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I’m sure my header picture tells my current story (check out the two month old date!). Since I don’t have internet access at home, I am limited to posting whenever I have some free time at some other place. I’ve posted some on my other blog, and keep thinking that I need to put something over here. So here’s some of what’s been going on.
Please forgive me. I feel the need to get a little socio-political today.
The big news headline in southwest Florida yesterday was “Washington Group Finds the FCAT Flawed.” FCAT opponents across the state cheered and shook their finger at the Department of Education at this news. Unfortunately, the actual story resembled the headline like I resemble my brother-in-law’s Cuban family. (I’m a bottle brunette.)
The Washington group actually found a problem not with the 10th grade FCAT test itself, but in the fact that a high school student needs to pass this test for graduation, thereby proving that he or she is able to work at a 10th grade level. The group recommended students take a test at an 11th or 12th grade level like many other states.
At this point, all those cheering people should be hiding right now. But they’re not, and the misinformation about standardized tests continues to be passed around like a bad case of the flu. I cry in moments like this because it reminds of how many people in our country don’t think for themselves and research information to find a truth they can live with. This is why we continue to believe that a slice of Wonder Bread has the same nutrients as a multi-vitamin. And vote for elite career politicians. And fret over catching the Bird Flu. And think that AIDS is a threat to the mainstream population.
Thinking for ourselves is just too much to ask, I suppose, because it requires a certain level of risk. The truth isn’t always pretty or convenient. No parent wants to hear that their child has a difficulty. Or that moving around between states and countries and schools might affect their learning on so many different levels other than the quality of the school system. Who wants to hear that in almost every case, a child will have a better life living with two committed, married parents? Or that not everyone will know fractions by the end of kindergarten? Goodness, I just recently figured out the concept of potential and kinetic energy fifteen years after my honors physical science class!
At some point we have to put our biases and wishes and dreams aside and take a look at the cold, hard facts. Even if they are ugly. It’s impossible to change your reality when you’re only using fantasy tools.
In other news…
I’m really hoping that I will have some exciting news to post here soon. It just might be a very fun surprise.
I sat down at a table today with four teens who are still learning English. Our goal was to learn the past tense of some irregular verbs, like drive/drove and eat/ate. Most of us who grew up in this country take for granted the fact that we know delightful grammar rules like this. This is often a struggle for these kids, and if you ever tried to learn a foreign language as an adult, you can sympathize.
So like I said, I sat down at the table today and started off with, “Today, we’re going to talk about verbs. What is a verb?” Fingers snapped in the air, accompanied by several “ums” and desperate appeals to the ceiling tiles. In their Spanish-mumbling, I heard the correct answer—in Spanish—so I asked them to teach me. It wasn’t enough to just tell me “accion”, they taught me an entire sentence: “Verbos es una palabra que espresa accion.” I butchered it. They corrected me. One boy fought to keep his hands from molding my jaw into the proper stance to pronounce the words. They erupted into loud applause when I finally got out all the words without stumbling.
Their eyes shined like they had just won permanent immunity from all standardized English tests. It was our moment. You see, it’s easy to dismiss these kids as slow or lazy when they don’t pick up the language the way we think we did. Believe me, there are many times I do that. There are days when I struggle to even smile at them because I don’t think I’m making a difference. It takes far more energy to embrace them and listen to what they have to say.
By the end of the lesson, they all knew the past tense of burst and caught. I was reminded again that the way to a person’s soul is to show them you care about who they are instead of who they should or could be. In the end, that’s all that matters because that’s all we really want anyway—to be loved.
Here’s one of those classroom exchanges that keeps me in stitches:
Me: Mr. Q, I have had it with your negativity today!
Q: What? I’m not negative…I just suck at everything.
Part of teaching 8th grade, I’m told, is that I am required to do a unit on the WW2 Holocaust. I put this off until the very end of the year because I had a difficult time deciding just how to present the topic in an unbiased way. The heart of my teaching method is showing my students how to find facts in emotionally charged arguments and form their opinions based on the facts.
I finally decided to let them read “The Diary of Anne Frank.” The play presents a perfect opportunity to discuss how dramatizations are adapted. We’ve watched interviews with survivors and will be reading some of Anne’s essays that are not part of the diary. Next week we will wrap it all up with a exploration of genocide around the world and more discussions about free speech.
We all really needed a break the last few days; this topic is draining. Yesterday and today I showed them the black and white “Diary of Anne Frank” movie. You know the one. I have quite a personal history with the movie beginning in the 6th grade when I saw it at school. In 8th grade, I read the play and watched the movie again. That same year, I taped it off the Disney Channel (back in the day when it was a subscription channel and they ran those free weekends for you to preview the quality programming). I LOVED that movie, and for the following year, I woke up just about every Saturday morning to watch the tape and write in my own diary. The story captivated me.
It’s fun to see that kind of love spread to another person. Five of my girls–the tough, street wise ones–spread out on the floor and violently “shhhd” everyone during the movie. They were captivated. Their mouths curved into smiles as the love story between Anne and Peter progressed. Their eyes grew wide and mouths gaped when they thought the families had been caught by the police. They laughed at Anne’s antics and screamed at her when she was mean to her mother. I think I almost saw a few tears.
The afternoon was just as much fun. It’s a large group filled with such a wide array of characters that I could never completely describe them. Like me, they are verbal…and quick…and downright funny. Here’s some of our exchanges:
During the scene of Anne and Peter’s first “date”.
“What’s he doing to her hand?”
“Um, isn’t he holding it?”
“No, he’s moving the pen across it.”
I had to get up and see just what was going on. “Oh, come on, that’s the poor boy’s move!”
Burst of laughter. “What kind of move is that?”
I look around to see a few of them experimenting with this technique and reporting to me that it didn’t work. The scene ends shortly after this. One boy exclaimed, “THAT was a date? That’s the shortest date I’ve seen.”
I couldn’t resist. “Really? And just how many dates have YOU seen?
We laughed even more just a few minutes later when just as Anne and Peter were about to kiss (all I heard today was, “Are they going to kiss?”), someone on the floor adjusted the backpack under their neck and unplugged the t.v.
On top of all this, three girls ran up to me between classes, just bursting at the seams, with comments about “To Kill a Mockingbird.” This is my all-time favorite book, and it was so much fun to get into such fascinating discussions as how much we dislike Aunt Alexandra, Atticus’ parenting styles, and the creepiness of Boo Radley wrapping a blanket around Scout during Miss Maudie’s fire.
There’s my bliss today…my hope for next week. And I so desperately need these moments in the midst of my chaos.
