Learn Me Gooder (8 page)

I can just imagine what would happen if I lined up with a bunch of people with various jobs and let Shelly greet all of us.
“Good morning, Mister Ramsey!
Good morning, Doctor Barton!
Good morning, Judge Carson!
Good morning, Special Agent Johnson!
Good morning, Archduke Fielder!
Good morning, Miss Woodson!”

This afternoon, I noticed that Shelly was writing notes at her desk while we were going over the homework. When I told her that she needed to be paying attention and grading along with us, she looked shocked and replied, “But I was writing a note to YOU!”

She said this very defensively, as if she was thinking, “When we walked into class today, our two choices were to either pay attention and do the work or to daydream and write notes – and I made my choice!”

I told her that it was very sweet of her, but that she needed to do that at home, not during math class. Still affronted, she continued, “It’s a note about how you’re my favorite teacher!”

I glanced quickly at the paper on her desk and saw little hearts lining the edges. At that moment, I was very thankful that I hadn’t just snatched the paper off of her desk and thrown it away, because I could totally imagine Shelly tearfully asking, “Miss Woodson, why? Why do you hate love?”

I finally convinced her to stop writing notes and to pay attention in class – at least, her version of paying attention.

At any rate, I’ll probably be getting a very lovely note come Monday morning along the lines of, “You’re the best, Miss Woodson!!”
Talk to you later,
Matt Skewlin

Good to have you back in Dallas, with most of your sanity intact after a week with Larry. I know how exhausted you must be after spending most of yesterday catching up on paperwork, build statuses, team updates, and the like. Yet somehow you found the time to tell everyone about that last email.

They all sent me emails calling me Miss or Ms. Except Winter, who always has to top everyone. His email was addressed to Mademoiselle Woodson. And they say engineers never have an original thought.

In addition to those emails, guess what I received yesterday? If you said an autographed picture of veteran character actor Robert Loggia, you’re not far off. I got (pause for dramatic effect) A CARD FROM SHELLY!!

Who could possibly have seen that one coming?

It said, “Dear Msr Woodsman, You are the best techer ever! Love, Shelly.”

I’m willing to overlook the misspelling of my name, since she does verbally say Woodson. So I won’t need to call her “Barry” in return.

I think “Msr” is just a misspelling as well and doesn’t mean that she’s decided to start addressing me as Monsignor. She still looks at me oddly when I ask her to call me “Mister,” but she’s not the only one who is still trying to figure me out. I’ve been with my kids for about two months now, and it’s amazing how the two classes behave as completely separate microcosms. One group seems to really “get” me, while the other seems to wonder what planet I’m from.

This morning, we were going over a word problem that mentioned someone’s garden. I knew that Mrs. Bird had just finished reading a story with the children called “Ugly Vegetables,” so after reading the word problem, I said, “Tim’s garden is 5 feet wide. Oh, maybe Tim is planting some UGLY VEGETABLES!”

Dead silence. I looked out into a sea of blank faces, as a tumbleweed slowly drifted across the room. I tapped on the end of my overhead marker and spoke into it – “Is this thing on?”

After lunch, with my second class, I tried the exact same bit. Maybe it’s just the personalities of the different kids, maybe I improved the timing in my comedy act, or maybe the cafeteria pizza pockets had nitrous oxide in them, but the results were decidedly different.

“Tim’s garden is 5 feet wide. Oh, hey, I’ll bet Tim is planting some UGLY VEGETABLES!”

The room exploded into laughter and applause like Showtime at the Apollo. Kids were waving towels in circles around their heads, shouting “WOO WOO!” and throwing buckets of confetti at each other.

Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

They may not all be hanging on every word I say just yet, but they certainly are influenced by what they see on television. Mrs. Bird told us a story over lunch today about a response she got from Jacob during her social studies lesson. She’s been discussing the court system with the class and going over the roles and functions of judges, juries, lawyers, etc. Today she asked, “Who could you go to if you needed help in solving a legal problem?”

Jacob immediately raised his hand and shouted out, “James Handler, The Dallas Sledgehammer!”

Clearly, Handler’s local commercials – “My neighbor’s dog peed on my mailbox, and James Handler got me $450,000!!” – have made an impression on young Jacob, among others.

This is not the first advertising campaign that has had an effect in the classroom. A few years ago, every time I mentioned bar graphs, one little boy would go into a robotic trance and recite, “Cingular – Raising the bar!”

Heck, Mrs. Fitzgerald and I have been paying homage to an ancient commercial for years! You remember the old jingle, “Cha cha cha, Charmin!” for Charmin toilet paper? We adapted that to make it easy for the kids to remember where to place the comma in a number. “Cha cha cha, comma!” (Where each “cha” is a digit to bypass.)

I’m always tempted to tell the kids, “Don’t squeeze the Thousands!”

There is no possible way that these kids are familiar with the old Charmin commercials, yet the jingle resonates with them. It makes me wonder if teachers might not be wise to take a different approach to lesson planning. Maybe we should start making commercials to be aired during Saturday morning cartoons and Monday night wrestling. This might turn out to be more effective in promoting concepts like estimation and the scientific method than boring ol’ classroom activities.

I’m thinking a simple, direct message played over and over for 30 seconds, wedged in between ads for Playstation games and Vytorin. Just look at how successfully the phrase, “Headon, apply directly to the forehead!” has gotten stuck in our brains. Sure, everyone wishes they could meet the creator of that ad, just so they could punch him in the face, but there’s no denying that the message sticks.

We could record someone saying, “Comma! Apply directly between the Hundreds and the Thousands. Comma!”

Over and over, for the entire commercial.

I mean, if James Handler can infiltrate my kids’ minds with a catchy slogan, then I sure as heck ought to be able to!
Later,
Mark Etting

OK, if we ever DO get the green light to shoot commercials, tell Tiffany I’m putting her in charge. Her idea of “Division – So easy, a 3rd grader could do it” is genius!!

Larry’s proposal – “Just glue it” – Not so much.

The fridge in my kitchen finally has some modern art displayed! Jacob gave me a hand-drawn picture today, which was very sweet of him. It was a picture of Larry the Cucumber from the cartoon Veggie Tales. My nephew Kyle loves Veggie Tales, so I’m familiar with some of the characters.

I did find it just a bit inappropriate, though, that Jacob had depicted Larry The Cucumber wearing nothing but a thong. I mean, I’ve never heard of a cucumber hammock.

No, I’m just kidding. Larry was dressed as Sherlock Holmes – there shall be no obscene vegetable portraits on my kitchen appliances!

Jacob gave me the picture right before leaving my room this morning, around 10:30. At 10:50, the class went to music, and from there to lunch.

When we went to pick the kids up from the cafeteria, Jacob was visibly upset, as was Nestor (favorite color: OGO).

While Mrs. Bird took the other kids outside for recess, I tried to get to the bottom of the mystery (as I’m sure Sherlock Cucumber would have done).

Somehow Mickey was involved in this whole mess as well, and he seemed more than happy to tell me what had happened.

“Jacob told me he didn’t want to be friends with Nestor anymore, and when I told Nestor, he started crying. Then Nestor said he didn’t want to be friends with Jacob anymore, and when I said that to Jacob, HE started crying.”

I thanked Mickey, The Great Facilitator, and then asked him to go away. Nicely, of course.

Left with Jacob and Nestor, I proceeded into the classic “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” speech (AKA, The Bronze Rule, copyright 815 B.C.). I pointed out that if neither of them had made mean comments, neither of them would have had to cry and feel bad.

At that, Jacob, on the verge of tears again, turned to Nestor and exclaimed, in his high-pitched voice, “I’m so sorry! Can you ever forgive me?”

Nestor responded by throwing his arms around Jacob in a full-on bear hug, complete with back thumping.

I couldn’t help but think that somewhere, Chris Farley and John Belushi were smiling.

I told Mrs. Bird that I would take her homeroom to the library this afternoon so they could check out a couple of new books. As they were making their selections, I noticed that Nestor had a book that was way beyond his level. I asked Mrs. Drogz, the librarian, if she had any really, really, REALLY basic books that he could read. The first thing that came to mind was Dick and Jane. She returned shortly with a Dr. Seuss book which I thought would be perfect.

Nestor’s face lit up, and he exclaimed, “Oh, I know that one!” He pointed at the title and proudly traced the words with his finger as he read, “The. Cat. In. The. Hat.”

It was very touching to see Nestor so excited, and I didn’t have the heart to point out that the book was actually titled “Hop on Pop.” But at least he recognized the author, so that’s something, right?

In a showing that all was once again right with the world, Jacob started helping Nestor sound out the words in the book. Their lunchroom tiff seemed to be a thing of the past, and I kept an eye on Mickey to make sure he stayed away from them.

I had another Dr. Seuss moment while grading today’s tests after school. The final question was a written response question, and it asked, “Give an example of when you would round instead of using exact numbers. Explain.”

As usual, answers ranged from mostly right to inexplicably wrong to downright unintelligible. I was looking for answers that contained any mention of what we had discussed when we first started rounding, namely, going to the store and keeping track of the total cost. Probably about 1/3 of the kids got this.

Eddie, Lex, and a few other lazy kids answered, “at school,” or, “in math.”

Gwenn really took the WHEN to heart and answered, “Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.”

I guess Wednesdays are rounding-free days for priti prinseses?

Franco and Hillary both wrote, “Never. You wouldn’t get an answer.”

Great! So glad they think my class is all about learning things that have no use whatsoever! Tomorrow, I’ll teach them how to make piggy banks out of Kleenex.

This brings us to the Seussical response. Ava’s answer to when you would round was, “At my house, in the car, in a tree, at the school.”

For some reason, after I read this, my mind immediately started chanting,
“I will not round that in a car,
I will not round that with a jar.
I will not round that in a box,
I will not round that with a fox.”

I think I’m going to start requiring these free response answers to be written in rhyme. And maybe illustrated with vegetables that can talk.
Talk to you later,
Sham-I-Am

You’re absolutely right, kids like Nestor are tough cases. He can’t read, he doesn’t do math well, he can barely count, and he’s actually too low academically to be in the special education program. He’s certainly not going to pass the TAKS test, which is the end-all measuring tool for the state. Unfortunately, the TAKS tests measure the growth of a student about as much as the height stick at an amusement park measures growth.

When I worked at Six Flags in high school, we would put the height stick (a 5-foot long ruler with a crossbar set at the minimum height) down next to any child we wanted to check and give it a twirl. If it whacked the kid in the head, he was tall enough to ride. It certainly didn’t measure how much the kid had grown over the summer, though.

There is no chance at all that the TAKS is going to whack Nestor in the head, so to speak. So he will show up as a failure blip on my records. I’ve accepted that. It doesn’t mean he’s going to leave my class without making any progress, though. The important thing now is to get him to a higher level than he is now, even if that level is far below the third grade requirements.

Hey, he can already count twice as high as he could on that first day, and more importantly, he doesn’t throw letters into the mix anymore. Having him partnered up with Jacob is very helpful, because they can work together, and Nestor can feel some sense of accomplishment. Plus, I’ve heard them have some pretty good discussions during science time.

That’s more than I can say for some of the other pairings.

This year, the district has made a really big point of stressing what they call “Accountable Talk” among the children. This means that the kids are supposed to explain in detail how they got their answers and discuss their strategies in depth with the other students.

This can be quite the challenge for many of my kids, since they are used to just saying a number when I ask a question or shouting, “NOOO!” at another kid when they disagree with his or her answer.

Frequently, I will say, “Please raise your hand if you know the answer,” and 20 hands will shoot up. But when I add, “AND if you can explain to me how you got your answer,” 17 of those hands go back down.