fun in threes, sometimes fours
education and teaching
L has an absolutely astounding memory. She can “read” many, many books — at least fifteen, I would say — from memory. She turns the page and quotes almost verbatim the text on the page.
And she corrects me.
“‘That’s what you said yesterday,’ shouted elephant,” I read from one of L’s favorite books, Goose Goofs Off.
“No, Tata! Elephant snorted!” comes the reply.
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.
Our school has a dress code that in effect creates a school uniform. It is, in short, relatively strict. Regarding shirts, it reads, in part:
The county dress code is somewhat more lenient, and on occasion, students are able to come dressed in the less restrictive, county dress code.
For all involved, it usually turns into more of a nightmare. Such esoteric concerns as "Should this shirt be tucked in?" and "Is this accessory permissible?" take up much of the first minutes of the day.
A few weeks ago, we had such a "county dress code day" and there was much emotion and worry about whether the fashionable, down-to-the-bottom-of-the-crotch tee-shirts had to be tucked in or not. County dress code states that shirts that are designed to be tucked in should be tucked in, so it was a reasonable assumption that this particular style shirt didn't have to be tucked in. Other styles caused problems, and a general rule was implemented just before first period: if it's a rounded seem, tuck it in.
It occurred to me that a clothing designer could create a dress shirt (i.e., with the rounded shirt tail) with the intention of it not being tucked in. And walking back to the classroom, I shook my head and laughed aloud at the amount of energy we expend on such trivial things as whether or not to tuck in a shirt.
And the experience made me quite thankful for our strict dress code. The kids complain about it and about my enforcement, but I can simply respond, "The dress code is out of my control, and I will get reprimanded if I don't enforce it. So if you have a problem with it, you should talk to the principal." In short, it allows me to pass the buck.
Ron sits in the front row and raps. Sometimes it’s an audible mumble, but it’s often just a whisper.
Harvey likes to turn his desk into a drum set. He’ll beat, thump, scratch — he’ll get more sound out of a school desk than one would think possible.
Keeping them quiet is a recurring task. It’s not a constant battle, but I do have to ask them a few times a week to stop the disruption.
Working on poetry and teaching meter, I was having students gradually move from dryly reciting the poem (“Cat!”, from yesterday) to rapping it. The idea was to get them to create a rap and “a beat” and point out that it all depends on the pattern of stressed syllables in the poem. I asked Ron to rap; with a nervous laugh, he eventually begged off. When a student finally volunteered, I turned to Harvey to supply the beat. He too said he’d rather not.
Another ironic moment in the classroom.
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.
Robert Frost reportedly said, "Writing poetry without rhyme is like playing tennis without a net." The same could be said of meter-free poetry.
We've been working on poetic meter in English I Honors, and yesterday I sent them packing with deceptively simple homework: write a sonnet.
"What's a sonnet?" they thought. Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter -- da-Dum times five.
One by one they filed in today, and one by one they declared, "That homework was a nightmare!"
We took some individual lines and examined them, adding words and massaging the lines until they were roughly iambic pentameter. The homework for tonight: rework the first four lines so that they are all the proper meter. Just before the bell, I reminded them of the next hurdle in sonnets: "Remember, we're working on English sonnets, so ultimately we'll be having an a-b-a-b rhyme scheme for this first quatrain."
The moans were overwhelming, but at the very least, they have a newly found respect for Shakespeare: "He wrote 154 sonnets."
"Did he not have any friends?" one young man asked.
The problem with teaching is that it leads to manic-depressive thinking. When things are up, they’re really up. Confidence soars; it’s easy to get out of bed; grading and planning are a snap. When things are down, it can make one lose confidence in the entire national competency and grind one down into a pessimism that is almost palpable.
When Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, Reagan used one of his most loved slogans:
The President: [...] We have listened to the wisdom in an old Russian maxim. And I'm sure you're familiar with it, Mr. General Secretary, though my pronunciation may give you difficulty. The maxim is: Dovorey no provorey -- trust, but verify.
The General Secretary: You repeat that at every meeting. [Laughter]
The President: I like it. [Laughter] (Source)
It was in that spirit that I approached an administrator to verify a student's explanation of her absence.
"No she did not come talk to me" came the reply, and my own words to the students, from the beginning of the year, echoed: "You have my trust now. Once it's gone, it will take a long time to rebuild it." This young lady, sadly, has lost my trust.
I'm not sure she'll care. I can see her brushing it off as if it's no big deal, and it might very well not be a big deal. Someone who hasn't spent much time in an environment that fosters trust might not know what it's worth, and in that case, it's difficult not to try to care for her.