One of my favorite things about teaching junior high is blowing their minds. One of my fave parts of the week is Fridays before the test, when we do Mental Floss. Middle schoolers: they can’t hit the curveball.

Like this:

“When the day after tomorrow is yesterday, this day will be as far from Friday as this day was from Friday when the day before yesterday was tomorrow. What day is it?”

All I asked was, “What day is it?” All the rest is obfuscation. But they always try to figure it out.

“OK, so. Day after tomorrow is Sunday, so yesterday is Thursday…wait…How can it be yesterday?”

And etc.

This class is also the first time some of them contemplate the whole time travel paradox thing.

“So if Stevo here is feeling all sporty,  joyriding in his stolen car back in the past, and accidentally runs over his mom before she’s his mom…”

“Ewww. Why would he do that?”

“He didn’t know it was her. And speed kills. Anyway, now what would happen? If she never had him…”

“He’d just disappear!” Most triumphant.

“So how did he travel back in time to hit her? If he was never born in the first place, how did he travel back and do it?”

“Wait. What? Wait…” And the eyes glaze over.

We do lots of paradoxes during “A Sound of Thunder.” The “I am lying” one gets ‘em every time.

This week’s torture came in the form of a writing exercise.

“How many of you have started to realize that if your essay is a little different or a little livelier or more unusual than the average duck’s essay, you tend to get a higher grade?”

Almost all the hands go up. But that doesn’t mean a thing. Most of the hands would have gone up if I had asked how of them had been to the moon. I just use that as a way of telling them to JAZZ THINGS UP A BIT!

“You do realize that if I’m reading 150 of these things, and I’m on number 97, and everybody is pretty much sounding the same, and then I come across yours, and your  new angle on things makes me think, “Hey, this guy is thinking,” of course the grade is going to be nudged higher…not exactly on purpose always, but that’s just how it is in reality. You know what I mean?”

So we work a lot on sentence variety and varied intros and some showboat techniques that their high school AP teachers will probably grind out of them, but make their writing a whole lot more fun to read. And it makes them more inclined to write.

I used to use this exercise very early in the year, sometimes on the first or second day. But some of them, in their noob naiveté, thought that I intended for them to write ALL their essays this way, and got really frustrated.

Sigh.

I haven’t used this one in a while since then.

One of the biggest issues in their writing is often their repeated use of boring, non-action verbs. I refer to these as verbs you can’t draw a picture of.

“What does is-ing look like? Go? What does go look like?”

They all start pantomiming walking and running and flying and etc.

“That ain’t going. That’s flying or running or whatever it is that Barney is doing with his fingers over there. That’s my point; verbs like that don’t add any action to your essay. You don’t go to the store. You slither or walk or ride or strut or cruise. So I’m going to take those boring verbs away from you, and force you to think outside the box, as they say.”

“I’m going to grade this assignment on only three criteria.
One: Did you write about one topic? I do not care what that topic is–cheese, your mom, the economy–as long as you stick to one topic.
Two: Did you get to the bottom of the piece of paper? This part is the old grade-by-ruler approach. If you fill the page, you get full credit (assuming you meet the third criterion ), you write half a pag, you get half credit and etc.
Three: This is the hard part. Did you use any of the following words?
any form of the word be (am, is are, was, were),
any form of the word go (went, gone, going),
any form of the word have (has, had, having),
any form of the word get (got, getting, gotten),
any form of the word do (did, done, etc.).

I will subtract one point for each of those words I find.”

OMG. I swear I could see the gears turning and the eyes bulging.

“Butbutbutbut…what’s left?”

“My brain hurts just thinking about it.”

Soon: The Aftermath.

(Reposted from Teaching the Outsiders.)

We’re getting to the point in the story where the wire services and talk radio morons are starting to pick up the story of Philip’s “patriotism.” I paused the reading today — we’re reading it live in class so it unfolds sort of in real time, and they can react to it without knowing how it ends — and we talked about free speech.

“Philip is claiming that it’s his right to sing, well hum anyway, the national anthem, even though the rule is to stand at silent, respectful attention. Is his right to free speech being violated?”

The answer was almost unanimously yes. I was a little shocked. We had talked about Phil’s motivation for the humming. The kids acknowledge that he started doing it so he could get kicked out of Miss Narwin’s class. And they still think he has a right to do what he’s doing.

So I flashed up on the big screen something I found at ReadWriteThink. It lists the three main Supreme Court decisions affecting the free speech rights of students at school, and breaks each one down in a paragraph. Here’s the link.

“The first decision says it’s all about ‘reasonable disruption.’ Is Philip’s humming causing a reasonable disruption? Does it violate the rights of other students to listen to the anthem with respectful silent attention?”

“No!”

“Hmm. We’ll come back to that idea in a minute. Let’s look at the other two decisions first. The second decision is about political vs. ‘vulgar’ speech. This guy made a speech supporting his candidate for student government, and he used language the school thought was lewd-”

“What’s lewd mean?”

“Of a sexually suggestive nature.”

“Ooooooh.”

“Anyway. The Supreme Court sided with the school, saying that we should be teaching you ‘socially appropriate behavior.’ So even if your intentions are good, you can’t be ‘inappropriate’ as we call it around here. You can’t get up at an assembly and give a speech about how we should ‘f’in help those f’in starving African kids.’”

Now right about here, the conversation shifted. Suddenly we’re talking about the recent ban on those pink bracelets that say “Save the B_ _ bies” or something similar. It’s been a bit of a fad recently, and finally the word came down that said bracelets will now be considered dress code violations.

It’s a classic junior high loophole: “I’m just supporting breast cancer research.” (And getting to walk around saying b_ _ bies all day long.)

“I think that’s free speech! That’s not disruptive!”

“Lewd?”

“Mr. Jellyfish (our esteemed vp) says it all the time when I’m in his office. Take off you boo-”

“I get it. But that’s not the same thing. It’s not public. And anyway, very little of what Mr. J does would stand up to Supreme Court scrutiny. But this does bring us to the third decision. This one is about setting high standards for school related activities. So basically, would it be appropriate for the school to send home a flyer asking for help with their breast cancer research fund-raiser with the headline, ‘Save the B_ _ bies’? If so, then your bracelets might be protected speech.”

Two or three managed to slip the word in as they made their points. They really got into this one.

“But all we’re doing is support-”

“That doesn’t matter. Remember the f’in African babies?”

We went ’round and ’round on this one well into break time.

(reposted from TeachingtheOutsiders.com.)

(Aside: I’m really going to be getting into this for a while, so you might as well go read the book, if you haven’t already. It’ll only take you an hour or two.)

And this morning, I thought of a last minute mutation for my “Facebooking” it real time experiment. The notebooks were going to be awkward for sharing, which is sort of the whole idea, so I was trying to think of an alternative that didn’t involve our IST department. Then I thought of an old web article I read about teaching kids about webpages and hypertext without using a computer. It involved putting an essay on the bulletin board (written rather larger than life), and then underlining the words that would be “links” and then running a string or whatever from each of those underlined words to another short piece of writing that explicated/expanded on the link word. And then those could be connected (literally) to other such pieces of writing or pictures or other materials. It was a very groovy way to illustrate the power of hypertext. (That’s what the ht in http stands for.)

Since my bulletin boards are still empty (I don’t really do posters with slogans about perseverance or lists of writing traits or “Good job!” type things; my bulletin boards are saved for end of novel projects, and my walls are all about me), I cleared a footpath to a big section, and set the stapler nearby.

Today, at the end of the period, after we had started the novel, and gotten only to Miss Narwin’s first letter to her sister, I handed out 5×7 index cards, and told one side of the room to write a “Facebook post” about Phillip, based on the few documents we had read so far, and told the other side to post about Miss Narwin, with both sides pretending they were in Miss Narwin’s class with Phillip.

On the bulletin board I stapled two signs; “Phillip” and “Miss Narwin.” I figure I will add characters as we go along.

I was literally thinking out loud at this point, but I think I might be on to something. The first round of cards/posts were very illuminating. Some are already leery of Phillip, some actually think he might be cool and funny. Some are sympathetic to, or even already like, Miss Narwin, some already think she should retire. And we’re not even past page 10.

OMG. I couldn’t have asked for a better set up. I can’t wait to start talking about this tomorrow.

(Reposted from TeachingtheOutsiders.com)

(Follow the link for the poem and discussion questions, then come back for the poetry-writing part.)

I stole/mutated this from a presentation I attended at my first English teacher conference. (CATE 1994 – I only went to one more conference like that, the next year, and then the money ran out for conferences, and so forth…I really should go again sometime on my own dime.)

Anyway, it’s a fairly painless and very cool way to show that what you cut is just as important as what you add.

FROM PROSE TO POETRY

Prose is the usual form of writing.  It has complete
sentences, paragraphs, capital letters, and punctuation.  When we
write poetry, we can often ignore those conventions to produce a special
effect.  We are going to take your rough draft essay and turn it into
a poem using the revision  strategies of cutting, adding, changing,
and rearranging.

What you need:

1. Your rough draft essay.
2. A pencil (so you can erase).
3. At least one or two extra sheets of paper.

What to do:

1. Count the words in your essay by counting the number of words
   in one line, counting the number of lines and then multiplying.
2. Using a pencil, cross out at least half of the words in
   your essay. Try to remove all the dull, utilitarian words and leave
   the colorful, descriptive language.  Remember the elements of good
   writing and keep them:  surprise, comparison, vivid verbs, nouns,
   sense details, maybe even dialogue.
3. Make sure the story can still be followed,
   but don’t worry too much about complete sentences…
4. Now make changes in line length and punctuation.  Rewrite
   the piece as a poem arranging it on the page as you wish.  Think about
   pauses and the effect you want to make as you add your own punctuation.
5. Remember that poems LOOK different
   than essays:
   The lines don’t go
   All the way to the end;
   Sometimes there might be
   Only
   One
   Or two
   Words on a line
   (for a special effect).
   The lines should  have a sort of a rhythm.
6. Rearrange the words if you want.  Also, you may add
   a  few words here and there if you need to complete a thought.
7. Copy your final poem on to a separate sheet of paper.
8. Capitalize the first word of each line.
9. It should be 1/2 the number of words of your original essay.
10. Final Draft due Friday.

A Sample

PROSE:
from
Summer of My German Soldier, Bette Green

If there were not mirrors or mothers, I probably
never would  know how ugly I am.  But it was all there, plain
as my reflection in the glass.  Skinny bones, skinny face, feet too
big, nose too long. In the mirror I could also see my mother’s profile:
a high cool forehead and a slender nose that stopped where a nice nose
ought  to.  A lot like Sharon’s.  And there were lofty cheekbones
that gave my mother’s face form, symmetry, and on occasion great beauty.
Sometimes I think God lavished so much beauty on her outsides that when
he got around to her insides there just wasn’t much of anything left over.

(112 words)

POETRY:

Mirrors

It was all there

plain as my reflection in the glass.

Skinny bones,

skinny face,

feet too big, nose too long.

Mother’s profile:

high cool forehead,

slender nose,

lofty cheekbones,

form, symmetry,

on occasion great beauty.
God lavished so much beauty on her outsides,

there wasn’t much of anything inside.

(50 words)

I’ll update the list to include two more lists and corresponding exercises soon.

“Hi, my name is mrC, and I’m an English teacher who doesn’t especially like very much poetry…”

There, I admitted it.

I don’t do a “poetry unit.” I don’t assign the kids to write poems (shiver), except as an option on novel final projects, and then I make them meet with me first and run ideas and rough drafts by me.

I do admire good poets’ ability to cram a whole lot of meaning into a few words, and there are some poems that just complement our reading so well, so we do read and discuss some poetry: e e cummings (check out this one), some Robert Frost (obviously), and my personal fave: Langston Hughes.

I read somewhere that Langston Hughes was one of the first black men in America to make his living entirely from his writing. He didn’t just write poetry; he wrote short stories and plays and essays too. His work is accessible, yet has depth, and oh how I love his use of slang and dialect. A part of the Harlem Renaissance, he was tuned in to the rhythms and the banter of the jazz dudes too.

Some years I do a whole web-quest sort of thing on the Harlem Renaissance, and we explore LH’s life and other poets from the time, like Countee Cullen and check out Bessie Smith’s life and music, and groove on some of the slang from the era — “salty dog” anyone? But even if I don’t do the whole HR thing, I always do “Theme for English B.”

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.

The rest of the poem is ostensibly the page he writes for his instructor.

I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and then I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down and write this page:

We talk about how in 1951, North Carolina would still have had “whites only” facilities, and Harlem was an all black neighborhood, with the all-white NY City College in the middle. He lives at the YMCA. (Most of them are actually so into this that they don’t even start with the Village People.) We talk about why the walk home is so central to his truth; he’s not just walking home, he’s moving from one world to another.

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.

“Is he right? Are you made up of what you feel and see and hear?”

“?”

“Well, let’s see. What if I take “Dale” here (I pick the most straight-laced, still looks/acts like a 6th grader kid in the class), and send him to South-Central Smell A, in the heart of  ”da hood” to live for a year? Would we get the same sweet Dale back?”

“No way!” A chorus.

“Well then.”

(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.

“Is there anyone who doesn’t like those things?”

“No!”

I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records — Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.

“What? Is he saying that he’s turning in his essay on black paper?”

It doesn’t take long for them to get that if he’s being “true,”  his life experiences will have to come out in his writing.

“No, the teacher won’t go, ‘Ha! Black guy!’ as he reads the essay.”

But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

By the time we finished working our way through it today, they actually applauded when I read the last line. They really seem to connect.

Then I hit them with…

“You have the same assignment Langston Hughes had. But you have until Friday.”

“Wha?

(to be continued)

(Here’s a link to the whole poem and some questions/activities.)

“Seven.”

“Five.”

“Ok, six.”

In my class, almost every activity, except the reading/discussion, is timed. In the upper corner of the lcd projection, there is always The Timer. It is such a part of what we do, that when I forget to start it, I hear about it.

“You forgot to start the clock.” (Followed by a chorus of shushing and “Why’d you tell him?”)

The Clock keeps us all moving right along. It allows them to set a pace that gets them done in time. It prepares them for standardized state tests and suchlike. Etc. Etc. But the best part is, The Timer plays a sound when you start…and when time is up. Any sound (.wav file) you want. And that’s where the fun begins.

Right now the start sound is a silly, high-pitched sort of teeheehee giggly thing. It actually sounds like the laugh of a student I had a few years ago. Everybody that year thought I’d taken the sound from her. But it’s the sound at the end that makes it fun.

I have pretty decent speakers attached to my class computer, so when the volume is up, and I choose, say, a screaming man sort of sound as the alarm at the end…well, the result is one of the unheralded perks of teaching middle school. They’re working away on the warm up, and don’t notice that time is running out…and then: Scream! The first few times, early in the year, I’ve had some fall out of their desks. There are inadvertent squeals (from boys too), screams, and almost all of them jump, if I have chosen the right sound.

Earlier this year we started doing more of our warm ups “one-at-a-time,” with the CPS clickers, and the clicker software has a countdown on the screen, so we haven’t been using the Timer as much. But lately we’ve been going old-school on our warm ups (no clickers!), so there isn’t the built-in clicker countdown, and I’ve been breaking out the Clock more often. Maybe it’s because we hadn’t used it so much recently and their immunity was wearing off? Maybe I just found the right alarm sound for this crowd? Anyway, their reactions have been an endless source of enjoyment of late. The collective scream today in one class was much louder than the alarm itself.  Almost rivaled our Pledge of Allegiance scream. I really thought I was going to need a mop in another class.

After a while, everyone gets to know who the jumpy ones are. Sometimes we try to warn them a few seconds before the end, so they can gird themselves (that only works about half the time), sometimes we just watch, and wait.

“We’re in the red zone now (the clock turns red when you’re under a minute), so those of you who are more… sensitive… might want to prepare yourselves.”

(40 seconds later)

“What did you say, I wasn’t lis…”

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM

Hahahahaha. I never get tired of this.

Every year, before Back to School night, the kids make me promise I’ll use it on their parents. Our BTSN consists of 10 minute periods where the parents follow their student’s schedule, and we give our spiel. I tell the parents that I’m setting a timer so I don’t run long.

Yeah, that’s it.

Click on the picture of  The Timer to go to a listing of files. Right-click on each one and save them all to a folder called timer (or whatever). Read the “Read Me” file for how to change the sounds.

I like to change the sounds at random intervals. Keeps them on their toes.

Here’s my stash of sounds for the Timer. Right-click on each one to save as.

(Originally posted @ TeachingtheOutsiders.com.)

1. Be the Alpha. Middle schoolers in groups are, in many ways, like dogs in a pack; they are always looking for the Alpha, and there’s chaos if there isn’t one to be found. Or worse yet, one of the kids will assume the role. Remember, MS’ers crave structure (no matter how they protest that they don’t), and they hate the wishy-washy even as they take advantage of them. Don’t try to make them like you. They will anyway. Eventually. It’s sort of like how hostages sometimes fall in love with their captors after a long time.

2. Learn the word NO, and use it frequently. (This one is sort of a corollary to #1.) To paraphrase Huck: “becuz (they) don’t give a dern for a thing ‘thout it’s tollable hard to git.” Where I teach, for some of the kids, this class is the first place anyone has told them no.

3. Don’t make it too easy. Their biggest fear is boredom, not challenge. Huck’s words are true for this one too. But, it shouldn’t be a macho thing, as we’ve all seen in some (ahem) high school (and above) teachers – “I always give lots of homework…every mistake lowers you one grade…I never give A’s…”
Challenge them, don’t beat them down. (Though you might feel like it sometimes.)

4. Enjoy it. The kids know when you’re phoning it in. You can’t do this job right if you don’t like it. If it’s just a job, quit now. Really. I always tell my students, “You’ll know when I don’t enjoy this any more, because I won’t be here.”

I don’t see that happening any time soon.

(Originally posted @ teachingtheoutsiders.com.)

(Sung — way off key, and sort of warbley — to the tune of  ”Oh Christmas Tree.”)

I guess we need to talk about the King.

On Wednesdays, after we go over the vocabulary homework, and discuss the words, I give them a vocabulary pretest. If they ace it (100%), they are exempt from the vocabulary portion of the Friday test. I used to have one of them flip a coin to decide whether or not I let them use their “cheat sheet” — the homework page we just went over and corrected — on the pretest. What they don’t believe when I tell them — even though it’s true — is that, on average, their scores on the pretest are lower when they use the cheat sheets, and fewer of them get an exemption. But they like to think it’s a security blanket, so I play along.

Then I discovered the King. I would give you the URL of his creator’s web site, but he has some other, shall we say, inappropriate shtuff. (You can do a Google search if you really want to check it out.) So I took the liberty of “cloning” the King. If you click the picture above, you too can experience decision making at its finest, without fear of filtering. Make sure you have the sound on, because that’s 3/4 of the fun. Projected 8 feet high with the LCD projector… Well, it’s just inspiring.

We now consult the Raffle King for all kinds of decisions. When we get to our 120 Seconds Presentations, the King decides who is next. He decides about cheat sheets on Wednesday. And today, he was to decide whether today’s quiz on chapter 3 would be open mouth or not. I actually wanted them to do it open mouth stylie, but the element of chance always makes it more fun.

In first period, he said si! (That Raffle King likes to think he’s bilingual.) But in the next class, he said no. So we tried again, and this time added “Please?” to the first box. Still no. Pretty please? No. Pretty, pretty please? Still no. And so, for the first time in recent memory, I had to overrule the King. Luckily, he was amenable to the idea for the rest of the day.

The kids are always trying to come up with ways to influence/appease the King.

“I brought an offering of Sharpie pens.”

“We love you Raffle King.”

Some bow down and suchlike.

Some sing. Badly. Desperately.

Every year, after the first time we consult the King, there’s always a whole buncha kids who go home and, well…

“I played with the Raffle King for an hour and a half last night.”

“Raffle King got me out of doing the dishes last night!”

“I used the Raffle King to decide what I should do to my brother for…”

“Lucky for you the Raffle King said I should do my English homework last night.”

No, it’s lucky for YOU.

(originally posted @ teachingtheoutsiders.com)

A week or two ago, he asked me if I wanted it back. He said he hadn’t been using it that much, and he was going in the computer lab for a while, and then…etc. He wasn’t going to use it for the rest of the year. So my servant wheeled it over, and we’ve been doodling ever after.

We finally used the SmartBoard for more than doodling. I copy/pasted a few old sentence scramble exercises into the SmartBoard software. I made each sentence chunk a movable piece, so they could come up to the board, and physically drag the pieces around to show the sentences they’d put together. Since each sentence can go together in more than one way, it’s groovy to move the pieces around to change the rhythm of the sentence. (“Now you’re getting all Shakespearean on me! Nice.”) It’s like those magnetic poetry things, only with sentence pieces. And a few grand worth of equipment.

A lot of them had some trouble with the dragging. Their fingers would bounce and the board would think they had tapped or double-tapped, and a menu would open up, and they would flip.

“AhhhUhhh.”

“Just tap somewhere else, and it’ll go away. You’ll be fine, try it again.”

“OhhhAhhh. What’s that?”

Still, it was pretty groovy, and the kids had fun, and I think I might do it again.

If’n you have a SmartBoard, here’s a copy of the notebook thing.