The Bread Winner

This morning, I woke up with one mission: to determine a winner for yesterday's contest.

First, I typed up the name of anyone who commented with the correct answer, which was alliteration.  Congratulations; you're all geniuses!

Next, I assigned each candidate a seldom-used font, because it's Christmas and Christmas is about caring.  I put Desiree's name in Wingdings which made me laugh hysterically.

Then, I printed them out.  To preserve my identity and ensure no bias, I forced my sweet mother to stop whatever she was doing and cut the names into strips.  Look at her pretty bathrobe!

After that, I put all the names into a tin that held a fruitcake once upon a time.

Then, to keep things interesting, I cut up a piece of bread.

I attached the names to the bread using clothespins.

And laid them out on our patio in a semicircle, giggling while doing so.

I selected another impartial judge and told her, "WAIT." 

Then I said, "Go get it!"  She pounced.

Congratulations, Andrea!  I hope you like Starbucks and drinks that cost less than $10!

Judge #2 says, "Thanks for playing! This was the best game ever!"

Love,

Teach

Christmas Wishes

I hope that all of your Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/seasonal wishes came true!  Mine did, and some are still in the process of coming true. Here were some of them.

-To not have any breakdowns from school anxiety!  So far, so good!

-A Brookstone BioSense Memory Foam Pillow.  This was the only actual thing on my Christmas list (not because I'm selfless or unaffected by commercialism, but because I wanted to be absolutely sure that somebody bought it for me). I happened to chance across one of these at Bed Bath and Beyond and ended up hugging it on accident for about 45 seconds.  I've only used it for one night, and last night I had a dream that I was dogsitting a litter of dachshund puppies next door to earn money to travel to a castle in northern Canada made of EMERALDS. It's either a coincidence or a magic pillow, and I don't believe in coincidence.

-Hydrate as much as I damn well please. This is one of my favorite parts of Christmas break!  My current schedule is such at school that I can't pee for about two hours in the morning, and then for about 3 and a half in the afternoon.  As you can imagine, this restricts my morning coffee and lunch time drinking pretty significantly, so during holiday breaks, I like to make up for lost time and just water, OJ, and coffee it up.  Let my bladder stretch its legs a little bit.  I don't think anybody has ever said that last sentence before.

-Not change out of pajamas if I can help it.  Check.

-Read like it's my job.  I won't admit how many pages I've read in the 3.5 days I've been on vacation so far because you'll call the police.  I finished Book 3 of Game of Thrones, read And Then There Were None, am currently reading The Hobbit, and I plan on snatching my brother's book Quiet about introverts.  Then I plan on making him go to a party where he doesn't know anyone and force him to socialize.  Just kidding.  All the books I've read so far are brilliant!  If you haven't read Game of Thrones, make sure you're OK with guts and scandal before picking it up.  If you haven't read And Then There Were None, make sure you read the Wikipedia article afterwards because it's fascinating.  If you haven't read The Hobbit, don't see the movie first or I'll come after you with a ruler to smack your knuckles.  If you haven't read Quiet, make sure you're not one of those terrible people who think introverts just need to be "cured."  Or actually, maybe you're exactly the kind of person who should read it.

-Not get sick. So far, so good... *knocks on wood* *wraps a rope of garlic around neck* *guzzles Emergen-C* *slaps anyone who is sick and so much as breathes around me*

-Hold some puppies.  Held a golden retrieverish puppy on Friday and have very serious plans to hold a beagle today.  If you would like to mail a puppy to me as well as a check for millions of dollars so that I can retire and hold the puppy for years without interruption, please contact me with haste at loveteachblog@gmail.com.

Hoping this season leaves you happy, hydrated, and holding the ones you love, whether it's a nephew, a Nook, or a Nalgene full of 'nog.

If you can tell me what poetic device I just used, you'll be in the running for a gift card for a very unimpressive amount from me.  Deadline is midnight!

Love,

Teach

5 Good Things, or "Effie Trinket, you's a cold-ass honky."

I almost wrote another post about the Newtown tragedy, but decided against it.  The only thing I have to add is that I take back what I said about 7th graders being incapable of having a serious class discussion.  On Monday I had them journal their feelings and questions, and then we had a brief class discussion about things they had journaled.  They were total champs, and I am infinitely proud of them.

I will not, however, take back my statement about 7th graders being the weirdest.  That is still true.

Anyway, I thought you might want to hear some good news instead.  Here are some good things that have happened lately!

1) http://www.cat-bounce.com

Drag kittens with your mouse to bounce them across your screen.  Sounds a little juvenile, no?  Not something kids over the age of six would enjoy?  Wrong.  I let my class do this after their final today, and they were fighting over the use of the pen for my SmartBoard.  It's like watching a baby have the time of his life crawling around inside a cardboard box.

2) While the rest of my class was playing Cat Bounce, I look over and saw one of my students on his phone.  "I didn't say you could have your phone out!" I sassed.  He smiled.  "Do I have to give it to you?"  

"Depends," I said.  "What did you bring me for Christmas?" 

"Nothing."  

"Then I get your phone until the bell."

Five minutes later, I look up and see him with this piece of paper held up to his ear, chatting away.

Nugget DREW HIMSELF an iPhone. (Number censored to protect the creative.)

3) One of my students brought me a jar of Nutella for Christmas.  Automatic 100.

4) I found this act of vandalism on a desk. I like it.  So I left it.

5) I'm reading the Hunger Games with a small class I have that needs extra support, and today I read this paragraph with them: 

"At least you two have decent manners," says Effie as we're finishing the main course. "The pair last year ate everything with their hands like a couple of savages.  It completely upset my digestion." 

The pair last year were two kids from the Seam who'd never, not one day of their lives, had enough to eat.  And when they did have food, table manners were surely the last things on their minds.  Peeta's a baker's son.  My mother taught Prim and me to eat properly, so, yes, I can handle a fork and knife.  But I hate Effie Trinket's comment so much I make a point of eating the rest of my meal with my fingers.  Then I wipe my hands on the tablecloth.  This makes her purse her lips tightly together.

I stopped there to ask a question.  

"Ok, Juliana.  What do Katniss's actions say about the way she feels about Effie?"

Silence from Juliana.

"Think about it this way. If she said out loud what she was thinking when she wiped her hands on the tablecloth and ate with her fingers, what would she say?"

She nodded, indicating she now understood, and thought for a moment.

"'Effie Trinket, you's a cold-ass honky.'" 

Perhaps she might have said it a little differently, but I bet that's exactly what Katniss was thinking.

Love,

Teach

Broken

I found out about the tragedy during lunch yesterday, while checking Facebook.  Immediately, I went to my computer to find out what I could about what had happened.  By the time my after-lunch class came in, I had a news website projected onto the board streaming live coverage from the small town in Connecticut.  My students came in and sat down.  They got silent pretty quickly.

We watched the same footage that everyone else did, of parents crying, swarms of emergency vehicles outside of the school.  We watched the President brush away tears and tell us that this tragedy belongs to all of us. I held it together until watching another news clip where I heard that police at the school told students to close their eyes while being escorted out of the building, past the dead bodies of their teachers and classmates still lying in pools of blood in the hallways.  That bit of information just made something inside of me snap.  Of course, part of it is that I am a teacher, and that this incident just hit a little too close to home, but I think it's more than that.  I can't explain it in words very well.  Only that it's the feeling version of angrily sweeping the entire contents of a desk onto the floor, then sitting on the floor to cry.  It's the same feeling I get when I learn statistics of human trafficking in my own city and across the world, when I see photos of people who, in the year 2012, are still dying of hunger and thirst or preventable diseases, when I meet with a student's mother who can't look her own daughter in the eye and tell her one thing she does well.

We are all so broken. 

Love,

Teach

Pre-Coffee Decisions

I love coffee, but I have a complicated relationship with drinking it on the way to work.  I either a) never remember to clean out my travel tumblers and just keep throwing dirty ones in the back of my car until it resembles a scene from Hoarders, b) lose them, or c) spill coffee on myself in the car, even if it's one of those "spill-safe" adult sippy cup-types. For these reasons, I now have a coffee maker at school and just wait to have my coffee there in the mornings.

Unfortunately, I am an idiot before my first cup of coffee. Here are some things I have done, thought, or said pre-coffee:

-I thought that this thing in the parking lot behind school was a baby squid.

In fact, I thought that for weeks walking into school (pre-coffee), and the only thing that convinced me otherwise was the fact that weeks had gone by without it disintegrating. 

-Hallucinated.This morning, on the way to school, I drove by a guy walking some kind of animal on a leash.  I put one hand to my mouth and whispered, "No… is that a… bear?"  I live in a sort of funky, eccentric neighborhood, so my pre-coffee brain did not put that notion of a man walking a small bear on a leash outside the realm of possibility.  I slowed my car to get a better look.  Nope.  Irish Setter.  Here is what I imagine the poor man and his dog saw when they looked up:

-Treated a coworker like a child.

Earlier this week, on a morning long before my first cup of coffee, I was power-walking to the building on campus that has our copier, papers and laptop in tow, and probably muttering an imaginary conversation under my breath.  Rounding the corner, I saw one of my colleagues.

"Oh hey," he said.  "I was actually going to--"

"Good morning!"  I said, and kept walking.  Before coffee, I have a one-track mind.  And that morning, the track was copies.

"I was actually going to your room to talk to you," he said.

"Ha!" I laughed, turning my head briefly, but still walking away.  "I'm going this way!"

"Can I talk to you for a second though?"

"Well, you can walk with me to the copy room or you can wait outside my room for me to get there, but I'm not going back until after my copies!  Have a good one!" 

He ended up walking to the copy room and talking to me there, but it wasn't until about 15 minutes into my first cup of coffee that I realized how INCREDIBLY rude I'd been and sent him an email with my sincerest apologies, plus a package of stickers of various fruits and vegetables for his troubles.  The thing is, I wasn't even feeling cranky or annoyed by him-- I just think I honestly forgot all social registers and went into immediate Teacher Mode, since that's when I'm usually responding to someone's request for me to go back to my room ("Miss, can you go back? I left my jacket!"  "Miss, can I work on my project right now?" etc. ) Luckily, my colleague is the forgiving type.  I also offered for him to slap the back of my hand as penance by flagellation, but he declined.

-Registered for a 10k. I thought it would be a great idea to register for a 10K.  Only problem is that I haven't run that far in two and a half years, and that I haven't run at all except for maybe once in the past two months.  (Also, for "run" see: "brisk walk" or "laughably slow jog")

-Told an administrator "It's all good in the hood" when asked if I would need training on how to use a particular software.  

Looks like somebody needs to start caffeinating before leaving home.

Love,

Teach

No... thank YOU.

My nuggets wrote thank-you notes recently to some friends and family who donated supplies for my classroom.  I encouraged the nugs to be creative and express their personalities in their thank-you notes.

Don't worry.  They did.

They included some pretty breathtaking illustrations:

Me: Why does your robot have fingertips for eyes?

Student (without hesitating): Because his hands are sledgehammers.

And asked some really relevant, thoughtful questions:

Maybe we will do a unit on thank-you notes.

(Or maybe we won't.)

Love,

Teach

Haikus, Round Twos!

One fine day last April, I discovered the joy of teaching haikus.  The kids had a blast, and their haikus were so offensive/bizarre/amazing that I knew it would be a must-do lesson plan from now until the day I win the Powerball and don’t teach anymore.  Today, as a closing to our poetry unit, I revisited the haiku lesson with my new batch of weirdos.

To start them out, I showed a short video that I used in April that gives students opportunities to practice by filling in the last line and then last two lines of a haiku that had already been started for them.  Their starters were:

The tight string broke and

the loose kite fell fluttering

_______________________.

and:

A flash of lightning

_______________________

_______________________.

Then I had students create a new haiku on their own using a subject of their choice.

Just like last year, I had some really adorable and/or traditional-type haikus.

Path by path you walk.

When walking, you sometimes trip.

But you get back up.

Deep in the water

Where the seaweed shall grow old

Little fishies swim.

A flash of lightning

Hits the trees and breaks branches

With strong wind and rain.

Cute, right?

And then there were these.

A flash of lightning

As  I see chicken tenders

Might wanna run, kid!

When I think about

How beautiful puppies are

I just can’t stop cry.

The tight string broke and

The loose kite fell fluttering

Mommy mommy hi.

Unicorns are cute

Like God coming down the sky

As he land in sand.

I am a fool, yes

I slipped and broke my face, yes

I am in Heaven.

A flash of lightning

Pass through my heart and Jesus

Tell me LOL

Where is that kid Tim?

He fall down the school stairs hard.

Now he has no head.

The boy play with balls

They go to movies with me

Cry with your brothers.

Thinking about these

Especially that last one (??!),

I just can’t stop laugh.

Love,

Teach

My other favorite student poem

I've been grading more student poetry.  Another favorite emerged.

My Life 

Some days I’m happy;
Some days I’m sad.
Some days I’m in love;
Some days I’m mad.
Some days I wish I could fly
Like an eagle in the sky.
Some days I wish I could cry all my anger from inside.
Some days I laugh,
Some days I pout.
Some days I smile,
Some days I frown.
Some days I wish I was like a lion and roar.
Some days I wish I could eat a hot flaming donut.

I think we can all relate to this one.

Love,

Teach

P.S.  We’re doing haikus tomorrow.  Hold onto your butts (to keep kites from flying into them). 

I am the TV

Not sure if it's my hormones, but a poem from one of my students made me sob today.

(Just so you know, nine times out of ten you should probably disregard any time I begin a thought with "Not sure if it's my hormones…", but today is an exception).

Miguel is one of my special little angels.  By "special little angel," I mean that he is often disruptive, loud, and off-task.  Unfortunately, he is also funny, so even my perfectly well-behaved kiddos in that class can fall under his spell.  Part of Miguel's behavior is that he has a learning disability that makes it difficult for him to read and write, but I also have many students with the same learning disability who can manage to behave just fine. After not turning in his fourth assignment (a poem that was due yesterday), I told him he needed to start coming before school for tutorials.  Given his fondness for not doing as I ask, I assumed he would not show up.

But today, well before school started, I heard a tapping so light on my door that I figured it must be a baby or maybe a fairy.  When I went to the door, it was Miguel.

"Oh!  Miguel. I didn't think you would show up," I said, before realizing how rude that was.

"I need help," he said, grinning.

"With what?"

"The poem."

"No problem.  Have a seat."

He sat down in an empty desk and I scooted my rolly chair over next to him.

"Sometimes the hardest part of writing is getting started," I said. "What do you want to write about?"

"Me," he said immediately.  "My life."

"Ok, great.  So we've got our subject."  I wrote ME/MY LIFE in the middle of a paper.  "Now I want you to think of some things that remind you of you or your life.  They can be stories or movies, or even objects.  Think back on some of the poems we've read in here."

"Ok," he said.

"When you've got an idea, write it down somewhere near your subject."

"Ok."

Then I left him to go sit at my computer and reply to 5,000 emails.  When I came back, he had some ideas going.  I asked which he was going to use, and he shrugged.  I pointed towards one of his ideas he'd written down.

"A TV," I noted.  "This is interesting.  How are you like a TV?"

"Well, my TV at home is broke," he explained.

"And you think you're broken?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. 

"Ok. How else are you like your TV?"

"I don't know."

"Well, what else does a TV have?"

"A screen… a remote… volume…"

"Ok," I said.  I glanced at the clock.  I still needed to finish writing a test to bring to a planning meeting later that day, and I had 40 minutes until the bell.  "I think you've got a good thing going here.  Is this the one you want to use?  Do you remember how to use similes or metaphors to compare two things?" I knew he probably didn't, but I was also rushing to finish writing the test.

"Yeah," he said. "I remember.  'Like' or 'as' is simile."

"Good," I said.  "You can use your other poetic devices, too. Let me know if you need anything."

Many times while I was working, I looked up from my computer and saw Miguel scrawling with his pencil, brow furrowed in concentration.  My heart did a little jig to see him engaged and taking something seriously.

Finally, with about ten minutes left before the bell, I finished writing my test.  I walked over to Miguel's desk.

"Can I read it?" I asked.  He slid the paper over to me.  But I quickly realized that it was misspelled to the point of being unintelligible.  "I have an idea.  Why don't you say it out loud and I will type it and project it up onto the board."

He started reading, struggling through his own words he'd been creating, and I typed dutifully.  By about line three, I was already crying.

By the time he said the last line, tears were everywhere.  I was a mess.  I don't know if he meant the metaphor to the truest extent, but if he did, it is one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever heard.  I can't imagine what kind of things Miguel has lived through, what "channels" he wishes he could have changed, or what good things have been taken away from him that he can't get back.  What has happened to him so far in his short life for him to believe that he is broken and that his life is out of his control.  

"Miguel, that was so good!" I said, wiping my cheeks with my sleeve.

"I made you cry, Miss," he said quietly.  "I'm going to tell everybody I'm so good at writing that you cried."  His face was lit up like a 1,000 watt bulb.  Or a TV.

"You can do that," I said, blowing my nose. Then we talked a little bit about why it was so good and why he used the metaphor that he did and I cried some more.  Then the bell rang.

"Miguel, thank you so much for coming this morning," I said.

"You're welcome, miss," he said.  "Thank you for helping me."

Teaching is really, really hard, and can often leave me feeling like I have no time for anything but making copies, grading, responding to or writing emails, and filling out forms.  But I hope I remember Miguel in the future, and that part of my job has to be slowing down and reaching out.  Less "Let me know if you need anything" and more "How can I help you in this moment?"

And I'm crying again.  Oops.

Love,

Teach

The End of the World

This end-of-the-world December 21st Mayan Calendar thing is wreaking havoc on my classroom management.

"Alright, that's it," I said, putting my pen down from the poetry annotation I was demonstrating for my lamb class under the document camera this morning. "What is it? I'm hearing about eight people talking, and I know that nothing in this world could possibly be more interesting than Emily Dickinson."

Silence.

"No, really. I'd like to know what everyone's talking about. I feel like I'm missing out on something important. Is it calzone day again so soon? Black Ops? The Christmas dance?"

One of my braver lambs piped up.

"The end of the world."

"Not a complete sentence."

"Neither was yours."

"I have a college degree. Continue."

"Do you think the world will end on December 21st?"

"No.  Next question."

Another student raised her hand.

"I read on the Internet that the Illuminati are going to take over the world that Friday."

"The Internet lied to you.  Next."

One of my 45-pound students raised his hand.

"How do you kill a zombie?"

I paused to think.

"I'm giving you 60 seconds," I said as I punched the buttons on my timer. "To discuss with your group members the best way to kill a zombie.  Go."

A minute later, we had our results.  Roughly 70% of the class said weapons, followed by fire/explosives, followed by drowning/asphyxiation.

"Ok," I said.  "Now that your burning questions have all been answered, can I continue with the lesson? Can we keep our conversations on lockdown until I'm done?"

"Yes," they bleated.

Five minutes later, I look up and see a note being slipped under a desk. Filled with rage, I pounced on it like a leopard on a warthog.  I unfolded the paper. Across the top was written "Wich wepin would u use to kill a zombie????" About five students (including the one who asked it) had already responded with their name and weapon choice.

"You five clowns now have lunch detention with me," I said.

And then, softly, "Crossbow."

Love,

Teach