rhythm of all fathers and sons: never quite in synch but like counterpoint, ultimately complementary.

Sitting

Sunday 16 September 2012

The Boy so wants to sit. If only he could keep his balance.

Goal! Again!

Saturday 15 September 2012

Game two. The Girl sits out the first quarter. After her adventures last game, perhaps that’s best — start slowly.

When she enters the game, she volunteers to be the goalie. It’s a potential disaster: I anticipate her frustration if she lets a ball get through. She’s doesn’t take mistakes very easily, and I know as goalie, she’s likely to experience them — especially with number five on the opposing team, who seems to steamroll through the defense like a panzer column.

Sure enough, within a few moments of the start of play, the Steamroller Five comes barreling at the Girl. She pulls up a little short and shoots; the ball approaches L with decreasing speed. She bends down; she’s in position.

And the ball rolls right through. Instant frustration; intense irritation. She begins marching to the coach, tugging at the goalie jersey the team shares, when I call her back.

“No, sweetie,” I begin. “You have to stay in. This is your position. We can’t substitute right now just because you’re a little frustrated. But don’t worry — it’s your first time out. You’ll get the hang of it quickly enough.”

And the next time Steamroller Five shoots, the Girl makes the save. She makes a few more as the game continues, but come the second half, she’s ready to go on the offensive.

Her first goal is an act of pure aggression. The goalie makes the mistake of not controlling the ball fully, only gently resting his hands on the ball. L simply takes the free kick.

Her second goal of the the day, though, is a beauty, a joy to watch. She emerges from a pack of defenders and faces off with Steamroller Five, who’s been playing masterful defense the whole game. Just before Five can reach her, the Girl lets loose on a cross-goal shot.

that blasts past the goalie — himself a wonder. He’s been stopping shots left and right, and he’s not afraid to dive

This time, though, he’s a little late. The ball squirts past; Steamroller Five looks on; L collides with a defender — it’s straight out of the World Cup.

The shot just catches the bottom corner of the goal, with the goalie still refusing to give up and the Girl realizing fully she’ll be on the ground momentarily.

So with two games down, we have the stats that might just encourage her to continue. She’d probably like it more if she could wear a tiara, though.

Sharing

Friday 14 September 2012

“Name something you don’t like to share.”

Plinky

Shouldn’t the selfless answer be something along the lines of “Absolutely nothing?” As a parent who is always working to teach my daughter (and soon, son) to share, I wonder if this isn’t the perfect way to set an example. “Look, my child: there’s absolutely nothing I would not share with you. I have my ice cream, but I’m only happy if it’s our ice cream. In fact, it gives me more joy to give it all to you than simply to share it.” Indeed, in such “sharing,” I would certainly be getting the better end of the deal: ice cream melts, no matter what; joy lingers.

Sharing — Photo courtesy of bengrey via Creative Commons.

Yet isn’t that also the reckless answer? As with most questions, the more one thinks about this, the broader the potential. Do I want to share my sorrows with my children? Do I want to share my pain?

And deeper still: if I don’t want to share my sorrows with my children, why not? It would only be shielding them artificially from what they themselves would experience, and if I share my sorrow, I can control the dose. If I don’t want to share my pain, then how can I expect them to share theirs with me, which is much more important?

Homework

Thursday 13 September 2012

The bane of most students and many teachers, too, homework seems in some ways to speak to the inadequacies of our educational system. Alfie Kohn and others certainly argue that, but they’re certainly in the minority among educators. Most of us educators see homework as practice: just as a world-class gymnast or swimmer puts in extra time beyond formal coaching to improve his or her skills, so too young learners put in the extra time to master new skills.

For the Girl, it’s turned into something of a rite of passage. “When will I have homework?” she used to moan when she found me going over student work. Now that she has homework — of a sort — she’s thrilled. “Tata!” she squealed as she ran into the room the other day, “I love homework!”

And what’s not to love about it if it’s done right? It can be a moment of bonding between a parent (or grandparent) and a child, an intense social and intellectual engagement where the two engage in a task with a specific and common goal.

Our Own Trisha

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Every year, as we begin a unit on the Gary Paulsen novel Nightjohn, I read Patricia Polacco’s Thank You, Mr. Falker. The story of a young dyslexic girl who was suffering the taunts of peers and the seeming neglect of teachers, the book emphasizes the life-changing nature of literacy. Trisha, the protagonist, spends the first four grades of school hiding her inability to read, feeling dumb for not being able to keep up with peers, and taking solace in her one skill, her exceptional artistic ability. It’s such a touching story that even a room of rowdy eighth-graders ends up sitting in silence, visibly moved. Every now and then, a girl — always a girl, for a boy will never show such a “vulnerability” — sniffles in the back or wipes her eye occasionally as the story nears its conclusion.

“We have Trishas in this room, guaranteed,” I tell the class this afternoon. “Someone here has felt stupid about something, been taunted for something out of her control, taken refuge in solitude and some seemingly non-academic talent that doesn’t fit today’s educational mold.”

“We’ve probably all experienced it,” says a boy who has never struck me as being particularly attuned to the pains and sufferings of others. I nod solemnly in agreement. And I think back to the quiet girl a couple of years ago who, leaving the classroom after that particular lesson, murmured, “I have a lot in common with Trisha.”

Future Food

Sunday 9 September 2012

It must be boring to eat the same thing, meal after meal, day after day. I can’t imagine I’d like it very much. K and I used to eat oatmeal most mornings for breakfast, and then it became an everyday thing. It soon became clear to me that I must stop eating so much oatmeal or I’d never be able to look at a Quaker Oat’s box again without having a fit of some sort.

Yet that is precisely what E does, only it’s not a question of X or Y for breakfast or lunch every day. It’s a question of X for every meal, every single day.

Still, it won’t last long. He’s almost four months old. We’ve begun giving him rice cereal and grated apple. At the same time, it’s mixed with milk, so it probably tastes just about the same as every other meal — the consistency alone might be a little different.

But that doesn’t keep him from dreaming of the not-too-distant future.

Hat Trick

Saturday 8 September 2012

When Pele was just over seventeen years old, he became the youngest player to achieve a hat trick — three goals in a match — in a World Cup match. In 1930, Guillermo Stabile scored a hat trick during his debut World Cup game.

What happens if you combine the two?

All I was hoping for was a successful first game, and I defined success simply enough: enough enjoyment to encourage the Girl to continue with her soccer adventure. Certainly, I wanted her team to win — winning always feels good. But more than that, I wanted the Girl to leave with an eagerness to return. And so among my great fears was the shut-out. “If L’s team doesn’t score a single goal, it might be frustrating to her,” I thought.

There were other concerns as well. L is not always the most aggressive person, especially in novel situations, and a first-time soccer game is about as novel as one can imagine.

Yet right from the start, the Girl is aggressive. Really aggressive. She charges the ball without concerning herself about the number of kids kicking wildly at the ball, and she often emerges from the pack with the ball.

And then she scores.

We’ve all seen the typical reactions among the pros — the wild celebrations, the leaping, the shirt front over the head. L seems completely oblivious to the significance of what has just happened. Countless games have finished one-nil, and the sole scorer is automatically the hero.

L, ignorant of all this, simply walks away from the goal calmly, a bit confused even. But my reaction and the coach’s reaction tell her something big has happened.

“It can’t be a more perfect first game,” I think. No matter what happens now, we have something to celebrate. Even if her team loses 5-1, we have that single moment to smile about. “Wasn’t that a great feeling to score?” I’ll be able to ask.

But the Girl has other things on her mind. She continues charging. She continues heading straight for the goal. She continues shooting.

And she misses. Once. Twice. And then more lightning: another goal.

And then a third. A hat trick, on her first time out. As she walks away from the goal the third time, her teammates celebrating, a small smile appears on her face. She knows what she’s done. She’s gotten a taste of athletic greatness. And she likes it.

Not content with having scored the only goals for either team, she proclaims with calm assurance as we walk back to the car, “Next game, I’m going to score five goals.”

Watch out Messi, here comes the Girl.

Dead Ends

Friday 7 September 2012

It’s really just how I would imagine his mug shot to be: head cocked at an angle to show that, while he was complying with the police officer, he still wanted it clear that he was his own person. It’s the defiance of the desperate: lacking any other meaningful way to express himself, he showed that he wasn’t going to face the camera straight on.

I met De’Andre (not his real name) while working with at-risk youth in North Carolina. For a year, I and others worked with him (and others) to provide instructions and practice in the basic social skills: accepting “no”; following instructions; managing anger; maintaining eye contact in conversations with authority figures; managing impulses. The things that so many of us learned without direct instruction; the things that make basic interactions in society possible; the things without which success is unthinkable. Some days were successful; others were not.

Like De’Andre, Clearance had great difficulty with even the most basic social skills. He had a short temper that could quickly grow violent and a mischievousness that could quickly cross all boundaries of acceptability.

For both these young men, life had been a series of dead ends. Clearance’s one bit of pride came from his success in fourth grade as a football player. De’Andre had even less he would express pride about. They lived moment to moment, second to second, without any hope of making it to anything but the next meal. They shuffled in and out every day, unsure what would happen the moment they crossed the threshold, and quite honestly, unconcerned as well.

What can we do with young men — and there are thousands of them in America today — who are so very fatalistic that their probable response to seeing their own mug shots on the internet would be, “Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later?” What do we do to help young men from seeing their lives as a dead end?

It is here that I remain left-leaning with right-leaning motivations. This is not to say that I see these men as victims. They might have been victims as children — and from what I know of the personal histories of individuals like this, they certainly were victims of various forms of abuse — but the only thing they’re victims of now is their own fatalistic thinking and the habits they’ve formed over the years. Their mug shots are now on the internet because of choices they made, pure and simple.

But my left-leaning tendencies emerge when I think of their experience in school. It’s clear that they had no one in their homes to teach them these skills; it’s clear that they had no one in their lives to model these skills. That is the sense in which they are now victims of their neglected childhood. And as a teacher, I wonder if we can’t do something while such young men are children to help them develop the skills they need.

These deficiencies are as clear in early life as reading problems. In fact, they’re more clearly evident. What are the current options in such situations? There are few, if any. The classroom teacher is responsible for the academic instruction of thirty young children; she has little to no time to instruct little De’Andre or Clearance in the basic skills they seem so clearly to lack. So they get called down, sent to time out, removed from activities, and generally shunned. Instead of learning these skills, they become resentful of those who have the skills and meet with success in school. Indeed, they don’t even recognize that there are different skills successful students are using. “Those kids are just kiss-ups” is the common response.

What do we do with this students are they grow older and more intractable, more incorrigible? We do the logical thing: we suspend them. Talk back to the teacher? Get three days out of school. Fight with a student? Get five days out of school. Initiate a fight that is particularly brutal? Get ten days out of school. And this helps these students how? Giving students who don’t want to be in school because they’ve only met with failure in school a chance to get out of school advances their education how?

What’s in place for habitual offenders — alternative school — seems less than effective. Indeed, De’Andre and Clearance had already been to alternatives school, and they’d met with as much success there as they had in regular school.

I would imagine it’s the same success they’ve met everywhere else in life. And it seems to me that when people aren’t meeting success through the normal channels of life, they begin looking for it in other ways. Or, perhaps as in the cases of these boys’ lives, they apply the techniques that bring them relative success on the streets to institutional situations, where those same methods will bring not success but condemnation. Or even eventual incarceration.

And every day I see flickers of such futures in this or that student. I see reactions that I think, “Young man, that will get you fired in ten years.” And it occurs to me that perhaps the best thing I can do for such young men and women is provide an environment where they experience at least some success without resorting to a thug attitude.

Errors and Mistakes

Thursday 6 September 2012

In the midst of the process, it becomes obvious to me that the road these students are on will not lead to the results they want. They’re working hard learning a new framework for planning and writing formal essays, but there are so many larger and smaller steps — I couldn’t have covered them all the first time through. Yet I sit and wonder whether or not I’ve made a mistake. Instead of essays, many of them are going to wind up with three body paragraphs that seem to have nothing to do with each other.

I’m left wondering what to do. Do I stop everyone and make a group course correction? That’s likely only to confuse some. And besides, it’s the process I’m teaching. I’m not worried as much about the finished product at this point as I am the steps the kids are taking to create that final product.

Then it occurs to me: sometimes the teachable moment is not in the moment. Sometimes it’s best to let them stumble — knowingly, even anticipating it — so that their misstep will show them rather than tell them where they were on the wrong track.

“Mr. Scott,” I envision one young lady beginning quizzically, “This essay we wrote — it don’t make sense.”

“How so? What doesn’t make sense?” I will reply, hoping that she will see then what I already clearly see Â now.

“I don’t know. It’s just,” she might continue, pausing to look for the right way to express herself. “These paragraphs. They just don’t go together somehow.”

And I will smile and say, “I know, and I’m so very glad you’ve noticed that.”

Advice

Wednesday 5 September 2012

Though it seems to be largely ignored regarding our particular school, the web site ratemyteachers.com offers a method for evaluating teachers that includes a somewhat-disturbing metric: easiness. I’m not quite sure what they mean by this, for the other metrics seem fairly acceptable. One would hope teachers would be helpful, clear, and knowledgeable, and the notion of strictness might be initially off-putting for some teachers, but I take that to be an evaluation of whether the teacher is authoritarian, authoritative, or permissive. (I try to be the second of those three options.)

But easiness? Do we really want easy teachers? Do we really learn anything by doing easy work? Do athletes improve by completing easy workouts?

I would professionally take this as an insult if I were rated “Great” in the easiness category. I want to be challenging; I want to hear students complain, “Mr. S., this is hard.” Indeed, if I could write my own dream end-of-the-year evaluation, it would read, “This is an extremely hard class, but it’s worth the effort because I learned a lot.”

Every year I get a view of how close I’ve come to this goal when I have students write letters to the next year’s students. Some highlights from what my current students read last week from the class of 2012:

English one honors in the eighth grade with Mr. Scott is the hardest class I personally have taken so far. Mr. Scott will set expectations so high that you don’t feel like you can actually reach them but don’t worry to much, Mr. Scott will never leave you out high and dry.
By the end of this [first] class you will be scared out of your bananas!
With Mr. Scott as your teacher, I am positive that this year in this class will not be any easy one. What he has you do, is only for your benefit. By the end of the year, you will see much improvement in you English work. You will eventually thank him for all the hard assignments he had given you, well most likely you will.
This class will be about one of the hardest classes you have taken from kindergarten through seventh grade. […] This year you will have to work your butt off and you can’t procrastinate if you want a decent grade.
This was by far the hardest class I completed all year. You will have homework every night so I hope you enjoyed last night. Don’t stress too much because Mr. Scott is a great teacher and he will prepare you for all the challenges that are yet to come.
Mr. Scott’s class is a fun yet serious class.
English I Honors, more technically known as Genre Analysis, is the most abhorred, despicable, positively terrifying course you will take yet, with gigantic papers over 1500 words (3+ pages, if you’re wondering), your thoughts of writing completely overturned, colossal, complicated tales, and most of all, a dash of creativity and thinking outside the box. Are you sure you’re ready?
This year will be a great one because you are on top of the middle school food chain and you will have at least one class that you will look forward too. Mr. Scott is a nice guy and is very funny.
You will learn many critical things in this class that you need to take with you after you leave Hughes.
At first the class seems intimidating, but when you get to the end of the year you feel like you have made a lot of progress.
You know that extremely nervous feeling you’re having right now? Yeah, you’ll get used to it in about three months… Maybe.
You’re not going to be able to just walk in and expect it to be an easy A, because it’ll probably be the hardest class you’ve ever taken. Although it may be demanding at times, if you pay attention, listen, and take my advice, you should do just fine.
I hope you are ready for one of the toughest classes of you life. You will be learning a lot of new things that are very difficult to understand. It will be very helpful but also very hard. […] If you thought you had a hard class before, just wait until this year.
Mr. Scott’s class is a very difficult class with many challenges. Â He is a wonderful teacher. He always keeps you entertained while you are in class. Â I have learned so many things this year that were very challenging, but I learned that he will always help you if you need it.
You are about to enter the hardest class of your life. Good luck. Do you have a social life? Well, not anymore. Be prepared for late nights of studying, long reading assignments, and well, you might lose some of your hair, but don’t worry… throughout the year it won’t get any easier.
Mr. Scott is a very demanding and rigorous teacher that loves to watch his students suffer as they struggle to meet his requirements.
You are about to have one of the most challenging years of your life. It will be difficult but it will help you tremendously. […] Mr. Scott is the hardest teacher I have ever had, but he is also one of the best.
This class requires time and energy, more than you have I suppose. One way to avoid the 100 lashes earned from a late assignment is to stop procrastinating.
I hope you’re ready for a really great year. This year, you will learn tons of new things, from improved writing skills to reading plays. Prepare yourself for hard work, because this class is definitely not easy. Don’t expect to breeze through the year, but as long as you study, pay attention, and try your hardest, you should be fine. This year definitely won’t be easy, but it won’t be unmanageable. Mr. Scott isn’t that bad!
English 1 Honors is one of the hardest classes that I’ve taken in the years that I’ve been in school.
You may get mad at him for giving you so much work, but think first. Â The assignments you have to do are sometimes nothing compared to how much he as to read and grade. Â So multiple your work by fifty six and you will know how he feels.
If you’re nervous about taking this class you shouldn’t be. If you do your work and you complete all assignments then it should be fun!
Mr. Scotts English One class will be very challenging.
Welcome to the hardest class of your life! Be prepared to study like never before, work harder than you ever have, and be ready to learn a lot. All my life English has been a class I’ve never had to try in. But this year I have worked more for this class than all my other classes combined. Mr. Scott has taught me so many things and I feel ready for high school and at the end of this year, you will too.
This will potentially be one of the most difficult classes you will take this year.

It’s an affirmative moment to read things like that about you. Then again, there’s always the question of kissing up…

Floating on More than Survival

Tuesday 4 September 2012

male sparrows putting on a show. by Will at Morro

The students sit during the Silent Sustained Reading with which we now conclude each day in our new schedule. We’ve begun the year reading the same book, a Pearl Buck short novella called The Big Wave, keeping a reader’s journal as we read. We’re all almost literally on the same page, which simplifies some of the logistics of the year-long project.

“Once you finish this book,” I tell the kids, “You can read whatever you want.” And so when I finish the book, I pick up a poetry collection and encounter R. T. Smith’s amazing poem (source):

Hardware Sparrows

Out for a deadbolt, light bulbs
and two-by-fours, I find a flock
of sparrows safe from hawks

and weather under the roof
of Lowe’s amazing discount
store. They skitter from the racks

of stockpiled posts and hoses
to a spill of winter birdseed
on the concrete floor. How

they know to forage here,
I can’t guess, but the automatic
door is close enough,

and we’ve had a week
of storms. They are, after all,
ubiquitous, though poor,

their only song an irritating
noise, and yet they soar
to offer, amid hardware, rope

and handyman brochures,
some relief, as if a flurry
of notes from Mozart swirled

from seed to ceiling, entreating
us to set aside our evening
chores and take grace where

we find it, saying it is possible,
even in this month of flood,
blackout and frustration,

to float once more on sheer
survival and the shadowy
bliss we exist to explore.

I think of all the linguistic hoops most of my students would have to jump through even to understand the poem let alone to find themselves floating themselves when they reach the final line. Then there is all the cultural knowledge they would need — chiefly, at least a rudimentary knowledge of the and familiarity with the music of Mozart. And the general motivation.

It’s at times like that that I understand just what it means to teach literature and writing in 2012 to fourteen-year-olds.

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