We almost finished The Monsters are Due on Maple Street today. Obviously, since it’s in teleplay form, we have had people reading parts. I get to read the longer stage directions and be Rod Serling, all deep and gravelly. (You wouldn’t believe how many people have told me my voice sounds like David Frost. I figure that’s close enough.) And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you guys how the whole reading parts thing goes. But I will anyway. 1. As soon as I say, “It’s a pla–” the hands go up volunteering for parts they can’t handle. 2. There’s always a bunch of boys who want to volunteer for the women’s parts. Then they they can’t cope if they have to call another character “Honey,” or they try to talk in a high voice, and end up giggling and stumbling so much I have to relieve them of their duties. 3. Girls do fine with men’s parts. 4. There are never enough good readers to go around. And most of them are girls. 5. When I say, “I need a good reader for this one, because he has a lot of lines, and is important to the story,”
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Eighth Grade: Finished with Nothing But the Truth. Pretty much all of them liked it. I do only have one class of eighth graders, but for my first time through this book with students, I’m pretty stoked with the response. I’ve talked to some former students whom I thought would have liked the book, and they gave it the thumbs down. I think it validates my “it’s all in the delivery” theory. Just like reading The Outsiders aloud. Final projects came in today, so we’ll see whether that translates into a good final product. We’re reading “Flowers for Algernon” now. Man, I love that story. I still remember reading it in a sci-fi anthology back in the day, and going, “Whoa.” We’re about a third of the way through. Charlie just saw through his “friends” at the factory after they got him drunk for the second time. The kids are all suitably outraged (“I want to punch those guys in the face!”) and saddened (“How mean!”). But “______’s a card when he’s potted!” might become a thing in this class. (Go read the story again.) We took Rorschach tests and made up stories for a couple of plates from the
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I’m not dead yet. It’s just been a bit busy ’round these parts lately. And I’ve been sleeping in for five days, so I’m still a little dopey. Even most of the kids were quiet today; they looked sort of tattered. “Where’s all the left-over pie I asked for?” “Everybody in my family went eeewww when I asked about rhubarb pie.” (Almost none of the kids knew what I was talking about last week when I asked for rhubarb pie. Did you know that rhubarb leaves are poisonous?) “I see how it is. I’ll settle for pecan.” On the last day before vacation we finally had time to finish the video of “The Monsters are due on Maple Street.” They really like the groovy old cars (Steve has a brand new 1960 Ford station wagon) and the old-school ice-cream man. They also crack up that somebody besides me says, no dice. When Les Goodman first tries to start his car, and Woman 1 asks him if he had any luck getting it started, and he yells, “No dice.” In every class, the kids yelled at the screen (a la Rocky Horror), “Cheese Slice!” “We went to my grampa’s for Thanksgiving,
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…I’ve been a little laggy about posting (again) because I’ve been revamping my school’s website. Check it out: http://lams.slcusd.org. …While I was checking out the sites for other schools in the district, I happened across a feature that Charlie Perryess, one of the English teachers at our sister middle school (about 1/2 of our 730-something students), has on his site. I think I may have to steal it. He only updates his site every three weeks (!?) so he gives a rundown of the activities and such for that time. At the end he has a section he calls, “Questions parents might ask their wonderful,yet not terribly forthcoming kids.” That’s the 8th grade version. The 7th grade version is, “Questions parents might ask to get a little more of an answer than ‘everything’s fine.’” (This guy also has to teach home economics and drama! The curse of diminishing enrollment.) The questions are beauty. Designed to check to see if the homework is done, in a non-confrontational, encouraging way. My wife is sooo good at talking to our son this way. I have a little more trouble with the proper…tone. Example: 1. Which character from Beowulf have you chosen to make
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Poem #435 by that strange duck (really) Emily Dickinson is a pretty good intro for Bradbury’s “The Earth Men.” And the idea that the majority decides who’s normal and who’s not (and everything else) really gets some of the kids angry. Seventh graders are strange ducks as well. They like to think of themselves as unique (If I ask, “How many of you are weird?” every hand will go up), but their biggest fear is not fitting in. And they all like think of themselves as rugged individualists. “The majority doesn’t decide EVERYTHING!” “Like what do they not decide?” Lots of hemming and hawing. “Coolness? Weirdness? Lameness? What?” More hemming and hawing. “How about things like murder and child abuse and racism?” “Racism is an easy one. Even in the time Tom Sawyer is set, you would hear sermons in churches about how slavery was God’s will. But, hmmm. You might be right about the murder one; some things are probably built into us. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that the majority of us think that now. Hmmm. But…well, let’s talk about Romeo and Juliet again (we talked about it before when we had soliloquy as a vocabulary word
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A few years ago, while we were reading Outsiders aloud, I was about to give them my usual “reading check” type quiz to make sure they were following along, thinking about what we’d talked about, connecting the literary terms to the examples in the book, etc. I can’t quite remember what my inspiration was (probably just to throw them for a loop like I like to do), but I decided to let them “cheat.” My quizzes on the books and stories we read are always open book, but this time I told them they could take the quiz, not only open book, but “open mouth.” I told them they could talk about the questions and answers as much as they want in any way they want, and decide however they want to, which of the answers to choose. “You can share what you know…or not. You can decide whether to heed the wisdom of the group…or not. You just can’t lie. You can’t knowingly tell everyone the wrong answer on purpose.” One class that day came up with the name Quiz for Dummies. The rest of the periods thought that was a little “mean,” so we’ve stuck with Open Mouth. [...]
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That reminds me of those great SNL skits about the Sofa King. You know, how the prices are "Sofa King" low, the deals are "Sofa King" great, etc. (You obviously have to say those phrases out loud to get the joke.)