The $15 Chair

As a high school teacher, I've never really thought about having furniture in my classroom.  However, when we renovated the English wing breakroom, I started thinking about how nice it would be to have a small wingback chair to sit in whenever I am evaluating presentations and for visitors to sit in when they come to my class for observations.

So the hunt was on.

For a town with a large number of thrift shops, it was impossible to find a wingback chair here.  Either they were already sold and waiting on pickup to go to their new homes or they were priced way beyond my low-end teacher budget. 

Finally, my best friend and I went to West Point for the Prairie Arts festival, an annual trip for us.  We always stop at this mega-awesome thrift shop there, and I found this chair.  It and several other pieces of vintage furniture were tucked behind some much glossier and slicker-looking new stuff, but when I saw its distinctive silhouette rising above the low backs of the faux leather couches, I made a bee-line for it. 

When I turned the tag over, I had a moment of true teacher joy:  $14.99.  I lifted it up right there and carried it up to the checkout lest some other predatory educator (or grad student) be looking for the same kind of bargain. 

It's not pretty, but man alive, it's awesome to sit down in from time to time.  It has made the times when my students come up and use my document camera or present my favorite lesson moments.  :)

My "New"spaper Wall

Whiteboard/wall space is extremely limited in my classroom because of all the lovely windows I have, so I have to try to find "workarounds."  I use a small whiteboard underneath my document camera whenever I need to write things during class, and I portion out my space carefully on the big boards that do hang on my wall. 

Newspaper needed more space, though, so I went back to Lowe's and got one more sheet of markerboard wainscotting.  After a theatrical farce trying to get it cut, I brought it back to school today, wrapped the raw edges in black duct tape with little skulls (or, as I think of them, baby Yorricks), and hung them on the front of my locking metal cabinet with command strips.

(Just a sidenote about command strips.  My whole teaching universe would collapse, literally and physically, if it weren't for command.  Thank you, 3M people, for an awesome product.)

I am pretty pleased with the result.  The staff has moved right in, and I think we will be more organized.  Not bad for $10 and a few minutes spent playing with duct tape.....

Newspaper

This year, we are trying to resurrect our school newspaper.  Several years have passed since we had one, and a school our size really should offer our students the chance to be a part of a newspaper staff.  The original problem was a conflict with block schedule, but by the time that was gone, the teacher who had been our sponsor for years was ready to retire, so the program was never restarted.

I've been trying to find someone who would be interested in taking it on, but everyone declined, politely or otherwise.  This year, I decided that if nobody else would do it, I would try it myself.

Lord Jesus, what I've gotten myself into.....

I have no training for being a newspaper adviser other than my own high school journalism career.  I was editor of our paper my senior year, but those days are dim memories of the "been there, done that, bought the t-shirt (literally)" kind.

So I'm learning as I go.

It's been a long time since I had to seat-of-the-pants it like I'm doing with this.  I am constantly ordering books, looking up resources online, finding strategies, and asking for help.  I feel like my usual juggling act has had about five more balls added quite unexpectedly.  I worry about keeping them all in the air.

There's something a little exhilarating about it, too, though.  I am learning so much, and I enjoy few things as much as I do getting new knowledge that I can apply to the world around me.  As I've been learning about the style and structure of the various parts of news stories, I have become me aware of the subtle and not-so-subtle ways the sources I get my news from are using their genre and, in some cases, bending their genre to their own purposes.  I catch myself evaluating leads right now since that's one of the focuses my students have in their current article.

I also enjoy watching my students discover how much they are capable of.  One of the hardest things for me to do is sit down and let them do, but I know it's absolutely critical to get out of their way in a class like this.  Part of me, the Type-A part, itches to sit down and "just get things started" with the new SNOsites website we have.   That's not the right thing to do, though.  My job is to establish a framework and help them fill it in.

And they're doing such a fabulous job of it.  Every day when we meet, I am amazed by how focused they are, with how independent they are becoming in looking for information, doing interviews, using equipment, and finding solutions.  One of my reporters was complimented by my head principal for the insightfulness and thoroughness of the questions the reporter had asked during an interview.  I was so proud, not because it reflected anything to do with me, but because the student is discovering talents he wasn't even aware he had.  It's an amazing thing to be a part of.  I feel genuinely privileged.
I don't know that our publication will ever win awards.  I would like for us to reach a level of competency and enthusiasm that would make us produce work of quality.  I would like for us to be of use to our school and the surrounding community.  I'd like for us to recognize the full spectrum of activity at MHS.

Most of all, though, I want to keep watching this tiny little staff do wonderful things.  It much more than compensates for all the scrambling to gather materials and knowledge.

Three Cold Tater Tots

Today was one of the longest teaching days I've had in awhile.  In addition to my regular circus show at the high school, I also taught my first night class in some twelve years.  I'd forgotten how grueling they were.

Part of the problem is that I have been worrying about the class for two weeks now.  I even had nightmares last night in which I couldn't find the classroom, couldn't work the technology, had forgotten everything about literature I ever knew.  I have been fortifying myself with caffeine all day to remain functional, and my body is even now shaking because of how "done" it is with that strategy.

Nothing that one is stressed out over that much is ever going to go well, probably.

My first impression was how much I missed my little classroom.  I get so used to having everything I need at my fingertips, on a shelf, in a drawer, that being transplanted somewhere else was a huge adjustment.  Not since my days at Aichi University have I done the traveling bag-o-stuff teacher routine.  Even there, I was usually close to my office, so if I found myself in need of something, I could just run back.  Tonight, I felt a little like a castaway, just me and my little raft of supplies staying afloat.

And I think my raft had a bit of a leak.

Even though I had planned, I didn't have nearly enough to fill the long night class.  My pacing was all off.  We finished too early, and now I feel like I failed somehow.  The funny thing is, I'm sure the students were as happy as only a night class student let out early can be.  I'm surprised they didn't all grow wings and simply fly away in beatific joy.

I sat in the classroom after everyone was gone and worked on the plans for next week.  It won't happen again, folks.  Two teachers and a small army of assistants couldn't get all the way through what I've got set up for next Monday.

I turned out all the lights, shut down all the computers, and walked through the beginnings of a heavy rain to my car.  The drive home was an adventure due to road work which had erased all the stripes on two lanes of interstate and interspersed it all with cones and unexpected surface height shifts.   The rain that had been drizzling at the college came down enough to slow traffic to a crawl. When I finally got home, I was exhausted and discouraged.  I grabbed the Sonic bag that had held my ersatz dinner, and inside were three sad, cold tater tots.  I sat with the door open, rain spattering on the arm rest, and ate them one by one.

Next Monday won't be like this.  There won't be a lackluster lesson (we have THREE pieces of literature to look at next week spanning THREE separate literary movements, I-thank-you-very-much).  I won't have a cup of Sonic fried chicken as my main evening meal.  I will have a teacher kit that boggles the mind on hand.  There will be PowerPoints, handouts, guiding questions, and yes, maybe even drama.

But never again, Scarlett O'Hara hand clenched and God as my witness, will there be an empty classroom too early and three sad cold tater tots in the bag at the end of the day.

Press Passes

I made these today.  I am probably twelve times as excited about them as any of the students will be, but hey.  Take your joy where you find it, right?

34-second Tour

Today, a huge tree fell on a power line, and we wound up having to dismiss early since we had no electricity. While I was waiting for campus to clear, I shot this.  Maybe the lovely Punch Brothers music will keep you from having vertigo....

34-second tour of my classroom #flipagram made with @flipagram . http://flipagram.com/f/aSvKxsfeZ7

Shakespeare in Action

Yesterday, at long last, all the preliminaries were over.  The handbook was covered and tested.  The syllabi were out of the way.  The classroom procedures were established.  It was time for the activity I’d been waiting a month to try.

I gave the students a copy of the “Twelve Ages of Man” speech from Twelfth Night.  Just as the group of teachers had done in the summer academy, the class and I read it together chorally, and I asked them to make notes.

I have to admit being a little nervous about this approach.  It’s worlds different from the way I have traditionally addressed Shakespeare.  Instead of defining all the potentially-problematic words and presenting tons of scaffolding related to history or culture, I was letting the language stand on its own.  The students didn’t even know which character had said it. 

As I walked around, I was thoroughly pleased to see all the students busily marking up their passages, and their notes were insightful and on-track.  No one was fussing.  No one was throwing up hands in frustration.  At this point, I successfully managed to resist the urge to jump up and down in the back of the classroom and clap my hands in glee.  Dignity, people.  Always dignity…. (And if you’ve never seen Singin’ in the Rain, you might not get the full measure of meaning for that quote….)

We read it again with each student reading to a strong mark of punctuation, just as our teacher group had all done when we were reading Hamlet together in DC.  Since reading aloud is a key fear for most of my students, I watched carefully to see how they received it.  Nobody even hesitated, even my shy ones. 

Another round of annotation followed, this time with them being asked to break up the passage into meaning groups or big ideas.  When we talked about it as a class, they all knew that the main theme was the passage of time and the stages of life, and they’d all identified what they were.  I hadn’t helped them.  I hadn’t provided a single translation.  I hadn’t done the endless background PowerPoint of doom illustrating what a “pantaloon” was.  They still got it.

That’s when it hit me.  They.  Still. Got.  It.

Since we have only 50 minute periods, we were reaching the end of our time when I had each group “pick-a-stick” from a numbered collection of popsicle sticks I keep for these things, and whatever number they drew became their “age” to act out in a one-minute pantomime the following day.  I expected eye-rolling or hesitation, but without exception, every student began eagerly talking to his or her partner about what they could do, making lists of props, and looking around my room for things they could use.  As the bell rang, they bustled out full of energy and ideas, already practicing gestures.

Today, we did a final quick review with each person reading just one line before passing it on to the next reader.  Then they put their scenes together, and the creative interpretation of Shakespeare’s words flowed.  One group used a balled-up wad of paper and a quickly bundled hoodie to construct an infant who was then “fed” from a bottle of blue Powerade.  Another group had a black-jacketed death stalking a cane-wielding “old woman” and gently pulling her down.  A third had a group member turn herself into the scales of Justice who passed an owl figurine from my giant collection to another student who drew a beard and mustache on her own face in an action of total commitment to the role.  I have known for years that my students are capable of wonderful things when they do creative assignments, but with as little preparation time as they had, it struck me again how good they are at it and how much fun they had while doing it.

After the acting, I passed out my “fancy” new whiteboards and told each group to pick three of the ages and give pros and cons for each.  After they’d had time to confer, I used the Folger website to pull up the close-up images of the Seven Ages window that had fascinated me so during my time in the Reading Room and the students looked at the individual characters  and related their pros and cons for each as we examined it.  I concluded by asking them to come a consensus as a group about to which “age” seniors belong.  The answers were as diverse as the people.  Some saw themselves as soldiers fighting for fame and honor.  Some saw themselves as lovers.  One group said infants; just beside them, a group claimed to be justices, the pinnacle of knowledge. 

When the bell claimed them again, they headed out the door full of discussion about who was right, swapping evidence and justifications, and my little teacher heart was absolutely full.  Without more than a minimum of assistance - perhaps the defining of two words - they had gotten there all on their own and, most importantly to me, they had made a connection.  I’d seen the looks of dismay yesterday when Shakespeare’s name was mentioned.  All of that was gone as they left.  They’d had a good encounter with the Bard.  He’d been a source of laughter and relevance for them instead of some monolithic obstacle.

Even though I love to teach Shakespeare and look forward to it all year long, today he became something for “everyday use.”  I don’t have to keep him in a special box and bring him out only for fancy occasions or my mega-Hamlet unit.  I can have the joy of watching my students discover him in small doses.  Maybe he can become their solace, too, or at least less of an object of dread or discomfort.

How liberating for all of us.