Learn Me Gooder

OK, if we ever DO get the green light to shoot commercials, tell Tiffany I’m putting her in charge. Her idea of “Division – So easy, a 3rd grader could do it” is genius!!

Larry’s proposal – “Just glue it” – Not so much.

The fridge in my kitchen finally has some modern art displayed! Jacob gave me a hand-drawn picture today, which was very sweet of him. It was a picture of Larry the Cucumber from the cartoon Veggie Tales. My nephew Kyle loves Veggie Tales, so I’m familiar with some of the characters.

I did find it just a bit inappropriate, though, that Jacob had depicted Larry The Cucumber wearing nothing but a thong. I mean, I’ve never heard of a cucumber hammock.

No, I’m just kidding. Larry was dressed as Sherlock Holmes – there shall be no obscene vegetable portraits on my kitchen appliances!

Jacob gave me the picture right before leaving my room this morning, around 10:30. At 10:50, the class went to music, and from there to lunch.

When we went to pick the kids up from the cafeteria, Jacob was visibly upset, as was Nestor (favorite color: OGO).

While Mrs. Bird took the other kids outside for recess, I tried to get to the bottom of the mystery (as I’m sure Sherlock Cucumber would have done).

Somehow Mickey was involved in this whole mess as well, and he seemed more than happy to tell me what had happened.

“Jacob told me he didn’t want to be friends with Nestor anymore, and when I told Nestor, he started crying. Then Nestor said he didn’t want to be friends with Jacob anymore, and when I said that to Jacob, HE started crying.”

I thanked Mickey, The Great Facilitator, and then asked him to go away. Nicely, of course.

Left with Jacob and Nestor, I proceeded into the classic “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” speech (AKA, The Bronze Rule, copyright 815 B.C.). I pointed out that if neither of them had made mean comments, neither of them would have had to cry and feel bad.

At that, Jacob, on the verge of tears again, turned to Nestor and exclaimed, in his high-pitched voice, “I’m so sorry! Can you ever forgive me?”

Nestor responded by throwing his arms around Jacob in a full-on bear hug, complete with back thumping.

I couldn’t help but think that somewhere, Chris Farley and John Belushi were smiling.

I told Mrs. Bird that I would take her homeroom to the library this afternoon so they could check out a couple of new books. As they were making their selections, I noticed that Nestor had a book that was way beyond his level. I asked Mrs. Drogz, the librarian, if she had any really, really, REALLY basic books that he could read. The first thing that came to mind was Dick and Jane. She returned shortly with a Dr. Seuss book which I thought would be perfect.

Nestor’s face lit up, and he exclaimed, “Oh, I know that one!” He pointed at the title and proudly traced the words with his finger as he read, “The. Cat. In. The. Hat.”

It was very touching to see Nestor so excited, and I didn’t have the heart to point out that the book was actually titled “Hop on Pop.” But at least he recognized the author, so that’s something, right?

In a showing that all was once again right with the world, Jacob started helping Nestor sound out the words in the book. Their lunchroom tiff seemed to be a thing of the past, and I kept an eye on Mickey to make sure he stayed away from them.

I had another Dr. Seuss moment while grading today’s tests after school. The final question was a written response question, and it asked, “Give an example of when you would round instead of using exact numbers. Explain.”

As usual, answers ranged from mostly right to inexplicably wrong to downright unintelligible. I was looking for answers that contained any mention of what we had discussed when we first started rounding, namely, going to the store and keeping track of the total cost. Probably about 1/3 of the kids got this.

Eddie, Lex, and a few other lazy kids answered, “at school,” or, “in math.”

Gwenn really took the WHEN to heart and answered, “Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.”

I guess Wednesdays are rounding-free days for priti prinseses?

Franco and Hillary both wrote, “Never. You wouldn’t get an answer.”

Great! So glad they think my class is all about learning things that have no use whatsoever! Tomorrow, I’ll teach them how to make piggy banks out of Kleenex.

This brings us to the Seussical response. Ava’s answer to when you would round was, “At my house, in the car, in a tree, at the school.”

For some reason, after I read this, my mind immediately started chanting,



“I will not round that in a car,

I will not round that with a jar.

I will not round that in a box,

I will not round that with a fox.”



I think I’m going to start requiring these free response answers to be written in rhyme. And maybe illustrated with vegetables that can talk.

Talk to you later,



Sham-I-Am



Date: Wednesday, October 28, 2009





To: Fred Bommerson



From: Jack Woodson



Subject: Talk this way





Hey Fred,



You’re absolutely right, kids like Nestor are tough cases. He can’t read, he doesn’t do math well, he can barely count, and he’s actually too low academically to be in the special education program. He’s certainly not going to pass the TAKS test, which is the end-all measuring tool for the state. Unfortunately, the TAKS tests measure the growth of a student about as much as the height stick at an amusement park measures growth.

When I worked at Six Flags in high school, we would put the height stick (a 5-foot long ruler with a crossbar set at the minimum height) down next to any child we wanted to check and give it a twirl. If it whacked the kid in the head, he was tall enough to ride. It certainly didn’t measure how much the kid had grown over the summer, though.

There is no chance at all that the TAKS is going to whack Nestor in the head, so to speak. So he will show up as a failure blip on my records. I’ve accepted that. It doesn’t mean he’s going to leave my class without making any progress, though. The important thing now is to get him to a higher level than he is now, even if that level is far below the third grade requirements.

Hey, he can already count twice as high as he could on that first day, and more importantly, he doesn’t throw letters into the mix anymore. Having him partnered up with Jacob is very helpful, because they can work together, and Nestor can feel some sense of accomplishment. Plus, I’ve heard them have some pretty good discussions during science time.

That’s more than I can say for some of the other pairings.

This year, the district has made a really big point of stressing what they call “Accountable Talk” among the children. This means that the kids are supposed to explain in detail how they got their answers and discuss their strategies in depth with the other students.

This can be quite the challenge for many of my kids, since they are used to just saying a number when I ask a question or shouting, “NOOO!” at another kid when they disagree with his or her answer.

Frequently, I will say, “Please raise your hand if you know the answer,” and 20 hands will shoot up. But when I add, “AND if you can explain to me how you got your answer,” 17 of those hands go back down.

As a reminder and an aid, each desk has a list of accountable talk prompts taped to it to help the kids remember how to begin. These prompts include:



“I got my answer by ____________.”

“To solve this problem, first I _______________, then I ______________.”

“I’d like to add more to what __________ said.”



To be honest, my kids very rarely begin their sentences any of these ways. However, the two prompts that they really DO seem to have latched on to are the ones that begin, “I agree with __________,” and, “I disagree with ______________.”

It was very funny to hear the way in which these prompts came into play this afternoon.

The kids were completing a name graph in their math journals. To construct this bar graph, we had to first create a tally chart that showed the number of letters in people’s first names. I was standing at the center of the class asking the kids to raise their hands if they had 4 letters in their first name, 5 letters in their first name, etc.

When I got to the “10 or more” category, only Thilleenica raised her hand, saying she had 11 letters in her name.

With our tally chart completed, we moved on to the next step, but that’s when DaQuayvius raised his hand and said, “I disagree with Thilleenica, because I counted the letters in her name, and there are only 10 letters in her name.”

Immediately, Thilleenica raised her hand and retorted, “I disagree with DaQuayvius, because I KNOW how to spell my own name, and there are 11 letters in my name.”

Let no one say that my kids aren’t talking accountably! Though my newest little girl, Fo’lina, doesn’t want to talk to me at all. Fo’lina showed up last week, and her mom raved and raved about what a fantastic reader she was. That day, though, before entering my classroom, Fo’lina asked, “Do I have to read in this class?”

Mrs. Bird told me later that she had been asked the exact same question. I was tempted to use some accountable talk of my own – “I disagree with your mother.”

This morning, Mrs. Bird told me that she had asked Fo’lina to bring a book about sharks over to me yesterday, but that Fo’lina had hesitantly replied, “Can someone else go with me?”

When Mrs. Bird asked her why she needed someone to escort her ten feet across the hall, she answered, “I’m scared of Mr. Woodson.”

I considered donning a hockey mask and walking into Mrs. Bird’s room, shouting, “FO’LINA!! WHY ARE YOU AFRAID OF ME? BRING ME THAT BOOK! NOW!!”

But that would be cruel. And while I may be scary to some, I’m really not cruel.

While we were switching classes, Mickey shared some accountable talk of his own with another hilarious insight. As soon as he saw Mrs. Bird, who was wearing a horizontally-striped black and white long-sleeve shirt, he told her, “You look like one of those guys who goes…”

Here he proceeded to stick both hands out and pretend he was pushing on an invisible wall.

Brilliant.

Talk to you later,



Marcel Marshow’n’tell



Date: Friday, October 30, 2009





To: Fred Bommerson



From: Jack Woodson



Subject: A Jack of all grades





Hey Fred,



Here’s hoping that the first grader who ran into me at full speed out by the buses today learns to watch where he’s going. And that he recovers from his injuries quickly.

I haven’t really kept in touch with Philby since I left HPU, so I’m sorry I can’t help you out with whatever issues you two are having now. At least not directly. Give him a little space, and hopefully things will blow over. I’d agree that it’s always good to maintain clear communication, but I don’t think my sample Accountable Talk prompts are going to help you much. Especially not if you fill them in like MadLibs.

“To solve this problem, first I shaved Philby bald, then I laughed my butt off” – made ME laugh, but it’s not going to resolve your dispute.

Let’s accountably talk about the blessings of ADHD. I’m speaking, of course, of Big Jack, and the wonderful world of Shangri-La-La he lives in. This is a boy who routinely asks me after tests, “Is a 50 good?” To which I have to routinely bite my tongue and NOT reply, “No, Jack, in fact, it’s so bad that I’m pretty sure it’s going to start raining soon because a 50 usually makes the angels cry.”

The other day, tired of the kids repeatedly asking how old I am, I tried to show them that they could find anyone’s age if they knew the current year and the year of that person’s birth. Since most of my students were born in 2000, I put 2009 and 2000 on the board and asked what we should do with these numbers. Big Jack immediately shouted, “ADD!!”

So, I added 2009 and 2000 and then complimented Big Jack on looking quite well-preserved for someone over 4,000 years old. He just grinned and asked, “Is that good?”

Yesterday, I had to keep him and a couple of others in my room during PE because they did not finish their work during class time. As is so often the case, Big Jack weighed the options of labeling fractions vs. playing rocket ship with his pencils, and the fractions were found wanting.

As a result, we were both in my room when Mrs. Fitzgerald’s voice suddenly boomed in from the PA system. She must not have realized that I had kids in the room, because she didn’t address me as “Mr. Woodson,” but rather used my first name.

When he heard, “Jack, are you there?” coming from on high, Big Jack immediately looked up and responded, “YES!”

He must have thought God was speaking directly to him, rescuing him from having to finish his work.

“Did I do good, God?”

He actually DID do pretty good on today’s test, which was taken from the math textbook. Once again, the final question was a free response, giving the kids a chance to show how poorly they can express themselves in written English. After reading a couple of answers, I decided to make that question an extra credit question.

It read, “A cake has been cut into 40 pieces. Is it reasonable to say that this is enough cake for 32 people?”

If the kids said anything to the extent that yes, it is reasonable because there are more pieces of cake than there are people, I gave them 1 point extra credit. If they expressed their rationale even more clearly, I gave them 2 points.

Big Jack wrote, “No, it does not make sense because the people would get 1 piece only and sometimes I want to eat 2 pieces of cake or 3.”

I gave the lad 2 extra credit points! It wasn’t at all the answer I was looking for, but he did explain his thinking quite clearly, and being a cake lover myself, I couldn’t exactly disagree with him.

I even made it a point to write, “You did good, Jack” on the top of his test. He’ll still come and ask me if he did good, even after getting his test back, but now I’ll at least have something to point to.

Have a great Halloween!



High Jack



Date: Monday, November 2, 2009





To: Fred Bommerson



From: Jack Woodson



Subject: The Nightmare after Halloween





Hey dude,



I had no doubt that once I told you a little more about Big Jack, he would begin to remind you just a bit of the person with whom you share a cubicle wall. The ADHD, the proclivity for sweets, the always speaking before ever thinking.

I hope you had a fantastic Halloween. It’s a shame Nancy hasn’t thrown one of her costume parties in a while, but I had a good time answering the door at my house, seeing all the little tykes in their twilight finery. I went all out myself, dressing as Wolverine of the X-Men, only instead of claws, I taped three sharpened pencils to each of my hands.

My house was popular! And in case you were wondering, I was handing out the good stuff, my friend. We’re talking Twix, Nestle Crunch, and Jolly Ranchers! None of this knockoff stuff. Mrs. Bird was telling me last week that she usually goes to the dollar store and comes away with a bunch of cheap imitator brand candy. I’m sure her neighbor’s kids were thrilled to receive n&n’s, Slickers, and Two Musketeers.

This year, I followed through on my plan to be a bit more discriminatory in who got the good stuff.

I really get a kick out of seeing 5-year-old superheroes and 4-foot tall Transformers. What I do NOT enjoy is the roving bands of teenagers who come in no perceivable disguise, knock on the door, and mutely hold out a pillow case. They don’t even go to the effort of saying, “Trick or Treat!”

In the past, I’ve tried reasoning with them. “Um, you have no costume.” – No reasoning to be had.

I’ve tried sarcasm on them. “Oooh, I can see you’re going for angry punk! Nailed it!” – Sarcasm wasted.

I’ve tried shaming them. “Um, you have no costume.” – Zilch on the shame-o-meter.

This year, I decided to hit ‘em where it hurts. Right in the taste buds.

I went out and bought a bag of candy corn. I know there are some people out there who love candy corn (including Larry and Big Jack, no doubt), but personally, I think it is one of the most disgusting food items on the planet, second only to those really nasty orange circus peanuts that have the look, feel, and taste of Styrofoam packing peanuts.

On Saturday night, whenever a cute little costumed kid came to my door, I happily placed a Twix or a Jolly Rancher into his or her bag. But whenever it was a lazy teen, looking to capitalize on October 31st, he received one single candy corn.

Boom goes the dynamite.

One kid, dressed perfectly like an extra from a high school-set movie that does not take place on Halloween, stared at me in shock and said, “That’s it??”

“That’s all you’re dressed for,” was my reply.

I almost added, “The good candy is for Top Performers only.” A tip of the hat to Latya, who would never turn the A/C in his car up all the way when he drove the gang to lunch. According to him, the highest setting was for Top Performers only.

I’d say I passed out about fifteen candy corns on Saturday night. I’m sure as heck not going to eat the rest of them. Maybe I’ll save the bag for next year, so lazy teens can get one single STALE candy corn!

On a completely unrelated note, if you know of anyone there who has a recommendation for the best way to get toilet paper out of trees, please let me know.

Several kids greeted me this morning by telling me about their Halloween experiences, their costumes, and all the candy they had scored. I heard about ghosts, Batmen, princesses, and Power Rangers, to name a few. Katie and Ava gave me Hershey’s Kisses as soon as they saw me.

Then Gwenn walked into the room, and the whole class gasped in horror. She (or someone she knows) had shaved both of her eyebrows off. I have no idea whether or not this was related in any way to Halloween. She may have just decided that November was anti-brow month for all I know. One thing’s for certain, though. The lack of eyebrows does NOT make her priti-er.

After lunch, when I started to grade the first problem with my second class, Victor suddenly spoke up and announced, “Saturday night, after trick-or-treating, we went home, and my mom was real tired, and she fell asleep on the couch, and she didn’t cook us dinner, and I was hungry, and so I had no choice but to eat all my candy. It was good!”

Good ol’ Victor. Chooses not to do his homework, but has no choice whatsoever when it comes to stuffing himself full of sugar before bedtime.

Here’s hoping the class-wide sugar high wears off by mid-week, so I can actually accomplish some teaching! Those rulers aren’t going to measure themselves!

Later,



Admiral Candy Cornelius Vanderbilt



Date: Thursday, November 5, 2009





To: Fred Bommerson



From: Jack Woodson



Subject: Behold the power of cheese





Hey buddy,



Tell Tiffany she can NOT have my leftover candy corns and that I’m doing her a huge favor. Weirdo.

Tom Winter sent me a five-paragraph essay extolling the virtues of those orange Styrofoam peanut candies. Don’t you guys ever do any work over there? I’m guessing not, since I also received several photographs of the Heat Pumps gang with no eyebrows. Including one of ME!! Why is my ID mug shot still on the HPU server?

Anyway, today was a beating of a day. Here I was all set to give my students the gift that is perimeter and area, but the schedule kept getting upset by interruptions. Never mind the fact that it rained all day long, so there was no outdoor recess. I can live with that. Sure, the kids get cabin fever and act like they don’t know left from right, up from down, or isotropic from anisotropic. But then I lost about an hour of class time due to two mandatory out-of-the-classroom treks.

First thing in the morning, I had to take my homeroom to another classroom so that they could do hearing tests. It’s very interesting how the kids can hear a minute little beep that tells them when to raise their hand, yet somehow they don’t hear me when I tell them to write their names on tests. Amazingly, Eddie was able to raise his hand at the beep without hearing his own name first.

I asked the nurse if it was wrong of me to tell kids who have trouble listening to “go home, get a really big spoon, and scoop all of the dirt out of your ears.”

She politely said, “Um…”

The second time loss came after lunch, when the entire 3rd and 4th grades crowded into the auditorium to listen to our counselor, Miss Rooker, talk to them about the dangers of a new drug going around local schools. This assembly was called after our Monday staff meeting (now weekly, for our pleasure!), in which a district spokesperson came and talked to us about cheese.

I’m not talking about your typical individually-wrapped slices of processed Velveeta. This is “Cheese,” the new designer drug that is sweeping the halls of Dallas-area schools.

To my knowledge, we haven’t had much of a drug problem at my school, except for the one time three years ago when a 5th grader allegedly brought in 20-some grams of marijuana. I imagine he tried to roll it up into a big construction paper doobie, but I didn’t actually witness this. Frankly, I’m just glad I haven’t had any kids watch Scarface at home and then come in and try to snort a line of Play-doh off their desk. (Say hello to my little backpack!)

Nevertheless, this new drug, cheese, is already a major problem at middle and high schools, and people are worried it will filter down into elementary schools. Cheese is a combination of black tar heroin and crushed Tylenol PM – two great tastes that taste great together! I can practically see the Colombian drug lords sitting around their compounds, going about their business, when suddenly –



“Hey! You got your Tylenol PM in my black tar heroin!”

“Hey! You got your black tar heroin in my Tylenol PM!”



Cheese follows in the footsteps of last year’s scare – Pepto Bismol and liquid ecstasy (codename: Pickles). Rumor has it that a new threat is on the horizon – a hybrid mixture of flour, methamphetamines, and oatmeal termed “Sesame Seed Bun.”

I can’t for the life of me imagine why anyone would even want to go near a drug called Cheese, but then I could never understand the appeal of edible cheddar-flavored product you can spray from a can – and look at the success of Cheez Whiz!

Apparently, Cheese is sold in tiny increments called “bumps” which are snorted, often with the ink straw from a ballpoint pen. Except in Plano, where they no doubt use rolled up hundred dollar bills. We were also told that some kids may hide a small amount in a Kleenex and then snort it while pretending to blow their nose. Often right at the front of the classroom! Since we were told that one of the symptoms of Cheese is euphoria, I’ve been advising everyone to be on guard against kids who get REALLY happy when they clear their sinuses.

Logically, we would discuss this subject with our own homerooms in our own classrooms, so that we could ensure that everyone was listening, and so we could answer any questions.

Instead, we were instructed to herd two entire grades at a time into the auditorium and do the talks there. So instead of 16-22 kids reasonably well behaved, we had roughly 250 kids closely spaced and much more interested in talking to kids they usually don’t see.

Miss Rooker talked to the kids while the teachers tried to maintain order. She started by talking about illegal drugs, and she asked the kids to name the ones they knew. Among the responses were cocaine, X, beer, wine, weed, and spinach. You KNOW they would never let Popeye play Major League Baseball or ride the Tour De France all juiced up on spinach.

A fourth grade girl stood up and announced that her grandfather has to blow into a straw before he can start his car in the morning, because of his drinking. This sparked a battle of one-upmanship, which concluded with another kid declaring, “Sometimes, my parents drink pot!”

At least nobody mentioned snorting vodka, injecting cigarettes, or smoking Michelob.

While patrolling the aisles, Mr. Redd passed by and whispered, “I hope she reads ‘The House That Crack Built.’” This is an actual book that one of our old counselors used to read to the kids all the time. Believe me, the story was as entertaining as the title.

I can pretty much already predict that the result of all of this will be a few kids going home and telling their parents that they can’t have macaroni and cheese anymore – because it will kill them.

And so, thanks to an ear check and Killer Cheese, we only covered perimeter today and did not get around to area. Maybe tomorrow we’ll try to figure out the square footage of a Schlitz.

Later,



Cheesed Lightnin’



Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2009





To: Fred Bommerson



From: Jack Woodson



Subject: Lookin’ for sub (in all the wrong places)



Hey Fred,