One for the End of Term...

My 9th graders are hosting a zombie haiku contest for the school. Here was my off-the-cuff example:

junior high zombies
shuffle from class to class in
search of brains--no luck!

It's not surprising how few of my 7th graders understood it.

Feel free to post your own. Mwa-ha-ha!

Catch What I'm Sayin'?

Imagine an infield of eleven T-ballers. On any given hit you might have two sitting down, three fighting with grass, seven picking their noses. And there’s always the one darling whose hair ribbons match her hat, glove, and socks putting on lip gloss as the ball trickles to her feet. She sidesteps. And by the time anyone picks up the ball, the runner stands smugly on second base. Whereas, when the next batter laces one to the outfield, half the infielders (including the catcher) give chase and wrestle over who gets to throw the ball back to the coach.

Trying to teach junior high can be quite a similar experience. You toss out a question and nobody fields it. The “popular” crowd sidesteps anything hit directly their way and they try to spin you off onto a tangent. Some still sit and pick their noses. After watching a couple of grounders bounce off their gloves for a while, you become discouraged. You might yell (a little), give encouragement (you’ll get it next time), or maybe even complain to the umpires down in the office. But most of the time these things in and of themselves won’t do you any good.

Even if you are blessed with that one natural athlete who can play all positions, knows all the rules, and hits homeruns in each at bat, that’s just one; and she will make it with or without you. Your job as a teacher, as a coach, is not to hand out “attaboys” to the top stars, although they do need that when they get stuck in a slump. As a coach, a teacher, you need to use your talents, your abilities, your managerial skills to help the rest of the team.

I recently reread Roger Rosenblatt’s “A Game of Catch,” and was inspired by his description of the poetry and beauty found in the simple art of a game of catch: “They do not call it a game of throw, though throwing is half the equation. The name of the game puts the burden on the one who receives, but there is really no game to it. Nobody wins or loses. You drop the ball; you pick it up. Once you've got the basics down, it doesn't matter if you bobble a ball or two…A ball travels between two people, each seeking a moment of understanding from the other, across the yard and the years. To play a game of catch is not like pitching to a batter. You do not throw to trick, confuse or evade; you want to be understood.” All kids, all human beings for that matter, want to be understood.

Rosenblatt uses this analogy of playing catch to also talk about successful parenting and families. I figure that teaching is also like a good game of catch. In order for any true learning to occur, the interchange has to be fluid, effortless, full of trust; the environment of the classroom should be one of comfort and ease, one where each student feels safe enough to stretch out and take risks, to try a circle change or a knuckleball after a while. Because, as in throwing and catching a ball, there is always the risk of an idea or concept to be dropped.

The article goes on: “We do what we can as parents, one child at a time. We take what we get in our children, and they take what they get in us, making compromises and adjustments where we are able, making rules and explanations, but for the most part letting things happen, come and go, back and forth. The trick, I think, is to recognize the moments when nothing needs to be said.” These moments of automaticity, though, don’t happen overnight. They start one ground ball at a time.

The beginning of the school year needs to be a warm-up period: soft grounders, short toss, calisthenics. New procedures, hormones, and even good ol’ fashioned fear might cause some to doubt themselves and not get down on a ball. They might lose a pop fly in the lights, or the sun, or the perfume of that hot brunette sitting in the next row, but eventually the plays become routine. Soon, nothing needs to be said. The game of catch becomes automatic, smooth, and graceful. Slowly, each team member, from the next Albert Pujols to the kid who can’t fill out the line-up card, feels free to dive after that chopper up the middle without fear of getting dirty, without worrying about embarrassment. The key is building confidence and trust one kid at a time. We take these kids, one at a time, and coach them through the skills they need to develop whether it’s how to fix an elbow hitch in a left-handed stance of a switch-hitter or how to hold the bat. Some are super readers while others are still decoding. But it’s not a competition to see who scores the highest on the spelling test or who can name all fifty states and their capitals in reverse alphabetical order. It’s a team effort to bring each other along no matter where each one started individually.

Robert Frost once said, “Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.” And students are the same way. Some mornings the ball will still dribble between their legs, their minds on snowcones, or bubblegum, or hot dogs slathered in onions and mustard, or hair-dos, or homework, and nothing seems productive. Other days, they’re just on, snagging tricky one-hoppers and firing them back with so much velocity Nolan Ryan watches in awe. However, all that Major League success depends on the basics of a game of throwing and catching—ideas and routines—comfort and confidence. Where each student ends up, though, undoubtedly depends on the amount of effort the he is willing to put forth. Some have Major League talent but will squander it and never make it past rookie ball. Others will work harder, come to practice early, take a few more swings in the cage, field a few more line drives, and will find success. When one of the players doesn’t put in the effort or hold up his end of the bargain, it doesn’t work; the ball is dropped, the team is let down. But when both thrower and catcher discover a flow, watch out! Learning happens.

Happy National Day on Writing!

Last year, to celebrate this special occasion, I started this blog. I've made a little progress, picked up a few confused disciples along the way, and I've even done a bit of writing.

This year, I'd like to submit one of my previous blog posts to the National Gallery on Writing. I'm asking you, my readers, to comment as to which piece you believe I should attempt to publish. Feel free to browse my past posts, or if you know of some other piece I've done in the past (or am currently working on) that you think is worthy to be published--or close enough--let me know.

Here are a few possibilities arranged chronologically backward:

20 Aug Bring It On!
18 Jul Swears and Voice
1 Mar Back-to-Back-to Back Donut Jack
14 Feb Valentine Splat!
16 Dec Low Brow
26 Oct "Quality Piece"
22 Oct Where Do I Write?


In the meantime, I'll be working on a few pieces with my students today, and I might post one or two over the course of the day. Or maybe my conscience might get to me and I'll be writing my part of a group presentation for tomorrow.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Resurrection (Sort of)

It's that time of year to bring back the dead. The first is a call to action. The second I wrote after reading an article about math (go figure-pun very much intended).

resurrecting the
zombie hunger in fellows
revives the wordlust

counting digits for
zombie manipulatives:
it's all subtraction

Brevity and Conventions (Part 1...I Think)

So, here I am endeavoring to write for at least fifteen minutes today. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what I should write about. A myriad of topics floats through my cranium, but nothing is sticking. It must be this multi-tasking world we live in. It seems that most writing these days is just done in blurts and splurts and hiccups: a text, a Facebook status update, a Tweet. Perhaps we eke out a blog post if we’re waxing verbose, but that’s only on a good day, right? Is that symbolic of how fragmented our lives have become? I wonder.
It’s been pretty hard to get my 7th graders to string together complete thoughts this year. Forget paragraphs right now; we’re working with capitalization + (subject+verb) + punctuation = complete sentence. Hopefully soon there will be some progress. Don’t get me wrong, the ideas are there, and they’re pretty dang spiffy if you ask me; I don’t think I’ve had such a unique (to be read “random”) group when it comes to generating ideas. But the conventionality distracts even the best readers from coherent meanings.
I did an activity today where I took their “final” drafts, which had supposedly been revised and perfected, and orally exposed their flaws to the entire class. My tongue and lips tied themselves into knots worthy of eleven-year-old scouts. And they couldn’t even see the egregious errors in homophones, which we had supposedly just covered! I’d post some examples, but no one should suffer as I did today.
The point? I think they caught how they need to be courteous to their readers, how revision (especially oral) really does make a difference, especially if they have an audience.
My new goal this year is for my students to put several related thoughts together and convey them meaningfully to a given audience. Oh wait! That’s what it already was. I guess I have my work cut out for me this year. Gotta break the textspeakers! LOL ;P

Tips from Gary and a Favor

Last Friday I went to a reading by Newbery and Printz winning author Gary D. Schmidt. I first read Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy when it first one the Newbery Honor. I enjoyed the voice so much that dashed to the local library to find all I could by Gary. I only found one dusty, old copy of Anson's Way, and it was tucked behind a few other new but never-read novels. (Thanks, Payson.) The crisp, bent pages made me doubtful, but I was pleasantly surprised. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though seventh graders might shun the lack of immediate action. But that was all. Nothing else. The library didn't even have Lizzie Bright...yet.

And then I read The Wednesday Wars, one of my favorite new novels to explore with seventh graders. It is so full of meaning and description and beauty and sorrow and humor and everything. Wow!

So, here are a few tidbits of writing wisdom I picked up from Gary before I dropped a load (of cash) on more of his books, including the last copy of the book with my name in the title!

** The first thing Gary does when creating a plot is to find the narrator's voice. He tries to capture it, get it in his head before unfolding what happens. By doing so, you can understand what you want to say and how you want to say it. It's also important to distinguish between the voice of the author and the voice of the narrator/character.

** First drafts are simply that. "It's not brain surgery. You don't have to get it right the first time."

** Most young adult novels need to explode into the story. But every once in while try and break the rules (see his novel Trouble).

** Writing is discipline. You need to establish and keep a routine. You must write every day.

I think this is where I go wrong. Duh. Gary writes 500 words per day on each project he is currently working on. When he reaches that mark, he makes notes for the next day's work, to establish continuity. He also rereads any previous work on a chapter while writing a first draft. (Gary also uses a typewriter for each first draft. Think Grandma Walker will let me use hers?)

I guess I just need to get back into a habit of writing. To update my goals, I think I'll start baby taking baby steps, Dr. Leo Marvin, with a mere 15 minutes each day. It doesn't need to be perfect, or necessarily a draft of a novel, but I need to keep writing.

Could I ask all you awesome people out there to keep me on track? Check up on me every so often? Just ask me how I'm doing on my 15 minutes? I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

One last thought from Gary:
"Writing is never served by being in a hurry."
True dat.