55.

In my writing elective class, we are beginning a poetry workshop.  I'm also trying to help the kids build a writing community and play together, so they'll feel comfortable sharing their work with one another.  Take a few minutes here and there to play now can make a huge difference in our productivity later on in a class like this.

The students are in four teams, writing examples of poetry terms on small white boards.  One team, which named themselves "Dumbledore's Army," has instantly bonded over Harry Potter, and every example they write down has something to do with Harry Potter. The current term: metaphor.  (If your figurative language terms are rusty, it's a comparison without using "like" or "as.")  The white board reads as follows:
Dumbledore is a pillar.
Umbridge is a toad.
Snape is a greasy frying pan.
Voldemort is a snake.
Nagini is actually a snake.

They could hardly get through the last one without busting up laughing.  While I agreed that it was a very clever addition to their board, they did not earn a point for metaphor.

53.

So, I took a long break... and I'm about to take another long break from kids (4 days to go!), but I had a moment today worth sharing.  Not that I don't have moments worth sharing other days, but I haven't felt like writing them all down the last couple months.  My dear friend Donna has been trying to take the word "should" out of her vocabulary.  I suppose I followed suit a little and waited for the desire to come back.  I'm sorry I'm a lazy blogger.  Anyway, here's a story.

Yesterday we were reviewing for a test over our final short story.  I try to write broad questions about stories when I'm checking for understanding because I was always a kid who did the reading and who forgot the details when it came to reading quizzes.  We almost never have reading quizzes, so yesterday I read my students a question so they had an idea of how specific the questions on the test would be.  It was actual #5 on the test today, and they knew this.  I told them none of them better miss it.

Today, during the last class of the day, a student raised his hand.  I approached him and looked over his shoulder.

"I'm having a problem with one of the questions.  I'm not sure about it," he said.

"Okay," I said.  "What's your question?"

"I'm just really confused on number five."

He waited.

I read the words on his test, and as my eyes scanned over number five, he broke into a grin.  He couldn't hold his poker face any longer.

This humor, the end of the year connection, when every person is the building is counting down the days until summer, is the gift of working with teenagers in an environment you help create.

45.

"Hey, I want you to look at my shirt," Luke says as we're trying to start class.

"Okay," I say.

"It's because English is my favorite class.  I have an entire shirt about it," he says.

His shirt looks like this:

He denies all connections to the Chargers and maintains that he's just trying to support his favorite class.

I wonder at what point in the day he realized he should try this out.

44.

I was the first person back from lunch today (my 4th period class is split in half by lunch).

I was eating a dark chocolate at my desk when the door peeked open.

"She's in there," I heard someone whisper.

Then, as quietly as possible, the door crept open, and two boys ducked for cover behind the first row of desks.  They proceeded to army crawl to the front of the room and avoid eye contact, holding objects in front of their faces or just staring off into space.

The next line is not a joke.

They were pretending to be invisible.

I teach eighth grade.

40.

"I'm tired," Luke says as the bell rings at the beginning of fourth hour.

"Me too," I say.

"Oh, you look really tired," Michael pipes up from the front of the room.

I do look really tired.  When I was putting on my makeup, I noticed that it looked like I had either been crying the night before or had very little sleep.  Neither was true, but my eyes were puffy and red nonetheless.

"I know," I say.  "I'm not sure why I look so tired today.  But you know you should never tell anyone they look tired, right?"

"Why not?" Michael says.

"Well, because you know what you're really saying is...who knows what you're really saying?" I ask the class.

Craig raises his hand.  "You look terrible!" he says.

"That's right!" I say.

Michael protests, but it eventually clicks.  And another life lesson is had by all.

39.

I haven't stopped writing.  Last week just got utterly swamped.  Life is good.

My seventh hour and I are sometimes at odds.  Most middle school teachers are sometimes at odds with their last class of the day, I gather. It has been a particularly chaotic week with the preliminary stages of research, and I had rushed down the hall to discuss something with a colleague between sixth and seventh period.

At the beginning of the period, my students are to immediately read or write when the bell rings without prompting from me.  Seventh hour does not usually do so well with this, so I expected to walk in the door, thirty seconds after the bell, to a flurry of activity and noise.

I walked into dead silence, kids (pretending, at least) to be intent on their reading.  Except for the kids whose book was upside down, of course.  My jaw dropped in grateful surprise, a silent “Awwww!”

They held it together for a moment, when Mike blurted out from across the room, “I bet you weren’t expecting that!”

“Shhh!” I said, and I may have stomped a foot.  “Don’t ruin it…”

As I settled down into my own reading, I heard a slight wheezing from the back of the room.  Noah was doubled over, red in the face, trying not to laugh audibly. Something about the whole scenario had struck him funny.

Because class started smoothly, it went smoothly.  We were all warm toward one another.  It was sweet.

38.

I was talking to a group of ninth grade girls this Valentine's Day morning when the conversation drifted to what else--Justin Bieber.  I asked, "Did anyone see Never Say Never this weekend?"

Shrieks and whole-hearted yeses ensued.  "Omigod.  I almost cried.  I cried when I saw him in concert," one girl said.

Another girl turned to me, looked me dead in the eye, and said with a completely straight face, "It is a movie that will change a person."

Happy Valentine's Day!

27.

You should really listen to this song in the background while you read this post.  If you read slowly, the timing might work out perfectly!

Several weeks ago, I moved into my newly renovated classroom.  I'm naturally disorganized, so I enlisted the help of some of my students during their study halls.  Two girls unpacked all of my school supplies into drawers and carefully labelled the contents of each.

My classroom hammer (which fondly reminds me of my Grandma's philosophy that every kitchen needs a hammer) received a special place in its own drawer, labeled exuberantly, "HAMMER!"

Fast forward to a day last week. I'm on the side of the room with all of said drawers, bent down at a desk, helping a student.  In my peripheral vision, I see movement toward the drawers.  Michael is "sneaking" with an exaggerated tip-toe. I turn around.  You never know what can happen.

I nearly miss it.  My eyes pan back and forth, eventually finding the yellow sticky note next to the "HAMMER!" label.  It now reads "HAMMER!"  "TIME!"

My friend Nancy used to say that she never belly laughed as much when she wasn't teaching middle school.  There is truth in this.

25.

I got married in June.  I thought I wanted to take my husband's name.  It turns out that professionally, it's not working for me.

This week, at the beginning of a new semester, I declared my intention to return to Ms. MyName.

The kids reacted in lots of funny ways.  Many were concerned about my husband's feelings.  Some thought I had problems with my in-laws.  Overall, though, their desire to honor my request has been really sweet.

The best reaction: "This changing-your-name-stuff is going to come in really handy for your next crime spree."

21.

"Hey, did you know that 'butt' is blocked from the images search here at school?" a kid asks in my writing elective.  He's in charge of putting together the cover for our print publication.

"Well, no, but I'm not surprised," I say.

"I'm just looking for a tiger butt.  You know, for the back.  What could go wrong?" he says, genuinely puzzled.

20.

Rob is holding out his pencil toward me as he walks into class.  The tip has been mauled by his trip through the gauntlet of a locker hallway plus construction zone.  "My pencil just broke--on my way here!" he cries.

"Bummer," I say, "there's no longer a pencil sharpener in here either."  Our library is also a construction zone.

He looks at me with a glimmer in his eye.  He's trying to think of something clever to say.  Ten seconds pass.

"And that's why... I shouldn't have come to Hogwarts!" he says, shaking his head as he walks away.

Just to be clear, I do teach in a normal public school.  I also teach eighth graders.

14.

I am reshelving books and generally bouncing giddily around my newly remodeled classroom while seven or eight students work in my room after school.  I rush next door for a minute to find out if we're still planning to go out tomorrow after school.  When I return, one student is on the floor, howling in laughter.  All the others are chuckling heartily albeit less dramatically.

"You don't even want to know," Charles says.

"I imagine I don't," I say, "so don't tell me and get back to work."

They try.  They really try.  But they can't hold it together.  Finally, Charles blurts out, "Jordan farted!" And they all lose it again.

I am reminded of a time in eighth grade when my best friend let out a ladylike little toot in U.S. History, then daintily raised two fingers and squeaked, "Excuse me."  Mr. Fitzgerald left the room so we could all enjoy a laugh.  I imagine he needed one too.

I tell this story while laughing with them.  Sarah looks up from her math and says, "You have to admit: farting is funny."

There is a thirteen year old in all of us.

13.

I have moved my students out to the hallway so we can hear each other reading a play.  It is our second-to-last day in the temporary classrooms, and the speech teacher has decided to go out with a rousing, loud game of charades or something similar.

It is sixth hour, and I cannot describe how angelic my sixth hour is. If you saw them, you'd think I was paying them in cold hard cash to behave.  To not have to manage any behavior between fifth and seventh hour is completely awesome.  They are fun.  They joke.  And they know when to work.

As our school is under construction, we've been holding class in the gym for the last ten weeks.  The kids know that nothing makes me angrier than outsiders disrupting their instructional time.  There is one construction worker who is constantly walking about the building, blasting his hip radio and dragging heavy boxes.  Whenever we hear a noise from inside our not so soundproof classrooms, we all look at each other and say, "that guy."

Anyway, we're in the hallway, trying to hear each other read aloud.  The students are holding themselves up against the lockers and I'm sitting at one end, in the middle of the hallway.  Class is clearly in session.  We hear "Stairway to Heaven," faintly at first and then coming closer. It is that guy.  Our laughter ripples like the wave--as soon as he passes one pair of students, they double over in silent glee.  By the time he passes me, the only person left reading is the poor girl who started the monologue.  She has not looked up from her lines.  Someone says, "That guy."

Tears are seriously rolling down my cheeks.  Shared human joy is so easy when you let them be people.

10.

I approach a male group of former students this morning before school in the hallway.

They are playfully roughhousing and trying to impress those around them as usual.  We say good morning.

Randy leans toward me and says, "Hey, do you want to know a secret?"

This is a dangerous question at the junior high level.

"I'm not sure," I say.  "Do I?"

"Oh, yeah."  He stage whispers.  "My shirt glows in the dark." A discussion about Hypercolor shirts from my time in junior high ensues.

In that moment, I know that Tuesday is going to be better than Monday.

7.

Imagine an after-school book and movie club.  Imagine a fantastic discussion of the book Coraline happening, and then students munching popcorn, and then this scene coming on:



Imagine me shifting uncomfortably, wishing I had remembered this scene from when I saw Coraline in the theatre.  I had to love Kaleb's blushing and embarrassed face throughout, though--he proved innocence still exists in the junior high.

After we stopped the movie to discuss differences they liked and didn't in the movie, the lone seventh grader raised her hand: "I have a comment.  The theatre scene was just a little awkward."

"I agree," I said.  "I'm so sorry."

6.

White boards snap up across the room with eager faces behind them.  We are playing a review game for their grammar test tomorrow.  Anytime I can incorporate tiny white boards, I will have immediate student engagement.

Three groups tie at the end.  There is no prize.  I want to give final tips for studying and preparing, so I opt for this instead of a tie-breaking round.  One of the winning groups does not like this call.  They taste arbitrary victory, and they want to claim it.

I review the expectations for the test, and look to the back of the room.  Brandon, one of the tying group members, is grinning from the couch.  His white board is in the air.  "Grrr," it says.

Brandon is a kid who is so quietly funny that I had to call home one night just to tell his parents how much I appreciate his sense of humor and how well he manages appropriate timing and delivery so it doesn't interfere with instruction.  

I continue with directions and suggestions, reminding students of the low-stakes nature of the assessment and what their options are if they don't do as well as they'd hope.  My gaze finds Brandon again.  He's holding up his white board.  "This is ridiculous!" it proclaims.

I can't imagine laughing so much in any other profession.