Learn Me Gooder

Listen man, “trying too hard” is a pre-requisite for this job. Have I taught you nothing? Funny, those last five words are what I often find myself muttering to the kids as well.

Given the choice of meeting President Obama or Shakira, you know I would make the same choice as you. And she does NOT weigh 300 pounds. Since you’re up in Boston, you probably won’t meet Shakira, but you might run into Shaq. If you do, be sure to greet him with, “May the fourths be with you!”

Mrs. Forest sent out an email today that included “The Starfish Story,” where this couple sees a guy throwing starfish back into the ocean. The beach is littered with starfish, so the couple remark to the guy that he can’t possibly make a difference because there are so many starfish. The guy then looks at the one currently in his hand and says, “I can make a difference to THIS one!” as he throws it back into the ocean.

Mrs. Forest sent this to us hoping to lift our spirits during this stressful time and to let us know that we CAN make a difference. It inspires me with a desire to throw a few of my students into the ocean.

It’s probably a good thing we don’t live anywhere near the water.

My day had an interesting little wrinkle in it, and I hope it’s something that DID make a difference for my kids. At around 10:30, Mr. Redd stuck his head into my room and knocked lightly on the door. When I looked up from what I was doing, he motioned me over and softly said, “I need to tell you something.”

Of course, as soon as Mr. Redd first disturbed the air molecules in the doorway, the kids had totally lost interest in what they were doing and were staring at him. Throughout the year, we have gone over the visitor procedure many, many times. When a visitor walks into the room, the kids are supposed to completely ignore the visitor and continue doing whatever it was they were already doing. Only if that visitor specifically talks to them are they to pay any attention to that person.

In practice, the complete opposite happens. When somebody walks into the room, the kids all swivel around in their chairs and stare the person down. This happens more often per day than you might think. I have a lot of kids coming and going to and from various tutoring groups throughout the day, and when they leave my class or come back into my class, I never have the full attention of my kids. Same goes for when another teacher walks in to talk to me. It is incredibly aggravating.

Anyway, I walked over to the door to conference with Mr. Redd, who looked much more serious than he usually does. He started with, “Don’t tell anybody this. I probably shouldn’t even be saying anything.”

My eyes darted sideways, and I could see that every child in the room was listening with bated breath, waiting to hear the gossip that Mr. Redd shouldn’t be sharing. You could hear a mechanical pencil lead drop.

Mr. Redd went on, “When you see the words ‘How many more’ in a word problem, it means you’re comparing two things and you’re supposed to subtract.”

I stroked my chin thoughtfully as I fake-pondered the importance of his words and as the two of us did our best not to ruin the moment by laughing. We had come up with this plan a few weeks ago while commiserating with each other at happy hour, er, I mean, at book study one evening.

I do my best to impart pearls of wisdom to the kids every day, but too many of them choose not to listen. Yet, like I said before, when the kids SHOULD be ignoring a visitor and focusing on their work, they instead listen raptly to the conversation with the visitor. Maybe gaining the knowledge through eavesdropping on Mr. Redd will last longer. Who knows? I need to return the favor in HIS class, and I’m thinking about whispering, “Did you know that TAKS really stands for ‘Texas Accentuates Kids’ Suffering?’”

There is still the problem of the complete loss of production any time somebody walks into the classroom, though. I am very tempted to start running visitor drills. Grading the kids on their response or lack of response to people entering the room. Why not? It’s not like we don’t do enough drills at this school.

In fact, the powers that be have for some reason decided to cram all of this month’s required drills into this week. We had a fire drill on Monday and a crisis drill yesterday. That’s a bit much. Especially when you add in all the drills I already make the kids do when I get irritated with them.

“All right, that’s the FOURTH time you’ve told me three plus four equals nine! Drop and give me twenty!”

After school yesterday, Miss Palmerstein told me that she had heard from Ms. Zapata that we were due a tornado drill. That’s one we don’t do very often, where we have to take the kids out into the hallway and have them kneel down in front of the wall.

All day long, I was prepped for the tornado drill. So when it finally came at 2:15, I was the first teacher out the door in the 3rd grade hallway. I already had five or six kids ducking and covering when Mrs. Bird’s class started to pour out from across the hallway. Fortunately, only two more kids had assumed the position before Mrs. Bird pointed out that we were having another fire drill, NOT a tornado drill.

Hey, my kids might have burned, but at least they wouldn’t be harmed by falling debris.

Chalk up my mistake to the stress I’m feeling over the TAKS next Tuesday. My left eyeball is twitching more than a frog’s legs under an applied electric current. Eyeballs are pretty much not supposed to do that. But some of my kids still don’t seem anywhere close to ready.

Today in tutoring, I asked Suzie how many minutes were in one hour. She just stared at me with a blank expression. I asked her to turn her attention to the clock hanging on the wall, and to count by fives all the way around the clock. She counted 5, 10, 15... all the way up to 60. Perfect. Then I asked her again how many minutes were in one hour. She thought about it for a few seconds, and then replied, “One?”

Now, not only is my eyeball in danger, but my forehead has a huge red welt from me pounding it against the wall.

At this point, I have to believe that my kids either have the knowledge or they don’t. Cramming is probably not going to make a difference. Maybe it’s time to start chucking starfish.

Later,



Teddy Ornott



Date: Tuesday, April 27, 2010





To: Fred Bommerson



From: Jack Woodson



Subject: Panic A-TAKS





Hey man,



I told you that eavesdropping strategy works wonders! I’m glad you and Winter were able to put it to good use to once and for all end Larry’s weekly demand for Arby’s.

I’ve had a super long week, and it’s only Tuesday! These past two days have been the longest of the year. Either I’ve fallen into my own personal version of Groundhog Day, or it’s TAKS week.

Time to see if I’ve made an impact in any of these kids’ brains. Like I mentioned last time, I reached a point late last week where I just had to accept that if they don’t know it by now, they’re not going to know it for the test. As one of my old college professors used to say, “Time for me to let go of your hand and see if you walk out in front of a truck.”

Ironically, that same professor was himself severely injured when a truck fell on top of him during a Force and Load demonstration gone horribly wrong.

Typically, kids do bring their A-game to the table on test day, and quite often, kids who don’t seem to know their head from a hole in the ground will do well. It’s just that I have a sinking suspicion that several kids in my group this year would need to undergo some sort of “Flowers for Algernon” process in order to pull off a miracle like that.

I did all I could do to motivate and bribe. I told the kids that everyone who did their best would get to have a reward pizza and movie party on Friday. I promised extra blue tickets to everyone who spent time checking their work. I told Antonio that I had plenty more coupons for free meals at the Golden Corral if he put his best effort into it. I thoroughly confused several kids by shouting, “I gotta have more cowbell!”

Grudgingly, I had to comply with the state-mandated directive of covering everything in my room. Anything that contains print or numbers must be covered up. Last Friday, I had to spend about an hour stapling butcher paper to my walls to cover up bulletin boards, the word wall, the number line, and just about everything else that was too big or too high to take down. You know, I can understand the need to remove posters, signs, and boards that contain mathematically-related items, but some of this is just downright silly! I have an alphabet strip running the length of the wall above my whiteboard, and I had to cover up the letters! I’m so sure that a student is going to be immersed in the TAKS, look up at those letters, and in a flash of insight, suddenly comprehend the answer to the question he was stuck on for 20 minutes.

“Thank you, Cursive P! You saved my bacon once again!”

Since they don’t let us monitor our own kids anymore – after all, the word “teachers” CAN be rearranged to spell the word “cheaters” – I was up in Mrs. Jones’ 5th grade classroom while she was in mine. This made for two very long days of doing nothing but walking around the room, keeping the kids quiet and focused on their tests. Oh, and replacing broken and dull pencils. Because as soon as one kid asks for a new pencil, twenty others need one too.

During the test, we’re not allowed to say anything to the kids that could be construed as help or hints. We are trained to respond to any requests for help with one universal mantra.



Student: “How do you say this word?”

Teacher: “Just do your best.”

Student: “I don’t understand this question.”

Teacher: “Just do your best.”

Student: “I fell out of my chair and landed on my pencil, and now I’m bleeding profusely from the ear!”

Teacher: “Just do your best.”



It’s pretty easy for the first two hours or so, when the kids are still answering the questions. It’s when they finish the last question that the squirrelly behavior starts to come out.

They all know that they’re supposed to go back and check their work and find mistakes. Most of them have been told that it would not be the best decision to even think about turning their test in before lunch. So as a compromise, most of them will spend hours pretending to check their work. This can be amusing to the observing teacher for a few seconds, but it gets old quickly when the child keeps looking back every few seconds to see if you’re noticing that they are checking.

“Yes, student who so desperately wants me to think that you are actually checking your work, I DO see you deliberately counting on your fingers! Way to go!!”

Aside from that, Mrs. Jones’ class was pretty well behaved and did their business. My class wasn’t quite so accommodating.

Mrs. Jones caught me after school today to tell me that Suzie had fallen asleep twice before lunch, that Eddie had finished his test and then loudly announced to the class, “I’M FINISHED!” and that Shelly had basically just played with her hair and nails all day long.

On a positive note, Mrs. Jones mentioned that several times during the math test, she heard kids muttering, “Use the force.” I told her I had taught them a Jedi mind trick. I wanted to follow up with, “I have the death sentence in twelve systems!” but I didn’t want to confuse her any further.

Over in Mrs. Bird’s class, there was one case of idiocy. During the reading test yesterday, Gwenn actually tore out a piece of her test booklet so she could write a note to the girl in front of her! Mr. Utoobay, who was monitoring that class, handed me the torn out piece and said, “Maybe she thought she’d get a head start on the 4th grade writing TAKS.” Gwenn’s note consisted of one word – “Hola!”

I’m sorry, but if you’re going to go to the ridiculous extreme of MUTILATING the document that determines whether or not you go to the next grade, you had damn well better write something more than, “Hola!” I’d better see Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians or the complete lyrics to “American Pie.”

Joaqim and Marcus turned their tests in before nine-thirty. For those of you keeping track at home, you can just write those two off right now.

I will be having several lengthy discussions with students tomorrow. But the good news is that standardized testing is over for another year. Now we have to play the waiting game for the results. I’d much rather be playing Stratego or Hungry Hungry Hippo.

Later,



Walker, TAKSes Ranger



Date: Friday, April 30, 2010





To: Fred Bommerson



From: Jack Woodson



Subject: 1-800-IMCRAZY





Hey pal,



Thank you for that lengthy and eye-opening lesson on the powers – nay, SUPER powers even – of the cursive letter P. I will never again question the rationale behind the requirement to cover up every little letter before test day.

As to your technical question about which solder to use for your latest heat pump model – Just do your best.

Today is Friday, which is always nice, but it’s also the Friday after the TAKS, which makes it at least doubly sweet. We had a little pizza party for the kids (with a few exceptions), and I mostly played math games with them for the rest of the day.

It was a picture-perfect day. Except for one little thing that happened at recess.

Have you ever had a telephone conference with a customer that upset you to the point of tears? It’s not pleasant, let me tell you.

I had just such a conference with Lex’s mother today, and I now have a much deeper insight into why he acts the way he does.

Out on the playground, I saw Lex throw a punch at another child. He missed him, thankfully, but the intent was there all the same. This is not the first time that he has scuffled during playtime. In fact, according to Tattle Tale General DaQuayvius, Lex fights at least a dozen people every day.

I had a few words with the lad, and even though he kept trying to tell me that he hadn’t done anything, I got my point across – “No more fighting, or I will suspend your ass for a week.”

Not five minutes later, I saw Felipe and Victor run into each other, with Felipe hitting the ground hard enough to bring tears. Lex immediately leaped at Felipe, leaned over him and shouted, “You got knocked the f--- out!!!”

Thus the phone call to Lex’s mom. I made the call once we had all gotten back inside and settled. This began the most frustrating call I’ve ever been on, even more so than that time two years ago when I tried to get the cable company to explain to me why ESPN2 had suddenly been replaced with Lifetime for Women.

I began by telling her about the miscalculated punch. She seemed fixated on the fact that he had not actually HIT anyone – the swing and miss didn’t matter to her at all. You know, in a basketball game, if you throw a punch, you get ejected whether you make contact with someone else or not.

I tried to tell her that just because her son was not coordinated enough to actually strike his intended target doesn’t absolve him of any wrongdoing, but she didn’t want to hear it.

Next I told her about my conversation with Lex, where I warned him about fighting and being suspended and his subsequent profane statement. Her reply was, “Well, did you tell him not to curse?”

Uh, no. I also didn’t tell him not to eat yellow snow, lick batteries, or fall asleep in a swimming pool. Us school people DO expect parents to teach their kids SOME common sense type stuff.

A moment later, she switched gears and stated, “Mr. Woodson, kids curse at school all day long.”

“Not in my class, they don’t,” I answered firmly.

“Was he IN your class, or was he on the playground?”

At that point, I realized that it really wasn’t going to matter what I said or what Lex had done. I was speaking to a crazy person. And quite possibly one of Marcus’s relatives, given the semantic quibbling going on.

I moved on to the part about suspending him, telling her that he would have to stay home for three days.

“Why does he have to stay at home?” she asked. “Why can’t he be put in a first grade classroom or something?”

Clearly, the woman is familiar with behavioral consequences at the school.

I told her that Mrs. Bird and I had decided that the severity of his recent actions warranted an at-home suspension.

She came back with, “Well, I don’t think it’s going to teach him a lesson, if that’s what you’re hoping for, if he gets to stay home and watch cartoons and eat ice cream all day.”

If I had been face-to-face with this woman, I would definitely have felt the need to begin backing away slowly, avoiding eye contact, and not making any sudden, jerky movements.

I was out in the hallway during this conversation, and when I ended the phone call – pretty inconclusively – I found myself visibly shaking with frustration. I had to take a few moments to compose myself before going back into the classroom. Thankfully, Mrs. Bird was watching the kids, getting ready to start the movie for the TAKS reward party.

I took Lex down to Ms. Zapata’s office and explained the phone call I had just had. Ms. Zapata was not impressed with Lex OR his mother. She said that Lex would be suspended AT HOME next week.

Poor Lex. Three days of watching cartons and eating ice cream. And possibly working on actually connecting with his punches.

Crap, I probably SHOULD have put him in a first grade classroom. Next time, and I’m sure there will be a next time, I’ll suspend him in-school. Let it never be said that I don’t learn from my mistakes.

And when Lex comes back on Thursday, I’ll be sure to tell him not to curse, not to tattle, not to pretend to be blind, not to stick toothpicks in his butt, and so on, and so on. I’d better start making a list now.

Later,



Mel O’Drama



Date: Monday, May 3, 2010





To: Fred Bommerson



From: Jack Woodson



Subject: Alas, poor Pluto, we knew you well





Hey dude,



No, Lex’s mom will most likely NOT be adding me to her email list and forwarding funny videos. That’s a very astute observation. I’m guessing she would never go out of her way to help me change a flat tire, either.

Thanks for letting me vent in that last email. Today’s tone will be noticeably more breezier, I promise.

Right off the bat, one thing that’s breezier is my now tie-free attire, as the summer dress code is back in effect. We got an email last week that covered “Acceptable and Unacceptable Dress,” and I found a few of the bullet points quite humorous.

For one thing, the memo specifically banned big overalls from being worn at schools. This makes me wonder two things: Who actually necessitated that clause by showing up to school in bib overalls, and did they also have a hayseed sticking between their two front teeth?

Also, Spandex has been outlawed. I’m OK with this, because I already wear Spandex at night to fight crime (and to rock out with super-crazy dance moves), so I don’t need to wear it at school, too.

This morning, as I walked Spandex-free around the classroom observing the kids doing their morning work, I noticed an overpoweringly sweet smell coming from one table. It seemed to be coming from Jessie’s area, so I stopped to talk with him. Here’s how the conversation went:



Me: “Is somebody over here wearing perfume or cologne?”

Jessie: “No.”

Me: “Really?”

Jessie: “Yes.”

Me: “OK. How many times did you push the spray button?”

Jessie: “One.”

Me: “Smells like more than one.”

Jessie: “Five.”



I don’t think most people realize that teachers often have to be master detectives and interrogators to get to the bottom of things. Not to mention expert hand-writing analysts to figure out who didn’t put their name on a test or who forged their parent’s signature on their report card.

With TAKS behind us, and only about a month left in the school year, we can finally get around to some of the fun stuff on the curriculum. Today we started to read about the solar system from our science textbooks. These are the same textbooks we’ve been using since I started teaching, so they are a bit outdated in terms of the current planetary lineup.

When we came across the sentence that said, “There are nine planets in the solar system, including Earth,” I had to stop for a moment and explain why this was no longer the case.

All of the kids seemed dumbfounded that Pluto was no longer considered a planet. Mickey even blurted out, “Pluto got blowed up?”

No, it was more like being voted off the island. Maybe I should tell the kids that there was one big episode of Solar System Idol, and Pluto’s performance just wasn’t up to snuff. Some experts questioned its choice of “Cold as Ice” by Foreigner, and the gold sequined unitard really had people wondering.

Here’s what the judges had to say:



Randy: “You rock, dawg! Really! You’re a rock, and you’re named after a Disney dawg!”

Simon: “That was really pathetic. You call yourself a planet – but where’s the warmth? I’ve seen more personality and spirit from an errant comet. Next you’ll be claiming planethood for that so-called ‘moon’ of yours.”

Paula: “Our mystic fathers joined together to drink from the river of the galaxy. I feel like the ultimate bingo winner in a high-stakes universe with multiple realities. Meet me in my dressing room.”



Ultimately a big group of scientists banded together to kick Pluto to the curb. I think I read somewhere that Mel Gibson’s father has already begun to promote the word that there have always only been eight planets.

I told the kids that one of the reasons for Pluto’s exile was that it did not meet size requirements. It was just too small to be a planet.

Clarisa asked me, “So Pluto is so small it would fit in this room?”

Um, noooo, not quite THAT small.

“But it would fit inside the school, right?”

To them, small means a cat, and big means an elephant. Anything beyond that, and they have a very hard time comprehending. Telling them Pluto is small is kind of like telling them that a Pinot Noir from 1857 is overrated – they’re just not going to grasp it.

Interestingly enough, Uranus is still large enough to be considered a planet.

Later,



Mel Keyway



Date: Wednesday, May 5, 2010





To: Fred Bommerson



From: Jack Woodson



Subject: Bad Breath of a Salesman





Hey man,



Nope, I don’t think Uranus humor will ever not be funny. I’ve entertained myself greatly over the past couple of days by slipping Uranus jokes into conversation during science class. At last count, I was up to 19.

In fact, Mrs. Davidson, the Behavioral Unit teacher who’s been sitting in class with Felicia, had to excuse herself from the room yesterday because she started giggling loudly. This left us with a potentially dangerous situation, because I don’t think Felicia’s pepper water would stand a chance against the denizens of Uranus.

20!

Yesterday, we went to an assembly in the auditorium so the kids could learn about this year’s fundraising activity. Each child was given a case of “World’s Greatest Chocolate” bars to sell to their friends and family (and weak-willed teachers), and sales will benefit the PTA at the school.

The guy who gave the presentation kept the kids’ attention by doing a lot of magic tricks and promising great prizes to anyone who sold a lot of chocolate. Mention prizes to these kids and they go bananas. They have no intention whatsoever of actually doing whatever it takes to WIN the prizes, but just HEARING about the prizes is like winning the lottery for them.

They’ve been doing the candy bar sales here at my school for several years now. Before that, it was some kind of coupon book they had to sell.

This makes me think back to when I was in the third grade, and my school’s fundraiser was having us sell fertilizer door-to-door. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but looking back on it, that seems a really odd choice of merchandise to have an eight-year-old child sell. But sell it, I did. I sold more than anyone else in my class. I don’t know if this was because people in my neighborhood really needed fertilizer, or if it was just a welcome relief from all of the other kids selling candy.

“If that’s just another snot-nosed kid selling M&M’s... Wait – what’s this? Fertilizer?!? THANK YOU, GOD!!”

I remember there was one guy in the neighborhood who really boosted my sales. The whole time I was meticulously working my way through my carefully prepared sales pitch, he was making impatient gestures as if to say, “Get on with it,” and when I finally did finish, he immediately stated, “Yeah, okay, gimme twenty bags.”

I can understand buying a two dollar candy bar because you want the kid doing the hard sell to feel successful. Nobody pity-buys a fifty-pound bag of fertilizer.

Thankfully, I wasn’t out there lugging around huge bags of manure – it was a system of pre-order and cash on delivery. And instead of some crappy plastic prizes like my students get here at the school, we were actually paid a commission. For every bag we sold, we received a Susan B. Anthony dollar. When I first laid eyes on this previously unheard of coinage – the reward for my hard efforts – my reaction was, “What the *%$# is that??”

But, ridiculous coinage aside, I had been paid handsomely for my hard work, so I offered to use some of my money to take the family out to dinner. We went to Pizza Hut and pigged out. When my mom and I went up to the counter to pay at the end of the meal, I carefully laid out ten Susies before the waitress got to the register. When she came to ring us up, she asked, “Who put all these quarters here?”

My current third graders don’t need to worry about being paid in some obscure monetary unit. Instead, the kids who sell at least two boxes will get a little party at the end of the school year with an air bounce, ring toss, and other hokey little games.

They’d probably just lose the quarters anyway.

Personally, I think it’s rather foolish to give every kid a case of candy bars right off the bat. Not all of them are going to have the drive to sell them and return with money. Or, in the case of Cerulean, they might not have the will power not to just eat the chocolate themselves.

Cerulean, who walks herself from Ms. Hamm’s special ed class back to my room around 2:45 each afternoon, decided today to duck into the bathroom and eat herself into a chocolate-induced stupor.

Someone found her in the back corner of the restroom, glassy-eyed and near-comatose. Talk about a Functional Voiding Disturbance! She had eaten five candy bars and unwrapped a sixth. No amount of magic tricks can counter that sort of determination.

On a completely different note, Jill called me last night. I almost didn’t answer the phone, but I’m really glad I did. We talked for quite a while, and the key message was that she wants to get back together. She said that she went out with the ex-boyfriend a couple of times and quickly realized that the spark wasn’t there and that she missed me. She wanted to wait until after the stress of TAKS to contact me, but she wanted to see me again as soon as possible.

I might be a total fool for agreeing to try this relationship out again, but I’ve always believed in the saying, “Itsy-es better to have lost in love than never to get lost at all.” Or something like that. At any rate, I think Jill is worth the risk. It’s not like she screwed me over or anything. She just needed to sort things out, and she’s obviously arrived at the right decision.

I’m going to be very optimistic about this working out for real this time. Just like I’m optimistic about someday receiving super powers from an advanced alien civilization. Hey, at least one of them is probable, right?

Talk to you later,



Ray Demption



Date: Monday, May 10, 2010





To: Fred Bommerson



From: Jack Woodson



Subject: Dino-Mite!



Hey dude,



I told you, I have no idea why fertilizer was the sale item of choice during my formative years. And yes, I’m going to continue to call it fertilizer, not the four letter expletive that you kept slinging around.

Cerulean is fine, thanks for asking. Her mom had to cough up the money for the bars she ate, and the rest were returned to the office. I don’t think Cerulean is going to be going anywhere near chocolate of any sort for quite a while.

Thanks for your support on the matter of Jill. Don’t worry, if things work out, as I hope they will, I’ll forgive you for calling her a black spork.

Back to school stuff, this afternoon, I was talking with my class about the solar system, and we started discussing asteroids and meteors. I explained to the kids that there is a theory that says that a huge meteor struck the Earth, and this is what caused all of the dinosaurs to die.

Since I have painstakingly taught them the scientific method, this immediately led to fact-finding questions of, “Where are the dinosaurs now?” “Did King Kong live with the dinosaurs?” and, “Did you see Jurassic Park?”

Once we were on the topic of dinosaurs and their ilk, Lance saw fit to share a story about the time he picked up a lizard and put it in his cousin’s sandwich. While all of the other kids in the class were making retching sounds, I tried to explain that you should never touch a lizard, or any other wild animal for that matter, because of the diseases they carry. Without actually using the word salmonella, I told the kids that lizards carry a disease that can make your stomach hurt really bad.

A couple of the kids piped up with, “And you can get rabies!!” I agreed with them that rabies is a disease that some animals carry.

Victor then raised his hand and asked, “Do birds give you herpes?”

While the sarcastic side of me wanted to answer, “Yes, and those lousy unicorns will give you genital warts,” I instead responded with, “Uhhhhhhhhhh, I don’t think so. But I wouldn’t chance it.”

Since there are only three weeks (and change) of school left, I thought I would stop having a word problem as my bell ringer activity and switch to something more fun. Of course, I suppose I should have remembered that fun is in the brain of the beholder.

I’ve got a set of overhead transparencies that display logic puzzles. You know the ones – Bozo, Flozo, and Schmozo own a dog, a cat, and a herpes-spreading parakeet. Read these clues and fill in the grid to determine which pet goes with which kid.

Personally, I have always LOVED logic puzzles like this. Of course, I love math also, so call me screwy. When I’ve done logic puzzles with my third graders in the past, they’ve enjoyed them as well.

Maybe these kids will grow into them. However, the first day was no reason to celebrate their arrival.

The first puzzle in the set involved three boys – Richie, Howard, and Leo – having their birthday parties at three different places – the swimming pool, the roller rink, and the mini golf course. I showed the kids how they needed to copy the grid that had the boys’ names and the place names. We read the first clue together, which said something along the lines of, “Richie and the boy who had his party at the roller rink are best friends.”

I then asked the kids, “So what does this clue tell us about Richie or the other boys?”

Several hands went into the air. I called on Betsy, who is one of my brighter girls.

“It tells us that they are very excited about having their birthday parties?”

Hmmm… I hadn’t considered that. I replied, “Um, they probably are, but remember we’re trying to figure out WHERE each boy is having his party.”

Next I called on Amir.

“They are happy?”

OK, I thought, this is not going in the right direction. Maybe if, instead of party locations, the top part of the grid showed emotions like Happy, Excited, and Manic-Depressive, THEN we’d be getting somewhere.

But still I pressed on. “The boys are all happy and excited, but we are looking for a clue to WHERE the boys are having their parties. Let’s read the clue again. Richie AND the boy who had his party at the roller rink. What do you think?”

Hillary had her hand raised.

“I think they will have their parties at a house because those places are too expensive.”

By this time, I was making “gaga” sounds, flapping my lips with my finger, and rolling my head around in circles. Finally, Thilleenica stepped up and offered the right piece of information from the clue.

Despite the rough first outing, I am determined to stay the course here. I feel strongly that puzzles like this really exercise the brain, and I have some kids whose brains seem to be morbidly obese.

Maybe tomorrow’s puzzle should be about animals and the disease each one spreads. That might capture the kids’ interest a little better.

Later,



Jude Lawjic



Date: Wednesday, May 12, 2010





To: Fred Bommerson



From: Jack Woodson



Subject: What is that heavenly aroma?



Hey Fred,



I certainly did enjoy your hand-crafted logic puzzle about recent woes there at HPU. Let me see if I interpreted the clues correctly. I’m going to go with Latya getting busted for coming in to work at 11:00 three days in a row; Tiffany leaving a tube of lipstick to melt all over a circuit board; and Larry hitting on the new parts inspector out on the line.

Though those last two really could go either way.

The melted lipstick almost sounds like the beginning of a science project, so it’s fitting that that’s my topic for today. I am super thankful that this year, we moved the science fair to a date AFTER the TAKS. There have been years when we’ve had to squeeze in projects while stressing over math review. During those years, I will admit, I was much more lenient and allowed somewhat less than rigorous project ideas.

“OK, class, we have 30 minutes to complete the project, and that’s it! If you don’t already have an idea, we’re going with, ‘How many fingers does Mr. Woodson have?’ Write down your hypothesis now.”

You’d be amazed at how wild and varied the guesses were.

A few weeks ago, we spent a few days doing a sample project together. It was titled, “Which will fly farther: a plain paper airplane or a paper airplane with a paperclip on the nose?”

It was a nice diversion during TAKS review week, the kids had fun, and I got to show them exactly what would be expected on their projects.

At one point, one of my cabinet doors was left open, and Jacob saw the big bottle of ketchup I keep on a shelf (ever since the run-in with the Ketchup Nazi). He pointed to it and asked, “Are we doing a science experiment with that?”

We certainly weren’t going to waste perfectly good Heinz on an experiment, but it was good to see that at least some of the kids had their brains in science project mode.

For the weekend right after the TAKS, their homework was to jot down a few ideas for potential projects to explore. I was looking for some open-ended questions and some feeling for what kinds of experiments they were interested in.

I got back a few viable responses, but as usual, the nonviable ones blew them out of the water.

I figured there would be some questions that don’t require an experiment to answer. Lakeisha submitted, “What is longer, a ruler or a journal?”

Hey, at least she’s exploring, right?

Tyler gave me one that would actually be interesting to see put into motion: “How does a solid change when you hit something with it?”

I can imagine Tyler walking around whacking everything in sight with a backpack, a lunch box, or a baseball bat.

Kevin asked, “How long can a human stay underwater?”

Not a bad question, though I’m not sure how we’d test it here in the classroom. I’m tempted to tell him to revise it to “How long can a third grader stay quiet?”

From the “Let Me Know When You Find the Answer” files, Chassany asked, “How do you think liquid was invented?”

Or maybe it was “How do you think liquor was invented?” – the spelling was a bit hard to make out.

Betsy turned in one of my favorites: “If I stop feeding my turtle for 10 days will it die?”

My hypothesis – the turtle will croak.

Not at all unexpectedly, Eddie took the prize for the most bizarre response:

“Which one will last longer – game or cake?”

We might need a separate science project just to INTERPRET that question!

I (gently) suggested a few other ideas to some of these kids, but for the most part, I’ve let the kids choose their partners and choose their projects, and today we started doing the experiments in class.

Miles, Tomas, and Jessie are probably going to win first prize. They have three different types of liquid – water, Hawaiian Punch, and Coca-Cola – and they are attempting to determine which liquid will best clean a penny. I’ve hardly had to help them at all. They have a very sound procedure, and they’ve kept to it.

Three other boys – Jacob, Nestor, and Franco– needed some class participation to complete their project – “Can you identify an object by its smell?” These three were on the ball and had already brought in their materials early last week. That fact will come into play later in my story.

The boys chose five classmates to serve as test subjects, and one at a time they blindfolded their volunteer then held objects in front of that person’s nose, asking them to identify the object by its smell.

Their materials list included:

a bag of Hot Cheetos

a dirty sock

an old tennis shoe

a lime

a small thermos filled with strawberry milk

Sitting on the counter in my room for over a week didn’t much affect the cheetos, the sock, the shoe, or the lime. However, it didn’t do any good for the strawberry milk.

After the boys had collected their data, we pretty much had a reenactment of that old Saturday Night Live skit where one guy says, “YUUCCCKKKKKK!! This milk is rancid!!!” Then his buddy says, “EWWWWW, that’s disgusting! Let me try!!”

All of the kids had to smell the milk, whether they were involved with the project or not. I watched as Ta’varon recoiled in horror and then 30 seconds later shouted, “Let me smell that again!”

Before you even ask, let me answer the question that I know you’re curious about:

Of COURSE I smelled the milk myself.

I can only hope that when all these kids went home today, woozy with watery eyes and off-line olfactory systems, they told their parents, “It was for science!”

Otherwise, I’m gonna get phone calls.

Smell ya later,



50 Scent



Date: Friday, May 14, 2010





To: Fred Bommerson



From: Jack Woodson



Subject: Milk. It’s what’s for dinner.



Hey bud,