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