pwock, p'quok, plawk...or somethin'

I spent the day doing reading assessments with my students.

One story, set in the distant past (days of yore and whatnot), begins with the main character, Margaret, who's twelve, going to the farmers' market to buy a chicken.

As she approaches the stand where she plans to buy the chicken, she sees several older women poking at the chickens, trying to decide which of the birds on display is the plumpest and most tasty. "Stop poking and start choosing," the grumpy shop owner snaps at the women.

The story goes on from there to be largely about other things.

As part of this assessment, the kids have to stop after the first page, and record a few predictions and questions they have after reading the first section. Then, they read the rest of the story and write a summary.

A couple of my students just couldn't get past the thing with the chickens.

Some sample questions...

1. Why are they poking the chickens?

2. When will they stop poking the chickens?

3. I predict they will go on poking the chickens.

And from a summary....

"Margaret goes to the market. She is looking for a chicken. She sees some women poking some chickens. They keep on poking the chickens. Marget finds a nice plump chicken in the back. The women say, 'Why is she getting that chicken? We were here first.'"

I could not stop thinking about this bit from the Daily Show:

This clip, BTW? It is not safe for chickens...or, though strategically bleeped, work, most likely.

Grown up!

So, basically, I'm a babbler.

I live in constant need of someone to cut me off.

I think this is one reason that teaching is such a good career for me. Someone is always there to interrupt. No train of thought is allowed to run on too long. A hand will be raised. Someone will have to go to the bathroom. I will stop talking.

Not so when I talk to grown ups.

I have to work on this babbling thing when I talk to grown ups.

I find myself rambling on, adding the details, embelishing the details...trailing off in a mumble. Some people stand for a moment, wondering if it's okay to start talking yet. Other people stare at me as I mumble myself out the door and into my car.

But I have to remind myself that very few of them go home and obsess over what that crazy teacher down the hall (namely, me) was mumbling about today. As far as I know, I am at a complete lack of wacky stalkers. So, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one sitting here wondering why I couldn't answer the question about teaching square numbers with one sentence.

One sentence, self! That's all that's required! Tops? Main idea, details, conclusion.

Verbally (and, heck, in writing, too) my paragraphs tend to go: main idea....details...hey, that detail is cool...minor details...quasi-related sub-details...boring, not related at all details...err...mumble...mumble...mumble.

Hence, the devoted readership! Ha!

Anyway. Regardless of my conversational ineptitude...I'm sure I'm the only one still worried about it. No one else goes home and parses my paragraphs. So really, I should let it go.

Tomorrow is a new day, with no bumbled conversations in it.

credibility!

So,

I've been mocking my own seester for a while now about not updating her blog as much as I think she should. She, of course, then points out my own, less-than-regular blog-updating ways.

And then, I can't argue.

But I love to argue! So, here I sits of a Saturday, updating the blog again so's I can mock my seester.

My motives? They are the noblest.

I was talking to one of my moms this week (wierd teacherism...of course I mean one of the moms of one of my students, but that takes too long). So, one of my moms was asking about her son, and I told her how much fun I'm having getting to know him, especially since I had his little sister in first grade last year.

He'd delivered a note from his sister to me a few days before. Chin down, fifth grade disbelief at the uncoolness of it all writ large across his face, he handed it to me. "Here. This is from my sister."

His mom and I smiled at this, and she told me how excited his sister had been that I'd written back. "He wasn't thrilled to be her delivery boy," she said. "I wish he'd be nicer to her about stuff like that."

I laughed. "As a big sister, I understand how hard it can be to be nice to your little sister all the time," I said. "But don't worry, my sister and I figured it out!"

"You're a big sister?" she smiled, hope lighting up her face, "And you guys get along?"

"Oh sure," I replied, "but it took a while...I don't think we really appreciated how much we loved each other until sometime in my twenties."

She looked crestfallen.

"I moved away to go to college, and suddenly we missed each other!" I went on, oblivious to the fact that she'd moved on to calculating how long it would be until her kids were in their twenties.

"That long, huh?" She said.

We chatted some more, but I should have come back to this idea of when I became friends with my sister. I could have offered her some hope, I think, in the idea that even as you fight with your sister, even as you plan out complex and difficult ways to scare her at night, or spend hours cataloguing her flaws, nothing can stop you from being her friend.

My sister has always been my greatest ally. We'd fight tooth and nail until there was someone esle to fight against (sorry, mom!). And she, of all people, speaks the strange language of my childhood most fluently...a special dialect of southern twang, Boston slang, our father's neologisms, and select onomatopoeia - seasoned with whatever you call deliberate grammatical malapropisms. Or something. Mrrp, mrrp, mrrp!

So, what better to motivate me to write something on my blog than a desire to egg on my seester? No, no, not a desire to get egg on my seester! Read carefully!!

It's a little awkward, since my seester is one of two people who read my blog. Don't want her to get a big head...our family is cursed with preternaturally large heads as it is! Suffice it to say that I loves my seester, almost as much as I loves layering jackets and sweaters.

Hi there, seester, my name is Juan Carlos, I have come for my ccchhhhhhhhhhhhat.

September

So, it's back to fifth grade for me.

I've got to say, the first weeks of fifth grade are way less intense than the first weeks of first grade. No tears, for one thing...no moms hovering in the hallway on the first day, anxious to see if their little ones have made it safely to their desks...calm. But I have to say, I miss some of the fanfare of the first day of first grade. It's all so new. The desks are fascinating (Imagine what you could put in there!), the books are so mysterious (Open the math book to page twelve? Which one's the math book? Which one's a twelve?), and everyone - even the smartest kid in the room - is just a little bit terrified.

Fifth graders are so good at this school stuff. This is a golden year. They're the oldest, the wisest, the kids who know where the bathroom is and which is the shortest route to the gym. And it's been a while since they were befuddled by twelve. Those for whom some things are a struggle have figured out a lot of coping strategies by now, and even the helicopteriest of parents is content to settle most things over the phone. School has become familiar territory - the place, if it's not totally inappropriate for a school conversation, where everybody knows your name.

When I was wandering the long, dark hallways of my own middle school career, I'd sometimes sing that song to myself:

Makin' your way in the word today takes everything you got,
Takin' a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot,
Wouldn't you like to get away?
You wanna go where people know, our troubles are all the same,
You wanna go where everybody knows your name.

Except, I'd sing "where nobody knows your name."

Because middle school is about feeling like the eyes of the world are always on you, and you're stuck there, with everyone looking at you, while you go through the time in life when you feel the ugliest and the most awkward. Maybe, if nobody knew you, you'd slip past their notice more easily...an anonymous girl in wierd pants is so much easier to forget than one with a name.

And my fifth graders are standing on the cusp of that, about to take that leap into adulthood. Leap isn't exactly the right word. It implies a quick trip. On any great quest, though, you have to slog through some nasty territory to get to wherever it is you're going, and adolescence is like the Mines of Moria.

It's hard not to want to somehow snatch them back from that...turn them around and tell them to take the mountain pass instead...

But all I can do is make sure they've packed everything they need, or as much as I can convince them to carry: take your good cooking pot, remember to pack a strong rope, bring a towel.

And, hey, pack a good book! Don't you think that Samwise and Frodo would have been even more lost if they hadn't been able to sit by the fire and tell the familiar tales of their childhood? Didn't Hermione find something good in the Hogwarts library every time she looked? Doesn't every hitchhiker turn now and again to his Guide to the Galaxy?

The right book can make even the most hopeless landscape seem promising.

Fifth grade is a good time to start choosing the books that will comfort you as you make your way through your own personal fire swamp. Admit it. There are books you've been reading since you were ten, and those are the books that you love. I know my students won't necessarily find the same books I did in the same way. But I envy each one the first time they meet the characters who will see them through.

So, celebrate the back-to-school season by rereading one of those touchstone books. Ride in a wagon with Matthew Cuthbert. Use your great brain to scam the neighbor kids into doing your chores. Crack that egg in your lunchbox on your head. Resurect Nefertiti in a vacant lot.

That's what September is for.