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fun in fours

Month: January 2016

Diagram

Thursday 14 January 2016

L and I were sitting by her bed, reading the graphic-novel version of Shakespeare that she brought from the school library when she came across a sentence that stumped her: the king sent to men “to consult with the oracle of Delphi, in Greece.” I explained to her what “consult” means and then began working to help her figure out what “oracle” might mean.

“If ‘consult’ means something like ‘ask advice from’ and the men went to consult with the oracle, what did they ask advice from?” Much to my surprise, she couldn’t figure it out. I explained that the verb was “consult,” the action is “consulting.” “So who’s doing the action, who is consulting?”

“The king?”

It was clear a new strategy was necessary.

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That’s right, I started teacher her how to diagram sentences. There are few skills that are so incredibly useful for getting students to see the inner working of a sentence, the clockworks of the sentence. Of course it’s no longer taught today except by eccentric English teachers who have free reign with their curriculum design — in other words, it’s not taught anymore. Still, I’ve begun wondering if I could somehow incorporate it into my own teaching

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Wednesday 13 January 2016

Birthday, Thirty Years Earlier — today’s entry from Anne Frank’s diary:

Wednesday, January 13, 1943

Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone. The Christians in Holland are also living in fear because their sons are being sent to Germany. Everyone is scared. Every night hundreds of planes pass over Holland on their way to German cities, to sow their bombs on German soil. Every hour hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of people are being killed in Russia and Africa. No one can keep out of the conflict, the entire world is at war, and even though the Allies are doing better, the end is nowhere in sight.

As for us, we’re quite fortunate. Luckier than millions of people. It’s quiet and safe here, and we’re using our money to buy food. We’re so selfish that we talk about “after the war” and look forward to new clothes and shoes, when actually we should be saving every penny to help others when the war is over, to salvage whatever we can.

The children in this neighborhood run around in thin shirts and wooden shoes. They have no coats, no caps, no stockings and no one to help them. Gnawing on a carrot to still their hunger pangs, they walk from their cold houses through cold streets to an even colder classroom. Things have gotten so bad in Holland that hordes of children stop passersby in the streets to beg for a piece of bread.

Halušky

Tuesday 12 January 2016

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Reading

Monday 11 January 2016

I give the students the same information every year, but this year, I decided to break it down in a letter. Dear student, you recently took the MAP test, which measures your reading progress. And so on and so on. It's a mail merge, so "student" is replaced with the kid's name, and all the details are individualized. Like the winter score. Like its grade-level equivalent. It's bound to be a disheartening moment for some: I'm not sure they've ever been told point blank, "Your reading scores indicate that you're reading at a second-grade level." How do you take the news that your skills are six years behind where they should be?

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There are a number of reasons one could posit for this, and for each, a exception: For some, it's a question of limited English exposure at home. But I have Latino students in my honors high school courses as well. For others its a question of limited access to books. But I have such students in my honors high school courses as well, and they solve the problem by basically camping out in the school library. No role model in the immediate family to provide the support necessary. But I've had students in my honors high school courses who'd never even met their biological father.

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At times they seem like excuses, at times they seem like legitimate -- and tragic -- explanations. Whatever the case, they're my charge, and I'm tasked with reversing the trend. Some days, though, it just feels like I'm making the situation worse still.

Sunday in the Park

Sunday 10 January 2016

The patriarch of the Buendía family, José Arcadio Buendía, spent the last days of his life under the chestnut tree in the courtyard of his home. Even when villagers carried his body to his bed as his end became increasingly obviously near, he woke and went back to the tree every morning as "a habit of his body." Thus Marquez describes it in his classic One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I am re-reading some twenty or twenty-five years after I first read it. The idea of a habit of one's body stuck with me all these years, and tonight, when I finally read that scene, I smiled. It was one of the passages of the novel I couldn't recall where exactly it fell but read eagerly in search of it.

Part of the joy of watching children, I think, is that they have no habits of the body yet. They don't get up at five thirty and make the morning coffee without thinking about it. They don't come to an intersection intending to turn right but pulling into the left lane out of habit. They don't have a routine they follow in which they suddenly become aware they're half-way through the routine. Every action is new. Every action has a certain uncertainty to it that demands their attention and their care. Every act brings forth a joy of the novel.

Family Reunion

Saturday 09 January 2016

Not quite a family reunion, but a gathering of folks who haven't been together for a long time. And where are the pictures? Quite simply, I was too busy chatting. An opportunity lost.

Peeling Eggs

Wednesday 06 January 2016

The Boy is always eager to help, especially when it comes to cooking. Any time K is standing at the stove, E bounds over to the dining table, grabs a chair, and slides it across the whole room to the stove.

"I want to help!"

Most often, that's just stirring. It's simple, difficult to mess up, and difficult to make a mess doing. Today, though, as I was rinsing the boiled eggs we'd be putting in our żurek later, he decided he wanted to learn how to peel the eggs. Rather, having just woke up from a nap, he was encouraged to learn. Bribed, for he's awfully fussy when he's awakened prematurely.

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"Want to help me cook?" I began.

He was reluctant at first, but the words "learn" and "something new" seemed to pique his interest, and soon enough, he was peeling an egg.

When it came time for dinner, he was quite insistent that he got the egg that he had peeled.

"Bardzo słuszna koncepcja."

Why a Jet?

Tuesday 05 January 2016

First Day Returning

Monday 04 January 2016

The first day back can always be stressful: you walk back into the school wondering what kind of day the kinds have packed in their book bags and hauled to school from Christmas break. Some years, they unpack a chattiness and an unwillingness to work that in a lot of ways is understandable. Other years, they haul out their books and their attention and make the day slide by almost effortlessly.

It occurred to me that I could help them pack their bag by having them leave on a good note, hence my opłatek efforts at the end of the year. Through most of the day, I thought that perhaps it had worked, that perhaps ending the year on a deliberately positive note helped bring them back with a positive outlook. They worked brilliantly, and not a complaint as I introduced and modeled a new weekly assignment, the article of the week, based on Kelly Gallagher’s ideas.

The final period of the day rolled to a close, and one young lady who was absent the final day asked me if I’d saved a cookie for her.

“Excuse me?”

“The cookies you gave everyone before the break.”

Here it was — definitive proof that what we’d done together had made an impact, for someone had clearly told her about the experience. Obviously it had struck something in their souls, made them resonate as one for a moment, showing them the oneness of humanity and all the hopes and dreams of everyone who has ever set out to create a utopia.

“Oh, yes,” I replied. “How did you hear about them?”

“Oh, everyone was just saying they were really tasty.”

A utopia for the taste buds, I guess, is better than no utopia at all.

Final Sunday of the Break

Sunday 03 January 2016

Just as predicted, we blinked twice and it was Christmas Eve; another two blinks and it was New Year's Eve. And now, it's all over again. Another Christmas break is little more than memory. But that's not a bad thing: Most of our lives are memory. The present is just a passing phase that disappears as soon as you acknowledge its existence. The future is relatively uncertain. So it's our memories that make up the majority of our life.

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Slightly more serious

Today was glorious, but we were all tired, so we stayed home. It was a lazy day from the beginning: the alarm went off at seven, and it took only a moment for K and me to decide that the eleven o'clock Mass was a better option than the nine o'clock Mass.

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Slightly less

We were thinking about going for some afternoon outing, perhaps hiking somewhere, but soon after Mass, as we were heading to the car, I think I'd decided that even going to a nearby park might be too ambitious.

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So in the end, we spent the day at home. There was an abundance of trampoline time, including the fun game of Charge Yourself with Ample Static Electricity by Shuffling Around the Trampoline with Your Socks On Then Discharge It All Onto Daddy's Bald Head. A fun game, that.