SLICE #15- UNDERWEAR?

I am sitting with three eighth graders. We have just finished a session of our state's blessed event and are waiting to be released for an all middle school afternoon recess.  I had rushed from lunch recess duty to begin our time together, and hadn't had time to change out of my tennis shoes. One of the boys keeps looking at my feet. I think he is bothered by my tennis shoes, but that turns out not to be the case. Finally he comes right out and asks:

P: Are those tights miss?
Me: No, they're nylons.
P: Nylons? But are they tights?
Me: No they are called nylons. They aren't as heavy as tights.
P rubs my legs. Having taught primary grades for years, I'm used to this, but kind of surprised that an eighth grader would find my legs interesting.
P persists: But they are kind of like tights?
Me: Well kind of. Ladies wear them with their dresses. Doesn't your mom wear them sometimes?
P looks a little perplexed. I think most women occasionally wear pantyhose, so I continue.
Me: Sometimes they're called pantyhose. Does your mom wear pantyhose?
P shocked, I think that I would ask about his mom's undergarments: Yes (almost indignantly), my mom wears underpants (emphasis on the word underpants, not to be confused with panties but perhaps closely related).
I realize that he think I am implying that his mother does not wear underwear
 and try to back my way graciously out of the situation.
Me: Sometimes ladies call them hose.
Not sure why but this causes all three kids to roll on the floor in hysterical laughter.
Thankfully, the bell rang and we were allowed to go outside. I can just see the headlines. Denver teacher asks eighth grader about mom's underwear.
And that is kind of how the whole week has gone.

SLICE #14- A letter to Don Graves, during testing season

Dear Don,
February and March are for me, the cruelest months. Testing season.  They bring out the worst in me. That ugly, snarling, red-pen wielding teacher that I never want to be. And then I have to breathe. And breathe again. And again.  And remember all that you taught me about the teaching of writing.

1) Care.
You can't teach people to write unless they know that you care. How's your new puppy? How was your game last weekend? We missed you yesterday. Are you feeling better? You can't teach anyone anything until you show them that you care.

2) Model, model, model, model, model
You always said, Don, that the most important thing a teacher could do was to write with her kids. Not just talk about techniques, but actually show them what it looked like when you applied those techniques to your writing. You modeled that in all of your grad school classes, Don. Every time you asked us to write, you wrote too. One pagers, data analysis, research projects- you taught us by doing it with us and in front of us. We saw your finished products and we saw the messiness of your thinking/writing in process.

I try so hard, Don, to do that with kids. I write every single day in front of kids from kindergarten to eighth grade. I talk to them about how hard I have to work at my writing. I think, start, restart, scratch out, read aloud, rewrite, and draw arrows, just like I do in my writing life outside of school. And in this testing season, I have classroom teachers give me prompts, and I compose, right there in front of the kids. I model what it's like to get a prompt you hate, or feel like you can't write about. I want kids (and teachers) to know that writing is hard for me.

3) Respond to message first.
People write because they have something to say. They want to be heard. As a teacher of writing, my first message always needs to be, "I hear what you are saying." Always, always, always respond to content first.

4) Point out what the writer did well.
Not sure why, Don, but this testing season brings out the worst in me. Urban kids, and English Language learners to boot, have so, so, so much to learn-- about organization, about language, about grammar, about spelling, about conventions. To put it quite frankly, there is so much they do wrong. So much that will count against them as they take the state tests this week.


But that's not how you taught, ever. It didn't matter how bad/inexperienced the writing/writer was. You always found something good to say. Something positive the writer had done. And you went right to that place. "Look what you did here. Tell me how you did that. Can you do it again?" It was guaranteed that the writer would do it again. And that writer's bank account of strengths would build up. And the next piece would be just a little better. The piece after that a little better still. Writers who worked with you would grow, not because you pointed out the million things they were doing wrong, but because you honored and celebrated the one thing they were doing right.

5) Delight in the approximations. 
When I think of you Don, I always picture your smile and the laugh lines around your eyes as you conferred with writers. You were so good, Don, at delighting in approximations as signs of growth. Our writers have a long way to go, but they are growing like crazy. And I just have to relax and recognize those signs of growth. A fourth grade writer uses dialogue for the first time, and of course it's not punctuated right. But it's dialogue. And the punctuation will come. My fifth grade writers are all about academic vocabulary. Or, as they define them, words that make them "sound smart." The way they are using these words aren't always quite right. And they are often spelled wrong. But even so, they are trying.  I think of a line from the Eve Merriam poem, that I probably first heard sitting in your office.  "It takes a lot of slow to grow."It really does take a lot of slow to grow. And as teachers, we have to delight in the approximations.

6) Teach the writer one thing. 
Finally, Don, you taught me the rule of one thing.  You told me to ask myself, "What ONE thing would make the biggest difference for this writer?" Then teach that one thing. And look for it the next time you work with that writer.  Yes, it's probably true that there are 25 things this writer needs. But he/she can't learn/do 25 things at once. So teach one thing. And teach it well. And then when the writer has that under control. Teach another. Again. And again. And again. And the writing will improve.

It's testing season, Don. And it's so hard to be a teacher right now. But I wanted you to know that I think of you and what you taught me about teaching every single time I walk into a classroom. I miss you my friend!

Love,
Carol

SLICE #13- A PUPPY ADDICT

My name is Carol and I'm a puppy addict.

It all started last summer.

My oldest son had just left for college.

And then, about a week later,  Jack, my four year old Lab/Rottweiler/four-legged garbage disposal, ate something and had to be put to sleep.

And then the Aurora theater shooting happened. And while those things are always really hard for me, that one, at the theater in my city, where my sons saw their first movie, and often went to movies, hit way too close to home.

That day, Cynthia Lord posted a picture on Facebook. She had started watching a puppy cam.  The Warrior Canine Connection is an organization that raises golden retrievers and yellow labs. The dogs that are by veterans struggling with PTSD. After that, they become service dogs for other veterans.

Somehow, the Warrior Canine Connection, became connected with  www.explore. org, an organization that has cameras in habitats all over the world, and Explore put a webcam into their puppy pen. At that time, there was a gorgeous Golden Retriever mama, Holly, with six puppies, that were only a few weeks old.

And so I started watching Abby, Grace, Levi, Penny, Ruby, and Lucy. I watched them as they nursed, then learned to walk. I watched them as they cooled themselves against an ice block and played in a wading pool in Molly's backyard in Brookville, Maryland.  And I watched, OK, more than a little jealously,  as volunteers with the organization came to pet and love on the puppies, socializing them for their life in the world.

I especially loved watching Molly, the co-founder of Warrior Canine Connection train the puppies. When they were a month old, Molly trained them to use a litter box. They could sit for treats. They donned their little Warrior Canine Connection vests and went out into the world to love on vets. I also loved watching Molly's toddler, Mia, interact with the puppies.

Mia and Levi working on a project

Even though I knew, all along, that those puppies had an important job to do, and wouldn't be in Molly's backyard for ever, I have to confess that I was more than a little sad when they got big enough to go out into the world, to foster puppy parents.

And that might have been the end of the story.

But no. There were highlight reels. And so I watched those, over, and over, and over again. And the puppies have Facebook pages. Some of the foster parents post pictures and even videos which are also lots of fun.

And then right after Christmas, a new litter, this time yellow labs, was born. And I started watching Flurry, Blizzard, Derecho, Twister, and Breeze (named the Weather Litter because they were conceived during Hurricane Sandy). Eventually they were joined by Bea, a golden retriever who was a gift from another breeder. And my puppy watching started all over again.

You can watch the latest litter here, but only for a few more days, because they are also heading out into the world, in fact, about half of the litter is already gone. You can also follow them on Facebook. And with any luck, there will be another litter of puppies sometimes this summer.

I certainly hope so.

Because  I'm a puppy addict.

Slice #12- A Measure of Proficiency

Sometimes I remember how, umm, unimportant all of this test stuff really is. 

Take last week for example.

We were only a few days from our state's blessed event. The class had just wrapped up a unit on persuasive writing and we decided to revisit fiction one more time. The prompt the teacher selected was, "Imagine you have just gotten a wish granted. What would your life look like after that had happened?"

I modeled for the kids and we turned them loose. After 45 minutes, I threw the papers into my bag, and brought them home to read this weekend.  They sat in my bag in  the dining room until Sunday night when I got down to business.

L's was one of the first papers on the stack.

L is an English Language Learner who has been in the United States only since August. He lives with his mother and a younger brother. His father remains in Mexico, and L misses him horribly. 

my life changd wen 

I herd a call and I  ansered it was my Dad

he side if we can pecam up from the erport, but

my mom told hem how did you cross 

he sida he snict into 

usa so he caim my mom 

was so exaided she got

the cis and she lift.

when my mom caim back 

she caim wet my dad so

he hagd all of us so he

put hes clos awey and 

went to to slip because

he was toierd.

when he wouckup we 

went to casa bonita and

selibrided togeter as a family. w

 when we wher redy to 

go home we whent to 

the Mall and bot a lots

of stoof like toys, hats,

and showes so I sed to 

my self I never want 

thes to end.

In case you need a translation:

my life changed when
I heard a call and I answered it was my dad
he said he can pick him up from the airport, but
my mom told him how did you cross
he said he sneaked into
USA so he came my mom
was so excited  she got the keys
and she left.

When my mom came back
she came with my dad so
he hugged all of us so he
put his clothes away
and went to sleep because he was tired.

when he woke up we
went to Casa Bonita
and celebrated together as a family.

When we  were ready to
go home we went to the Mall and bought a lot
of  stuff  like  toys, hats, and shoes so I said
to myself I never want
this to end.

My state, and I'd venture, most others, would not consider this a proficient piece of writing. L did write to the prompt. He has what the state would consider a recognizable introduction and conclusion, and a beginning, middle and end. He is writing in paragraphs. As a beginning English Language Learner,  however, L is still trying to figure out the conventions of the English language. Each paragraph is generally one long sentence. L uses capitals and lower case letters intermittently. Almost half of the words are spelled wrong. 

Even so, L has used writing to express something really, really important to him.

And in my mind, that's a pretty good measure of proficiency.

SLICE #11- A JUNIOR ORGANIZATIONAL GODDESS

I come from a family of organizational goddesses.
My mom is an organizational goddess.
Both of my younger sisters are organizational goddesses.
Me?

Umm, not so much.
Actually not at all.

Every year,
the accountant sends a packet
in January
it's fat.
Almost as fat as our state reading tests books.
There is always a letter.
That says that if you don't return your stuff by the end of March
The accountant will file an extension.

And all of the organizational goddesses
in my family
pay attention to that letter
and fill out the packet
generally get their taxes
 to the accountant
long before the March deadline
usually by the end of January.
They never file extensions. 

Me?
Um, not so much.

I get the packet in early January
shove it into a drawer
until mid February
when I get it out
and at least try to answer a few of the questions
before shoving it back into the drawer
until I get the warning letter in late March. 
It sits on the dining room table all through spring break
and then I usually email the accountant
to tell him to file an extension. 
I generally do my taxes
in early June
right after we get out of school. 

But this year

I am determined to do it right.
I am going to turn my stuff in on time
I am not going to get one of those warning letters.
I am not going to file an extension.
I spent a good chunk of Sunday, then
Trying to make sense of  grocery store receipts
and book store receipts
and teacher store receipts
adding up how many hundred or thousnds of dollars
I have spent on school this year.
I entered them all into a little chart
And tomorrow I will add them up.

Each night this week
I plan to spend an hour
Working on taxes
And hopefully
By the end of this week.
I will be ready to send them
to the accountant.

Probably one of the earliest dates ever. 
At least for me.

Tonight
I am feeling
like a junior
organizational goddess. 

Yep.

A Junior Organizational Goddess.

That's me.

Slice #10- Dealing with the anti-spam gods

OK, can I just complain for a minute?.

I love Slice of Life.

I love reading all of the different slices.

I love commenting and connecting with other slicers.

But sometimes the anti-spam gods really get to me.

Now let me just say, right up front, that I totally understand the need for these -spam gods. Having being the victim of several spammers, including one especially notable "friend" that left comments, in an Asian language, on my blog. I thought it was totally amazing that the internet extended so far, and that people all over the world were commenting on what I wrote, and let them go on for several days, until one of my readers told me that a friend of hers spoke that language, and the things that that commenter was writing would probably only appear on an X-rated blog. And so I totally understand the need for anti-spam gods, and I actually have them living on my blog. 

However, I hate having to deal with them on other people's blogs. My dislike fall into several categories.

The first and most common one sounds something like this. 

Please prove you are not a robot.
 OK. Let me get this straight. I am a human, looking at a word that is not quite a real word, but sometimes looks very similar to one, e.g. Biant instead of giant. Sometimes the word has capital letters, which I assume are somehow significant (those anti spam words are case sensitive, aren't they?), stuck right in the middle. Sometimes the letters are really close together, almost on top of each other, like a font that has somehow gone bad. And there is also a photograph of some numbers, that  often look like someone's address (who goes around taking all of those address pictures anyway?). The photograph is usually kind of dark. And often a little blurry. And I'm pretty old and really need to go get bifocals. Or at least reading glasses, to wear when I'm working on the computer.  But I do my best to enter the letters and numbers properly.

Sometimes I am successful. Often I am not. And then I get this message.

The characters you entered didn't match the word verification. Please try again.
When this comment occurs, the anti-spam god gives you another word.  Sometimes, but not always, that word is easier to read, or the number is shorter, or a little more in focus. I persevere, dutifully entering those letters and the accompanying numbers. I'm never quite sure I got them right either,  but evidently the anti-spam gods on this site have some kind of rule. If you are willing to persevere, and enter the codes more than once, then you get to comment, whether or not you get the secret code right. 

Other anti-spam gods are not quite so forgiving.  One site,  for example, has what looks and sounds  kind of like a sentence somethink like "dontspamme6" with all of the words smooshed together,  almost like reading kindergarten writing before they figure out word boundaries, followed by a number. The font is much bigger, and it seems like it would be easier to read. It actually is much easier to read, but there are two kind of tricky parts. First, you have to remember not to put the apostrophe in don't, which is kind of hard for someone who spends her day reading/responding to/editing elementary school writing, Second, you have to remember that there are two m's, one at the end of spam, and one at the beginning of me. And if you forget either of them, the word is wrong.

Maybe because the anti-spam code on this site is generally a little easier,  the gods on this site are a little less forgiving. If you get it wrong, those gods tell you it's wrong. But then when you go back to try to correct it, your comment has disappeared.  And so then I quickly try to re-enter it, because I know people are working hard at their writing and I enjoy reading their work, and want to support them. But then when I try to resubmit my comment, being careful to enter the correct code word, the anti-spam guy says, "Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that! What????
 
Finally, there is one more kind of comment that brings me great consternation. It's the dreaded, "Please choose a profile" that sometimes pops up when I try to submit a comment. Choose a profile? Really? So you are telling me that I have just spent the last two hours commenting on people's blogs (whoops! probably should not let my readers know how much time I waste commenting on slices instead of cleaning house or working on my taxes  on snowy Saturday afternoons!) What profile have I been using for all that time? And why does it not work now?

I also worry that by choosing a profile, I might be commenting with more than one name, which we have specifically been instructed not to do. It's not that I worry about not winning prizes, because that's really not why I comment on people's writing. It's because there is a teeny (ok, maybe very teeny) part of me that likes to follow rules. And if the rule is to comment using only one profile, that's what I really want to do.  

Don't get me wrong.

I love reading people's slices.

And commenting.

And hearing from other people. 

But sometimes the anti-spam gods really get to me…

SLICE OF LIFE #9- I WISH…

Yesterday, I wrote in front of a fifth grade class. We are less than a week away from our state's "blessed event," and the fifth graders have been studying endangered species, and writing persuasive essays. We wanted to make sure that they could still write fiction, which they haven't written much since they finished that unit of study six weeks ago.  The prompt the teachers chose was along the lines, "Imagine you had been granted one wish. What would your life be like after you had received that wish?"

Having been raised in the Don Graves' school of writing, I believe it's super important for teachers to write in front of kids, or at least with them. We have talked a lot about how authors write about what they know because that's where they can write best. I took myself back to my ten or eleven-year-old self, and started a story about wanting a horse, and what my life was like after I won a contest that allowed me to ride and take care of one for a year. (And in case you are wondering, the wanting a horse part was true. The winning the contest part was not true, although I actually did get a horse when I was in seventh grade).

When I write with kids, I generally try to write about an experience that students, especially struggling writers,  could duplicate, if they needed to. I don't usually write stories, then,  about beach vacations or skiing trips to the mountains, because most of my low income urban kids have not had those experiences. Instead, I write stories about or cutting my sister's hair with pinking shears when she was four, or sledding down the very fast hill on the street behind our house, or visiting my grandmother. I also don't write tons about my adult life, e.g. stories like becoming a mom (although I often tell the kids those stories) because again, those are not stories that kids can duplicate.

Today, I thought about the wish prompt while I was talking to my oldest son. We had had a disagreement last night, and he had called to apologize and talk through the situation. As we were talking, he said, more than once, "You don't know what life is like for me. You don't know what it's like to be a guy. You don't know what it's like to be African American. You don't know what it's like to be an African American kid at college, where most of the kids don't look anything like you."

And I thought, "I wish my boys had a dad."

People who have followed my blog for a while, know the story of our family. I was a 44-year-old, never-married assistant principal when my boys wandered into my life. They were in the foster care system and needed a forever family. I had always wanted to be a mom and so I brought them home. I don't think our situation is ideal. I think it would have been far better for the boys to be raised in a family that looked like them. I think it would have been far better if the boys had two parents, or at the very least, were raised by a single dad. But none of those things happened. And so I did the best I could. I showed up every day. I made sure they were surrounded by people that looked like them-- at at school, in our neighborhood, and at church. I don't have any brothers, and my dad died ten years before I adopted the boys, but I tried really hard to make sure there were men in their lives.

Even so, right now, I really wish my boys had a dad.

The son in college is going through a really hard time with a girl. They've broken up, and have supposedly both moved on, but not really. This week, my son has had a couple of scary encounters with several other football players that she is dating. And I have talked to my son pretty much every day, and I've talked to one of the coaches, and I've prayed and prayed and prayed.

Even so, I wish my boys had a dad. Because a dad might know how to deal with these testosterone- filled encounters. And I really don't.

And my other son has had a really rough year. He made a really stupid five second teenager decision, and what should have been a fun senior year turned into an absolute disaster- a year of loss and and anger and sadness and might-have-beens. And I think he's coming out of it now, but it's been really, really, really hard.

And I wish my boys had a dad. Because a dad might know how to help him redeem himself. And I have pretty much scrambled and stumbled and clawed my way through the situation.

There's that whole female thing. One of my sons dated a girl for quite a while. When they broke up, her father made the comment that my son really didn't know how to treat a girl. And I suspect he's right. My boys don't know how to treat a woman. Not really. The whole time I have had them, I haven't dated. I've put my time and energy into my boys, rather than into pursuing a dating relationship. They haven't seen, then,  the day-to-day workings of a relationship. Their information comes from the brief public encounters of couples that we know or from television and movies. They don't really know how to communicate with a woman, or how to honor her by giving unselfishly, or how to work hard at a relationship.

I wish my boys had a dad. Because maybe he could teach them those things.

And to be really honest, right now, I wish my boys had a dad, because I'm really tired of paying and  listening and giving advice and solving problems and worrying and praying. And I wish there was someone else to share the load.

I wish my boys had a dad.