The New School

Jack, my good friend, asks if I would write about my new school, and my new kids, and how it is all going. Now, while I can't imagine why any of you could possibly want to read about my days with my 41 sixth graders, I can surely babble on and on about them all and the absolutely amazing school that I have tumbled into...

The place is simply the most phenomenal educational setting I have ever encountered. It is not fancy, mind you. The building is old, and there is peeling paint and no air conditioning and certainly there are plenty of places where the "facilities" are far shinier and more impressive. BUT -- the energy and the vision and the execution and the pure dedication to the idea of education is simply stunning, and the community wrapped around the place is alive with the reality of it. I have spent the first weeks in a continual state of WOW -- when I haven't been just exhausted from trying to keep up with it...

Because everything happens at a breakneck pace there, I don't think there is any such thing as a normal schedule, and events and opportunities and demands come flying from every direction. It is intense. So far, I don't think I've missed much.

One of the very first BIG DEALS, three weeks into the year was that we hosted an International Exchange program during which some 70 students from Germany, Hungary, Russia, and The Netherlands (along with their teachers and chaperones) visited our school and worked on various art projects with our students for a week. They stayed with our families and toured the city. It was an incredible event. There were lots of extra projects going on around our building, lots of interactions between our kids and the visitors, lots of special assemblies and just general disruption. The lead up to it all meant a whole lot of preparatory work. One of the last bits was that the very last Friday, just before the impending arrival, we got word that classrooms should all be decorated to "welcome" the visitors." OH SURE! So, I put my kiddos to work doing the "10 minute bulletin board drill." Now mind you, these kids had been with me just about three weeks at that point. We were still getting to know each other. Things were not fully established, but they were pretty sure they had fallen into the clutches of a mad woman. I sent two of them to the office to obtain as many of the posters for the week as they could get their hands on. I had the others line up chairs across the front of the room so that I could "chair walk" and staple blue construction paper up over the top of the existing bulletin board. "After all," I told them, "the stuff we were putting up only needed to be up for the coming week -- after our company left, it would come right back down. No need to take down our perfectly good bulletin board." The two girls returned from the office bearing armloads of posters which could be cut up for our purposes. The inside of said posters had nice, big, stylized doves carrying olive branches -- symbols of peace and friendship. Every student set to work cutting out a dove. In no time at all we had 20 doves, and a half circle "world" with the motto for the week: "A week to change the world." We stapled our world up at one end of the banner board, and started putting up the doves in a great flock across the front of the room, flying toward the world -- most of them with hand written messages of friendship and welcome from my kids. The whole board was soon a charming flight of doves in flight from our classroom doorway across the whole front of the room. Total time spent: approximately 16 minutes flat. The whole crew was pretty amazed. And THEY owned that welcome! It was a first taste of how my classroom works -- organized chaos!

Since then, we've built models of cells from "found" stuff they collected and brought from home. We've learned how to analyze statistics by studying the "Great Homerun Hitters" of baseball history. We have delved into the ways of historians and anthropologists with a trunk full of treasures like you might find in your grandmother's attic, and we are currently exploring the nature of permeable mebranes with eggs that have spent the last two days floating in vinegar and are currently soaking in water as they balloon to rather remarkable size. We're having a grand time.

You might be surprised to learn, Jack (or maybe not) that I have a "bad boy" who's name is Jack. Imagine that! He is the leader of the pack, so to speak. One of Bad Boy Jack's (how awful can you be when you are only 12?) really horrible, rotten, defiant behaviors is that he simply refuses to tuck in his shirt. This is a hot button issue for our principal. So, I need to get this under control, or I am the one who is going to catch it from the boss. For the past couple of weeks, I've been hitting Bad Boy Jack with my brightest, most radiant smile every time I catch him with even the merest whisper of his shirt tucked in -- and in the chirpiest voice I can manage (and with an utterly straight face), I go on and on about how wonderfully mature, and responsible I think he is being to decide on his own to set such a great example for all of his buddies and start wearing his shirt tucked in! When I started this routine with him, he looked at me like I had lost my flipping mind, but I just went right on as if it was the most normal thing in the world, and then proceeded with whatever I was planning to teach. He would be left just shaking his head. Pretty soon, all his pals began to tuck in their shirts, AND remind him to tuck his in -- since he was setting the example for everyone else. So now, since his buddies have bought the story, his reputation is on the line, and he's caught in the fraud. He's not entirely sure whether I have really suckered him or not. I'd love to just giggle at the poor kid, but the fact is that it has worked. He mostly wears his shirt tucked in; he thinks I'm on his side; his buddies think he's pretty cool; and I'm getting a huge kick out of twisting the little devil's psyche in knots...

Now, on another note, I've had several parents (of girls) report to me in the last 24 hours that the boys are playing the "penis" game in class, and that this is embarrasing the girls. If you are not familiar with this particular little bit of "frolicsome fun," the object of the game is to say the word "penis" in progressively louder voice until someone either refuses to say it or until someone gets caught. Of course, in a classroom, the "thrill" (if you are a 12 year old boy) is that saying PENIS out loud in school embarrasses many of the girls around you to death, and of course risks serious consequences if you get caught. So, playing the game is a way to prove that you are a "manly" man. Tomorrow I'll get to yank some young fellows up short and see if we can't remember our manners. AHEM!

So, Jack, that's the report from the new school. Aren't you glad you asked? Anyone else want to play junior high with me?

swan