I found out that a former student of mine was buried today.  He was a deeply troubled boy, one who since leaving us here had so much tragedy in his life.  He may [or may not] have been responsible for the fire a few years ago that burned his family home, killing both his parents. He may [or may not] have taken his own life.  He was 21.

The sun rose and set in that child when his mother looked at him.  Even when he was being ridiculous, exhibiting behavior that we as teachers found unsupportable, it was clear how much she loved him.

Grief. Guilt. Darkness.

It was dark at 4:30 PM today.

And I am profoundly sad.

Image by walknboston

I know that I have unrealistic expectations for professional development, and maybe that is because I feel like I spend a lot of time with colleagues (both face to face and virtually) who are always thinking and challenging their own expectations and skill set.  The people that I look to for PD daily are the folks at blogs I visit regularly (you can find them on my blog roll) and who are next door, down the hall, or across the courtyard. I have the real  pleasure of working with a lab “coordinator” who is a co-teacher in the very best sense and a learning resources teacher who is one of the most gifted and caring teachers that I have ever met.  They make me look good.

Teacher Seminars

So it is always with great hope and certain trepidation that I head out to teacher seminars. I have been generally pleased with those organized by the Newberry Library (just up the street and a convenient bus ride from school). A memorable morning was spent looking at the allegory in Dante’s Divine Comedy and Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  An interesting conversation looked at Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and other contemporary “road” narrative (although they missed Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty – a classic Exodus tale).  But the last seminar I attended last year looked at *gasp* the fact that Walt Whitman wrote about sex in his poetry. News flash? Not really.

I had great expectations for last week’s seminar billed as: Steampunk to Slipstream: Contemporary Trends in Fantasy and Science Fiction

Although science fiction has been a popular genre for decades, and fantasy derives from a tradition as old as literature, the past two decades have seen a dramatic blurring of the boundaries between genres, between genre and literary fiction, even between adult and young adult fiction. This seminar will touch upon several authors representative of these trends, both in England and the U.S., such as Kelly Link, China Mi‚ville, Neil Gaiman, Scott Westerfeld, Jeffrey Ford, Neal Stephenson, Cory Doctorow, and others. Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, which received the 2009 Newbery Award and is also a finalist for the World Science Fiction Convention’s Hugo Award, [description published before it won - btw] will serve as an emblematic text of this new multivalent, multi-audience approach to fantastic literature.

I guess “multivalent” should have tipped me  off.

I Love Science Fiction

I am a HUGE fan of this genre, and I taught a class last year in Science Fiction and Fantasy in Literature and Film.  There is a small smattering of posts from that class (like this one on My Super Self) here on the blog, and as a class it was wholly satisfying to teach. I want to include a science fiction or fantasy book in the seventh grade curriculum, and I’ve been entertaining notions of either Little Brother by Cory Doctorow or The Graveyard Book by Gaiman.

What We Got

Instead of spending three hours talking about new trends in Science Fiction we were treated to an hour and a half lecture on the history of the genre beginning with From Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne (complete with French name pronunciation).  He talked smack about Amazing Stories and Weird Tales and other pulp fiction. He talked smack about the first WorldCon in 1939 (“All these genres have their own conventions”); the readers and writers to the editors of magazines (“some farm wife, living out in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas reading these stories with no one to talk to”); and the genre in the United States (“in England, Science Fiction is a part of the literary landscape, but it is marginalized in the US”). And he of course started by asking us if we were fans of the genre and did we give it up when we turned 15.  Ewww.

When he did finally get around to discussing The Graveyard Book he asked, “Where would it fit in the literary genres?” Was it a ghost story? A murder mystery with a serial killer? A coming of age story? (“Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!- that’s what went through my mind at that moment – had to share).  He said that he thought it was a series of short stories that all linked; things were set out at the beginning that were knitted in at the end and things left unexplained. “This is set up for a sequel.” Here are my notes:

War between the guardians and the Jacks of All Trades?  What happens/ed in sequel.  If there is a sequel it will be like the LOTR and the Hobbit. The book is a reversal of genre conventions and expectations like the Topper novels and A Fine and Private Place. What about the Guardians? Is Silas a vampire? Night Dogs – what are they? Werewolves? The Ghouls are immature goofy adolescents.  What looks like and functions like a horror novel trope is like low comedy when we are in the midst of it. Draws in the novel what he needs? Trying to write in the classic mode of literary fairy tales.

He tried to explain Steampunk (not very well) and he predicted that Scott Westerfeld will not be able to sustain a readership for Leviathan because he is really just jumping on the Steampunk bandwagon. He talked about Westerfeld’s other books briefly.  He said the Little Brother by Cory Doctorow was already dated and irrelevant, but that curiously teaching it might get me in trouble as it can be seen as a handbook for circumventing security systems.  I asked if the surrendering of our freedoms for the sake of convenience wasn’t an important theme to teach.  He saw some merit in that.  We spent most of the actually interesting conversation looking at Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation” a fascinating story that is a mediation on self discovery. There was a mildly heated discussion about whether or not it was essential to understand and recognize the second law of thermodynamics to really understand the story (so the moderator believes). Entropy my ass. I didn’t need to recognize it to be moved by the consciousness trying to understand itself in the story.

Thanks

So where does this lead me? Back to the teachers that I communicate with over their blogs and Twitter and face to face.  It seems to me that seminars are for those whose school and professional life lacks the riches that I am fortunate to have. Thank you to each and everyone of you for making my everyday interactions about teaching, books, stories, writing, and cognition fresh and lively.

I am lucky to be able to co-present a workshop this winter at the Illinois Computing Educators Conference. I will remember all the sins of ballrooms and seminar rooms past and beg the gods of presentation to not let me repeat them.

Image by San Diego Shooter

For my community service project this year I am working with 14 middle school students as “blanketeers.” We are making tied quilts for a local chapter of Project Linus the national organization that distributes new, handmade blankets to kids ages 0-18 who are in the hospital. We are going to make quilts that are three layers – cotton, batting, and flannel – tied with yarn and finished with satin blanket binding.

I have some busy boys and some socially isolated girls in my group, so I was not sure how things were going to start off.  My parent facilitator didn’t contact me ahead of time to tell me that she wasn’t going to be there, so I set off with 14 students for the 36 Broadway bus and the Hancock Fabrics on Broadway.  Many of my students had never been outside of their school neighborhood in anything except their parents’ car.  This was a real adventure.

Usually when I’ve done a project like this I have visited the fabric store on my own and purchased the materials that we will need, but I really wanted the students to be invested in their blankets, so I wanted them to do the choosing.  So many possibilities and combinations!  Of you were to do a math lesson on combinations and permutations we’d still be there doing the figuring.  They initially started out wanting MY approval, but slowly they started to trust themselves and each other.

“Mrs. T, do you think that this will make a good blanket?”

“Well, would you like it?”

“Totally.”

“Then you’ve got your answer!”

The ladies at the fabric store could not have been any more patient and helpful, asking each child how much they wanted of each fabric and asking them what they were going to do with their choices.  They made suggestions and offered praise.

When we got back to school I showed them how to straighten the grain of the fabric.

“Why do we have to do that?”

It’s exhausting but wonderful that they all need reasons and want to know what is really going on with the materials they are using.   It was a great day, and I can hardly wait to get started assembling the quilts.

Image by “Vintage Fairytale”

My eldest daughter has just finished a short weekend run of a Halloween Circus show. The girls have worked hard over the past month and it always amazes me when the show comes together. But I’m not amazed at what they can do. When they commit to the show and really bellieve in it, the performance comes together.

The people who speak to me after shows are always amazed that I am calm in the face of dangling, spinning, climbing, twisting, tumbling.  These things don’t worry me. The girls have been training, more or less seriously, for years. They are serious athletes, but they are also theater artists.

My commitment to the ensemble is to feed them, deliver them to where they need to go, take a million photos, and create stuff for them to use (clothing, props, manes).

So, it’s like anything that we do. If you practice and are committed to your work, amazing things will happen.  I know. I just saw one.

Nights like this after days like this make me think that I accomplish nothing in my work.

One of the paper editors wants to teach a dozen kids at school the software to lay out the paper. That would be good if we needed a dozen layout artists. It would also be good if the writing in the last issue wasn’t so terrible.  I said that we should have writing workshops first. She said we know how to write. Not that I’ve seen. Meh.

My students are sweet. Some of their parents have examined every bit of their children’s lives. Physical. Emotional. Psychological.  Educational. I can’t make them stop. Let them be kids for a minute longer.

I’ve caught a cold.

Almost every student that I wrote recommendations for is looking at Early Decision. I guess they should call the regular deadlines Late Decision instead.

It’s rained non-stop for weeks it seems like.

I’ve got homework that I HAVE to do. No motivation. Meh.

My seventh graders have learned how to be helpless. They whine. There is NO WHINING in English class.

I should take my own advice.  But I’m feeling rather hollow right now.

Image by flickr member Amanda M Hatfield

Today in class we were writing memoir pieces about Halloween.  I started with reading two chapters of Knucklehead, the memoir of Jon Scieszka author of The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and then we started writing our own memories of Halloween. Like the crazy lady who lived down the block from us in Belfry, Montana who was a witch because she ate shoe polish and could take out her teeth. True story. Really. I was three. I would know.

Here is what I wrote this afternoon as my class worked:

Halloween in Chicago has usually been warm. With the exception of the year that it rained so hard we discovered that the siding on the north side of the house had failed, it has been shirt sleeve weather.  My children have not had to worry about wearing their heavy coat over their costume. Haven’t needed a coat in 10 years. In fact, when they were little I made their costumes out of polar fleece, but we haven’t needed to worry in so long.

When trick-or-treating in South Dakota,  the possibility for snow was always extremely high.  You wanted to design a costume that let you wear a coat under it or had a coat integrated into it. I learned about this the hard way the year I had THE CUTEST nurse’s costume.  Little white cap and cape with the lovingly appliqued red cross on the cap and upper left hand side of the cape. I was going to carry my very favorite doll, Black Hair, ironically named as she had NO hair.

Too bad so sad – it was snowing out. That meant boots and a coat that did NOT fit under the cape. So, the cape was on under the coat, and no one saw my adorableness.

The next year we went as ghosts.  Old fashioned bed sheet ghosts. Matt was pretty small, so he was actually a pillowcase ghost.  We had our coats on under the sheets – we were warm and toasty and there was no loss of costume integrity.  It was even a bonus because Mrs. Cole, a woman in the neighborhood who had a huge house with a seriously fenced in yard took one look at us and stopped her reach toward her mini-sized candy.

“Look at you three. I love these ghosts.  This is what a ghost is supposed to look like, not those plastic mask ghosts.  Wait here.”

We had no idea what we were waiting for.  She disappeared and returned with full sized Hershey Bars for the three of us. Major score! No Bit-o-Honey!

We will be hosting the 13th annual Halloween Potluck on Saturday with the Halloween party for the cast of the circus adaption of Tim Burton’s film, Nightmare Before Christmas – called Nightmare - after the potluck.  My daughter’s circus ensemble is doing a workshop performance – Oogie Boogie does an amazing lyra routine, and the final aerial is a double silks routine with Jack and Sally.

When the official trick-or-trick hours are over, everyone comes to our house. We share food, beverages, and just catch up.  The rule is, once you are invited to the potluck, you never have to be invited again. You are invited in perpetuity.  The menu never varies: chili (beef, but also the best vegan chili ever) and amendments should you want spice or dairy, cornbread, salad, and whatever shows up!  It may not be the great candy grab of 1965, but it is fun.

Photo by flickr member euart

October continues treating us with passion and gentleness as befits this time of year.

There are few people that I know (outside of my classical musician neighbors) who might totally geek out with me about this piece of music. But I’m going to share it with you and the tiny little glimmer of hope that it gives me. (And the shiver down my spine that it gives me when I listen to it and a longing to perform it that I can barely understand.)

Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis, sung here by the Tallis Scholars

It is a motet for 8 five-part choirs.

That is 40 separate voices.

It should be chaos. It isn’t. And that is a extended metaphor that works for me.

The Latin text is from the Book of Judith. (in translation)

I have never put my hope in any other but in you,
O God of Israel
who can show both anger and graciousness,
and who absolves all the sins of suffering man
Lord God, Creator of Heaven and Earth
be mindful of our lowliness.

For me the text is less important that the lesson of the poliphony.  We don’t have to speak or sing the same song to make something beautiful together.

Both of my 12-year-olds were in a 6th grade level math class last year (one was bored, I’ll allow, and both were one of just a few girls in their respective classes). This year on the basis of a test only one was moved up not to the grade level class but to Freshman Algebra Honors.  That’s a skip of two years of math instruction, and I was worried that it was a leap to light speed, but as she was SO BORED and they really gave her few options.  She’s been really interested in the class but wrestling with negative numbers, ratios, and the distributive property (whatever that is).  Today I get this email from her teacher. Names have been redacted:

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to inform you that NAME scored a 68% on her Chapter 2 Honors Algebra Test.  This raises a concern about her being able to keep up in this class.  If I don’t see a significant improvement in her performance in chapter 3, I plan to switch her into regular Algebra.  Feel free to email me or call if you would like to discuss the matter further.

-Regards,

Teacher’s Name
Mathematics Teacher
Suburban Middle School

Okay  – back away from the Cranky Mother!

To Whom It May Concern?  This is not a form letter you are sending me.  This is a flippin’ email to tell me that my child is almost failing your class.

Hold on here, buddy.  I know that there are 31 (yeppers) kids in this class, but she didn’t ask to be put with you, and do you think that you might respond with a “we should look and see what she’s having trouble with” or “She can come in for extra help” or “I know she just skipped two years of math and may have some gaps”? Apparently not.

So IF she doesn’t improve her performance (how about your performance, Bud?) he will unilaterally move her to a class I was told was not an option at the beginning of the year. To quote my favorite vampire slayer, ” I think I speak for everyone when I say… huh?”

Now, I’m not saying that she might not be happier in 8th grade algebra. She might be, and that’s oh, so okay by me, but this guy’s tone is seriously messed up. Just sayin’.

Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography

I am happy to say that in my twelve years of teaching I have taught a number of books that have been challenged in other communities.  I have even taught that explicit book Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.  I once went to a seminar where the topic of the seminar became whether or not to teach Section 5 of “Song of Myself” and the explicit blow job that is this passage:

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over
upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue
to my bare-stript heart,
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my
feet.

So, of the ALA’s list of  challenged classics I have taught or I have on the shelves in my room for students to check out the following:

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Native Son by Richard Wright
Go Tell it on the Mountanin by James Baldwin
The World According to Garp by John Irving
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
My Antonia by Willa Cather
A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

But I also have these additional challenged  books for students to read on the shelves in my room-

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
The Giver, by Lois Lowry
It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
Alice (Series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck
The Witches, by Roald Dahl
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle
Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
The Goats, by Brock Cole
Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane
Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton (I actually have them all read this.)
The Pigman, by Paul Zindel
Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
Harry Potter (Series), by J.K. Rowling
James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl
A Light in the Attic, by Shel Silverstein
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher
Killing Mr. Griffin, by Lois Duncan
On My Honor, by Marion Dane Bauer
Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo A. Anaya
The Face on the Milk Carton, by Caroline Cooney
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
Tiger Eyes, by Judy Blume
Running Loose, by Chris Crutcher
That Was Then, This is Now, by S.E. Hinton
Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher
His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler

So, I’m happy to say that the community that I teach in is open to ideas that challenge our world – racism, racial language, sex and sexuality, violence, rape, hazing, loss of a parent, religion, fantasy worlds. Here’s to the first amendment. Here’s to courageous publishers and writers. Here’s to those of us not afraid to read about something different than what we know and think for ourselves!

I’m still looking for a book for this year.  I frame the year around stories and storytelling and why we tell stories. I have a bunch already:

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

(here is my hole in the list)

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Inherit the Wind by Lawrence and Lee

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

All of these books pose a problem for the reader that we, as a class, wrestle with.

Here is my burma-shave style tweets in response to a friend and librarian at the Newberry:

tabor330 I like to choose books that are complicated so we can talk about how to read them. If you will excuse a list of tweets,…

Haroun and the Sea of Stories: it’s an allegory! it’s an adventure story. It’s full of (Hindustani) puns!

Inherit the Wind – killer vocabulary, even for an adult in 2009 contemporary society, great look at rhetorical styles

To Kill A Mockingbird: A deceptively difficult narrative structure, lots of inference and indirectly stated relationships

All these books need a community of seventh graders (with my help) to read. It is a rare student that can do it on their own.

The Hobbit: lots of characters, great narrative voice, long boring bit in the middle, (what?) the dragon gets killed by who?

Each book poses a reader problem: tough words, confusing timeline, boring bits, inference. No Hobbit this year. What to add?

So, I’ve been thinking about The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I need to reread it to see what kind of problem it poses to the reader.  It’s like Kipling’s The Jungle Book or Burrough’s Tarzan.  There is definitely the story tradition here. But is that enough? It’s won an armful of awards (Newbery, Hugo) so I know that they will enjoy it. It’s not a “good for you” book or a lifetime achievement award that so often is the Newbery medal. I really liked it when I read it.
Any suggestions?

photo by flickr member dweekly