Grading some late work... this student was writing the prologue to Beowulf, in her own words.

Best line: "There was a crazy-ass man running around killing his foes. Everything was scary. He made some success and dollar bills y'all. This was one good king."
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Whenever I tell halfway knowledgeable people that I teach sophomore English, they give me a pitying look and say something along the lines of how difficult that particular age group is. And it’s true; sophomores are definitely the seventh graders of the high school arena. Then again, my two favorite ages to teach (so far) are 7th and 10th grade, so I guess I just really like squirrels and chimpanzees. I never really completely understand why people don’t want to teach sophomores; I mean, yes, they’re goofy and dopey and awkward, but they’re just so much fun!

And then something happens like what happened the other day, and I realize: Oh. This is what they’re talking about. J

We had a self-paced review for my extra 4A day, and while they worked with partners I was busily grading that day’s finals and fielding questions as they came. One of my very sweet, slightly needy sophomore boys came up to me with yet another question – this time, about how many questions were on the final. What follows is my own fault, because I didn’t even look up at him (so rude!) as I grabbed the top final on my stack to double check the number of questions. I told him, and he hmmed and hawed and said, “Well, how much of our grade is it?” and then “how much of it is multiple choice?” I answered each question without even really realizing that I’d never raised my head.

He finally thanked me and walked back to his small group. The class immediately broke out into suppressed and not-so-suppressed giggles.

Turns out, he’d taken something rather large and stuffed it down the front of his pants, and had been standing in front of me with this massive bulging crotch right at my eye level, having a conversation with me for several minutes.

And I’d never even noticed. Which, I maintain, is almost certainly for the best.

Seriously. SOPHOMORES.
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Another, “Well, good, but that’s not exactly what I was hoping you would get out of it” response:

The reading from this year has tought me many things. They have thought me that Black people arnt bad people and neaither are Jews.

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Student response on final exam (prompt was to choose three texts from a list of things read that year, and discuss what they had taught you about making difficult decisions in your life):

“In the book Night Eliezer and his father go through suffering and every decision they make can risk their life. This makes me think about my driving. When I drive I put my life in danger when I text or don’t wear a seat belt. So this book taught me that decisions you make can either save or ruin your life.”

Uhm… good?

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Okay, I just had an assignment turned in that I really have to share. It’s an illustration, but I’ll do my best to describe it. It actually does a decent job of showing comprehension of the concept, but I just can’t believe that anyone would turn something like this in!

The assignment was to pick an important quotation from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, cite it, and then illustrate it – either symbolically through a collage, or literally through a scene depiction. This fella chose the line where Theseus says to Hippolyta, “I woo’d thee with my sword, and won thy love doing thee injuries.”

We’d talked about symbolism and phallic imagery briefly before starting the play, and I guess it stuck.

Student's picture is a man and a woman in a field. The man is holding a sword aloft and saying, “It’s woo time baby!!” The woman replies, “Yayyy!”

The man is also sporting a, uh… how to put this delicately… a below-belt physical manifestation of romantic exuberance.

Oh, and did I mention the part where he screwed up the quote, making it now say that Theseus “won thy love doing thee with my sword”?

I guess this is what I get for teaching Midsummer through a Freudian lens… :D
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For those who are otherwise unfamiliar with my teaching schedule, we’re on block (A day and B day) with four classes a day (for kids; teachers have three classes and one prep). My A-1 and B-4 are very strong, very academic classes. My A-2 and B-2 are very earnest, for the most part, but struggle academically due largely to LEP and attendance. And my A-4 is a schizophrenic nightmare, filled half with National Honor Society kids and half with actual gang-member juvenile delinquents.

Today I started my Midsummer Night’s Dream unit, which is my very favorite part of the sophomore curriculum and one that I cling to despite other teachers’ insistence of Julius Caesar’s superiority. I love the goofiness of it, the dirty jokes, the shocking situations, and the happy, lighthearted way it allows us to end the school year.

And I love the way I teach it. I close my door and lower my voice, and ask my kids if they can keep a secret from the other English teachers. “I love this story so much that, even though it’s against the English teacher code of ethics, I really just want to just read it for the joy of reading it and not bother with a big paper or anything. Is that okay with you guys?” Then we prep for each reading assignment by dressing up and acting out the scenes in contemporary English, read, and watch clips from Michael Hoffman’s beautiful film adaptation. There are comprehension quizzes here and there to keep the kids honest, but mostly it’s a celebration married to some great discussion – and in the end, the kids are maybe just a little bit in love with Shakespeare.

Before I start, I want to point out that we did NOT review anything about the Shakespearean theater or the fact that men played women’s parts.

Today, we were talking about the Amazons and their matriarchal society, so that I can layer on additional understanding about the tension between Hippolyta and Theseus (and hopefully clue them in to why knowing “stuff” makes reading more interesting). I’ve given them a goofy history lesson about chopping off boobs and slaughtering Spartans, and explained the whole “where do they get babies/what do they do with men” situation.

First, let’s look at A-1. Sharing a moment of sympathetic pain, my girls are all hugging their chests and my boys are trying manfully not to cup themselves after my cheerful point that “If the Amazons couldn’t chop off the man’s head, they’d probably have to chop something else off in order to keep them as a slave.” I’m giving the children doe eyes and they’re loving it.

A boy in the back of the room raises his hand. “Mrs. Bees, is that what happened with the men who had to play female parts in the theater in that time? I mean, didn’t they, er, cut that stuff off so that they always had high-pitched voices?”

Okay – wrong. But he’s remembed something from last year’s Romeo and Juliet unit, and he knows something about opera history and the castratti, and he made an intelligent if wrongheaded connection. This is my A-1.

Now let’s look at A-4. After the same conversation, one boy blurts out, “So, if they chopped off their weiners, aren’t they a girl now?” The boy next to him says, “No, man, they don’t chop your nuts.” The girl in the next row wants to know how they pee, and now another boy wants to know what the Amazons did with the unwanted breasts, and whether or not they made them into ashtrays. Weiner Boy is by now holding forth on the idea that Shakespeare made guys play girl parts because he was gay and wanted to mess with little boys offstage.

I wrestle the conversation away from this subject and introduce the character of Nick Bottom and slip in the fact that he is the butt of many jokes in this play. “Okay, guys, so if it’s true that in Shakespearean comedy a sword is never just a sword, what do you think about this character’s name?”

“He likes to take it in the butt!”

This is my A-4.

Ah, what a difference a few hours can make.

Then again – he did remember that men played female parts!

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I have a lot of more serious posts to write, assuming I ever get around to it, but before I can do that I have to share something TAR-worthy.

We’re doing that thing (I’m sure it has a name) where you have an inner circle and an outer circle, and they pair up and discuss something, and then one circle rotates until they find a new partner, and then they discuss a new topic or more on the first… What in the blue blazes is that called, anyway? Whatever it is, it works very well…

Anyway, we’re doing that thing, which means that kids are sitting on the floor. And this kiddo in particular – we can call him Larry if you’d like – has taken the opportunity to roll up his pants legs to mid-calf. I can’t resist comment.

ME: Are you trying to persuade your partner by showing off a little leg?

LARRY: Ha – yeah, I think that’ll work.

ME: Rocking the man-capris today, I see.

LARRY: Yep. You know it.

ME: Is that the new fashion trend for spring? Man-capris? [To Larry's female discussion partner] I think he might ought to shave first, though.

LARRY: No way. [Rubs the leg hair on his calves.] This is my manhood here.

ME: [Blinking; heroically keeping a straight face.] That’s your manhood?

LARRY: Yep.

[Girls are giggling. Larry is oblivious. A couple of his guy friends look over, smirking, probably wondering whether it would be funnier to clue him in or watch him dig himself into a hole.]

FEMALE STUDENT: That’s a little disturbing.

LARRY: Okay, fine. I’ll put my manhood away.

[Much dissolving into giggles.]

ME: Did you really just say that?

LARRY: What?

ME: I’m going to have to write that one down. Dear Diary. Today, one of my students said ‘I’ll put my manhood away.’

LARRY: Huh? Ohhhh!!!!!!

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Lovely... 01/21/2011
 
Nurse sent out an email this morning warning us that there are a lot of kids getting sent home sick with flu-like symptoms, and advising us to scrub our desks and whatnot.

Found out in our department meeting today that we have a confirmed case of – get this – scarlet fever in the school, and a probable case of H1N1 amongst the faculty.

And about second period today, I began to get that hot-behind-the-eyes, abruptly-lost-ability-to-type-or-spell, scratchy-but-not-yet-painful-throat feeling that I know all too well. Here’s hoping that this germ is related to the last one I had like this, and will work its way out of my system in 24 hours… I have a class tomorrow and a long anticipated day trip on Sunday. No time for germs!

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I’m an English teacher, and I love books, and I actually enjoy analyzing books. I think that being able to read between the lines and grasp the greater themes, the symbolism, the connections to the rest of the universe, is a valuable skill for humans. I don’t think it’s going to prove especially useful to every one of my students; some people don’t and never will enjoy thinking for themselves. But being able to appropriately decipher literature will open intellectual doors for many of my students.

That being said… I have doubts. I became an English teacher in great part because I thought it was a tragedy to hear people say that they’d never read a book, that they hated reading, that they couldn’t write. I thought that I could do some small part, in my small corner of the world, to change that. And I bring passion and enthusiasm to our examinations of literature; I show them why it’s fun, I hold open the door and shine a flashlight inside.

But am I just reinforcing the very thing I wanted to fight?

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Jan. 2, 2011
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Head, Meet Desk 12/20/2010
 
Grading my sophomore English finals, and I swear if one more student identifies Scout Finch as a BOY I will scream out loud.

I mean, it’s not as if we didn’t read the book.

And discuss it.

And do activities for it.

AND WATCH THE EVERLOVING MOVIE.

Then again – at least these people (at least half a dozen of them so far) realized that the narrator was a child. I’ve had 2-3 identify Scout as a woman in her 30s-40s. And one precious little snowflake (whose sole recollection of TKAM is that there was a “ravid dog”, and who tells me that the reason he failed my class is because I assign too much work – never you mind that he doesn’t bother to do ANY of the work) believes that the narrator of TKAM is Boo Ewell.

Yes, you read that correctly. BOO. EWELL.

Then again, it is always nice to realize that the texts one teaches have subtextual connections. Did you know, for example, that one of Antigone’s siblings is Calpurnia, and another is Atticus? I had no idea that they were related!

We all know that Antigone’s family is a little dysfunctional, but I didn’t realize that she was married to her brother. Or that she believed that all dead people needed to be beared. Or berried.

It’s good to have working definitions of important terms, both academic vocabulary and text-specific. Here are two terms that you might find useful:

Theme: Theme is like for example is like the theme of a book or a play a movie or poetry.*

Comunist: Is when people vote on something that they think its right but its accuatlly wrong.**

*Who knew I had Miss South Carolina in my class?

**I knew we had a bunch of commies in this state!

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