Homecoming Friday

I missed Wednesday's class, and when I returned on Friday my mentor teacher told me there had been serious behavior problems all week. One boy whom she had sent to the principal's office never showed up there - he just walked out of the building, and the next day he tried to get into the classroom as if nothing had ever happened.

A girl dressed in maroon showed up on Friday; my mentor showed me her attendance record, and there were about three times more absences than "present"'s. As has become my wont, I went around to the students and asked them what they were doing, or if they needed help. The girl in maroon should have had her notebook out to do the bellwork, and there was nothing on her desk.

"Do you have your journal?" I asked her. "Because it needs to be out right now."

"I don't know where it is," she said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

I act as if I hadn't noticed. "Maybe it's in the blue crate over there. Mrs. D said there were a few journals that had been left in there from the last time she brought them home to grade."

"Oh, I remember," she deadpanned. "I left it at home."

"You don't want to check the blue crate?"

"No. I definitely left it at home." And she makes no move to get out a piece of paper or do anything else; she's waiting for me to leave, as if I was the one being rude.

I go over to the blue crate and look for her journal while she studiously disregards me. It isn't there. I head over to my mentor and ask if the girl can write her bellwork on a piece of paper. When I inform the girl that that's what she should do, she takes out a piece of paper and continues to ignore it until I come back.

"So what are you writing about?" I ask her a little too brightly. She shrugs.

"What am I supposed to write about?"

"Whatever you want. It's Freewrite Friday."

She considers this. "I think I'm going to write about how fake people are," she decides. I give her two thumbs up. I don't think I need to take the topic personally; she had been talking to her neighbor about the Homecoming Dance on Saturday night and how everyone gets all dolled up for it, so I think that's why it was on her mind.

She actually does write her paragraph, and shares it afterward. But then Mrs. D asks everyone to share their bellwork paragraph from the day before, which there hadn't been time for because of a fire drill. The class gets deep into a discussion about whether or not any of the students would ever consider plastic surgery. It was the most engaged I had ever seen them. The girls all think it's okay to be fake for the first impression, but then if the guy really loves them he ought to be able to see beyond the bad hair days. The boys in the class didn't have much to say about that. This is still 9th grade, after all.

Now it's Sunday evening, and my mentor teacher called me to say she'll be absent tomorrow. I'm going to try to put into practice a few of the ideas I've gleaned from reading Mike Rose's LIVES ON THE BOUNDARY as well as my textbooks. The classes are still showing almost zero engagement with their short story, so after their bellwork I'm going to ask them to pick a picture from the story and write something about it (there are several illustrations of various kinds). I'll ask them to imagine they're seeing the picture for the first time, and write what they think it's about. Then I'll ask them to write about what happened just before the moment the image is depicting, and what is about to happen afterward. Then I'll ask them to write about what happened one month later, and finally one year later. Finally, they should take a fresh piece of paper and put it all into whatever form they want: A narrative, a poem, a rap, a conversation. When they share, I'll first ask for positive comments, then I'll ask for questions about what was written. If they seem into it, I'll have them write down the questions and think about them, and then maybe rewrite their pieces on Wednesday.

Afterward, I'll read some more of the story to them. Hopefully they'll be more engaged.