Happy Halloween!

Ahh, it's a good day to be a teacher, assuming your appetite for chocolate and the level of chaos you can tolerate in your classroom are both proportionally high. The secret to maintaining your sanity on school-sanctioned holidays seems to be maintaining the routine as much as possible in the morning, and not distributing any sugar until an hour before dismissal. Also, all leftover candy must be handed to the teacher for safe-keeping. You know, as a trade-off for dealing with a roomful of hyperactive kids all day. This year, the candy haul was big, the energy level relatively low, AND it's a Friday. Couldn't ask for more.

Good thing he didn't lose his duck

The kids are finishing a food chain project in science when calamity strikes. They had to cut out strips of paper with pictures of plants and animals on them and then form the strips into interlocking chains to demonstrate predator/prey relationships. It takes a good forty-five minutes and a lot of scotch tape, but is worth the time and resource expenditure because the kids can literally see the inter-relatedness of organisms in a variety of habitats and how all energy originates from the sun. Four minutes are left on the timer. Suddenly I hear:

"I lost my rat! Dammit!"

I look up, alarmed. I don't hear a knee-jerk ooooh echo through the crowd or see eight million arms waving wildly for my attention, so I assume I misheard. Twenty seconds later, "Marcus" raises his hand.

"Ms. Powell? Jerry [so we'll call him] said the d-word!"

Argh. So I DID hear it. The tattling delay was due to students actually following the procedure I taught them for resolving interpersonal disputes and talking to each other about inappropriate behavior. The other students' intervention has apparently been unsuccessful, and now they're following the chain of command.

I saunter over and survey the situation. "What happened, Jerry?"

He is in near hysterics. "I lost my rat! Now I don't have anything to eat the corn and the owl's gonna have to eat it! That DOESN'T make SENSE!!"

"Okay, I see you're frustrated about that. What did you say when you discovered you'd lost your rat?"

Blinks matter-of-factly. "I said, 'I lost my rat, dammit!". I am clearly supposed to grasp that this is a rodent-related emergency and cussing is justified.

Marcus is pleased with this confession. "Me and Shante TOLD him not to say that! It's not appropriate for school. And he said, I don't care! So that's why I raised my hand."

I nod solemnly. "Thank you, Marcus. You did the right thing by telling him first, and then letting me know. So Jerry, we'll find your rat in a second. But first I want to make sure you understand that it's okay to feel mad, but you have to find an appropriate word to use. What else could you say besides the d-word?"

My semantics game is not amusing Jerry, who is getting teary-eyed and peering frantically under the table. "I don't knooooooowwww!"

"Well, let's see. Marcus, maybe you can help him. What do you say when you get really frustrated?"

Thinks hard. "Ummm...I say, I don't like that?"

Good guess, wrong scenario. "I mean, when you're not mad at someone else, you're just frustrated by yourself. What do you say instead of saying the d-word?"

Marcus scrunches up his face. "Well... I just say it in my HEAD!"

Thank you, Marcus. I'll take it from here.

Parent of the year award goes to...

Book Review: The Mercy Rule

It's rare that a work of fiction resonates with me as an apt exploration of the dichotomy of child welfare and development across class barriers...in a really witty, entertaining way.

This week I finished reading "The Mercy Rule", which is written by Perri Klass, a pediatrician and medical director for the national literacy program Reach Out and Read. She's a woman who has obviously seen it all and writes from an amazingly authentic place.

Lucy, the main character in the story (and also a pediatrician), constantly grapples with the question of what's normal and appropriate for children as she straddles the two socio-economic worlds she must navigate on a daily basis. Here's one of Lucy's ponderings on her six-year-old son who demonstrates compulsive and socially awkward behaviors which isolate him from the upper-class society their family reluctantly identifies with:

"And sooner or later, some teacher will want him tested again, and someone will formulate Freddy. He will have a diagnosis: Lucy doesn't believe that he will make it through school without one. And she can't quite explain why she wants to hold out as long as possible in this complicated world where as far as Freddy knows, he defines the boundaries of normal, and everyone else is off kilter."

And Lucy's witty observations of the at-risk kids and pregnant-for-the tenth-time moms she examines for the state:

"But where is it written, tell me, that we must coddle the clueless? Clothe the naked, okay, feed the hungry, you got it. But where is it written that a mother who cannot do what every stray cat can do--lick 'em clean, feed 'em till they're full, keep 'em in a safe place, and snarl at intruders--needs a therapist and a residential substance abuse program and some respite babysitting when she comes out? As far as I'm concerned, if you need regular supervised urine tests to show that you aren't too bombed out of your mind to hold the baby, you lose the baby. You're a loser and you lose."

If you like action, be warned: the book is character-driven, not plot driven, and there are many diversions along the way. But I found "The Mercy Rule" to be a compelling read about loving and caring for children from another 'mandated reporter's' point of view.

Funta pick a president

As part of the district's program Kids Voting Broward, students will be participating in an online mock election vote. We don't discuss the issues, we just stress the importance of voting. Today's assignment: write a persuasive essay to convince the reader to vote for your chosen candidate. Most responses stuck pretty well to the campaign talking points:

"Barack Obama will help people with other langages so they can get more jobs. He will also stop the gases from going high. Will stop the war. Last, he knows what we are going through. And on TV he said that a dad that was at war was going to his home."

Others relied on rhetoric:

"And no matter what [Obama] dose, he will always mak a nice grater and beter and awsmer world!"

A few included a bit of negative campaigning:

"No mucan, pick obama. Even if you refuse. Prove how mucane is beter. i bet you have no awnser."

And my favorite... see if you can decipher the local accent:

"I am funta vote for Barack Obama becuse he is a go candidate and I now hes funta do everythang to help our cuntrey. But he can't do dose tangs yet becuse we all in the world have to vote for a candidate first. Now Barack Obama is nice to people and some times people say bad thangs to uder people but day don't want to say it and Obama is funta to make are cuntry a beter place to live."

Funta? That's fitting to, which means about to, as in, "I'm fittin' to go to school, 'cuz I'm fittin to get me some edumakashun."

There you have it, folks. The swing state of Florida has spoken: Barack Obama is funta be the bestest president, ever.

It also wasn't 'Ms.'

"Ms. Powell? I saw a guy on T.V. last night? Who has the same name as YOU! But... His other name wasn't Angela."

Records

So I was in the teacher's lounge the other day and there's this table where staff can put things we don't want in our classrooms any more. There's usually a heaping pile of random base ten blocks, magazines, raggedy stuffed animals, posters from the eighties, etc. Another staff member wandered in and noticed a box full of cassette tapes. "Ooh, these are cool! Kindergarten read-aloud stories and songs! Wait. Do people have cassette players in their classrooms?"

I shrugged. "I still do. But I mean, I had a record player until I moved to Florida in 2004."

She looked at me like I said I'd used scraps of slate for a chalkboard.

I struggled to redeem myself through a rambling stream of consciousness. "Well, yeah. When I started teaching in '99, no classrooms that I knew of had CD players yet, and I LOATHE having to fast forward and rewind through cassettes to get to the song or story I want. Um. Not that they gave us any cassettes. But the record player was like the perfect classroom tool! I used to play the Hap Palmer songs about colors and shapes... man, that guys' voice was soothing. it was almost miraculous to watch...you could take the most out of control street-wise kid and a 1969 Hap Palmer song would totally captivate him...Um. You know Hap Palmer, right?"

This staff member, several years my senior, stared at me blankly.

Oh, okay.

And that's when the thought occurred to me... Is my familiarity with nineteen-seventies classroom technology less of a reflection on my age and more a reflection on how behind the times my school district was?

I had a Strawberry Shortcake record which I begged my mom to play incessantly for me when I was too young to work the machine myself. By the time I was in elementary school, I had a collection of cassettes which I played in an oversized boom box ("Cherish" by Kool and the Gang, and later the same song title by Madonna). CDs soon followed. So theoretically I could have gone my entire life without having learned to use a record player.

Then I entered the world of education and encountered a record player as a student teacher. My wonderful mentor, Mrs. Jacobs, showed me how you could drop the needle on a specific line on the record, and voila! You've skipped right to the song you want. I thought it was genius. But now looking back, that whole student teaching experience was a monstrosity of outmoded education. And it was in an entirely different school district, one in rural Maryland about forty-five minutes from my future urban employer along the state's Washington, D.C. border.

This is only ten years ago, right? Get this...they still had half day kindergarten (2 hours and fifteen minutes). 20 minutes of that was dedicated to snack time, and another 30 to recess. Centers were strictly non-academic, like blocks and housekeeping. No small group reading instruction. Ever. No textbooks. For any subject. That includes teaching manuals. And we only taught math three. times. A WEEK.

Ouch. Have things changed THAT much in ten years? Was I the only one teaching like that in the frickin' NINETIES?

Were other teachers cueing up the, um, record player, in 1999? Or did a two-minute song about numbers count as a math lesson only in the most pathetically underfunded schools?

And perhaps more importantly, could the past ten years' steep national increase in curricular and student expectations actually be a GOOD thing?

Parent Conference Lolcats

This year I tried to do all my initial parent conferences in three days.

I announced at Open House (and through three subsequent notes home) that I would be coming in at 6:45 a.m. and staying until 5 p.m. from Tuesday through Thursday to accommodate working parents. Those three days were loooong, but I think I like getting most of the conferences taken care of right away, instead of giving up my planning time every single day for a month. Thanks to intense badgering, I have now met with ALL of my families except one. That might be a personal record.

Overall I would say things went well. A few highlights:












Obviously, I'm kidding. My kids' parents are perfectly lovely. And yes, I captioned these myself at icanhascheezburger.

Letter from a former student

This is the kid I yelled at only ten minutes into the first day of school. I was undergoing the tedious task of trying to figure out how children would be going home at the end of the day ("Um. I think my mom is gonna pick me up? But I also ride the bus sometimes. No, I don't know which one. But I used to go on the purple bus until I lived with my grandma."). Argh. So I ask this kid whom I'll call Elsa, "How are you going home today?".

She stares at me. I repeat the question. She stares at me. "Elsa. Are you riding a bus?" She shakes her head tentatively. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. "Do you go to aftercare?" Shakes head again. "Can you walk home?" No response. I sigh. "Okay, Elsa seems to be a little bit shy about talking in front of the class. I will ask her later. Jerome, how are you getting home?"

I go up to Elsa later and whisper, "Elsa, do you walk home?". She stares at me. "Elsa. You have to tell me. How are you getting home? I won't know what to do with you at 2:00 if you don't say something. ELSA. Seriously. If you don't know, say 'I don't know' and I will find out for you. But you have to say something. You can't just ignore my questions."

Nothing. The girl next to her raises her hand. "Um. Ms. Powell? Elsa doesn't speak any English."

Now it's my turn to stare. "Why? Didn't. You. TELL ME? That. Twenty minutes ago?"

So as it turns out, Elsa speaks no English. She has just moved here from, let's say, Venezuela. I pity her, and also pity myself. It will be a long year of badgering another eight-year-old to translate every thing I say, all day long. Of searching out pre-primer readers for her independent reading box. Of working one-on-one in math. Of playing the Spanish version of the science video series before school. Of creating a special reading 'group', just for Elsa. Of discovering English learning software and scheduling time for her to use it. Of begging other staff to write notes home for me in Spanish. Of pantomiming "Please don't throw away your trash right now" and "Get your notebook out of your backpack" and "No, you cannot use the bathroom during a science test which you cannot read but must complete anyway so I can record yet another failing grade which will magically become a 'C' on your report card".

Fortunately Elsa is a sweet girl, and very smart. She catches on fast. I learn that her mom is still in Venezuela and Elsa lives here with dad. She misses her mom very much. Elsa has another Spanish-speaking child tell me, "You are like a mom to Elsa." She instantly becomes one of my favorites, although of course, I do not have favorites. I miss her over the summer.

Last week, Elsa hands me a folded up TWO PAGE note as her class passes mine on the way to the cafeteria. Portions of it read:

"Hi, Ms. Powell. I am Elsa. Ms. Powell, you was the best teacher ever. you were so nice with me and the class. I am living {leaving} this year for Venezuela with my parents. I am not happy because I am living. I am going to miss you Ms. Powell everybody but I going to miss you so much. Thank you so much for everything that you did for me when I did not stand any English. Love Elsa"

I heart Elsa. Elsa makes me 'stand why I teach.

Printable EZ Grader

Week after week, one of the most searched-for phrases on my website is the free printable ez grader. For those who don't know it's there, I thought I'd feature it here. I found the link (for 'classroom grading aid') on Mrs. Perkin's Dolch Words site, which is a phenomenal resource for all kinds of free printable reading resources. The Classroom Forms and Testing page is especially valuable. Thank you Jill and Nick for maintaining such a wonderful collection of materials!

Phrases I Never Want to Hear Again

-I forgot my lunchbox in the room.
-I can't remember how I'm getting home today.
-My mom wants you to call her. I don't know why.
-Do we have to write our last names?
-I left it on the playground.
-It was right here, and now I can't find it!
-I couldn't do my homework because I had football practice.
-I'm finished! Now what do I do?
-What time is lunch?
-Do we have P.E. today?
-Can I call my dad and see if he can bring my library book?
-Nevermind. I forgot what I was gonna say.
-I don't get it. Read what directions?
-Do you want us to check our work?
-I don't have a pencil.
-Do we have homework?
-Is today Tuesday?
-Are we going outside now?
-I'm hungry. I wish it was lunchtime.
-I had my Nintendo DS in my backpack and now it's gone.
-I left my backpack at home.
-I don't have any paper.
-What are we supposed to be doing?
-She's not putting away her book like you said.
-I wasn't talking! He was talking to me!
-I didn't do nothing.
-Was my mom 'posed to sign this?
-What progress report?
-I stepped in the puddle. By accident.
-I kicked him in the face. By accident.
-Do we have to write in complete sentences?
-Is it time to go home now?
-Do we have school tomorrow?

Add your own in the comments!

Metaphor of the Week

This mysterious chart strip appeared today on the door leading to one of the stairwells. On first glance, I assumed it was part of a new school-wide metaphor of the week initiative we're beginning in order to develop our students' vocabularies. (It turned out not to be--in fact, no one I've asked has any clue where it came from--but I was more focused on getting to lunch on time than on determining the origin and meaning of a random chart strip.)

However, the sign had totally confounded my kids, who are constantly being told to face forward and look where they are going. One of my sweetest little friends said in his tiny, high little voice: "Ms. Powell? If we keep our heads up when we're walking, won't we miss one of the stairs and fall down?"

Um, yeah. A 'metaphor of the week' is definitely in order. :-)

A trip down memory lane

I was uploading pictures from my phone when I came across these photos. Yes, that is a shopping cart in my foyer, and no, it was not stolen (my condo keeps half a dozen on the property, since it's a bit of a journey from the parking lot to the top floor of the building). This is what my house looked like on August 4, when I was sending out that initial load of 'pre-orders' for The Cornerstone book that were taken through my website. The books arrived much later than I had expected, so I was already kinda freaked out, and I was going up to NY to spend the last week of summer break with my fiancee. The day before my flight, I was on pins and needles praying that the books would arrive in time. Otherwise, all of the orders would have to wait ANOTHER week until I got back, and I knew people wanted to read their copies before school started. Well, God is faithful--UPS delivered the shipment to me TWO HOURS before the post office closed for the day. (See the brown boxes piled in the background? Yeah. There were 21 of those.) You should have seen me, all Tasmanian devil-like: unpacking boxes of books, autographing, shoving them in Priority Mail envelopes, affixing stamps, and piling them up in that ridiculous shopping cart which blocked my way out of the 720 square foot apartment. I had already addressed the envelopes, fortunately, so I was able to get the shopping cart, little rolling cart, and a few boxes completely processed and dropped off at the Post Office before 7 pm. (Each book is 500 pages and weighs 2.2 pounds. Needless to say, the postal workers were not thrilled to see me coming.)

Whew. So August was a bit busy and stressful. Since then, things have slowed down a bit, as they do for all education-related book sales in late September. (There's also a decline in my web visitors after school starts, and the trend continues until January. Fortunately, I've been tracking this since 2003 so I didn't go into cardiac arrest when book sales and web hits dropped.)

The book's reception has been phenomenal, in large part because of word of mouth. Those of you who have been following the site for years told your friends, who told their friends...and the book is selling internationally now. Okay, so not particularly well yet, other than in Canada, but better than expected, considering I self-published and don't have a 'marketing machine' (or budget) behind me. This has been a total grass-roots effort, a product created by a teacher and publicized through teachers, and I think I'm more proud of that fact than any other.

So that's the book update. I haven't done much promotion since school started for obvious reasons, but plan to get back on the ball in the coming weeks. If you love the book, help me out! Add your book reviews to Amazon and Barnes and Noble, blog about it or recommend it to your favorite blogger so s/he can blog about it, and buy copies for your coworkers for the holidays. Also, I totally appreciate the emails you all send. I am still answering each one personally, even if it takes awhile to get back to you, because you rock. Seriously. :-)

Chalk? Really?

Girl in my class, cringing as she displays her red, blistery hands after lengthy acrobatics on the monkey bars: "You know Shawn Johnson? How come this doesn't happen to her?"

Inspiration when you don't feel like teaching reading

The person who ordered the cake said, Write 'Best wishes Suzanne', and underneath that, 'We will miss you'.