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!