Isn’t there a law written down somewhere that requires school dances end with “Stairway to Heaven”? What happened to that? Was the law repealed? Or is there just no enforcement? I didn’t have my usual luck in drawing numbers for extra-curricular duty sign ups. The last time I had to chaperon a dance was my first year here…16 years ago. But tonight I got to watch 200+ kids wiggle for an hour and a half. Wiggle isn’t quite the right word. They just never stopped moving. As I recall, dances usually consisted of a lot of standing around, mixed with moments of terror. (Sort of like war, I hear.) This was not like that. Not one of them stopped moving ever. Not for any longer than it took to get a piece of pizza or some cotton candy. Never. Stopped. Moving. If they were standing in one place (never longer than 3 minutes), they were hopping up and down, or just sort of vibrating and, well wiggling. After 3 minutes of that, small groups would just randomly run outside, or to another part of the multipurpose room. More groups would follow, and the whole crowd would flow like an amoeba.
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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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