Matching Tracksuits

We're working on poetry in my honors classes, and being halfway through the unit, we've turned our attention to one of the most difficult things to do in the class: determine the tone of something. Our something was Billy Collins's (rightfully) semi-famous "The Lanyard."

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Afterward, we listen to Collins doing a reading. The laughter surprises them. Who would think poetry could be funny? Their homework: graph the laugh. Today, we go over it.

It's an example of perfect comedic timing. Collins builds the anticipation with the first two lanyard references, which come quickly one after another. Then he goes several lines focusing on the mother before reminding us about the lanyard.

The anticipation is such that the audience even chucks a bit at the line "here are thousands of means" and a little less at "here is clothing and a good education." The anticipation appropriately high, Collins then hits us with one of the best lines of the poem: "And here is your lanyard, I replied / which I made with a little help from a counselor."

The kids always find it amusing later, but none of them ever laugh the first times we go through it.

Some day...

Some day...

I don't think anyone knew what to expect when the students returned to school today. Our eight days out of school were unlike virtually any "break" we teachers had ever experienced, and that surely would be doubly true for the students. There was one "break" it called to mind, the "vacation" we dare not speak of. Still, the similarities were undeniable: we left suddenly; we knew not what devastation the future held for us and those we love; we had no idea when we would return.

During our faculty meeting during yesterday's teacher work day, our principal reminded us about the potential fragility of the situation. "We have no idea what our kids have gone through. We don't know what trauma each individual child experienced. We don't know what stresses await the children when the return home. Go easy on them. Love on them."

Many of the kids would likely have said they were not happy to be back, that they would have been thrilled to hear that they would never have to return, but our experience of the lockdown would belie such sentiments, as did the students' faces this morning as they walked down the corridors for the first time in days. There was a palpable sense of relief in each of my classes: things were returning to normal.

Events like this shouldn't be the only thing that reminds us of the inherent frailties in many of our students' lives, shouldn't be the only thing that reminds us to go easy on them. The more I teach, the more I realize this gentleness is the key to students' hearts and souls, and once a teacher has those things, she can lead the students -- even the most recalcitrant or incorrigible -- just about anywhere. Or in the jargon and memes of teaching, "They have to know you care before they care what you know."

It was a good day to be a teacher.

These three kids are among my best workers. Z, the boy in the middle, wasn't the best worker last year.

This year, he is. When I told the seventh-grade administrator about the change, she threw her arms up and proclaimed, "Hallelujah!"

English I students continued with their parts of speech review, getting out of the traditional order and skipping from adjective to prepositions in order to help students identify prepositional phrases. This will help them with all the other parts of speech, especially since we're going to be covering active/passive when we get to verbs later this week.

English 8 students continued with the district-designed unit on argument based on the newly adopted textbook looking at argumentative writing. We're looking at a second article dealing with automation and employment: this article makes the opposite claim as last week's article "The Automation Paradox."

In English 8, we're off to our next set of required readings. I have very little say in what I teach English 8 this year, and a lot of the materials are too difficult for my students and too -- quite frankly -- boring to get their interest. Our piece is called "The Automation Paradox," and so we did a little pre-teaching today so kids know what a paradox is. To that end, I introduced them to Zeno's Paradox. We did some measuring, completed a little math, and I convinced them that the math was solid: the arrow should have never hit Zeno.

So then we tested the theory with a ball. Which students took turns throwing at me. I was fairly sure they would hit me quickly, but I failed to take into account the light weight of the ball and the tendency of smooth light balls not to travel in a straight line. So most of the throws missed.

But the point was made. And the kids had a blast throwing that silly ball at me.

This is what makes middle school so fun: they're cognitively developed enough that we can get into some abstract thinking and still childlike enough to enjoy being silly.