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.

52.

It is conference week, friends, so it's very busy.  I have a quick story to share.

I always say that I am about building life-long readers, not life-long test takers, and I design my reading instruction that way.  I try to make reading a privilege and invite kids to try new books they might like.  I try to make close-reading a good experience to have so we can learn something about ourselves through literature--not so we can guess someone else's interpretation.   Students ask questions instead of answering them.  This is not always the best type of reading instruction for test preparation, and this year's political climate has make me second-guess what I'm doing--not a lot, but certainly enough to lose a little sleep over.

So I really needed this parent last night.

I needed her to sit down at my table and say, "I don't know what you did, but Luke is a reader now.  He asked for books for Christmas--full of small print and historical facts.  When we asked him if he was sure, he said, 'Yes.  I want to read about it because I want to learn about it.' He goes to his room at night to read for a half hour.  He never did these things before.  So thank you."

Luke would not be doing these things if my reading instruction were made of multiple choice questions to answer.

51.

Today we shared books with each other as a break from the difficult research essay writing we've been doing and as a way to jazz up our independent reading.

We used the format of a book pass, where students all bring a book (I also threw several in from my classroom library and the school library), and we pass them around in small groups, giving kids a chance to have exposure to 50 or more texts in a single class period.

The discouraging thing about teaching is when a couple students in each class go through the motions of looking at a couple books in each basket and then sit with a blank page in front of them.

It gets more encouraging when students with discerning taste walk out with three or four books on their lists.  They will have a book on the back burner, and maybe they will even look forward to it.

My favorite part about a book pass, however, is when students (and this is at least a third in each class) are just hungry for reading material, and they write down 20-30 books.  One student in my last class of the day couldn't wait to check something out from the classroom library: she had to take it home that night.

A hunger for books is what I hope to instill in as many students as I possibly can.

50.

I spent this evening with the delightful Ted Kooser, who reminded me of some tenants of teaching poetry and writing.  I plan to share them with my students tomorrow, and thought I'd share them with you tonight.

On teaching poetry and the experiences he wants kids to have with reading poetry:
"I want them to take pleasure it it.  The minute the poem begins to become a problem to solve, it's over."

On writing:
"I think we all ought to be writing about our families."  He said something about a memory you'd scribble on a piece of paper and stick into a drawer.  Years after the family members are gone, someone finds the piece, and "all of a sudden, back into the light they come."

"I love to write about the most ordinary things there are."

A glorious, refreshing evening.

49.

At the end of class, I remind my students of tomorrow's change in class location.  "So, where are we meeting tomorrow?"

"Media Center!" most of the students yell in unison.

"Texas Roadhouse!" says one small voice.

"Yeah, and you can buy us all lunch on your HUGE teacher's salary!" one kid chimes in with a devilish grin in his eye.  His smile and his tone make it 100% clear that he's being sarcastic.

The kids are pretty informed.  I can tell many of them have seen the anti-teacher garbage in the news based on the jokes they're making.  "You even get health care!" one kid says.

The laughter reminded me that they don't think I'm milking the system.  They don't question my motives for being there.  They don't question the hours I work when I make it a priority to return their research notes so they can work on their essays during break.

THEY are the reason I teach.

48.

Today weighed heavy.

After reading student writing that broke my heart, a conversation with a student left me unsure how to help, what advice to give.

I told the student this, and said that I would consult outside sources and check back in. 

“It’s okay,” the student assured me.  “I know—this is going to sound like a pamphlet or something—but it really helps to just talk to a ‘trusted adult.’”  Yes, this was in air quotes.

These are the days I feel like all the training in the world couldn’t prepare a person to do this job.  Simultaneously, I know the most important thing I can do—in situations like this—is to listen.

47.

I've posted before about how sometimes working in a junior high forces me to enforce rules simply because kids have to receive more privileges as they get older.  I buy into this philosophy most of the time, but when my students are so thoughtfully considering their research topics and writing contemplative essays about how their thoughts and opinions have changed, it can be difficult to see them as beings that need to be "controlled."

Don't get me wrong: sometimes they do.  (For example, after school I witnessed two separate groups of seventh-grade boys in track sweats attempting to run down the hallways as fast as they could while carrying high-jump mats in from outside--as a group.  I just spent ten minutes trying to find an image online that can do this madness justice, but apparently people are too terrified to grab a camera in moments like this.)

Anyway, I digress.  Two stories in one today.

I was to review before-school procedures today.  It's rather complicated.  We don't have supervision in the halls, so students are supposed to get a pass to check out of the cafeteria or gym if they want to see a teacher before 8:05.  If they are found in the hallways without a pass, they will be immediately escorted to the morning detention room.  To be honest, the system now is better than the system used to be. Without passes, you couldn't tell if a kid had checked out of the cafeteria or not, so people that generally trusted kids they didn't know didn't do anything to kids who appeared to be on their way to see a teacher, and teachers that don't... well, those kids ended up in morning detention.

The sweet moment of reviewing these expectations came from the vast number of questions my students had when I was done with my speech.  "If we need to drop a band instrument off, should we do it before or after we see a teacher?"

"Can we stop at our lockers before we go see a teacher?"

"What if the teacher isn't in their room?  How do we get back to the cafeteria?"

I had to laugh at our work on figuring out ways to "get back" to the cafeteria as if it were across hot lava.

You might think my kids were dreaming up ridiculous scenarios to waste class time. (Well, maybe just a tiny little bit.  I'm working on convincing them I wasn't born yesterday.)  They were, for the most part, genuinely deeply concerned about how they could not get in trouble, how they could do the right thing.  And that is refreshing.