We’ve recently wrapped up our poetry unit with a small group share activity. Students shared a favorite poem from the many they had written – haikus, concrete, free verse, limericks, and more.
A limerick in honor of a student who was very nervous to share:
A student once said to his peers,
“Sharing aloud is one of my fears.”
After bravely reciting
out loud his own writing,
he said, “I could do this all year.”
Yesterday I reflected on my classroom decoration; today I follow it up with a story about last night, where my classroom decoration came into play unexpectedly.
Over a year ago, my boyfriend and I discovered Taskmaster, a British comedy show where comedians compete in hilariously stupid tasks (like painting a picture of a horse while riding on a horse, hiding a pineapple somewhere on their body, creating a stop-motion film about a potato, impressing a mayor, moving a boulder as far as possible in an hour, playing long distance charades across a river, etc.) and are then judged very arbitrarily by Greg Davies, who sits on an ornate throne. We love it.
After introducing many friends and family members, we got my little brother Adam and his three housemates hooked. Sometime in December, my brother and gang told me they had decided to film their own version. It was highly secretive and actually very professional. I showed up to film my tasks and found multiple camera angles set up. I had to wear an earpiece. The task envelopes were sealed with wax. These guys went all out.
I didn’t know who else was involved or who would be judging, but I tried my best and made what I believed to be some good television. After weeks of hearing about the editing process, I received a “live show” date to put in the calendar.
Which brings us to last night: the live show. My first thought upon walking in was that I had just been the victim of a long con prank. Six of my friends plus my family were there (one brother Zooming in from Boston). I asked, bemused, if I was the only one who “competed” – was it all a prank to make me do stupid things on camera? Nope, these wonderful, thoughtful people had been planning a surprise early birthday party for months. Suddenly all these little weird things started making sense. The vague “errands” my boyfriend had been running. Why my out-of-town friends had been in the neighborhood so often for flimsy reasons. Several conversations where I was convinced my memory of something was wrong.
But my trust will be quickly won back, because the videos were fantastic. I was in some tasks, but not all, so I got to laugh at myself but mostly at other people. Tasks included timed jello-eating, a hunt for bugs, acting out Harry Potter scenes, synchronized dancing, and more. But, the relevant one: the contestants needed to create a diorama depicting what they thought my classroom looked like. The best was one of my brothers furrowing his brow in desperate concentration while fashioning me a tiny blonde pompom head, the “whiteboard” behind me reading “What is the difference between affect and effect?” He even made a little reading corner.
I am re-inspired and reinvigorated. I will capture the bright energy of colored pompom fluff and remember the joyous feeling of being surrounded by friends and family while we watch someone build a version of my classroom for ants.
One of the walls in my classroom isn’t a true wall, but a partition separating my classroom from the next. Students rarely notice or care, but there is a door between the two rooms and the occasional lucky student is allowed to pass through the “secret” opening if they have classes in both rooms back-to-back.
I noticed recently that a large (floor to ceiling) strip of bulletin board paper I had stuck to the wall and decorated with some writing resources (to cover up some old stains and peeling parts) has come very loose. The side is dangling and will likely soon come completely off. I’m sure it will make a fun diversion when it suddenly slides to the floor during class.
It’s late enough in the year that I don’t want to get a ladder to fix it. But this has me thinking about a new plan for next year. Do I paint the partition? Keep the ‘writing resources’ section or make it something new? And that has me thinking about my goal for the classroom decor in general. What is the best use of my wall space? More student work? We have a spot for that, but could add another. I like the idea of having an art-oriented student paint a mural, maybe something related to English class.
I need to find out what other educators love most about their classroom decorations. And what students love too. Perhaps at the end of the year I’ll do a poll and see what the students think is the best use of the walls.
Two of my students walk to school together, rain or shine. At the end of the day, whoever gets to their locker first will ask me if I’ve seen the other one.
I usually stand in my doorway to monitor lockers while also keeping an eye on the large windows in my room, through which I can see students leaving for car pick up and to walk home.
Yesterday (it’s only March 4th and I already forgot a post…), boy #1 showed up, instrument in tow, asking if boy #2 had been there yet.
“Nope. I’ll let him know you’re outside waiting.” Off he went.
Students ebbed and flowed, bunching up to chitchat in small groups, separating again to their various lockers. One girl struggled to stuff the world’s largest binder into her average sized backpack. I peeked my head into my room, looking out at the grassy space behind the school. There, peering back at me through the window, was boy #1. He saw me and raised his arms and shoulders in a silent question. I shook my head and shrugged: sorry, I had no idea why his friend was taking so long.
Minutes later, boy #2 surfaced. He started sticking things in his backpack, telling me how he had to stay late to ask a question.
While we chatted, I waved to the friend in the window, pointing next to me and giving the thumbs up. The walk-home buddy had been located at last.
Boy #2 reached into his locker for his skateboard. He brings it regularly, and has explained to me before how he skates slowly so his friend can walk alongside him. As he starting pulling on his helmet. I asked him about the stickers on his helmet.
“Are they from places you have been?” I noticed that several of them looked location-themed: some ocean waves, something that looked like a family of cacti.
“No, my sister gave them to me!” This was said with some pride.
“That’s so nice!”
We wished each other a great weekend (a long weekend for the kids) and then he asked if boy #1 had been to his locker yet.
“He’s waiting for you outside.”
I watched as he went outside and found boy #1. They headed off together, immediately engrossed in conversation, leaving me to appreciate the pure joy of a young friendship.
Today in class we learned about text structures: cause and effect, problem and solution, description, sequence, cause and effect.
Them: “Why are all of the examples about zebras?”
Me: “I guess I was thinking about zebras when I wrote them.”
Them: “Is ‘problem’ a signal word for problem and solution?”
Me: “Well, what do you think?”
Them: “This is so sad. Why are we reading about the causes for puppies being abandoned?”
Also them: “It’s not making me sad.”
Our note page had a picture for each type. There were some falling dominoes for cause and effect and a spilled drink with a sponge for problem and solution (“What a terrible problem,” we joked). When we got to compare and contrast, I asked the students why the picture was an apple and an orange. None of them had heard of “comparing apples to oranges” but accepted my explanation that this a commonly said phrase.
My last class of the day, though, was indignant:
“That’s an apple and a tomato!”
“It’s a tomato – look at the stem!”
“I don’t like tomatoes at all, but that’s a tomato.”
To be fair to them, it was a black and white picture. To be fair to me, comparing apples to oranges is a thing.
Me: “Listen. If it makes you happy, if it makes your day better, if your happiness depends on this being a tomato – you can call it a tomato. The point is, the fruits have similarities and differences. Now we are moving on to the next! Flip over that paper – don’t look at the tomatoes any more!”
Them: Giggles
Them: “I am actually so hungry now. Is it lunch yet?”
My hope for this challenge is to write about one conversation or moment that brought me joy during the school day (thanks to my teacher research cohort for this idea).
Today was one of the rare and reassuring days that the activities I had planned for class took the exact right amount of time. In a great mood from that, I decided to stick around after school and watch the end of our girls’ basketball game.
Wary of committing to a seat in the bleachers, I did what the students who didn’t buy tickets do and lurked in the doorway. The game was nearing the end, with us up by a few, so most of my 6th graders were on the bench. I don’t watch basketball and I don’t know if middle school basketball has its own unique rules, but I couldn’t believe how many timeouts were called in the last 4 minutes of play. One of my students subbed in at last and I was able to see her make a great defensive play right in front of me.
While I watched, another student of mine peeked in and said hello. She’s on the wrestling team for our school, but told me that she plays basketball too, locally.
“Wow, they are soooo tall.” My student was impressed by the 8th graders, watching one of them streak down the court to attempt a layup.
As an adult who has to look up to make eye contact with about half of my students, I agreed with her enthusiastically.
The group of antsy boys standing against the wall next to us predicted scores, though not understanding how to calculate the points. We stayed to watch our girls eke out a win (while my student told me all about her team and the coach and the girls that she knows and what she thought about some of the plays we were seeing).
It’s always fun to see students out of the normal context. And it was fun to have a moment of connection, even though it was about something as small as our jealousy of a few inches height.
This week already pained us with daylight savings and last night I had another aggravating interruption to my sleep schedule. Why do smoke alarms always need new batteries when you have the least amount of coordination and mental faculty?
We had another one start the beeping process about a month ago, so luckily we had some of those rectangular batteries on hand. I grabbed a chair from the kitchen table to stand on and luckily, it only took a minute to extinguish the beeping. The poor dog, not liking the noise at all, was running all over during this process, trying to get outside to safety. At the end, she leapt onto the bed without waiting to be invited, and curled up between us to get comforted.
I didn’t want to know what time it was or how soon I would have to get ready for school; I slipped gratefully back into sleep, hoping for better timing the next go-round.
On a day associated with the word “beware,” I’m listing 15 things that make me feel fortunate in this moment:
It didn’t occur to me that today was “pi day” until my friend complained about the madhouse situation at Bakeshop. We get all excited about certain numbers (or at least, pie-sellers and pie-eaters do). We like to keep the same uniform numbers from year to year and team to team. As a collective, we acknowledge the unluckiness of 13, though I’ve learned recently that because the Chinese word for “four” is very similar to the word for “death,” many Chinese establishments omit a fourth floor (like some US hotels skip the 13th floor).
As a roll call question I once asked my students to share their lucky numbers and a surprising number of them actually have one. Yes, it’s usually their birth date or it’s how old they are (and changes each year). But already they recognize the significance and buy into the superstition. We definitely spent too long discussing the stories behind their numbers, a tangent to sate my curiosity. But isn’t it interesting?
Do you have a lucky number?
This week’s weather has been so nice that we wanted to spend as much time as possible out of the living room/kitchen/office box that we exist in these days. I had never been to the National Arboretum, so we stuck some granola bars and a travel dog bowl in a backpack and made a day of it.
We walked through the camellias and the Asian collection, then wandered our way, map-less and agenda-less, over some hills until we eventually ended up at the columns. I read the plaque to learn that they used to be part of the Capitol until the dome was added (and it was much larger than the architect originally intended); the retired 20-plus pillars were brought to the arboretum in the 80s.
There were plenty of families walking around, relaxed picnickers, a group taking pictures for some fancy occasion, many many dogs… We sat on the hill next to the columns and let Samantha army crawl around a bench to sniff for crumbs. She was happy and we were relaxed – it was a beautiful Saturday.
AuthorlingO