We had an open mouth quiz on chapter 8 today. One class has several boys who have a new phrase they’re trying out. Personally, I sort of like it. 4) On p127, we get an example of what seems to be foreshadowing. What is it? a) When Two-Bit says that Darry will kill him if Pony’s really sick. b) When Two-Bit says Darry could be a Soc. c) When Pony says he has a helpless feeling. d) When Two-Bit calls Pony chicken. e) When Pony says he’ll be well by tonight. “OK, number four. What’s foreshadowing?” The class takes care of that one for me. Most of them laugh, and one says, “I was wrong.” (Pony’s line at the end of chapter three, and a beauty example for them of foreshadowing.) “Oh yeah. Ok, so it’s C, right?” “True that.” “Number six. Darry, I mean Dally (they always mix up those names), right?” “True that.” (me, doing some “refocusing” of a gentleman off to the side) “‘Clark,’ could you focus your comments on the questions? Open mouth only applies if that mouth is talking about the questions.” “True that.” “And I think we’re done with that line, for today at
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Our vocabulary list last week had several, what we used to call homonyms, but what I guess what they teach them to say now is homophones. Remember, this is middle school. The short o in homonym elicits no snickering. However, as I explain to them the roots of the two words – homo = same, nym = name, phon = sound – I always get the snickering at homo. It also happens when Tom Sawyer and the boys say gay. Just today I found my old (1986) Matt Groening cartoon book, School is Hell . It has a beauty cartoon called, “A Teacher’s Guide to Words That Make Kids Snicker.” (Fair Use, right?)
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Right now we are well into chapter 7. It’s only been a week (book time) since chapter 1, and S. E. Hinton starts us off by showing a slice of life at the Curtis house. Friends come and go, they get to eat chocolate cake for breakfast, pillow fights. Almost sounds fun. Then we get Pony’s conversation with Randy. Middle schoolers (even today) are surprisingly conservative, and very few of them question Randy’s statement about Bob’s parents needing to “belt him, just once.” They all know what he means, and they’re just shocked when Randy tells the story of Bob coming home drunk and his parents blaming themselves. I like to ask them about their experiences with teachers who didn’t have control of the class. We talk about how it’s no fun when everybody is just doing whatever without consequences. Middle schoolers like consequences. Really. They do. They think everybody should get what he/she deserves. Just as long as it isn’t them. Anyway, we’re getting close to chapter 9. I read to them up through the rumble, and Dally and Pony on their way to see Johnny after. Then I have to let them read 9 and 10 on their
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My friendly and sensitive class is also the furthest ahead in the novel. When Johnny tells Dally that he wants to turn himself in, and Dally flips out and tells Johnny that he doesn’t want him to “end up like me,” we stop and talk about Dally. This class is quick to realize that Dally does care about something; Johnny. It’s a revelation to Pony too. “Aww. He doesn’t want Johnny to be like him. That’s so sweet.” They suddenly forget that Dally is a hoodlum, and the groundwork is laid for chapter 10. This is also where, I read somewhere, that S. E. Hinton got stuck as she was writing. The boys were in the church, and she didn’t know what should happen next. She went to her friends at school, and they suggested that she “burn down the church,” and see what happens. This is good place for us to discuss what it is that makes this such a great book. “See, it isn’t just that there’s action and such, it’s that she has created characters that we care about. Realistic characters we can relate to.” (They don’t know from not ending a sentence with a preposition.) Then
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“If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” That’s Mark Twain’s famous observation after Tom Sawyer has scammed the town kids into whitewashing his fence for him, and paying him for the pleasure. We won’t be getting to Tom Sawyer until January, probably, but in seventh grade, we live aspects of Tom Sawyer every day. In this case, it’s about Punishment vs. Play. One of my classes was getting a little sporty the other day, and in frustration, I forgot that I had told myself I wouldn’t do that any more, and I threatened to go old school on them and put one of them in the cage. “What?” they all laughed. “I went to 12 years of Catholic school, baby. Kneeling on pencils (that story later), nose in the circle on the chalkboard, rulers on the backs of the hands and knees, cages…” “Cages?” I pointed to the ball cage I scrounged a few years ago, and keep in a corner of my
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(Friday Flashback – Last Year) “Mrs. G” has been teaching in our district for over 40 years. She’s been at our school since it opened in 1980. She’s taught English, art, social studies, music, and much more. She is literally an immovable object, and doesn’t need to rise from her chair to strike fear (well, not exactly fear any more, but…) into 8th graders’ hearts. She doesn’t care what people (parents, admins, other teachers) think of her, and speaks her mind whether it’s “appropriate” or not. She currently teaches 8th grade US history, and has been going toe to toe with a particularly pesky student I had last year. Now, this “Steve” sends me e-mails about how the posts he’s reading in the discussion forums on our Moodle don’t have enough thought behind them, and he has a real brain. But he’s a loud-mouthed pain in the rear, whose parents it seems, are wrapped around his finger. I was probably the only teacher he got along with…until Mrs. G. He’s still a pain, and though, like me she recognizes and likes the Steve underneath, she’s not afeared of giving what she gets. So… Food is not allowed in our classooms. [...]
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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.)