It's Derby Day. I love Derby Day. When I was 17, I skipped the prom because I wanted to stay home and watch Derby coverage. My friends and I used to bet dirty socks on the race when we were in junior high. When I was eight, I had a pink stick-horse named Unbridled. I have always loved Derby Day.
As part of the Derby Day festivities, I was going to go see my horse, Marvin, but it's pouring rain and he lives in a mud pit, so I decided to wait till tomorrow. Instead, I went to see a horse show at the ag center.
When I arrived, the English classes had just ended (darn!) and the arena was full of ten-to-twelve-year-olds warming up for Youth Western Pleasure. They wore sparkling vests that matched their hair bows, and their saddle cloths, and their ... cell phones?
Sure enough. A twelve-year-old girl was cantering her Appaloosa gelding along the railing at a fast clip, completing loops and figures of eight, all the while talking on a cell phone she held to her ear. Twice, I watched her almost run into other horses. Twice, the other riders high-tailed it out of the way with their mounts. She chattered happily through her entire warm-up pattern and rode out of the arena, still gabbing.
I want to comment on this occurrence, but I'm just not sure what to say.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Good News
What a great week for the writers!
First of all, my students got their galley copy to look over on Thursday. I was thrilled to learn that they were more interested in seeing their characters' names in print than their own! I can't wait to get back from spring break so we can pick up our final copies and go out into the world with them. First stop? The local indy bookstore for a book signing. The kids have made posters and prepared a short reading. They've been working so hard on this project!
Then yesterday, on the first day of spring break, my wonderful agent, Laura Langlie, sold my own novel, LIVVIE OWEN LIVED HERE, to Feiwel and Friends! This is the novel I wrote right alongside the kids during our NaNoWriMo project. How perfect that I got this news in time to share it with this year's class!
I am just over the moon about all of this!
First of all, my students got their galley copy to look over on Thursday. I was thrilled to learn that they were more interested in seeing their characters' names in print than their own! I can't wait to get back from spring break so we can pick up our final copies and go out into the world with them. First stop? The local indy bookstore for a book signing. The kids have made posters and prepared a short reading. They've been working so hard on this project!
Then yesterday, on the first day of spring break, my wonderful agent, Laura Langlie, sold my own novel, LIVVIE OWEN LIVED HERE, to Feiwel and Friends! This is the novel I wrote right alongside the kids during our NaNoWriMo project. How perfect that I got this news in time to share it with this year's class!
I am just over the moon about all of this!
Friday, February 20, 2009
I didn't get my spaghetti and meatballs.
Field trip day! I love field trip day. I love taking seven kids who I'm not sure I have any control over in the classroom, and moving the whole shebang outside.
Walking to the bus -- "walking" being relative, of course -- is an adventure. My tallest student is in the lead, at a run. A few feet back is student #2, who has been out sick all week. He helpfully volunteers information about his mucus to a passing teacher. Meanwhile students #3 and #4 have veered off from the group because there is a) a cool reflection on a windshield, and, b) a dropped piece of bubble gum.
More...
I am rushing to catch up, so students #5 and #6 have decided it is the perfect time to lag behind. They rattle the doorknobs to classrooms and shuffle their feet. And student #7? Holding my hand and being sweet as pie, of course. I think they must consult one another before major outings. "It's your turn to be the good one today! If we're all bad, she'll make us skip movie day!"
Remarkably, we make it onto the bus and get seated. One student grabs another and chucks him like a Frisbee out of her favorite seat. I have to sit with her and have a conversation about bus manners. For the third time. This week. By the time she utters a grudging apology to her stand-in Frisbee, Mrs. J has the bus moving and we're pulling out of the parking lot.
A truckload of teenagers careens around the building and almost takes us out, eliciting a scream from the half of my kids who notice. The other half continue to enjoy their own personal worlds, much safer and calmer than the bus.
At the restaurant, one student who is being allowed off her diet for today launches herself at the complimentary chips and salsa, polishing off four before I can stop her. She takes a bite of one chip, then dips it again into the salsa, immediately claiming one whole basket for herself. When her chip supply runs out -- as far as she knows, although I have sereptitiously slid about half the chips from the basket and whisked them into my napkin -- she grabs the salsa bowl and upends it, gulping the salsa like spring water. Beside her, her classmate grabs the lemon from my sweet tea and takes a bite, then begins to cry.
We order using pictures. This is to say, the students order using pictures, and I am so busy helping them choose and articulate their choices that I nearly forget to order for myself. When the food comes, Salsa Girl takes one sweet bite and smiles at me, as though to remind me that she does, in fact, possess table manners. I turn to help Lemon Boy, who has taken a huge bite of sour cream because he isn't sure how to mix the ingredients of his Taco Salad. Together we break the shell into manageable bites and stir them into the lettuce, sour cream, and guacamole. I turn back to find that Salsa Girl has completely finished her enchilada and rice. She is on the last bite of beans. In amazement, I glance back at Lemon Boy, who has taken the tomatoes from his taco salad and dropped them square on my quesadilla.
Across the table, one of my verbal students is attempting to order a side of spaghetti and meatballs. All week, she has been singing a song about this particular dish, and now she is determined that this restaurant will serve it. In front of her, a perfectly good enchilada grows cold. She is near tears. I rescue the poor server, who appears near tears himself, and talk her into trying the food on her plate. She lifts one tiny forkful to her lips. Then prompty takes three bites and forgets all about spaghetti.
When dinner has been eaten and spills mopped up, each student takes a turn visiting the cashier with her changepurse, counting out the bills and coins for her meal. No one can remember the name of what they ate. They tell the cashier, "I had that thing. The one that was wrapped up." Or "I ate something that was green and yellow." Or "I didn't get my spaghetti and meatballs."
Outside, we pile onto the bus again. I run interference with the student who likes to play Frisbee with her classmates. By the time we reach the school, I have burned off every calorie I packed in, and then some.
The minute we reach the classroom, Salsa Girl turns to me and beams. "Want cookie," she signs.
We are never leaving the building again.
(Till next week, of course.)
Walking to the bus -- "walking" being relative, of course -- is an adventure. My tallest student is in the lead, at a run. A few feet back is student #2, who has been out sick all week. He helpfully volunteers information about his mucus to a passing teacher. Meanwhile students #3 and #4 have veered off from the group because there is a) a cool reflection on a windshield, and, b) a dropped piece of bubble gum.
More...
I am rushing to catch up, so students #5 and #6 have decided it is the perfect time to lag behind. They rattle the doorknobs to classrooms and shuffle their feet. And student #7? Holding my hand and being sweet as pie, of course. I think they must consult one another before major outings. "It's your turn to be the good one today! If we're all bad, she'll make us skip movie day!"
Remarkably, we make it onto the bus and get seated. One student grabs another and chucks him like a Frisbee out of her favorite seat. I have to sit with her and have a conversation about bus manners. For the third time. This week. By the time she utters a grudging apology to her stand-in Frisbee, Mrs. J has the bus moving and we're pulling out of the parking lot.
A truckload of teenagers careens around the building and almost takes us out, eliciting a scream from the half of my kids who notice. The other half continue to enjoy their own personal worlds, much safer and calmer than the bus.
At the restaurant, one student who is being allowed off her diet for today launches herself at the complimentary chips and salsa, polishing off four before I can stop her. She takes a bite of one chip, then dips it again into the salsa, immediately claiming one whole basket for herself. When her chip supply runs out -- as far as she knows, although I have sereptitiously slid about half the chips from the basket and whisked them into my napkin -- she grabs the salsa bowl and upends it, gulping the salsa like spring water. Beside her, her classmate grabs the lemon from my sweet tea and takes a bite, then begins to cry.
We order using pictures. This is to say, the students order using pictures, and I am so busy helping them choose and articulate their choices that I nearly forget to order for myself. When the food comes, Salsa Girl takes one sweet bite and smiles at me, as though to remind me that she does, in fact, possess table manners. I turn to help Lemon Boy, who has taken a huge bite of sour cream because he isn't sure how to mix the ingredients of his Taco Salad. Together we break the shell into manageable bites and stir them into the lettuce, sour cream, and guacamole. I turn back to find that Salsa Girl has completely finished her enchilada and rice. She is on the last bite of beans. In amazement, I glance back at Lemon Boy, who has taken the tomatoes from his taco salad and dropped them square on my quesadilla.
Across the table, one of my verbal students is attempting to order a side of spaghetti and meatballs. All week, she has been singing a song about this particular dish, and now she is determined that this restaurant will serve it. In front of her, a perfectly good enchilada grows cold. She is near tears. I rescue the poor server, who appears near tears himself, and talk her into trying the food on her plate. She lifts one tiny forkful to her lips. Then prompty takes three bites and forgets all about spaghetti.
When dinner has been eaten and spills mopped up, each student takes a turn visiting the cashier with her changepurse, counting out the bills and coins for her meal. No one can remember the name of what they ate. They tell the cashier, "I had that thing. The one that was wrapped up." Or "I ate something that was green and yellow." Or "I didn't get my spaghetti and meatballs."
Outside, we pile onto the bus again. I run interference with the student who likes to play Frisbee with her classmates. By the time we reach the school, I have burned off every calorie I packed in, and then some.
The minute we reach the classroom, Salsa Girl turns to me and beams. "Want cookie," she signs.
We are never leaving the building again.
(Till next week, of course.)
Friday, January 30, 2009
SENT!
My students have e-mailed their completed, edited, typed, and illustrated NaNoWriMo novels to my father, who will assemble them for publishing! You should have heard the cheer in the classroom when we clicked "SEND."
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Starch
Yesterday, the kids cooked Thanksgiving dinner. While shopping for ingredients, one child who is on a strict diet actually hugged the box of macaroni and cheese before she would scan it. Not wanting to break her heart, I got permission from her mom to let her eat the meal, which included a lot of delicious starchy foods. Her mother said she could eat it, but that starchy foods sometimes give her mood swings.
A while after the student was watching her favorite video. Suddenly she went charging across the room, flung herself into the classroom assistant's arms, and started sobbing. It took us a while to figure out what it was that was breaking her heart. Turns out she was upset that on "The Little Engine that Could," the little engine couldn't yet. She kept signing "train up" and sobbing, heartbroken that that poor little engine couldn't make it to the top of the mountain.
We had to fast-forward to the end to reassure her that "The Little Engine that Could," in fact, does.
A while after the student was watching her favorite video. Suddenly she went charging across the room, flung herself into the classroom assistant's arms, and started sobbing. It took us a while to figure out what it was that was breaking her heart. Turns out she was upset that on "The Little Engine that Could," the little engine couldn't yet. She kept signing "train up" and sobbing, heartbroken that that poor little engine couldn't make it to the top of the mountain.
We had to fast-forward to the end to reassure her that "The Little Engine that Could," in fact, does.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
"Ralph the Traveling Mouse"
Or: An Update on my Students' Writing
So, we have a major mouse problem in my classroom this year. They have caught nine mice in my classroom in the last four days, including the one the custodian picked up with his bare hand as it was running across the classroom. The mice have been stealing packets of oatmeal from one of my students and eating them, packet and all, in their favorite hiding place under the microwave. And remember a few weeks ago something had crawled into the ceiling and died? Yeah, this mouse problem is major.
It's also been good for several hundred collective words! The day we saw the mouse (and my two classroom assistants screamed and ran across the room, which the kids loved), the kids went back to their writing afterward eager to add the mouse to their stories. We all did it. The mouse has become a major character in my story. Here's what he became to my students' stories:
More...
ONE: The evil dentist blows up the good dentist's office to get rid of the mouse, but the mouse is the only thing that survives the blast. Now the good dentist and the mouse are on a quest to steal all the evil dentist's candy.
TWO: The weather forecaster is jumping around on a desk, screaming, because there's a mouse under her desk, and people think she's trying to tell them about a scary storm moving in.
THREE: Jennifer Heather Porter put the mouse in Frankie Muniz's prison cell (don't ask) and he got mad that she played a prank on him, so he signed her up to be in the dunking booth at the carnival
FOUR: The mouse ran through the school of which Mr. Rooster is the principal. Now Violet Fern Charlotte has to get a cat to chase the mouse. But the cat is much more interested in becoming a librarian than in concerning himself with mice. (I mean, this is brilliant!)
FIVE: The mouse scared the horse. The horse ran fast. (This guy's worse than me, I'm telling you. If I wrote down what he said verbatim, every other word would be "horse." I have to keep stopping him and explaining that, yes, we're still talking about horses, but sometimes it's okay to use other words.)
SIX: The mouse is on ice skates. No more mouse. (That one rang kind of ominous, but I was a little scared to ask what she meant. Did she mean he skated away into the sunset? Did she mean he had a skating accident? Or -- *gasp* -- could she have mixed up her prepositions again and meant "under" instead of "on"?)
SEVEN: The eight-legged rat is in the kitchen. (It grew in retelling.) The teachers run screaming to their cars. The students sit and laugh.
EIGHT: The mouse scares the football player, so the cheerleader bravely picks it up and tosses it outside.
NINE: I eat french fries. The mouse hides. (I guess it's lying in wait?)
So, we have a major mouse problem in my classroom this year. They have caught nine mice in my classroom in the last four days, including the one the custodian picked up with his bare hand as it was running across the classroom. The mice have been stealing packets of oatmeal from one of my students and eating them, packet and all, in their favorite hiding place under the microwave. And remember a few weeks ago something had crawled into the ceiling and died? Yeah, this mouse problem is major.
It's also been good for several hundred collective words! The day we saw the mouse (and my two classroom assistants screamed and ran across the room, which the kids loved), the kids went back to their writing afterward eager to add the mouse to their stories. We all did it. The mouse has become a major character in my story. Here's what he became to my students' stories:
More...
ONE: The evil dentist blows up the good dentist's office to get rid of the mouse, but the mouse is the only thing that survives the blast. Now the good dentist and the mouse are on a quest to steal all the evil dentist's candy.
TWO: The weather forecaster is jumping around on a desk, screaming, because there's a mouse under her desk, and people think she's trying to tell them about a scary storm moving in.
THREE: Jennifer Heather Porter put the mouse in Frankie Muniz's prison cell (don't ask) and he got mad that she played a prank on him, so he signed her up to be in the dunking booth at the carnival
FOUR: The mouse ran through the school of which Mr. Rooster is the principal. Now Violet Fern Charlotte has to get a cat to chase the mouse. But the cat is much more interested in becoming a librarian than in concerning himself with mice. (I mean, this is brilliant!)
FIVE: The mouse scared the horse. The horse ran fast. (This guy's worse than me, I'm telling you. If I wrote down what he said verbatim, every other word would be "horse." I have to keep stopping him and explaining that, yes, we're still talking about horses, but sometimes it's okay to use other words.)
SIX: The mouse is on ice skates. No more mouse. (That one rang kind of ominous, but I was a little scared to ask what she meant. Did she mean he skated away into the sunset? Did she mean he had a skating accident? Or -- *gasp* -- could she have mixed up her prepositions again and meant "under" instead of "on"?)
SEVEN: The eight-legged rat is in the kitchen. (It grew in retelling.) The teachers run screaming to their cars. The students sit and laugh.
EIGHT: The mouse scares the football player, so the cheerleader bravely picks it up and tosses it outside.
NINE: I eat french fries. The mouse hides. (I guess it's lying in wait?)
Saturday, November 1, 2008
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