Allison’s Update: Poets In Our Midst

I’ve been painstakingly going through everyone’s work to choose pieces for the anthology– always such an interesting process. I see things I’d forgotten about, realize how much better many of them have gotten, find some things that were never read in class (like finding small treasures), and in one sitting… have the ability to see what is important to the collective consciousness of a bunch of elementary school kids. Over and over, it’s concern for their safety with the violence and guns and gangs in their neighborhood. It’s a concern over drugs, and a constant written reminder to themselves of what they do not want to do and who they do not want to be. It’s stunning to think of the social issues these kids deal with everyday, and yet they still manage to overcome all of it and learn and laugh and move forward. They are much wiser and much more mature than many adults I know. Reading their thoughts just made me think again how very sad I am at the thought of them all leaving this year, and like them, how sad I am to see their school closed. One student wrote that every single member of her family, starting back with her great grandmother, attended G. School.

That being said, there was some darn good writing.

In the past four weeks, all of my groups (except the 2nd graders and special ed) have continued to work with poetry, and specifically with social commentary.

We have read a variety of social commentary poems. One week I brought in poems written by STL high schoolers, who were writing about the same themes of drugs and violence and street life. I also brought in a “community” poem written by the high schoolers. It was a merged poem, with parts from each student. All of my classes really liked it. We took that idea of using many voices to form one and we tried our own community poems. In each class, everyone started with their own piece of paper and wrote for about two minutes, then we passed the poems clockwise until everyone had written something on each paper. We knew at the beginning that some would work and some would bomb, and that some people would take the ideas in directions we had not imagined. For the most part, they were actually quite good, and the kids really liked how they worked.

In smaller classes (less than 8 people), we split into groups, I wrote topics on the tops of papers, and then we passed them around several times. The best poems were all about their neighborhoods, crime and violence, and their school– all local and on their mind. A poem I suggested about the environment seemed to be lost on them, or certainly not as immediate.

We have also spent a lot of our time reading more social commentary poems. Each time, I bring in two poems that are very different– usually one which is older and by an established well-known poet, and one which is more contemporary and unknown. Both have gone over well. We have read many by Langston Hughes, as well as several poems by other teenagers and homeless men. We have discussed the themes and tones of the poems and learned these terms.

Last week, wanting them to better understand tone, I started by handing each of them a piece of construction paper that had an emotion listed on it. They were asked not to show anyone, but to figure out how to act out or convey that emotion without words. The emotions were mostly straight-forward, but they did a good job, and most guessed immediately as we talked about how they knew.

We then moved on. I had written random lines from poems they were not familiar with onto notecards. Each chose a notecard and then had to figure out how to read it with an emotion– any emotion they wanted. They could go for funny/silly, sad, happy, confused, commanding, frustrated, etc. Almost everyone got this and really did a great job. I saw for the first time, my students really connected with words they were reading. Even when they read their own stuff, no matter how much we practice or say the same thing, there is little feeling. We practiced doing the same line in several ways.

Then, each student got a poem and had to figure out the tone they saw in it, and then they had to read it, expressing that tone. They did a fantastic job. We talked about cues we give as we speak– head up, voice high or low, speed, pauses, eye contact. I told them to read their own work with that kind of emotion so that their audience didn’t just hear the words, but they understood them. Many of them were able to carry those new reading skills into their work this week, which impressed me greatly.

Today we worked on more poems, first brainstorming true things about ourselves, questions about the world, and our beliefs… then writing. My sixth grade group from Ms. P’s class is a group of fantastic poets. Funny too, because many of them have learning and literacy issues, but man, can they write poetry. All are great at rhyming. R., the only girl, is an excellent poet who seems to really understand the value of poetry as expression and release. J.F., a great thinker who knows many Hughes poems by heart, always has great brainstorming lists and makes answering my questions look easy. N. and T., whom I had never worked with before, have proven themselves to be exceedingly expressive and very given to performance… in a good way. Both would be great at poetry slams. I think people will love to hear them at the end of the year.

My 2nd grade and special ed group has also been doing quite well. We took our parts of speech learning and translated it into poetry. I wanted them to also realize the fun of words by being able to write poems, even though I wasn’t quite sure they were ready for poetry. Taking, and ammending an idea I got from another program I am involved with, I created fill-in-the-blank poetry, like Mad Libs, which they were familiar with. I wrote two original poems, and then Mad Lib style, they filled in the blanks with certain parts of speech. Some got this very quickly, like D. and RF, but all got there eventually and seemed to enjoy it. We brainstormed first about spring things and butterflies, and then we worked on the poems for two weeks, with the ones who finished early illustrating their poem. Now, they are all working on writing and illustrating books. It’s interesting to see who starts with words (the girls), who starts with pictures (the 2nd grade boys), and who is illustrating their poems (the other boys)… though it’s both funny and a bit disconcerting to see them illustrating butterfly poems with cars.

All the same, I feel like there has been a lot of progress. This year has been much more about concepts, especially about building upon the basics. That has meant less writing, or not necessarily less writing, but definitely less polished, finished product. Last year and previous years, almost every session yielded a product, and then every few weeks we went back and chose one and edited it. This year, we have written less and worked more on thinking and the process, editing quickly as we go, and not re-typing or re-writing our final products as much (though we still do). It’s interesting, because I almost feel like it’s yielded much better work.

Two more weeks, and I can’t wait to see what else they think.

Schaenen-catching up on April

MAP tests and odd schedule messed up the 4th grade schedule for 2 weeks, so here we go, a little behind.

Second grade round up – April 2, April 9, April 16, 2008

We had a long talk in class about what it means to “talk white.” It all started with adjectives – we were going to highlight the adjectives in the first chapter of The Hobbit, and somehow when reviewing what an adjective was, we got on the subject of color and ethnicity. We tried to emphasize that people of any color can talk in any way, that color was not necessarily attached to the way one sounded. But this was tough and complex – I’m not sure how or whether any of this “got through.” After a long talk, I asked the students to write three adjectives that described who they were and then some sentences about why they chose those three. Some examples:

“Black
African American
Kind
Precious
Sweet
I chose those trhee because they are true about me and my teacher told me half of the words and my mom told me all of them both of them are my favorite teacher and mom.”

“ I am light. I got short hair. I am African American. I pick those three because I have all those adjectives on my skin. I’m kinda white.”

“I am a African American. I love myself. I am in the second grade. I am JB. I am the tallest in my classroom. I am light brown. That’s who I am and I love my family.”

“I am African American from Rochester, NY and St. Louis, Missouri. I am crazy colors of the world. I am a person who writes and reads.”

The next week we then proceeded to read through a handout of The Hobbit,first aloud, then on our own, circling adjectives and defining them so we would know what they meant. Working in pairs, the students made lists of all the adjectives they could find and then picked three to use in sentences that they could make up on their own. Many of the kids used colors, but a few used the more interesting words like sandy, comfortable, oozy, nasty, wet, and respectable.

On April 16th, we played Two Truths and a Lie. I put my example on the board, and we played one round with me as a group. Then they wrote theirs and everyone got a turn, got to call on someone to guess, and feel at the head of the class.
Mine: If I could have any superpower, it would be teleporting.
I eat a banana every day.
I would always rather eat at home than go out.
Keeping track of what’s true, what’s not, and why we guess one and not the other exercises critical thinking every single time.

Third grade, same weeks:

We had the same talk on the 2nd about “talking white. I got some of it on audio tape. Then we did the same thing as second grade – pick 3 adjectives that describe yourself and use them in sentences:

“I am a African American. I speak English. I do not speak any other language. I like school. I really like writing class.

I like those these because they were the first thing in my mind. They are also true. I am a African American. I so speak English I don’t know a nuther language. I like school. And this really true. I like writing class. All these things are true. I really like to write.”

Naturall, this warmed my heart beyond belief – written by a very shy by hardworking and attentive student who is really coming into her own, expressively.

April 9, we talked about how language could sound different even if the words were speled the same. We said GIRL shaped in AAE and GIRL shaped in SE. Some feedback from listening to family out in the world – one girl reported that she heard her cousin, granny, auntie, other cousin, and unclfe all switch from AAE to SE when on the phone with certain people. Another girl heard her uncle switch when talking to the electric company.

Then read through The Hobbit and looked for adjectives, harvested them, is how I referred to the process. Then they used as many of these cool words as possible in a story they made up themselves. Silent good writing time, sound of pencils ONLY for many many minutes. Most kids wrote two solid pages of story. One question posed to me, “Is it OK if you are the evil queen?”
K looking at T’s work: “She write neat. I like how she write.”

Great work from everyone.

On April 16, I spread out all these cards of famous accomplished African Americans and the class chose one to read about and write about. Lots of vocabulary learning and deciphering. Lists of words to look up.

Fourth grade, April 16

Great to see everyone after a month!
Before getting started with anything, I asked the kids to write me letters to tell me anything they wanted me to know – what they’d been up to, any feelings, thoughts, anything about spring break, anything…activities. “What’s been up with you?”

Some reports on the MAP tests, some adventures from break, many addressed to me personally like a letter. All so sweet and focussed. I let them write for 20 minutes or so, and then we chatted about the upcoming collaboration day with the John Burroughs kids. We planned the menu, and some of the flow of the day. Then they wrote their 2 truths and lie for the program of that day. The second hour did the same thing – free write followed by two truths. They also browsed in their folders for their favorite work to go in the lit journal we publish at the end of the year. Sorry this is all so short and brief, with few examples – I’ve been wanting to catch up for a while – I will try to infill or backfill some examples at some point. We only have a few more meetings this year and there is a lot to pull together. I am really looking forward to the JBS day.

Inda

The Things That Are the Same… and those that are different.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

I was so excited to be back after Spring Break and MAP. The kids were very excited as well. I came in early and wrote out what we will be doing in each class for the next six weeks that way the kids see it each time and can see where we are headed and where we have been. For most of the classes, we will be focussing on poetry for the next several weeks, resulting again in a reading party like we did last year. But for most of the groups, we will be doing a Poetry Slam instead of a regular reading. I want them to perform their work, and to feel their work and make an audience feel it. They have such great things to say, and I am hoping that taking care with the delivery will allow them to slow down and really understand the value of their thoughts to others and the power of language and communication. So, the next several weeks, we will be discussing poetry as social commentary, reading a selection of poems I have been reasearching and pulled together, and writing. I also found out that Ms. Warren has a DVD player in her room, so hopefully I will be able to bring in some clips of Slams for the kids to get the idea. I am really excited.

On my way to get my first group, I ran into Ms. Warren who said they had been writing poems in her class to celebrate National Poetry Month, and she had written as well, which I loved. I only had a chance to read a couple (they’re posted in the hallway), but they were fantastic free verse, very personal, and pretty honest. I was pleased to see that.

2nd Grade and Ms. V’s students

Before the break, we had been working on parts of speech and then on poetry with this group. I was very pleased with how far they came, the second graders especially doing very well. I had created fill-in-the-blank poetry with parts of speech. So the poems worked to reinforce what we were learning, as well as allow them a lot ofcreative freedom, and a safe and more approachable way to experiment with poetry. It went very well. Because I knew the kids would be trickling in yesterday, those from Ms. V’s room always late, and because some were in resource and other locales, I quickly decided that we would finish our writing next week, but get back into the swing of things yesterday. So, we worked on covering synonyms and antonyms. I had a new student who guested in the R4W with us from Ms. G’s class, name. Temea, who was a pleasure. All four second graders knew the terms synonym and antonym, but when I asked for a synonym for “nice”, they all said “mean”. So we went back over the definitions and then through examples of same/opposites for “nice”, “pretty”, “good”, “Big”, etc.

When they got it, we moved on to playing Apples to Apples, though I changed the rules a bit. I was playing too, and I would call out, “Synonym”, so then everyone had to find one the same. The next time might be “Antonym”. With the structure of that game, sometimes you can only do so much, but it practiced out terms and the kids did a great job. They read the words well and knew most of the vocabulary on the cards already, which was quite impressive.

Our flow was a bit disrupted as one by one the four kids from Ms. V’s class came in, and all very late. Each time, I had to stop, explain the concepts and the directions. It would have been better to have two activities going, but all the kids in this group need a lot of supervision– the second graders because they are young, and the older ones because of their learning disabilities. Ms. V’s kids were getting frustrated because they didn’t understand the terms and couldn’t play very well; they stopped listening and T. began whining. Finally, I told them all I would not read them their cards, but would help them sound out the words, but only so many times, so they shouldn’t ask for help unless they really needed it. T. has a tendency to ask the same questions over and over as a way of getting attention. If I know she knows something and tell her no, she will do just fine on her own, but sometimes it takes a while for me to guage what she does and doesn’t know. I also told both her and TR that if they whined again, they would not be allowed to play, and behavior grew much better.

Overall, it was a great activity, just more difficult because of the interruption of students not coming in at the same time– which I will address with Ms. V. Not just the interruption, but then some students were only with me for 10 minutes. I can’t do anything in ten minutes, and I feel it just muddles many concepts and frustrates the students because they can’t participate fully, and many of them are frustrated enough.

6th Grade from Ms. W- Tuesday group
I brought in two social commentary poems from the packet I had put together and introduced the concept of Poetry Slams, which they liked. The poems were very mature– one about race by Langston Hughes, and the other about inner-city violence. We read them silently, then together each reading a line. Then we discussed the tone of each poem; we did this by me asking them what emotion they would use to label each poem. For the inner-city violence one, some missed it and just saw the kids playing, not the other things going on, but many noticed it was sad. I then read it for them and we discussed possible interpretations. We also did this with the Langston Hughes and then each student had to say whether they liked or disliked each and a reason why. It was a very mature conversation and they were very engaged.

I had meant to use the poems as prompts, but they asked if they could not write, saying they had been writing for two days in their class. I offered other thinking alternatives and they selected one. As a writer, some days you need to just think and not get anything on paper. I decided to allow this because their discussion was very good and heavy. and I wanted them to have time to let it all sink in.

We ended up switching gears a bit and did a group rhyming story. Each person had to say a line and rhyme it with what came previously. I particpated also. the first few times were harder and some were better than the others (I am terrible at rhyme). It was fun though and great to see how they played off each other, what words were used repeatedly, and what themese kept coming up. At first I tried to write everything down to keep track of it, but it was moving too fast, which was really cool. We did probably about five separate stories, most of which involved at some place or another, a trip to the hospital, a trip to the mall, the things they do at home, and the sounds and sights of their neighborhoods. It was very interesting to see the locations and things that populate their world when they are less conscious.

It was a fun day. Tomorrow, with my Thursday groups, we will work through the social commentary poems and work on writing our own.

March 15…Schaenen

Fourth grade, first hour

We tried to repeat the activity formt he week before with a student playing teacher, but it didn’t work. The “teacher” upset one of the students very badly, in part because the student had wanted another boy to be teacher, but also because of their past relations, and I called it off. She ended up writing about how much he drove her crazy. Others wrote poems and raps. Once I was teacher again I had them put their heads down and close their eyes and I talked them into a safe, quiet place where they were totally happy and relaxed and safe and at peace. I asked them to picture this place and then get up and describe it in writing. Some places:

Six Flags, City Hall, a “camping tent” on the grass in Hawaii where “everything is free,” the art museum, a a hotel with mom and sister, at home “cooking in the kitchen for me and my family (“I be cooken chicken macironi and we drink sugar-free kool-aid and then I wash the dishes”), my room, my cousin’s house, the mall, Some people added on a little extra expression on a separate page:

PJ: “Sometime I want to scream and holler at people for no reason. But when I’m fin to I take a deep breath and count to ten for ten minutes. But what makes me mad is the hollering that people do by my ear so I got hot and start hollering and punching walls and other things. The things I hit gets dents in it.”

Second hour, fourth grade

We did the same “place” activity. Some places included: church, hotel, backyard club house, Anarctica (fanstasy), my bed, the massage room every Sunday with my grandma, Hawaii (fantasy).

Second grade

This is a very able group of writers. We did the same “place” activity and the results were amazing. Here’s one by DF. Notice how he addresses the experiences of all five senses (which I had written on the board as prompts):

“I will like to be in a swimming pool in the summer because it is very hot in the summer. The people who be there with me is my grandmother my sister my brother and my momma. I hear splashing in the water and I just like to lie in the water. I dive for some bricks, rocks, quarters, pennys. I touch the water and it is very, very, very warm in there. I look at my sister my brother and they all are having fun. My mom attached a rope on me so I will not drown in the water. Then when it is time for me to get out of the wter they always says I win because I am the fastest in the water. I went high in the air to see if I can survive the splashes of water. Then it is time to go.”

Other places: Hawaii, a jacuzzi, bed, candy world, spending time with my greatgrandma, Texas in order to be with a particular relative “ti-ti.”

Third grade

We had a visitor, an energetic, kind, interested senior from John Burroughs School whose parents are from south India. Mary Jo came with pictures and loads to share. She talked and took questions while I did management backup and discusssion facilitation. I passed out paper and invited the kids to “take notes” about what they werer hearing and remembering about the conversation. Some people also jotted down the questions they wanted to ask MJ. “When are you born? What is your hair style? Why is it so warm in Asia? What are the schools like?”
Some vocab:
Malayalam (the language spoken in Kerala) – a palindrome!
sari
rupees

I think the kids were a little confused about exactly what MJ represented – was SHE from India? Was she American, a regular kid from St. Louis? Exactly how exotic could she be when she spoke, dressed, looked exactly like an American kid. Also, there was the usual “at-a-loss” about the geography about where India was, its relation to where we are, distances, and the way the countries are laid out on the globe in general. I note all this simply to register how much seems to be needed by way of orientation and preparation when people with interesting things to share enter an urban classroom. I mean, one boy wrote as a question: “Do you have a friend in Indianna?” Then he crossed out the Indianna and wrote India. Obviously, this self-correction is important and good, but I do think there is all kinds of work to be done in terms of geographical concept building. All through the hour, MJ was kind and patient!

Allison’s News

I have encountered problems logging into WordPress for the last three weeks. Before, page load errors, and then today, once I actually got logged in, I then got errors about the page address not being found.

So I am going to do this the old-fashioned way—via email.

I went back to the kids at G. on the 15th of January, and was then very disappointed to hear about the school likely closing down. Some students seem acutely aware of this impending (and probable) possibility while others keep asking me if I will be here with them next year. For now, I have not addressed the issue with them in any great detail, though the thought of not being there after so many years saddens me each day.

Sickness and winter weather has offset a couple of our scheduled meetings, but we have managed to do some good work and some fun lessons. Here’s the update:

TUESDAYS, 2nd graders + special ed.

With this group, the whole year for me has been about building blocks, teaching the basics of writing and the components of phonics, words, and sentences. Their teacher really wants these students to be able to write long book reports and asked me for help in that department early in the year. But upon really working with the students and observing their skills and difficulties, it seemed very apparent that the goal of book reports might not be reached in the way the teacher envisioned. So I stepped back and created a plan. With so many students with special needs (5) and completely different literacy issues, it is often a struggle to find ways that we can all learn the same things, but enter into the activity with different access points and objectives. Surprisingly, it has worked reasonably well.

We began early in the year with simple phonics—using the concepts of alliteration and word choice to help students see that words could be fun, and the magic of choosing the right ones for our purpose. I have hoped all year that if I could show these students the power of language, specifically the power of words, that they would see it is all worth the effort and frustration. If something is difficult and there is no payoff, it seems to me that you are not going to expend much effort, nor have goals that even begin to approach your potential as a learner. We have worked with sentences in several ways—2 truths and a lie was one they liked.

In January, I began working with the concept of paragraphs, something we had begun to touch upon before the break. The problem was: not only could these students not define a paragraph or identify one, they claimed to have never heard the term. We did an experiment where they each found books on the shelves and we went through and discussed things we noticed, ultimately leading them to see indentations and that paragraphs were groups of sentences about one topic. We made models of sentences and showed how paragraphs were similar. But they still seemed a bit lost, and much of that was because… they also have a really tough time with sentences.

They know sentences are groups of words and that they end with a period, sometimes something else, but they did not know where or why or how you know when one is done when writing it yourself. So we backed up even further.

We spent the last month working on sentences. We began by going with a simple definition of a sentence is a subject, a verb, a complete thought and punctuation. I posted this all over the room with the parts being color coded so that they might visually understand the distinctive parts of the sentence and hopefully remember. We then went through a bunch of examples (some correct, some fragments, some run-ons) and talked about them being sentences or not. They were pretty good at this (the 2nd graders rocked as well). Then, in groups, they made sentences on the colored construction paper with the parts being coded again into their colors. And we acted out our sentences, each student in each team with a part. The repetition and fun of it made them better recall what a sentence is. Most of the time now, we are doing better with writing sentences. When something is missing, we go back and they can identify the missing part pretty quickly. I also left some posters up for reference.

While doing all this, we also used markers to find certain types of words in poems, and then we spent 2 weeks working on MadLibs for them to continue working with parts of speech. The 2nd graders got it a little more slowly, but once they did, they could finish in minutes. T (boy) had a harder time, just wanting to put in words and getting easily frustrated. He is very smart, but gives up easily and seems to use his anger as a way of getting out of things that are hard. No such luck with me. We’ve been working on the outbursts, and they are getting a bit better. He does not need my help very often in reality, but insists that he does. So now I simply stand next to him and encourage and he gets it, I praise, and he smiles, and then he can work for a while alone—that, for him, is a major improvement.

T (girl) has also been doing better with her behavior. Similarly, she will interrupt and disrupt when something is hard for her. She has the most difficulties of anyone in the group, and her classmates get frustrated with her and often want to just do things for her which I have outlawed. In December and January, she would barely write two words, never a sentence. I questioned for a while if she could even read. She definitely has some severe problems with reading and confuses her letters often, having a difficult time with the phonics and with identifying a “b” as a b, or even an “r” as an r. But, in the past two weeks, she has worked much more independently and can almost always now get the first letter or two of very short words alone (cat, dog)—something she was not doing a few weeks ago. Her behavior has also improved greatly.

All of the kids have been taking out books, though their teacher won’t let them take the books home even though I keep insisting it is fine. The good thing is, they are reading. Many choose books much easier for them, but they read and seem to enjoy it. R chose a chapter book one day and she told me that people tell her she isn’t a good enough reader for chapter books. (She’s in 5th grade, but a good speller and with good ideas, she reads below level.) She asked what I thought and I asked her back if she thought she could. She looked like she wanted to say yes, but was unsure. I told her that if she only did what people told her was easy, and if she never tried harder, then she would never achieve what she could. I told her no one but herself knew what she could truly do and she would only know that if she tried hard. I told her to take the book and take her time reading, and if she didn’t know a word to sound it out, that I often look up words myself. She took it, read it, and loved it. I was so proud of her.

Now with this group, rather ambitiously, we are going to try some poems. We spent this past session brainstorming to write “I am from” poems. I wrote several headings like “Things found inside my house” and “What I look like” (10 different headings) and we passed them around about every two minutes, each student adding to each list and then switching. They did a good job. Some needed help with words, but once they got going, they did well. T (boy) did a much better job spelling his own word and barely had any anger outbursts. T (girl) did extremely well and wrote many things on each sheet (short words, but barely required my help). Next week, I will have two observers, but I have already asked Martha to help me help them with the spelling. We read some poetry examples and they seemed excited. For our first try, we are going to do some fill in the blank poetry, MadLib style, using the kinds of words we have already brainstormed. If that goes well, maybe we’ll try poetry in a more organic, original sense. One way or the other, they enjoy coming, are improving, and hopefully are learning to love words a little more than they used to.

TUESDAY, 6th Grade Biography Class

In this class, we have continued to read and learn about biographies. In a lesson that tanked, I asked the students to imagine their classmates in the future and write a biography of the person they selected. They picked names, birthdates, and their classmates’ goals out of a hat and were asked to imagine why that person might be famous or important and then write a 1 page biography. A few people got it straight away and did well, like S. Others asked for some help with the why and then did well like M. and O. But behavior that day was bad. After several warnings, I finally split everyone up, told them there was no speaking and I wanted heads bent towards papers. At the end of class, I wrote nice notes to the two girls who had worked hard and behaved well the whole time.

The next week, I explained why we had done the lesson the previous week—to understand that biographies are the story of a person, and to enjoy them, we want to know why that person is special. We want to know that person’s story, with a sense of trajectory. I asked some what they would change in their writing from the previous week and they seemed to get it. Behavior was definitely better. If we have a few spare moments, we have been playing a modified game of 20 Questions, where each student gets a famous African-American written on a post-it note on their back. They have to walk around and ask questions of the others until they can guess who they are. It’s fun and good critical thinking and description for them.

Next week, we will have a musician in as a guest speaker, and then they will interview her and write about her.

THURSDAY, 5th grade

We have been experimenting with different kinds of poetry with the fifth grade since the break. We have done some rhyming bees, as well as working with the phrase “couplet” and producing rhyming couplets. On Valentine’s Day, we wrote odes. R.’s was the best, very funny—an ode to his technology. Most others wrote shorter, more basic odes to their moms or a friend. Each did a good job rhyming, which I personally find quite difficult. I will have one more session, where we are completing work on perspective and point of view and writing poems that ask the students to consider themselves from someone else’s p.o.v. After that, I will switch these groups and then take Ms. P’s 6th graders, which is a groups of 6-8 rather rowdy boys. I have worked with most of them before, but I am curious to see how it goes. The mixture of students may not be a great one, so I am planning on activities and lessons that keep them focused for shorter periods, keep it fun and engaging, and doesn’t have them up out of their seats too much (which tends to pull some of these boys off task, especially in the past). I am looking forward to it, but sad to see the 5th graders go. There are some good writers in that bunch (sadly, KH moved a few weeks ago, and without her talent in the room, you can feel the absence).

THURSDAY, 6th grade

My 2nd Thurs. group is the other half of Ms. W’s 6th graders. This mix of students is really fun. Their behavior is unparalleled and fantastic. They are smart and engaged and want to learn, which is like a dream for me. I usually try to do the same lesson for both the 5th and 6th grades on Thursdays to keep it a little more straightforward for planning. So we have been doing the poems and rhyming bees and African-American short bios as above. This group will also continue to work with p.o.v., though we will likely do more with it in addition to the brainstorming and the poems. I think we might even work through writing some dialogue and discussing voice—those are fun things to do that can also lead to a dramatic bent. This group is well enough behaved that we can definitely all be up and moving and having a good time and still stay on task. So I am curious to follow the idea of perspective through to its conclusion.

Overall, it’s been a good month or two. Lots of assemblies and schedule shifts though, which has had me come in early, stay late, combine classes, go to many rooms to pick up classes, etc. I hope to maintain the energy through spring break, then regain it (hopefully) in April after MAP.

LEAP DAY-February 29th–Schaenen

Fourth grade, 1st hour

The students all wrote their names on an index card. Then one person drew a card and the person whose name it was became teacher for the day. PJ was the teacher. We would be calling her “Ms. J.” I explained that now that the whole class was familiar with so many kinds of genres, her job was to pick one (they’re all always listed on the flip chart) and make up an activity for us to do in that genre. She could decide whether we would work alone or in groups. After being aggressively lobbied by the girl’s group (SA loves writing plays; so do the others, actually), she decided on “a play,” which we would write in 3 groups of 3. As we shoved desks around and got going, PJ said, “Y’all need to write yo names on yo paper.”

D asked whether we could write in Ebonics. PJ looked at me and I said, sure. PJ added that we could NOT use “cuss words.” D asked about violence. I said no and PJ shook her head no.

So we got to work I was in a group with D and D, two boys. Another group was 3 girls, and the third group was three boys. PJ took my notebook (the one I always make notes in as a run-of-the-class log) and drifted from group to group noting what we were all up to. Just as I do, she marked what individual people were up to beside their name:

“M and her group are working on their poem called The Girls of the getto.”
“D and his group are working on their poem called The Sleepover.”
“M and his group are working on a poem called The brothers of the hood.”

Reality check: she did make entries for all nine of us, and for every one she noted that we were working on poems, not plays. I will discuss this with her next week. Maybe it was a slip, or maybe a genuine misconception of the genre types. Maybe the lobbying confused her.

After we wrote, we took turns performing with the microphone. Here’s something to notice: the boys “stuck” with me (although it is perceived to be a treat, too) wrote a little play about a sleepover. A reader would see no elements of AAE in it – none. Might as well be The Berenstein Bears. Partly this is because of the kids themselves—other boys might have taken more initiative in the composition and gotten their own dialect out.

Meanwhile, in the girl’s group…

“M: Hey, y’all, what’s up what we gon do today?
S: I don’t know. How about I ask my mom could she take us to the mall?
All: Alright.
M: We finally at this mall…”

Y’all….we gon do…we finally at this mall (zero copula)—all AAE features.

Meanwhile in the boy’s group…

“D: I’m second to oldest I try to stay out of trouble but the street keep calling me back…[no s-marker on the 3rd person singular verb]
D: Since I just seen my dad for the first time ever cause he just got out of jail and now he in casket for something stupid I cried til I couldn’t no mo. [AAE features: seen my dad (past participle in lieu of simple past), he in casket (zero copula), no mo (r-lessness on more)]

Not to mention, of course, the very content of this play…the 3 brothers identify themselves, suffer…

A: It’s hard out here on these street I almost shot one day because they hitting on me so when I walk to go pick up brothers from school They said that they had a good day…my dad just got out of jail but now he’s in the box dead…

And then the ending…

A: I made it to college and got my degree. Now I play football I am a millionaire now. I made it.

And another thing: when the boys were performing, SA in the audience engaged in call-and-response at the dramatic turns…backchanneling: MMM-HMMM, OHHHH, things like that, in response to the disturbing realities conveyed by the play.

An amazing class, needless to say. I wonder what would have been written in “my” group had I not been a part of it???

Fourth grade, second hour

I gave this group a choice of topics to write about.
1. The most interesting (or embarrassing) person in their family—the later choice because one student requested it as a subject OR
2. When I am 20 years old I would like to be…who? what? where?
At first R was stuck: “I ain’t got no stories.”
They wrote for 25 minutes.
Then we took turns being emcee and introducing each other to read on the mike.
As AW took the mike: “Hello, my fellow worshippers,” obviously re-voicing the sounds of Sunday.

I think I feel most proud of the paragraph written by a relatively new boy in the school. He is a slow processor, very shy, and suddenly came up with something whole and honest both:

“The most embarrassing day I had was when I put my tongue on a frozen pole and was there for five minutes and I finally get free from the pole then my brother kick a ball and it hit me in the head then I fell on the ground and when I got back up quickly and ran back into the house when it got dark out and I went to bed when I was dreaming I thought I was going to the bathroom but wasn’t and you know what I do in my bed.”

Another story came up from down south about an uncle taking out the teeth of a roasted pig and making a spectacle of himself and joking around.

And finally:

“My dad is the most embarrassing Dad. He once came up to the school for picture day. They had a Santa painting with a chimney with fake fire. He put his hand under the fake chimney and started to rub his hands. Me and my mom and sister was so embarrassed. I started hiding my face and we were mad. I was so embarrassed because other people was in the room. It was kids in the school and their parents. I did not say NOTHING to him.”

And then orally, J told the story about having been pushed into the deep freezer at 1 in the morning by another kid. “It was very dark,” he said. Also: he licked ice and his tongue got stuck on it (he told this in response to the pole story). After some time (he said an hour, but that seems unlikely given oxygen) his mom came down and let him out.

Second grade

I brought in a real reflex hammer, the kind doctors use. I held it up as a surprise and asked if anyone had seen something like this before. A few had.
IS: What’s it called?
“A knee tappper?”
“That’s a good name for it but it has another name.”
Pause.
IS: What does it look like? What is it shaped like?”
“A hammer?”
And so we worked our way toward “reflex hammer.” We also defined “reflex.” Someone (AB) said, a reflex is a kind of reaction. Fantastic! A reaction that we cannot control, something we have no choice about doing. I passed it around. Then we got to talking about things we have control over and things we have no control over, what we have a choice about and what we do NOT have a choice about. We discussed whether we had a choice about hair color, and agreed that you could dye your hair if you wanted to. Height? You could wear heels, or (as one girl said, “cut your legs down”).

TJ: “I can control my feelings, like when I start to cry, I stop.”

So I asked them to make two lists side by side on the page, one of the things they had some choice about, and one of the things they had NO choice about. There was quiet writing, and also lots of conversation. It turned out to be an incredible revelation about personality. What some kids put in the “NO CHOICE” column, others put in the CHOICE column. I heard things like:
“Wow, I have a lot of choices” from DF, who wrote “I have a choice about which color I should get red first blue second. If somebody pushes you I have a choice to tell the teacher not to hit back. Everybody have a choice of how they speak. I have a choice to get new friends.”

By constrast, I heard: “I ain’t got no choices about nothing.” from AJ, who listed about 12 items in his NO CHOICE column, including things like what to wear, when to ride his bike, what to watch on TV, what to eat, what to feel. The only thing in his CHOICE column was “to pick my friends.” He said his mom decided everything for him at all times. (He has no choice about walking or riding the bus, for example, because his mom’s afraid he will get lost.) After class I spoke with Ms. C about this because it concerned me in the context of what I have seen and observed about this child from the beginning of the year, and she said it confirmed what she sensed and knew about the situation. AJ’s mom had been in school recently, quite distracted and upset by all the things in her life she had no control over. As Ms. C insightfully put it, the less control a parent feels in their own life, the more control they sometimes exert over the lives of their kids. I tink this is just one of those activities that helps with sympathy and patience at the school end…simply airing these kinds of things enlightens teaching practice, makes it whole and connected to the whole life of the child.

OH’s list:

NO CHOICE: I have no choice to eat or not eat.
CHOICE: I have a choice to listen to my mom every day and Ms. Casey. I have a choice that to walk or ride the bus. I have a chocie to make friend and have good time.

TJ put feelings on both columns because after discussion, we agreed that some feelings a person can control and others a person cannot control—like crying at a funeral, say, as DT said, he “went crazy” crying at his grandfather’s funeral. Kids have NO CHOICE about driving a car, listening to the principal, going to school. listening to your mother, listening to your dad, or doing your school work, she noted.

DT:

NO CHOICE: I don’t have a choice to curss. I don’t have a choice to sky diving and whatever your mama put food on the table you got to eat it.
CHOICE: I have a choice to go to school and watch TV and get presents for my birthday and Christmas. I have a choice to eat or play at home. And we have a choice when a person push you have a choice to push him back or tell on the person.

DM:

NO CHOICE (partial): I don’t have a chocie to cut off my brother hair. I have no choice to fight. I have a choice to not talk to stranger.
CHOICE (partial) I have a choice to eat or not eat. I have a choice to drink something or not drink something.

JB:

NO CHOICE: I have no choice to go to the mall. I have no choice to be ugly [it’s impossible for a beautiful person to be ugly, is what she means]
CHOICE: I have a choice to be friends with A. I have a choice to be nice to my friends. I have a choice to give gift to people on they birthday.

PR:

NO CHOICE: high diving, swimming in sea, not listening to teacher, to go Dad’s house
CHOICE: doing homework, going to school, doing the right thing, listening to the principal, listen to everyone that’s older than me, how you speak to someone.

This turned out to be an excellent activity, incredibly generative of conversation and thought. I may have to do it with older kids, too, and make sure we all get to do it every year.

Third grade

A smaller group today. We chose books from the Leo gift and they wrote thankyous and read for a while. I took their pictures and will send the thankyous and the photo off to Leo. I also read them a rhyming book that KH brought in to share. This group is MUCH nicer without a couple of the girls who did not take the class seriously.

Inda

February 20, 2008–Schaenen

Fourth grade, first hour

I brought in the big box of gently used books donated by Leo, my nephew in New Jersey. We opened it, read his cute note, and then I laid out the books and invited the kids to browse and choose one that looked interested, one that wanted to keep. Then they read for a while, wrote thank you notes, and we played the word guessing game on the chalkboard for the last 15 minutes.

“It has a “t” on the top of it. It is a big building and people pray in it.”
Answer: The Revolutionary Center, a food pantry place in the north city.

“He a person. He a best. He come from the dead.”
Answer: [Some wrestler.]
Interesting thing: Above was how the boy wrote his clues, but when he READ them LOUD he said, “He’s a person. He’s the best. He come from the dead.”
This is evidence of style shifting from written to oral. But also, there is typically instability from one domain to another for this child, who (and this has nothing to do with standard/Ebonics, I don’t think) has some kind of processing block when it comes to getting his EXTREMELY fluent oral verbal skills to appear on paper in writing. Letters and words go missing no matter what code he’s writing in.

A funny moment: one child, having written the thank yous and seeing everyone else had, too, was eager to play the game. He said, “We ready.” and again, “We ready.”

Me: “We ready?”
Second student: “We ARE ready.”
First student: “We ready.”
Me: “We ready?”
Third student [to me]: “Please don’t start that.”
Me [smiling]: Don’t start what?
Third student: “Makin us switch back and forth.”
First student: “We ready.”
Second student: “We ARE ready. How many times you going to say that, man?”

This was all very fast….an indication of how second nature this subject is in classroom conversation–so second nature that I have students utterly bored by it, now, like “we get it, we get it, already.”

Fourth grade, second hour

We did the same thing but I laid the books out on a table. They chose books and read a while to themselves and then drafted thank yous. The thank yous were all very different – some involved crayons, glue, cutting the paper, turning it sideways and writing as if it were a commercial card. Many kids included facts about Leo I had mentioned, that he loved to play tennis and baseball, that he lived in Montclair. I forgot to mention that I passed out nice patterened paper to use instead of plain lined paper. Some kids wanted to use both so I let them.

A cute exchange with AW, who was play-bragging about his dad who lives in a mansion. I had said I wanted them to maybe watch less TV this week so they had time to read their new books, less video, etc etc. AW was in the middle of a long signifyin about his rich daddy, and he said, “I had my butler read my book while I be listening to my MP3 player.”

AW: My daddy live in a mansion. We got a maid, we got a butler.
AP: You got a limosine?
AW: Yeah.
AP: We got two.

Code Switching vs. Style Shifting–What’s in a Name?

[I wrote the following AFTER entering the blog below, because upon a night's sleep I realized I was growing less comfortable with the conceptual image of "switching."]

As I read more in the linguistic literature, I realize that it might be a good idea to alter how we reference the choice-making about language use. Most of the time, for most people, it’s not as though a switch is flipped and suddenly every single aspect of the Discouse – lexicon, phonology, syntax, gesture, tone, contour, etc – goes intact from one code to another. (See Lippi-Green: English with an Accent) It’s more accurate to imagine degrees of shifting—style shifting, is what I’m now going to call it, as sociolinguists do. Think of Oprah—she rarely speaks in AAE, syntactically. But she will often shift her tone, her tag questions, or in some other way signal her solidarity (and lay claim to the covert prestige that goes along with such solidarity) with an interviewee who is African American. Or even one who is not, in order to signal something like “I’m real, connected to the people out there in TV land, and you’re not.”) Politicians do this, too. Or you might have a person speaking “standard English” in every grammatical way, but pronounce ask “aks,” which is simply metathesis, an inversion of consonants, and something that has been going on in English forever—bird once having been bryd (there are many other examples). In a hundred years, everyone will likely be saying aks instead of ask, because it is a more natural way for a human mouth to manage those sounds. Another person might have his verbs “agree” in accordance with the practice of conjugating “irregularly,” which make it “standard English” (rather than regularizing the pattern–I is, you is, he is, we is, you is, they is–which renders the language stigmatized and “vernacular”) BUT say “ain’t NOTHING!” in order to make a point humorously with the emphatic use of a mulitple negative. My point is simply to consider the spoken languages represented very grossly by the terms “Standard English” and African American English on a fluid spectrum (shiftable) rather than as perching on/in two separate circuits. requiring a wholesale translation (switchable) from one to another. It may be easiest for young kids (and teachers) to think of “switching,” but on some level actual speakers know from experience that in reality, there’s all kinds of blurring and shifting and negotiating between the two.

-Inda

February 13, 2008

Fourth grade, first hour

Before class, I had xeroxed a photo of Barack Obama standing with (being clasped by) Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker, who is also a young, African American political star. (The photo appeared in a New Yorker profile of Booker this month.) We discussed what the image in the photo suggested. How did these two men feel about each other, if you had to say. D said he thought it looked like Booker was about to fight Obama, that there was a fierceness in his expression. I agreed, but suggested that strong POSITIVE feelings can sometimes come across as aggression. I told some of the stories of the two men’s lives, and tried to help D see that Booker was grasping Obama in solidarity, looking fiercely into O’s eye as if to say, “I’m with you on this.”

After this I handed out copies of a page of the article, the part where the author (Peter Boyle) relates how Booker prepared his introductory remarks before Obama was to speak at a NJ rally. I read the text aloud. It tells how Booker looks at the prepared notes, declares them to be “too vanilla,” and says aloud that what this moment calls for is “some chocolate, or maybe some Neopolitan.” Boyle explains that Booker then dashes on to the stage, shouting a protracted hello, then launches into a VERY animated speech – in standard English, but making use of the rhythm, rhyme, and tonal semantics of African American English (AAE). As Obama comes onto the stage Booker bows deeply at the waist and then exits.

The students knew right away what Booker meant by vanilla and chocolate and Neopolitan (meaning a mixture of both vanilla and chocolate). “Too white,” of course, was NOT how Booker wanted to sound. “This is code switching in action,” I said, “in a very public way, in a very self-conscious way. Booker knew how he wanted to sound and make some choices about how he should say what he needed to say in order to connect with the audience.”

So then I asked the students to sit down and write a speech. “The genre for today is speech,” I said. “You can pretend to be Obama, or Clinton (there are still a couple of Clinton fans in the Room). Or you can really compose any kind of speech. But you have to try to convince us of something, of why we should vote for you, or for someone you believe it. You can use any code you want—Ebonics or standard.”

DT, looking up from his work, said to me, “I’m talking in vanilla language.”

His was this:

Hi, my name is Hillary but you know me as Clinton. And the reason I gathered you here today because you guys should vote for me and not Obama but anyways you guys should vote for me because was there ever one time you felt like you should be in the hospital but you don’t want to because you don’t have a lot of money to pay the bill? Well, you can with medicare. And that is not why I want you to vote for me. I want to win this vote to stop the war. I also want to win this war for better schools, I also want to win this war for opportunity.

SA :

My Speech on How to Fix America
Hello, my great Americans. I hope to change the world with my knowledge. I hope to help people who need to be helped. My plan is to cure people who are ill. I want to help the schools have more books I also want to help the world not just America but the world and I can’t do that alone I need your help we need to take a stand and we need to stop the prejudiceness and we need to stop the wars against the Iraqis we need to have a life of happiness. We need to stick together.

MW: (I like this one because she wrote both the introducer’s part AND the candidate’s part)

Good morning my voters. How are you doing today? I would like to introduce someone who is strong, someone who has courage here he is Barack Obama.
Hello people thank you for giving me your support and all your might to vote for me. I will do my best to help out the community. I would fix up all the schools give books out and give more education out to kids and give more tutoring. There are people out here struggling to get houses we can buy houses we can fix up houses but we need change in our lives we need to help each other out in our community get better policeman there’s nothing wrong with that because we need to HELP THE COMMUNITY OUT.

MC: (This writer, who is charming, happy, cooperative and kind, really struggles with getting complete words/sentences on paper. His spelling is really rough, but he always sounds out as best he can. Sometimes he misses words altogether. That’s why I was overjoyed to see this lengthy speech.)

Hello my friend. [I] am Packman and I want everybody to vote for me because I need to be in the White House. Kids will have the best school lunch and the killing will stop because the war need to stop so moms can keep their children alive and keep them off the street and the people that [are] poor will have big house[s] but there one important thing I have to say is that I will let the children sag because that not a bad thing to do so I will give kids that are in the foster home a home so that [they] can be comfortable just like people that have big house[s].

When everyone was done writing the kids performed their speeches aloud using the microphone. I encouraged/allowed the audience to give audible feedback as if it really were a rally. So the strong comments usually received claps, foot stomps, nods, and “oh, yeahs.” Some people ad-libbed off their written work, some read word for word.

Fourth grade, second hour

We did the same thing as the first class. Except for two boys, this class generally writes at a lower level than the first hour. The work is heartfelt, but just not as deep or complete.

MS:

Vote for Me
Vote for me. My name is Barack Obama. I plan on stopping the war and bringing our family home to freedom. We need out family home so we can take care of them and they can take care of us. We need them and they need us. There is not a reason not to stop the war. People are dying and people are dead. People think if I stop the war the other people in Iraq are going to come kill us. That will not happen because when I stop the war people are going to say I am the best and WE WON THE WAR.

Second Grade

In our circle I read HAPPY HEDGEHOG BAND and POSSUM COME A-KNOCKIN, two illustrated books that use rhythm, humor, rhyme, and sounds to tell the story. Then I asked the kids to write their own. I wrote one, too, while they worked. Here’s mine:

I went out to the market
Seeking taters for my soup
But the grocer was a-sleepin
And I steppped into some poop [this got a laugh, natch]
I looked up on a shelf
Where I saw a little elf
Who pointed at a doggy
And then I learned the truth
He didn’t take a walk that day
Had nowhere else to go
And the consequences faced me
On the bottom of my shoe
revised to: When I walked into that store.
OR……..As I passed right through the door.

These lines don’t rhyme, but I emphasized that they don’t have to rhyme precisely.

Here’s JB’s:

Once there was a girl
That liked the boy
But the boy didn’t like the girl
The girl was sad
So she got a bat
And hit the boy
Upside his head
The boy said okay
You can be my girl
But then the girl didn’t want to be his girl
And they lived happily ever after.
This strikes me as one of those classic dramatic narrative plots, revealed simply and strikingly by a second grader.

AB:

Rat-a-tat-tat where my cat
Ma says you were sittin on the kitten
I said I wasn’t sitten on the kitten
Ma said Maybe Dad was a. . .
knock knock
Ma said who is that knockin at the door?

TW:

The Walking School
Once I came walking to school
I saw the school walking
the teacher was dancing
the principal was going
the student claming [?]
I said The School Walking Away!
They looked they saw nothing the school was swimming
they looked again the school was wet
That why they believed her.

Third Grade

We did the same activity as second grade.

KH:

I’m walking down the street
and heard something and it went beep beep.
My neighbor came out the door and she go Kelcie open dat door
So I go what is you screaming for
My mom told me to walk to the store
So when I walked to the store that lady go
Where did you go
I go why do you want to know
The lady go don’t slam that door
I go what are you looking for
She go no, no, no I’m not telling you what I’m looking for
What so not ask me to stay when I hit the door
The radio go this is Racherd [?] Radio
And I go wait before I hit the door.

KW: [Echoing me and the book and making it her own stuff!]

I step into some poop
I had to taste some soup
It tasted so disgusting
I wanted to start chucking
I start sleepin I start peakin
Mom was in the kitchen cookin some chicken
It tasted delicious I wanted to start kickin.
Mom what’s wrong you want some
I’m kickin
You want to start pickin
Pick me kiss me you want-a start kick me yeah.

I may pull a few kids out of this group. There are three of four kids (girls) who don’t really seem like they care to belong, or to try. I’ll talk to the teachers next week and see what they think.

Inda

February 6, 2008–Schaenen

February 6, 2008

Fourth grade, first hour

We began with a long, heated, lively talk about the primary election. Many strong opinions. I brought in the morning paper, reviewed the two-party system, how it leads up to the general election in November. I also brought a print-out bio of Obama. More than one student was VERY concerned about Obama’s safety as an African American in the public eye. Talk of Malcolm’s fate, and Dr. King’s.

“They gonna shoot him up as soon as he step outside ‘caus they don’t want no black man runnin the country.”
“I want him to be president but I don’t want him to die. I don’t want to help kill him.”

Then we settled down and wrote out these opinions on paper. One student had an interesting solution:

“I think there should be two presidents because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are trying their best to help the world …It wouldn’t be fair to vote for just one person who is trying hard to fix our world…”

Another one:

I want to vote for Barach Obama because I think we should have an African American president because we never had a black president. I won’t vote for Hillary Clinton because she don’t have the strength to be the president. Another reason I want Obama to be president because it was too many white presidents and now we need an African American president. I think Obama have the strength to be president, and the reason I say that is because us African American people is strong and we have the power to say what we think is right. My opinion about Obama is he went to college, he passed his grades, he got his education he went through some bad things and some good things through his life but he still stayed strong aas he moved on with his life. He married a wonderful wife had great kids. Hillary Clinton married a fool she gone turn out to follow his footsteps one day.

Now of course a reader can see all kinds of borrowed thoughts and phrases in this text—a fourth grader talking about “wonderful wife and great kids?” Or calling WJC a fool? Not to mention all that race-centered stuff about white and black presidents. But there’s also that business about being strong, having power, having a voice – all that being connected somehow. It was really a whole hour of exploring and questioning the connections here. The notion of “race,” of being black OR white, plays HUGELY in the way these kids view the world. Obama’s presence in the public landscape is enormously charged. One girl said she was very worried when she saw “all those white people standing behind him” on TV. She was worried that THEY might be the ones to kill him. I walk a fine line at these moments: dismantling certain assumptions without discrediting the logic that puts them in place, allowing for genuine feeling while settling expression into civil public discourse. It’s all very challenging and interesting. When the conversation got very black/white, and someone said something too extreme, which I would have to question, one student said:
“But Ms. Schaenen…”
“Ms. Schaenen ain’t white. She mixed.”
Somehow, for this one child, I had to stop being White for the moment. My own identiy, in the heat of the conversation, perhaps had to pass into a more amorphous place so that they could feel there were no “outsiders” present. This is just a guess.
What I honestly believe is that we’re all mixed, but are socialized to believe in a mythical notion of “race” that we “belong to.” After all, Italians and Jews were once considered non-White. Who’s white and who’s not has always been a social construction. This is not a fourth grade thought, but it crossed my mind yesterday. At that moment, my students – who have always in the past considered me white (often adding “no offense, Ms. Schaenen,” when discussing some aspect of racial/judicial injustice they traced to white oppression—aired the possibility (for a particular purpose) that I am “mixed.”

Another thing about the batch of papers: even the students who often write in nearly 100 percent standard English, when riled up about the election, “let themselves go” and created texts in pretty thorough AAE. With no comment or anything, they were simply getting words down hastily and unguardedly.

Fourth grade, second hour

Instead of beginning with conversation, with this class I started with writing. “ If you were 18 and could vote, who would you have voted for yesterday?” Again, these kids are 9 and 10: what we are reading are probably distillations of what they are picking up from news and community before being flavored by their own young perspectives.

“I would vote for Barack Obama because I never want a girl to be president because she will get us shot up by the people who we are at war with so when I turn 18 I will vote for a man instead of a woman who can get me shot up.”

“If I had a chance to vote I would vote for Hillary Clinton. I would vote for Hillary Clinton because she would be the first white lady to become president. I would vote for Hillary Clinton because if she is going to clean up America and she will keep the soldiers in war and not take them out of the war because they will come out of nowhere and come and kill us. I would vote for her.”

“If I was 18 years old and I was allowed to vote I would vote for Barack Obama. I would vote for Barack Obama because he is trying to stop the war and bring our people home. Also, he is trying to help the elementary school in St. Louis. Finally, Barack Obama made a commercial telling all of St. Louis that he is trying his best to become our president so he can help our community.”

Second and Third Grades

What a fun day with these guys!
We played a superfun game. I wrote a sentence, not quite complete, on the board. We all wrote it down:
“Once upon a time there was a mouse who lived……”
I left it open and everyone completed the sentence however they wanted to, Then we passed our papers to the person on our left in the circle. I was playing, too, which was really fun for everyone (especially me). We took two or three minutes to read what was written and then add to the story “so that it made sense.” Eventually the stories got back to the original person and we got to read them aloud, which was always fun. Some comments along the way:

“Oooh, I can’t wait to see what y’all wrote on mine.”
“Thank you, Ms. Schaenen. Somebody finally wrote something good like Eric Carle who inspired me in my writing,”

As we read aloud people smiled and couldn’t help calling out “I wrote that” when the story contained the sentence or two that they contributed. The stories got nice and long, which they also loved. Interestingly, as the stories moved around the circle certain themes emerged – the mouse getting fat and needing exercise, a witch doing bad stuff, and a few other things cropped up in more than one story. Another funny thing: someone erased the name I gave the mouse on my turn and changed it to another name. Not exactly according to rules, but there you go! They’re all cute, but here’s just one:

“Once upon a time there was a mouse who lived in a mouse house. And he always ate cheese. He would crawl out his hole at night. And one day the mouse went out of his house and went out of the house to move the mouse said that he will come back some day. And so he traveled very, very far, over the ocean – the Pacific Ocean – all the way to China, where people do not eat so much cheese.
“What is all this little white stuff,” he said.
“Why, that’s called rice,” said a small voice.
“Who are you?”
“I am a mouse,” said the little mouse. “I had ran away from the evil witch,’ he said. And he said, “Can I live here and she said yes and she put cheddar cheese and pineapple, and juice. Then Oreal fed themouse. And then the mouse got exercise.”

I changed the starter sentence for third grade:
“Once upon a time there was a cat who lived…”
The whole process was just as enjoyable for all of us. There came to be an insider joke among us, too, because whenever I saw the plot taking a turn toward the violent or gangstery, I changed it drastically into something humorous, not scary and goody-goodyish. Then the boy who went after me (on my left) laughed uproariously at my attempt and re-tweaked it to make it the way he and the other boys wanted. It was a playful sense of knowing what was “OK” and not “OK.” For example, when one cat shot another cat, I wrote “But, ha-ha, the gun was just a toy gun so the other cat ran away. The house cat got a band-aid for his bite and decided to go for a walk.” Then the boy on my left wrote, “The cat met the other cat again then pulled out a real gun and killed the other cat…” It’s almost like they’re saying to me, ‘this is the stuff in our imagination. You can try to get it gone, but it’s there no matter what you say.’” And yet there was a distanced, fictive freedom in this whole game that felt very mutually appreciated. One boy actually said, “Awright, awright, you want me to write white style?” I asked him what he meant, and he said, “All proper, like yes, ma’am, no ma’am.”

So here’s one full example from this hour, Can you guess where the author is a boy, a girl, or me?

Once upon a time there was a cat who lived in a castle. The cat was lonely until it met a female cat too. Her name was Ariel. And had a cat fight and pulled out a gun, three knives and [?] hammers. No, sorry, I was wrong. There were no knives, guns, and hammers in the castle. Instead of fighting, the two cats ate a huge pile of fish until they were very full. After they ate one of the cats pulled out a gun and shot the other one. It was sad and everyone got shot even everybody in the world. And popped back up and lived happily ever after, The End.

It felt so nice to be on a fully fictional, playful footing, all of us engaged in a shared process.

-Inda