Learn Me Gooder, page 18
I can’t devote all my energy to Marcus right now, because with the TAKS test fast approaching, I am banging my head against the wall with some of the other children. I still have kids subtracting 10 and 4 and getting 14. I still have kids that think their pencil is 8 miles long. I still have kids adding a dollar and a nickel and getting 6 cents. Or sometimes 6 dollars.
Not only do their actions not make sense, but sometimes their words don’t even make sense! Franco encountered a problem this afternoon and blurted out, “Man, that’s hard! That’s harder than a turtle!”
I wanted to reply, “No way, it’s easy! It’s easier than elevator music!” Instead, I let the mixed metaphor slide.
Victor still can’t remember his shape names. I quizzed him today, and he couldn’t tell me the name of an 8-sided figure. I tried to give him a hint – “What’s the animal that lives in the ocean and has eight legs?”
Without any hesitation, Victor nodded, looked me in the eyes, and answered confidently, “A squid.”
NO!! Well, I mean, technically, yes, he gave a correct answer to that question, but NO!! There’s no such thing as a squidagon!!
I’m at that point where some teachers might just throw in the towel and show movies all day. I’ll admit, I’ve thought about it. Maybe a continuous loop of “The Lion King 3 7/8: Simba Swallows His Pride.”
But I’m not a quitter. I’m not a giver-upper. I AM willing to modify my techniques. Therefore, I have decided that I shall henceforth teach in the style of Mr. Noodle, from Elmo’s World.
My nephew Kyle is a HUGE fan of Elmo and Mr. Noodle. They’re both relatively new additions to Sesame Street, so I don’t think they were around when your son was that age. I should probably explain what I’m talking about.
Mr. Noodle is a character that (seemingly) lives in Elmo’s window and has a very unique style of interpreting questions. Allow me to give you an example.
Elmo will roll up the shade, “waking” Mr. Noodle (the similarities to a peep show booth stop, for the most part, there). Elmo will then ask Mr. Noodle about whatever the topic of the day is. Swimming, cows, badgies, whatever. If the topic of the day is footwear, Elmo may say, “Mr. Noodle, how do you put on your shoes?”
Mr. Noodle will then do something outrageously stupid like putting a shoe in his mouth, making Elmo wonder if he has an IQ below 30.
At this point, a group of unseen kids will join the fray, shouting from off camera, “NOOOOO, that’s not right, Mr. Noodle!!”
The Noodle will then do something only slightly less “touched,” such as putting the shoes down his pants. Again, the kids will patiently yell, “NOOOOO, Mr. Noodle! Shoes don’t go there!”
Typically, Mr. Noodle will perform a third troglodytic act, maybe balancing a shoe on his head. At this point, we’re all waiting to hear the kids shout, “Are you EFFING SH!TTING me???” but they always seem to be inhumanly restrained.
Elmo himself will ultimately have to demonstrate the correct way to put on shoes.
That’s enough of the Wikipedia article about Elmo’s World. The point I’m getting at is that I am going to reverse my whole teaching style and try to Noodle it up a bit more. No more probing questions for accurate answers. Instead, when we talk about perimeter, I’m going to randomly make tally marks then wait for the kids to realize that I’m doing the wrong thing and shout, “NOOOOO!” at me. Then I’ll start dividing a circle into wedges until they shout at me again.
Maybe I will have more success with this technique than ever before.
I read an article the other day about how schools across the country are taking one move towards Noodlehood. They’ve gotten it in their collective heads that a great way to start making fiscal cuts is to do away with school libraries.
Your first thought may be, “But where will Colonel Mustard kill Mr. Boddy with the Lead Pipe?” Don’t worry, the article didn’t say anything about budget cuts to Billiard Rooms.
Let’s just remove a giant resource and wealth of literature from children in their formative years. Sounds like a plan worthy of Mr. Noodle, indeed.
Now I’m going to send this email by touching my monitor with my nose. If that doesn’t work, I’ll turn around three times in my swivel chair and hoot like an owl.
Later,
Dumb Perignon
Date: Friday, April 16, 2010
To: Fred Bommerson
From: Jack Woodson
Subject: The Clash of the Cretins
Hey buddy,
It is indeed a great time to travel. I’m sure Boston in April is fantastic. Not that you’ll get to see a whole heck of a lot of it next week, stuck in customer meetings. I would advise you to refrain from channeling Mr. Noodle during any of those meetings. I have to admit, though, I did snort at your line about licking a heat pump if anyone asked how it works.
Can you ask Paul if he can spring for an extra ticket so I can go to Boston with you guys? There are a few kids here that I could really stand to get away from for a few days, weeks, or lifetimes.
My newest charge, Marcus, is not doing much to endear himself to me. He is blatantly disrespectful, he lies, and I think he may be withholding information about Jimmy Hoffa’s whereabouts.
As we switched classes today, I was standing by my door greeting the students, and I couldn’t help but notice the top of Marcus’s head. He’s about half my height, so I had no problem getting a full view of his noggin. He’s got really short hair to begin with, not quite shaved but almost, and carved into what little hair there was, right on the top of the sphere, were the letters J.D.
Please keep in mind that this kid’s name starts with an M, which is neither a J nor a D. When I asked him who had written on top of his head, he immediately replied, “Nobody.”
Not believing for an instant that his hair naturally grows like that, I tried to press him for more information, but, as usual, he wouldn’t tell me anything. Mrs. Bird had a little more luck later in the day. She told me that when she had asked Marcus about his newest ‘do, he told her that a friend had done it to display his nickname.
Here I thought he was selling out his melon as a JD Powers billboard. But no, it was intended to be DJ, not JD. The boy’s self-appointed nickname is “DJ Cool.”
In my opinion, DJ Dyslexic would be more like it.
Later, I had to leave a message with Marcus’ father about a little outburst he had right after recess.
On most days, I let the kids enter my classroom as soon as they are done using the restroom, rather than waiting until the entire class is done. That way, they get a little more time to work on the word problem that day. Except for the stragglers like Cerulean, who always takes about fifteen minutes to use the bathroom. Which I encourage her to do. Of course.
On Fridays, though, the kids don’t do a word problem since they have tests to take, so instead of having them enter the classroom, I told the first couple of kids to just line up in the hallway outside my room.
By the time Marcus came out of the restroom, there were already about eight or nine kids sitting quietly in line by my door. Mrs. Bird was down at that end of the hall near our classrooms, and I was monitoring the bathrooms at the other end. A moment later, Marcus came running back to ask me, “Do we go in the room?”
I looked around the corner and pointed out the kids sitting in the hallway. “Don’t you see the line down there?” I asked him. “You need to be in that line.”
Five or six minutes later, when the last child was done, I rounded the corner to rejoin my class. But the line was gone. Mrs. Bird was there with her class, but my door was open and my kids were inside. Furthermore, the overhead machine was on, and the science test was being displayed.
I asked Mrs. Bird why the kids had gone inside, and she looked surprised and said that Marcus had told her that I had told him to lead the class in. He had told her that I had instructed him to, “Go in and cut the overhead on.”
She added that it didn’t really sound like something I would say, but that he had insisted.
I called him out into the hallway for questioning. Amazingly, he stuck with his story, including my odd choice of words.
It’s one thing to be caught in a white lie. But to stand there face-to-face (or in our case, face-to-belt-buckle) and actually be angry that I was contradicting his story is quite another thing. He got so mad, in fact, that at one point, he stormed back to his desk, screaming the whole way. Not a scream with words, just a primal blast that rose in pitch. Mrs. Bird and I exchanged glances that clearly said, “What the –??!?” Most of the kids in the room had a similar expression.
That’s when I made the phone call and left a message with his dad. Then he and I had another conversation in the hall. When I mentioned the screaming, he immediately rebuffed me. “I didn’t scream!”
“Yes, when you went back to your desk, you were screaming. Everyone heard you.”
Marcus rolled his eyes and asked, in an incredibly sarcastic tone, “Really? Everyone??”
As he stared defiantly at me, I practiced my deep breathing techniques. Finally, when my teeth unclenched, I stated again, “I don’t appreciate your screaming when I’m trying to talk to you.”
Again, he claimed, “I wasn’t screaming!”
“What do you call what you were doing then?” I asked him.
“I was yelling.”
I must have stared at him for two full minutes while my brain filtered through a myriad of things I couldn’t say, couldn’t do, shouldn’t even be thinking. I had to bite down on my tongue, hard, not to call him a spork. Eventually, what came out was, “I’m looking forward to hearing back from your father.”
On top of this little thorn in my side, I have a new student in the same class as of yesterday. This little girl, Gloria, has been at the school all year long and has been a real headache for two of the other third grade teachers. Last week, she upped the ante a bit, throwing a crayon at Mrs. Frisch and punching Mrs. Fitzgerald in the arm. That’s right, she punched a teacher. After three days of suspension, she returned to school, displaced into another third-grade classroom. I guess Mrs. Forest felt Mrs. Bird and I would not mind dodging crayons or being punched repeatedly.
Gloria was relatively well behaved for both of us yesterday, and she didn’t have any major flare-ups today, but I’ve had interactions with this girl before, and I know her temperament. The worst part is that she seems to have developed a real bond with DJ Clueless. Maybe it’s the head inscription, maybe it’s the disregard for rules, maybe it’s the complete illiteracy. Whatever the reason, they’re tight.
Lord help us all.
Seriously, I’m going to be checking my email all weekend for permission to go to Boston with you.
Later,
Jimmy Outtaheer
Date: Tuesday, April 20, 2010
To: Fred Bommerson
From: Jack Woodson
Subject: He has the nuclear codes AND the answer key?
Hey bud,
Yeah, I didn’t really think Paul would come through with an extra ticket. And your point is absolutely valid – these kids probably WOULD kill a substitute in my absence. I just can’t have that on my conscience.
So how’s the trip? Have you been able to shave P.R. into Ron Philby’s hair yet? That would make for some interesting discussions around the table at your plant visits.
Well, while you’re having a blast touring New England, I can’t dodge the fact that the TAKS test is next week! This is most likely the reason my heart is pounding, I can’t feel my toes, and my stomach feels like a troop of armored butterflies has taken up permanent residence.
I can’t help but notice that an uncomfortably large number of my students are still filling in bubbles very carelessly and sloppily on multiple choice tests. They know that they need to neatly fill in one bubble for each question, yet some of them turn in tests where their answer choices look like they were made while having an epileptic seizure during an earthquake.
It occurred to me that the kids might not know that a machine would be scoring their tests. A heartless, soulless machine that won’t care if all of the correct steps were followed to find the answer; only that the correct bubble was filled in neatly and completely.
Skynet’s most ruthless creation wasn’t the killer cyborg Terminators. It was the test-grading machines in Austin, Texas.
Before telling them about this, I asked the kids who THEY thought would be grading their tests. This made for a very interesting give-and-take.
Me: “Who do you think is going to grade your TAKS tests?”
Ava: “The teacher?”
Me: “Nope.”
Mickey: “You?”
Me: “Uh, I AM the teacher, so STILL no.”
Big Jack: “Mrs. Bird?”
Me: “Seriously??”
Tyler: “No, she IS the teacher, so still NO!”
Mia: “You a GOOD teacher!”
Me: “OK, thanks, but let’s get this back to the question.”
DaQuayvius: “The principal?”
Me: “No.”
Temperance: “The President?”
None of the kids knew that it wouldn’t be a person grading their tests, and one actually thought President Barrack Obama would be taking time out of his busy schedule to pick up a red pen and score thousands of TAKS! Forget the mess of our economy, never mind the whole international politics scene – give the guy a key to the 3rd grade math test, and put him to work!
The kids were stunned to discover that a machine would be grading their tests. A few equated “machine” to “robot” and asked if it had a name. I told them it was “Grady McSparksalot.” I can only hope that this translates into neater, cleaner bubbling.
After our discussion, we got back into review mode. This whole week is devoted to reviewing everything we’ve covered so far this year. We began this morning with some quick hits on weight and measurement. Weight is such an abstract concept for the kids. They know that anything heavier than a car should be measured in tons and that anything lighter than a loaf of bread should be measured in ounces. But in between those two benchmarks, there is a vast abyss of confusion.
When I told them that I weigh 200 pounds, there was a class-wide reaction that suggested they thought I was heavier than a whale. In an effort to show that heavy does not necessarily mean morbidly obese, I brought up Shaquille O’Neal, who weighs close to 300 pounds.
Lance only heard the first syllable of the name and looked excitedly around the room as he purred, “Oooooh, Shakira! I LIKE Shakira!!”
I like your thinking, kid, but c’mon, let’s try to focus, OK?
Moving on to capacity, when I asked the kids how many quarts were in a gallon, most of them remembered! More than a few even shouted, “May the quarts be with you!”
YES!!
Knowing that one of my mnemonics had worked, I was emboldened to try another. This time, I had one for symmetry (or cemetery, as my kids say).
First I asked who liked the movie Toy Story. Unsurprisingly, everyone raised their hands (including me). Then I double checked to make sure that they knew who Buzz Lightyear was. They did.
Finally I said, “Now remember that part in the movie where he shouts ‘To the SYMMETRY and beyond!’ And then he hits the little red button on his chest, and his wings pop up, exactly the same on both sides, just like he has a line of symmetry!”
Naturally, the kids’ first reaction was to argue with me – “THAT’S not what he says!!!”
Still, they thought it was pretty funny, and I heard several kids repeat it a few times throughout the class period.
During recess, I asked a couple of the kids to show Mrs. Bird our new way of remembering symmetry, and nearly every one of them proudly shouted, “May the fourths be with you!”
Pass the Tylenol.
I guess I can use this in tomorrow’s review of fractions – ½ of our silly memory devices have been retained!
I’ll talk to you later,
Buzz Slightfear
Date: Thursday, April 22, 2010
To: Fred Bommerson
From: Jack Woodson
Subject: Drillin’ like a villain
Hey man,
Listen man, “trying too hard” is a pre-requisite for this job. Have I taught you nothing? Funny, those last five words are what I often find myself muttering to the kids as well.
Given the choice of meeting President Obama or Shakira, you know I would make the same choice as you. And she does NOT weigh 300 pounds. Since you’re up in Boston, you probably won’t meet Shakira, but you might run into Shaq. If you do, be sure to greet him with, “May the fourths be with you!”
Mrs. Forest sent out an email today that included “The Starfish Story,” where this couple sees a guy throwing starfish back into the ocean. The beach is littered with starfish, so the couple remark to the guy that he can’t possibly make a difference because there are so many starfish. The guy then looks at the one currently in his hand and says, “I can make a difference to THIS one!” as he throws it back into the ocean.
Mrs. Forest sent this to us hoping to lift our spirits during this stressful time and to let us know that we CAN make a difference. It inspires me with a desire to throw a few of my students into the ocean.
It’s probably a good thing we don’t live anywhere near the water.
My day had an interesting little wrinkle in it, and I hope it’s something that DID make a difference for my kids. At around 10:30, Mr. Redd stuck his head into my room and knocked lightly on the door. When I looked up from what I was doing, he motioned me over and softly said, “I need to tell you something.”
Of course, as soon as Mr. Redd first disturbed the air molecules in the doorway, the kids had totally lost interest in what they were doing and were staring at him. Throughout the year, we have gone over the visitor procedure many, many times. When a visitor walks into the room, the kids are supposed to completely ignore the visitor and continue doing whatever it was they were already doing. Only if that visitor specifically talks to them are they to pay any attention to that person.
