Introduction/Seduction

Yesterday I introduced my creative writing unit - subtly. Mrs. D always has a writing prompt on the board when the students come into the class; I've taken over the prompts, although neither of us made that clear to them in advance.

The prompt was: "I'm usually a nice person, but one thing ticks me off. Let me tell you about it." Mrs. D gave them all instructions to begin their paragraph with these two sentences, and most of them followed the direction. I was gratified to hear one student say, "Oh man, this is going to be a good journal!"

At first, their paragraphs were disappointing. One complained about bad breath. Two complained about people who think they are funny, but aren't. One complained about people who call her "little." (She's about five foot three.) But then one girl said she hated it when her mother tells her to get something out of the kitchen, when she is standing right there and could get it herself in a second. Suddenly people who had already shared their paragraphs were raising their hands and saying they wanted to share some more.

When everyone was done sharing, I went right into the center of the empty space in the middle of the classroom and announced that this was the first writing prompt in a series that was going to help them write a 700-word story for a contest - and the first prize was $100 gift card from VISA.

I shouldn't have mentioned the word count. There was consternation at that, although several of the boys kept shushing everyone else: "Hey, she's talking real money here. I wanna know what she has to say about it."

So I told them that they did not have to submit their stories to the contest if they didn't want to. Someone asked what the deadline was, and I told them it was December 31, and that they could get feedback from me up until the deadline if they wanted. I also said they'd be working with partners, and we took a vote about whether the partners should be assigned by Mrs. D or pulled out of a hat. There was quite a bit of shouting back and forth over that, but eventually a clear majority voted for Mrs. D's judgment.

I did a draft of the list based on what she had told me about students who need a lot of help with grammar and spelling, pairing them with those who didn't have much trouble with that. The other major factor was attendance; I paired regular absentees with each other. She made a few changes, and we'll present the list tomorrow. I'm sure there will be plenty of groaning, but maybe a few people will be happy with their partners.

Today I wasn't there, but I had sent in a prompt to Mrs. D via text. She changed it slightly. I had asked, "Do you believe in Heaven and/or Hell? Why or why not?" She told me over the phone tonight that she had written: "Do you believe in an afterlife? For example: Reincarnation, Heaven, Hell, etc." She said that several people hadn't known what an afterlife was and had asked about it. Most of them wrote that they believed in Heaven and Hell because it was their religion, but some mentioned reincarnation.

Tomorrow the prompt is: "Whether you believe in Hell or not, imagine you are there. What do you see? Hear? Smell? Feel (temperature, etc.)? Who is there with you? Why? Why are you there?"

Before they share, I'll tell them we'll do things a little differently. I'll ask the class whether or not they got a real sense of what the writer thinks about Hell from the paragraph, and if so, what was in the paragraph that carried the idea? Then I'll put them into pairs, and tell them to answer the same questions for each other only more specifically. I have to ask Mrs. D. if we can change their seating arrangement for the duration of the unit.

They were so incredibly uncooperative yesterday, talking so loudly it was almost impossible to get a word in edgewise, I have pretty low expectations for my success with this. I wonder if any of them will actually finish a whole story, or even work at it in a sustained way. I wonder if any of the partner conversations will be on task. I guess I'll find out soon enough . . .

Meet the Mentor

I met my mentor teacher yesterday for my first field experience. She hadn't been planning on having a teaching intern, but the teacher I was placed with first decided she didn't want one this semester. So we both ended up with each other - hardly an auspicious beginning. Despite that, we related pretty well to each other.

It's an urban school with an illustrious past and a major sports reputation. Among the alumni: several NFL players, a former mayor and a former U.S. Senator, a few popular entertainment legends. But two years ago the school was deemed "failing" under No Child Left Behind, the principal was fired along with half the teachers, and now there are three "schools within a school" in the old building. One of those mini-schools is called the Ninth Grade Academy; that's where I'm placed. Its purpose is to bring together students of disparate backgrounds and neighborhoods and make them jell as an eventual graduating class.

When I got into the classroom there were only about a dozen kids in the room. Two of the boys were in uniform, one was in a sweater and tie. I was told there was a dress code, but it wasn't explained to me and I'm not sure what it was. Maybe everyone needed to be wearing a collar of some sort, precluding t-shirts and low necklines.

The kids were grading an "adverb practice" worksheet; they exchanged papers with their partners, then went around the class reading sentences aloud and telling everyone which words were the adverbs. The sentences were stereotypical: "The train raced quickly down the tracks." I immediately thought of ways I would spice them up: "The defensive back blatantly fouled the runner." One girl was marking her partner's worksheet with a crayon. But the students were extremely well-behaved. I later found out that this was the honors class.

After the adverb exercises, the teacher had them silently reading from whatever books they had brought from home. This gave my mentor and me the chance to chat in low whispers. She complained that the principal of the Academy was going to double the number of students in this class over the next few days, based on new standardized test results. She had begged him to wait until January, because the group was already in the middle of THE LORD OF THE FLIES and she didn't even have enough books for that many kids - but he had apparently decided to go through with it in spite of her objections.

Once the silent reading was done, they spent the rest of the period reading aloud from LORD OF THE FLIES, with most of the students taking roles (including the biggest role, that of narrator). I was a bit worried when I heard them read, because I literally did not understand a lot of what they were saying - I haven't encountered pronunciation like this in more than 20 years. The teacher never stopped the reading to ask questions or make comments. A few of the students followed along with their heads on their deskchairs turned to the side to look at the paperback books resting on the edges, the picture of literacy drudgery.

I remembered my own high school study of this novel in 1977. My teacher broke us up into small groups to discuss a bunch of questions he had on a list. One of them was: "Why is this book called LORD OF THE FLIES?" We tossed that one around for a few minutes, and then finally one of my co-future English majors opined wryly, "Because flies are attracted to shit and this book is a lordly pile of it."

No one would use language like that in this school building, but I bet the sentiment would have been cheered by most of the students in the room.