Seriously…Some Dirt IS Younger than I

When you teach 15-year-olds, as I do, the generation gap is glaringly obvious on a routine basis. As yearbook adviser, I chuckle at teachers who obsess over how their pictures will appear in print. To our target audience of 14-19 year-olds, anyone with the least hint of smile lines or crows’ feet is hopelessly over-the-hill, so why worry about whether the camera captured your very best angle?

However, over the last few years another insidious gap has crept into the high school I call home base. The administration’s preference for “moldable” candidates in concert with the budgetary preference for teachers at the lowest rung of the salary scale have combined to produce an influx of teachers who share more cultural memories with my children than they share with me.

It’s always been the case in education that any given school would have a mix of teachers varying in age and experience, but the pendulum has shifted lately, and the bell curve at my school is no longer smooth and balanced. Instead, it bulges at the lower end, peaking at approximately age 30, and making a rapid descent thereafter.

Spending my days mingling with more than 1900 teenagers as well as dozens of colleagues who have yet to experience their 10^th high school reunion, my own advancing age is a realization that cannot help but slap me “upside the head.” So, as I spend my weekends trying to clean my house before another school week begins, I do stop now and then to recognize my affinity with the dirt I’m trying to sweep. Here’s to you dirt - we’re both really, really old.

Cryptic Messages We'd Rather Not Hear

I asked, I thought humbly, to be shown a path. The path I was shown has been, in so many ways, a bitter pill to swallow. Before I received my marching orders, I felt like there were so many signs that this was emphatically not my path, but the incontrovertible evidence arrived today that it is, and there ain’t nothin’ I can do about it.

Naturally, being me, I can fight against it and say, “Okay, really, I’m giving you another chance - show me my path, as long as it’s not this one.” Or, I can find a way to walk this one with grace. Right now, it’s a toss up as to which way I’ll be able to go.

I feel like Bruce in Bruce Almighty, and it's an almighty uncomfortable place to be.

Building on a Weak Foundation

Ugh. Muscles are so much work. Right now, I’m walking, doing yoga, and (in the summer) swimming to try to beat mine into shape, but they’re fighting back. The conversation goes something like this:

Me: I’ve been doing 90 minutes of yoga at least twice a week for the past eight months. You should be getting stronger! Why is downward facing dog still a challenge? And what about warrior 3? Come on, muscles!

Muscles: We’ve been clinging onto these old bones for more than half a century. We’re tired, and we’re definitely ready to let go and sag.

Me: No! No! No! I don’t want old lady arms – and that belly – forget it! You can still maintain some semblance of sleekness if we work together.

Muscles: Come on, you're built like a female version of Ichabod Crane. What kind of results do you expect, here? Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Me: I'm not looking for Miss America, but I don't want to scare small children when I take my youngest - who won't be five until next week - to kindergarten.

Muscles: You won't be taking him anyway. You'll be at work. And to the high school students you teach, you looked ancient as soon as you by-passed 30, so forget about it.

Me: Well, some days I'll get to pick him up. And there I'll be, surrounded by moms about the age of my oldest kid. I have to at least make an attempt, here.

Muscles: (snickering under their breaths) You go ahead and keep working out. On your days off, we’ll backpedal as fast as you can try to build us. It’ll be fun.

Me: (still fighting resignation). Sigh. I guess I just have to work harder.

Muscles: Good luck, Ichabod-ess.

When Seasons Converge

Okay, it's been an unusually warm winter, so the daffodils resemble the kids in 3rd grade who grew extra fast so that the teacher has to bring in a couple 5th grade desks....but the seasons I'm talking about involve youth sports. Today, my newly minted 11 year old has a basketball playoff game, to which we must bring, in addition to the b-ball uniform, all his lacrosse gear so we can immediately head out to lacrosse tryouts...after that, we get to relax (read do laundry, vacuum, make dinner) for about two hours until it's time to get him dressed and over the elementary school's annual variety show, timed for this weekend, I suppose...to hit the sports hiatus?

Differentiated Instruction for the Real World

Good morning, class. Today, we’re going to have a two part outcome based wholly on the interest inventory I was required – I mean, delighted – to give you on the first day of class.

Okay, so today our outcome will be to apply your amazingly varied interests to the literature through both movement and writing, because, as you know, with our 90 minute class periods, I’m mandated to provide you with wholesome physical fitness in addition to rigorous content.

All right then. Group 1 will be composed of those students who stated that their chief interest was - let's see here - "writing gang symbols on the desktops." That's those of you who have lost track of your natural waistline, believing it falls just below the buttocks. Okay, you guys will meet back here. Your writing activity will be to compose a series of vanity plates Hester Prynne might have composed while in prison with her illegitimate infant. Here’s an example: I LV DMSDL. The anachronism of license plate in the 1600s shouldn’t confound you, as, presumably, you’ve paid as much attention in history as you’ve paid in my class. Now, every ten minutes or so, one of you should call out, “Drop and give me five,” and the others should comply. No questions? Okay, then.

Group 2 will be those of you who wrote “IDK” in response to every question on the interest inventory. Your writing assignment will be to compose a series of text messages that Tessie Hutchinson might have sent during the course of “The Lottery.” Remember, she gets increasingly indignant and frantic as the story proceeds, so just imagine that I had the audacity to take your cell phones, and you’ll be able to get the mood just right. Calm down, I'm not really taking your phones, so stop texting OMG to your BFF and sit over here. Your aerobic activity will be to text your completed assignment to me – that shouldn’t take you too long, as you have very nimble keyboarding skills. All set?

Group 3 will be those students who indicated an interest in "preparing for a future as a diva on Real Housewives of Charm City." Since that will require you to engage in high-pitched conflict pretty much around the clock, I’ve planned a great lesson to build skills for your future. Sit here by the door. You are going to write a scene – and then throw a scene – in the voices of Abigail and the other “bewitched” girls from The Crucible. Because we don’t want you stationary too long, every so often, please run screaming from the classroom, preferably while demonstrating a legit, sassy attitude. Got it?

Finally, Group 4 will be those students who did the reading assignment and are prepared to discuss today’s literary selection. So, both of you sit up here, and I’ll be working with you on how to write a literary analysis essay. Your aerobic activity will be waving bye-bye to the rest of the class as they head off to summer school.

Too Amused to Learn

Most of my students would not recognize the reasoning behind the use of two different words - to and too - in the title (nor would they necessarily remember the third form in this sentence). If they could explain it, they would still be hard pressed to distinguish between an infinitive use of "to" and a prepositional use of the same word.
They simply can't absorb grammar. They are having too much fun - I mean - 2 mch fn - with their constant companions, their dearly beloved, their cell phones. When I started teaching, cell phones were - well - phones. People used them to call one another, and that generally did not occur during class. Now, they do it all, and the more the phones do, the commensurately less the students seem able to accomplish.
I am a tech savvy person. I help students create a yearbook using digital photography and computer generated layouts. I can handle almost any trick my smartboard is able to dish out. But I can't compete with the innate fascination of the cell phone. I can't compete, nor do I really want to.
So that's it. We're through, I mean threw, I mean thru...

Thank You For Your Inattention

Dear Students,

If you use your cell phone to text in class, I will bag and tag it. Your “reminder” that some teachers are nice falls on deaf ears. If I were “nice” - in your vernacular - I would not have taken it, and if I am NOT nice, your helpful hints will not sway me. You would understand the logic behind this conundrum IF YOU EVER PAID ATTENTION to the lesson.

Thank you for your inattention.