Theme Day - Yellow

The DP blogs' theme for today is "Yellow." You can see thumbnails of how bloggers from around the world have interpreted this by clicking here.

Today was the first day of Poetry Month, of which, no doubt, more later.

Monday Morning

I woke up feeling lousy. Honestly, I can't remember a school year when I've been sick more, except for the year (or two or three - surely it wasn't just nine months) of my first pregnancy, when I used up all my saved sick days, between morning sickness and surgery on my broken leg and then delivering during finals week.

Which brings me to the great post I just read at Kristen's blog (always worth a look): Everyone loves a pregnant woman - but kids we can do without.

By the way, it's not like that where I live. Random strangers act like they love children genuinely and are always trying to help you when you have small ones. Even in the airport, you get hustled to the front of every line. Everyone wants to give you advice, which is another annoyance, but people don't treat you as an inconvenience.

Sunday

I'm back from church and about to settle down with a good book, but I have a few links to share first:

Last night was Earth Hour. People around the world were supposed to turn out all "non-essential lights" between 8:30 and 9:30. We didn't even have city power at all during that hour, but it wasn't through any particular eco-consciousness of our local utility company, but because we just generally don't have power at that time. I didn't find out about it until the hour had already started. I felt briefly self-righteous, though, especially when I read that Rush Limbaugh was planning to light his house - actually, he said all five of his houses - up like a Christmas tree. Way to be an ugly American. This article says that an hour of darkness illuminated the minds of the participants. In that case my mind must be really, really illuminated. That makes me happy.

Today at the New York Times site, they are featuring a video about an NGO working in Haiti. I can't link to it directly, but if you're reading this after it's not available there any more, you can also look at the organization's website here. Here are two young American girls putting their money and their lives where their mouths are, and doing it in a less than glamorous way. (Hint - toilets are involved.)

My husband asked me this morning if I had read Three Cups of Tea. Uh, yes, I not only read it, I reviewed it here on this very blog! So if you, gentle reader, like my dear husband, do not remember this post, here it is. Read it and then go read the book!

Here's today's collect from the Book of Common Prayer:

Fifth Sunday in Lent

O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and
affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people that they may
love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that
which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and
manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there
be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus
Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the
Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Amen.

Poetry Friday - Soliloquy of the Solipsist

Since I was thinking about Sylvia Plath this week, I looked for some of her poems online and found this link to many of them. I wanted to post one today and eventually chose this.


Soliloquy of the Solipsist

I?
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
When my eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon's celestial onion
Hangs high.

I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look's leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.


You can find the rest of the poem here. I enjoyed the mordant wit of the last stanza.

It's hard to keep biography out of my head as I read, and I particularly found that to be true of Child, which seems to be about trying to be a good parent while depressed, and struggling with the difference between the idealized mother in one's head and the "wringing of hands" that is actually happening.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Goodbye to Nicholas Hughes

I was surprised to see Sylvia Plath's name in the "In the News" sidebar on Google News this morning, and then sad when I learned why. Plath's son, Nicholas Hughes, just killed himself, 46 years after his mother's suicide. While the post I just linked cautions against considering him an "inevitably tragic figure," I imagine the suicide of a parent is a wound that never goes away.

I remember reading Plath in college and writing an insufferably arrogant essay about how "self-indulgent" her poetry was. I was still a teenager then, and not much had happened to me; I am not as quick now to shrug off people's deep pain and struggles. Clearly her son had his own pain and struggles. This article about his death doesn't even include his own picture, but hers. I prefer this one, which describes his own achievements apart from being the son of a famous poet who died when he was a year old.

Reading Update

I've been an absent blogger lately, and one of my readers has even complained. Given how few readers I have, this is a serious matter.

I don't have much to say, but here's an update on what I've been reading lately.

Book #5 of the year was a re-read - Twilight. Well, half my students were reading it, and putting pictures from the movie as the wallpaper on the classroom computers, and writing about Edward. Like most books that are almost entirely plot-driven, this one didn't hold up as well on second reading. I think all the books are funny, and I enjoy the satirical comparison of "normal" teenage life with what Bella is experiencing - like the prom scene. My favorite scene in the whole saga is the one in Breaking Dawn where Charlie, Bella's father, has just been filled in on the whole alternative world of vampires - information he'd just as soon not know. He deals with his new knowledge by...sitting down to watch televised sports. (I also read the draft of Midnight Sun, available here. Again, all the kids were doing it!)

Book #6 was Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt, a memoir about his thirty years teaching. McCourt's writing is wonderful and vivid as always, except that I get irritated by his lack of quotation marks - but that's just me. Here's a taste:

Every moment of your life, you're writing. Even in your dreams you're writing. When you walk the halls in this school you meet various people and you write furiously in your head. There's the principal. You have to make a decision, a greeting decision. Will you nod? Will you smile? Will you say, Good morning, Mr. Baumel? or will you simply say, Hi? You see someone you dislike. Furious writing again in your head. Decision to be made. Turn your head away? Stare as you pass? Nod? Hiss a Hi? You see someone you like and you say, Hi, in a warm melting way, a Hi that conjures up splash of oars, singing violins, eyes shining in the moonlight. There are so many ways of saying Hi. Hiss it, trill it, bark it, sing it, bellow it, laugh it, cough it. A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs, sentences in your head, decisions galore. . . . You might be one of those cool characters who could saunter up to Helen of Troy and ask her what she's doing after the siege, that you know a nice lamb-and-ouzo place in the ruins of Ilium. The cool character, the charmer, doesn't have to prepare much of a script. The rest of us are writing. . . . Dreaming, wishing, planning: it's all writing, but the difference between you and the man on on the street is that you are looking at it, friends, getting it set in your head, realizing the significance of the insignificant, getting it on paper. You might be in the throes of love or grief but you are ruthless in observation. You are your material. You are writers and one thing is certain: no matter what happens on Saturday night, or any other night, you'll never be bored again. Never. Nothing human is alien to you. Hold your applause and pass up your homework.

McCourt is great on the mind-games teachers play, the way you find yourself playing to one particular student, imagining what he or she is thinking, only to find afterwards that you were completely wrong, totally misjudged the situation.

Book #7 was The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman. I liked this one fine, but I thought the press it got was exaggerated, and so did my highly literate 11-year-old.

Book #8 was Flush, by Carl Hiaasen. My seventh graders are currently enjoying this one. They think it would make a good movie - and for sure, it would. The characters are memorable and the kids can all picture them in their heads. The book was the source of a great minilesson on character development last week. This is a lot of fun and non-stop action - just what that class loves.

Book #9 was Hero-Type, by Barry Lyga. This one is thought-provoking, the story of Kevin Ross and his journey from nothing to hero and back again. I'd hoped this would be a read-aloud for my eighth graders, but eventually decided to pass because of a little too much "mature content." The ending, though, blew me away with a spiritual sensitivity I did not at all see coming.

Book #10 was Alabama Moon, by Watt Key. I enjoyed this book - it's the story of Moon, who lives in the woods with his slightly wacky survivalist father. After his father dies in the first chapter, Moon is on his own and has to make his way in a world that's different from the one for which his father prepared him. Moon is 10, and I found him a little too mature in spots, but he's a strong character and I think kids will want him to succeed.

I'm reading several books right now and I hope the next Reading Update will not be quite so long in coming.

Barbie - Evil or Neutral?

I've never been much of a Barbie fan, but when my daughter had a period of six months or so when she liked Barbie, we just went with it. Someone gave her one, and I think I picked up some at a yard sale. She played with them for a while, and then lost interest.

Of course I have read about the criticisms of Barbie and how she ruins girls' self-esteem. I was interested to read this article, which says that we can't blame Barbie for the damage society does to our daughters - or for the damage we ourselves do to them.

What do you think?

Theme Day - Glass

It's the first of March, and today's DP blogs' theme is "Glass." You can see thumbnails of the participants' photos here.

Asparagus Standoff

This headline, Cypriots and UN soldiers in asparagus standoff, raised some Veggie-Tales images in my head, but apparently it is a very serious situation. I never knew that

asparagus harvesting has never been for the faint-hearted with pickers crawling into dense thorn bushes to pick the delicate shoots from the undergrowth.

Poetry Friday - Late at Night in Bed

It's been a long time since I did a Poetry Friday post of my own, as opposed to just linking you to the list of other people's posts. This week I have no excuse at all, since I have been on vacation. I finished all my grading last Saturday and have been able to relax completely. It has been wonderful!

And yet, as this poem reminds me, I don't ever relax completely. I am always alert, listening for what is going wrong, or what might go wrong in a minute. Just last night I was tiptoeing around while everyone slept, checking on the children, checking on the quiet empty living room.



Late at Night in Bed
by Gregory Djanikian

My wife tells me she hears a beetle
Scurrying across the kitchen floor.
She says our daughter is dreaming

Too loudly, just listen, her eyelids
Are fluttering like butterflies.

What about the thunder, I say,
What about the dispatches from the police car
Parked outside, or me rolling over like a whale?

She tells me there’s a leaf falling
And grazing the downstairs window,
Or it could be glass cutters, diamonds,
Thieves working their hands toward the latch.
She tells me our son is breathing too quickly,
Is it pneumonia, is it the furnace
Suddenly pumping monoxides through the house?

So when my wife says sleep, she means
A closing of the eyes, a tuning
Of the ears to ultra frequencies.

(It is what always happens
When there are children, the bed
Becoming at night a listening post,
Each little ting forewarning disaster.)



Later in the poem comes my favorite stanza:


My wife stirs, Be glad, she says,
Sound doesn’t carry far, that you don’t hear
The whole of it, cries in the night,
Children in other cities, hurts, silences.


Indeed, I am glad that I don't hear all of it, for what I do hear is quite enough to keep me listening, and worrying, and fretting, and praying.

Here's the rest of this wonderful poem. And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday

Here's this week's Poetry Friday roundup.

Storybook Ending

I loved this article by Edwige Danticat.

Blog Break

So, you miss a day or two of posting, and before you know it, it's been two weeks. I didn't intend to take a blog break but it looks as though I did anyway. Last week I took a quick trip to the States, and as usual, preparing to have a sub and then clearing up after having a sub took more time than the trip itself. I still haven't finished all the grading but the end is in sight now.

I had a wonderful time; I hung out with a friend who used to live here and the two of us went to a teacher retreat together. I visited a bookstore (and came back laden with some new choices for my students), Wal Mart, Target, an international grocery store and more than one restaurant.

I also got to visit a state-of-the-art middle school and drool over Promethean boards and carts full of laptops and wireless-enabled hallways and tens of thousands of dollars worth of musical instruments. I might be tempted to be discontented with the resources in my school after seeing these things, but when I compare my own classroom to those of the vast majority of the teachers in this country, many of which don't even have walls, I can't complain.

I came back to students who were happy to see me and my ordinary life goes on. It's always nice to have a change and a break, and mine did me good.

Reading Update

Book #1 of 2009 was Son of the Mob, by Gordon Korman. I picked up this book because of an article I read in a teacher magazine about pairing classics with YA books. This was supposed to be a great companion for Romeo and Juliet. It's the story of a mobster's son who falls for an FBI agent's daughter. It was OK, but not great. I put it in my classroom library and while several kids have started it, I don't think anyone has finished it.

Book #2 was The Splendor of Silence, by Indu Sundaresan. I enjoyed the portrayal of India in the 40s, in the last days of the Raj.

Book #3 was His Majesty's Dragon, by Naomi Novik. I bought this for my classroom based on a review I read, but I don't think it is going to hold the interest of most of my students. It moves a little too slowly for them, and the vocabulary is too challenging for most in my opinion. However, I enjoyed it myself. It's a bit difficult to classify - sort of an alternative history, except that it's fantasy. Perhaps one of the jacket blurbs (quoted from Time magazine) says it best: "Enthralling reading - like Jane Austen playing Dungeons & Dragons with Eragon's Christopher Paolini." Set in the Napoleonic Wars, the series imagines an Aerial Corps which consists of valiant aviators flying dragons. Ultimately, though, I found it a bit difficult to suspend disbelief. Not about the dragons - that part I accepted willingly and with great delight. No, I just couldn't swallow that the mores among the aviators are so - well, 21st century. Laurence, coming in from outside, fights against his shock - but he isn't shocked enough. Yes, this is the period of Jane Austen, and judging by the things her characters get het up about, Laurence would not adjust so easily. That said, I will probably read the rest of the series if I get the chance. The book is great fun and I am probably being ridiculous to ask for social verisimilitude in a dragon book anyway.

Book #4 was a wonderful book called Fieldwork, by Mischa Berlinski. To make reference once again to a blurb on the book: "A reader doesn't have to have any interest in Christian missionary work, anthropology, or the hill tribes of Thailand to be riveted," says The Christian Science Monitor. As it happens I'm intensely interested in the first two, and it didn't take a big stretch to become interested in the third. Mischa Berlinski is in Thailand because his girlfriend is teaching at an international school. He finds out about a mysterious story - an anthropologist shot a missionary. Soon he is enthralled and must find out more and more. The reader quickly feels the same way. I loved the sardonic, yet sympathetic portrayals of all the different kinds of characters. Some examples:

Gunther the yoga teacher knew all about the Walkers: he, too, had heard stories...."I haff never met them," Gunther said. "But I hear so many things. I do not like this kind of Christian who liff in a big house with so many servants, and then tell the people how they must liff. Is that for you to be a Christian?" Gunther looked at me severely. I shook my head. Gunther himself lived in a big house with many servants and told many people how they must live, but it did not seem the right moment to mention that.

Tom Riley knew the Walker story well, having passed many long evenings in the company of one or another of the Walkers as they went from lonely Dyalo village to lonely Dyalo village, preaching - and in preaching, like war, you get to know folks.

...the fourth-grade teacher at Rachel's school, a quiet Burmese woman...broke her wrist in a tuk-tuk accident. Mr. Tim...asked me to take over her class while she convalesced, and for a week I taught school, an experience so exhausting that I didn't think once of anthropologists or missionaries, just savages.

...she induced in Martiya [the anthropologist] a considerable sense of First World guilt and discomfort. (This discomfort was intensified by Lai-Ma's habit of taking Martiya aside and saying, "Oh, I am tired! How my bones ache! How I wish I were rich like you and could do nothing all day!") Hauling just one plastic petrol-jerry of water up the hill was enough to exhaust Matiya, but Lai-Ma would inevitably carry two, one in each hand, and on her back in a plaited basket, a dozen hollow bamboo tubes each overflowing with water, the whole heavy load held in place with a tumpline across her forehead....Matiya felt like a freeloader every time she saw her in the course of the day.

While this is an intelligent book and was a finalist for the National Book Award, it's also a great story (unlike another book I abandoned halfway through this week because in spite of all the rapturous comments on the back, there just didn't seem to be much of a plot). It is surprising, and funny, and heartbreaking. I recommend it highly - it's certainly the best book I've read so far this year!

Theme Day - Paths and Passages

Eric shows us a passage from Madame Bovary. Other DP bloggers have different interpretations of today's theme, Paths and Passages.

Poetry Friday

Overheard

In my classroom today, I heard a student say to another, "No, I'm sorry, I can't come to your party because I don't get along with you."

You have to admire that kind of candor.

Sunday Morning

Well, the electricity is fixed (hooray!) and I'm staying home from church with a sick child (boo!). I've been looking at the Obamameter, which is tracking which of President Obama's campaign promises he has already kept, is in the process of keeping, doesn't keep, compromises on, and so on. On day five in office, he's already kept five of his promises and fourteen are in the works. One of the ones in the works is getting his daughters a puppy. Come on, sir! Let's get moving!

Saturday

As usual, I am working in my classroom on this Saturday morning, trying to get caught up, plan for next week, and generally get my head together. This has been a bit of a hectic week, but I had several examples of what we as teachers always want to see - kids engaged with the material, or at least engaged by or with something.

One day this week we had some visitors to the campus and my administrator brought them in to visit my room. Not always the most risk-free thing to do when I'm teaching seventh grade, but this time it was wonderful. The kids were working in groups, everyone was on-task, and there was a low, purposeful buzz, rather than a roar of random racket. It's always fun to show off your students at their best.

Another class had a bake sale this week and it was not an unqualified success. Because of all the conflict among the kids in the class and the time we had missed already while the last brownies were sold, I threw out my plans and we brainstormed how the next bake sale could be better. The enthusiasm of the kids was good to see, and eventually most of them had stopped throwing blame and were coming up with great ideas.

In my ESL class, a simple activity where the students had to identify linking verbs and action verbs somehow engaged everyone. The kids were yelling back and forth, "AV!" and "LV!" and having earnest (and loud) arguments in their first language about which answer was best. I called it Grammar as a Combat Sport but one of the kids called it Extreme Grammar and I liked that even better. Afterwards we had a good discussion about how at times when we are emotional about or interested in what we are doing, our heart language (in their case not English) comes out of our mouths much more readily than our educational language. One of the students said that when she tells someone in her own language about an event, it feels as though the other person was there, whereas when she speaks in English there's more of a distance. Almost nobody at our school speaks English on the soccer field.

Each of these incidents reminded me how much I love teaching and, especially, how much I love teaching these particular kids, each one of whom is unique and full of potential.

I'm about to go home, since all my lessons for next week are done and my copies are made. I have plenty of grading but I can do that at home. We are having electrical problems at home again so I probably won't be online much for the rest of the weekend and won't have the time to read today's Saturday Review of Books.

Have a good weekend!

Poetry Friday - Praise Song for the Day

I am sure I won't be the only one to post Elizabeth Alexander's inauguration poem for today's Poetry Friday. I heard lots of complaints about it, but I think it's beautiful. Here's my favorite stanza:

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

And here's the rest of the poem.

Here's an article from a Minneapolis-St. Paul paper where local poets reflect on the effect of poetry at an event like the inauguration.

And I'm wondering, why have only Democratic presidents, so far, had poetry at their inaugurations? (Kennedy, Clinton twice, and now Obama.)

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.