Literature in action

Because of...

Thanks Min! And keep waiting for a lovable dog to show up...one day buddy, one day!

The fantastic Mr. Dahl

Who can forgot the way Willy Wonka crooned "Pure imagination" as he sipped crunched off a piece of his buttercup? Who led me to believe in snozzberries, whangdoodles, and in the BFG?

I'm not sure if I would be an English teacher today if I didn't have those late night feasts, devouring James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and Danny the Champion of the World, under my dim book light. Roald Dahl's magic touch still lingers as I find myself as giddy as an 8 year old while rereading his books.

For me this is the manna of English. This is great literature: a book that can transport you to another world and transform your way of looking at the world. My students are reading a chapter from his autobiography, Boy, and some of them hate reading even if its by Roald Dahl (miserable twits!). So I made a part of the story into a script so that they can act out the story and actually enjoy it for all its worth. Even in this short anecdote of a father trying to discourage his son from eating black licorice bootlaces, Dahl reveals his knack for wonderfully descriptive writing.

Father: Every rat catcher in the country takes his rats to the Licorice Bootlace Factory, and the manager pays tuppence for each rat. Many a rat catcher has become a millionaire by selling his dead rats to the factory.

Thwaites: But how do they turn the rats into licorice?

Father: They wait until they’ve got ten thousand rats. Then they dump them all into a huge, shiny steel cauldron and boil them up for several hours. Two men stir the bubbling cauldron with long poles, and in the end they have a thick, steaming rat stew. After that, a cruncher is lowered into the cauldron to crunch the bones, and what’s left is a pulpy substance called rat mash.

Thwaites: Yes, but how do they turn that into licorice bootlaces, Daddy?

Father: (pauses to think for a few moments) The two men who were doing the stirring with the long poles now put on their Wellington boots and climb into the cauldron and shovel the hot rat mash out onto a concrete floor. Then they run a steamroller over it several times to flatten it out. What is left looks rather like a gigantic black pancake, and all they have to do after that is wait for it to cool and to harden so they can cut it up into strips to make the bootlaces. Don’t ever eat them. If you do, you’ll get ratitis.

Thwaites: What is ratitis, Daddy?

Father: All the rats that the rat catchers catch are poisoned with rat poison. It’s the rat poison that gives you ratitis.

Thwaites: Yes, but what happens to you when you catch it?

Father: Your teeth become very sharp and pointed. And a short, stumpy tail
grows out of your back just above your bottom. There is a no cure for ratitis. I
ought to know. I’m a doctor.

.

A few of my favorite things

This lesson on idioms is one of my favorite lessons because it's multi-sensory. I love it when concepts or standards could turn into something that the students can see, touch, and even taste. If only every lesson could hit all 5 senses. And if only I taught in a megaplex as opposed to a bungalow classroom. And if only I had the budget and swagger of Donald Trump.

Idioms Lesson

1. Review definition of an idiom- only idiots believe in idioms because idioms are sayings with a meaning that is completely different from its literal meaning. ( At this point, I see many a blank expressions on their faces and I don't blame them. I remember being 12 and being embarrassed at having no idea as to what "literally" meant. Thanks to Clueless, it is now one of my favorite words.)

2. Have volunteers give examples of their favorite idioms: ups and downs, driving me nuts, shut up!

3. At this point, I say, "Raise your hand if you want to act like an idiot today!" Their hands happily go up. I explain that we are going to take 6 idioms and literally act it out. Then 6 stations get set up and the students are group into 4 and assigned to each station.

-Numero 1-

(Actually, slices of cheese is one of my least favorite things. Especially 160 of them)

-2-

(After hearing the ring of a bell, the group leaves one station to go to another. Gotta love Pavlovian conditioning!)

-3-

-4-

-5-

-6-

I recommend having volunteer students in charge of setting up and maintaining the 6 stations for all the visiting groups because it's my favorite thing to watch students take charge. As I heard one student say to a group, "Don't ask me what the idiom means, what do you think it means?" my heart swelled with happiness.

Snapshots

It takes me an extraordinarily long time to grade papers. This is the only time that I lament the fact that I chose to teach English instead of Home Ec. or PE.

Last week

A really pretty latte seems to ease the sting of grading papers. Or sitting next to a fireplace in which a stack of papers can conveniently fall into also helps to brighten my mood. I stare out the window, wishing I could be somewhere, anywhere but here grading papers on a sunny afternoon.

This week

Game time: no pretty lattes, no cozy cafes. Straight up business at Starbucks. I neatly line up 2 syringe-like pens like an OCD nurse. A cell phone to time myself for a 30 min. workout session accompanied by a 5 min break. Coffee-strong and black.

And then I'll come along a paragraph like this that makes me crack up, reminding me why it is that I heart English. This is just one snapshot of many interesting goals I came across from my students who had to write a biography of their entire lives in the 3rd person point of view:

Show and Tell

Teaching grammar is stuff that I have nightmares about.

Anticipating a roomful of glazed-eyed kids who don't give a rat's turd about what the difference between an adverb and adjective is enough to make me wake up in cold sweat. Grammar is meticulous, difficult, and tedious for both parties-it's too bad that I have to fake a passion for it.

So on the day that I gear myself up to teach a grammar lesson, a couple of guys from the local Pest Control Center drop by and start working in the classroom right next to me. It all began when the next door teacher and I smelled that sulfuric, nose-hair curdling stench-we knew that we'd been skunked. However, it turned out to be more serious than a late night, drive by shooting by that devious nocturnal critter. The smell was getting increasingly worse until we figured that the skunk has wedged itself under our bungalow and decided to lay its furry head to rest there forever.

The teacher next door had already evacuated his nose-pinched students out of the stinky classroom, but my classroom thankfully didn't smell as horribly. The problem was, however, that my students were finding the de-skunking much more exciting than my grammar lesson. My lesson didn't stand a chance against the scraping, sawing, and eventual shouting from the workers next door such as, "We've got it, we've got it!" "Oh my gawd!" "It's been dead for awhile now!!!"

At this point, with students begging me to let them out early so they could witness the exhuming of the skunk, I used the poor dead skunk as a bribe. "Ok, whoever finishes their work, I will release you in groups of 4 to check out what's happening next door." Never did I witness such determination. Kids who never do their work finished early as their friends yelled out, "Hey, save me a spot!"

And I must admit, in that moment, I was envious of the skunk because I would've killed to have that many kids interested in what I had to show them.

Reviews

For the first time in my teaching career, I had a personal friend sit in while I did my thang in front of the class. I was nervous for the first thirty seconds and then seeing the faces of lazy, unmotivated students put me right into gear. I used my normal bag o' tricks to get the class workin': far off surveillance, close surveillance, walking in and out of aisles, eye contact, verbal cues. Anything and everything to get 100% engagement in the lesson.

Immersed in the zone, I completely forgot about an observer. My beady eyes were busy scanning their papers to spot out the glaring, blank white ones. But admidst eagle hawk duty, I cracked a couple (literally, 2) jokes and ended the class by having them share their personal essays. I ended with a smile and scooted the kids on out, feeling victorious of a lesson gone well. I turned back to my friend with high hopes of two thumbs up only to hear,

"Wow, you're really mean!"

Wha~! I mean...but...they're kids! 12 year olds! Hormonal! You saw the knuckleheads! I threw out my best excuses but all to no avail for I heard back was "nazi", "micromanager", and just plain "scary".

Actually it was a good thing that this occurred because it kicked my butt into applying for a Master's degree in Education, emphasis on teaching Reading/Language Arts. Because they're aren't any Teaching English for Dummies book available yet.

PENIS!

In high school, I never played games that involved yelling out male genitalia in increasing decibels. In fact, I wouldn't have even been able to mouth the word. This was because I was a good kid. And a loser.

But being back at school, at middle school of all things, has rendered me less fragile, less delicate. I've seen enough crass words, drawings, and notes to last a lifetime. That flustered, genteel high schooler is long gone and now replaced by a new woman unafraid to be blunt in the face of vulgarity.

Last week I had a literature group circle assignment where each group member was given a different job. Somehow my resident tagger, Jose, got nailed with the perfect job: ze Artiste. He was to draw a picture depicting the poem "The Highwayman". Upon looking over his shoulder, I grew furious. The most obvious crime was that the paper was bordered with gangster bubble letters that I couldn't make out. Then on the drawing of Bess, the main character who shoots herself to warn her love, was a picture of a penis!

I walked away and gathered my thoughts as to what the key points to my tirade would be. In my head, I rehearsed saying, "Jose, what would future employees think of such a drawing? First, they would think that you're some gangbanger who would tag all over the company's property! And a penis! They're going to assume that you're some kind of a pervert! Is that what you want others to think? That you're a perverted gangster?!"

But here's how the actual conversation went.

Me: Jose, I need to speak to you after class.

Jose: What! I didn't even do nothin'.

Me: (stoically waits until everyone leaves) Can you explain this drawing to me?

Jose: Well the letters here (points to gangster bubble letters) say love because Bess was in love with the Highwayman and here (points to other gangster bubble letters) it says madness because the Highwayman went all crazy when he heard about her death.

Me: Oh, (cough) well, I couldn't read that. But what about this PENIS!

Jose: Ah mang, that ain't a penis! It's her arm! See that's one of her fingers reaching for the gun and that's the rest of her hand.

Me:

Jose:

Me: I apologize Jose. I see that you've really understood the story. Thank you for explaining this to me. Do you need a pass to your next class?

Jose: Yes. Sorry Ms. Won. I won't draw no more.

So not only am I the pervert, but I'm a dream killer too.