Category: Learnin’ ‘Em Kids

I teach. Most of these posts are password-protected.

No Reason

Two weeks ago, I had the kids write short autobiographies. I told them that they should include some of their strengths and accomplishments but that readers also want to hear their struggles, challenges, flaws. “That’s what people can relate to,” I said. As usual, I wrote a piece to use as an example. One of my struggles is I get overly sentimental about dogs, I wrote. I explained how I feel really sad when I hear about dogs being hurt or put to sleep.

One of my students piped up, “That’s what they do at the shelter. They be killing dogs for no reason.”

I practically leapt at her. “The Durham shelter takes in over 6,000 animals every year, and fewer than 1,500 get adopted. What are they supposed to do with the rest? How are they supposed to take care of them? They do the best they can. They put down the ones that can’t be adopted. Not for ‘no reason’.”

On Thursday, my girl inside Durham APS called because she had the whole story on DW. He had shown a lot of problems in the temperament testing: along with the barrier aggression, wildness, excitability, difficulty following commands. They said he would have to go to a one-dog family, but with the heartworm diagnosis, they weren’t going to keep him around long.

He needed someone to walk into the shelter and say, “I have no dogs right now, and what I’m looking for is a black pit bull, preferably with issues. Behavioral and medical, if possible.” No one did.

I asked them to reconsider; could I please foster him? They said no.

On Friday afternoon, they put DW to sleep.

I was headed out of town with some girlfriends for the weekend, so I swallowed hard and wiped my eyes. I went and lifted heavy things over my head at the gym, and then I put my emotions in a box and locked it in my house here in Durham. My friends and I drove up to my childhood home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We tried on my high school prom dresses, ate Mud Pie at Pepper’s, giggled at gaudy things in the antique mall on King Street, and hiked the Boone Fork Trail.

Then I came home, and when I unlocked the door, the box expoded open.

They killed my boy. Not for no reason. For lots of reasons. I know there were lots of reasons. And I know they know so much better than I do about these things, but I loved him. For lots of reasons.

I’m so sad.

I’m so mad. At them. At myself.

I can’t believe he’s dead, and I can’t stop hugging Redford and Violet, and I can’t, can’t, can’t get the lid back on the box.

They Have a Dream

Last week, I showed all my sixth graders Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. We discussed its historical context and the impact it had on the Civil Rights Movement in this country. I gave them the assignment to write their own “Dream Statements”, a few of which were chosen to be read at our awards ceremony for last quarter. Some of the kids wrote deep and moving pieces about domestic tranquility and global change. Some of them wrote the following, which are profound in their own way. [Vocabulary words are in all-caps. I didn’t tell them to include them, but I’m glad they did. Though I need to review a little bit with Tobias.]

Cayla: I have a dream for the world to meet people not judge a color by it’s book.

Bongani: I wish I could meet Obama not with his bodyguard like I really want to touch with the bodyguard touch me or stuff. [My family] will like nobody to get sick no more. We will except for me no more baby.

Hillary: …without bullys and fighting i wouldn’t be all shy. This would allow more HARMONIOUS work to happen! It would make me ECSTATIC!

Callie: As a country we need to decrease our death average. I don’t necessarily want everyone to have peace with each other because of course we’d all collapse but at least of whos life your taking away, or who your harming. Think about all the pros and cons, or just dont do it.

Layla: My biggest dream is there to be less crazy people, and what I mean by that is teens and school shootings, parents hanging and raping and droping babys off of briges.

Gabby: I do not be jugged by my hair.

Brandon: …in my dream, everybody puts a weapon into a spaceship and it goes toward the sun, and it just disintegrates because it gets so hot.

Nelson: Since I started 6 grade I want to be somewhere around Americas crime rates. Just something that will help the nation incredibly…I want them to decrease not increase. Less people are getting kilt, less drugs sneaked around in our nation.

Siarra: I dream too, that my New born nethew is going to grow up healthy, safe, and Atheletic.

Jay: I will have enoght money to buy a ferreri. but befor that happens I half to go to a good collidg.

Kalim: When I grow up I want to be a good Basketball player because you can Learn a Lot from Like Hit three Point, Layup and Free thorw I aslo want to Past collge so I can g a Degree

Tobias: I have a dream that I am very successful in life. Three of those things are get into a good college and be SCHOLAR[L]Y. Also [for my family to] follow there dreams and be successful and have a AMIABLE life.

Jeremiah: I Have a other dream that people [don’t] call me mexican when Im not…I want my family to stop getting in my bisness my love bisness too.

 

WMMH

I sometimes listen to NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, and the panel ends the show each week with a round of What’s Making Us Happy. As you can probably intuit from the title, they go around the table and name a thing or two (usually a TV show or concert tour or something) that’s giving their lives a little bit of joy. I’ve had some anxiety and depression and overwhelm in the last week (ran out of one of my amino acids; also, I prefer not working to working, but my job preferred that I go back to work), so I thought I’d try to psych myself out of it by accentuating the positive. Who knows? This might become a regular feature.

Here’s What’s Making Me Happy:

I’m doing really great on my New Year’s resolutions.

To wit, my friend invited me to go shopping (thanks, Michelle!), and I have worn actual clothes when I wanted to wear actual sweats several times. I even took two pairs of pants to a tailor to get them hemmed. That’s, like, some Carrie Bradshaw stuff.

I’ve flossed a time or two and made my bed daily.

I’ve engaged in no Facebook debates. Indeed, I’ve expressed nary a political leaning nor a religious dubiety, even though I wanted to post this cartoon real bad when I saw it:

I repeated things to myself that I said to the beasts (even though it feels embarrassing to say, “I love you, Violet… I also love myself,” even when alone in my house).

I went on a first date with a man and scheduled another with a different man, though the latter had to be postponed. Due to a sick kid. I’m probably going to be a stepmom.

Most importantly, I very much reduced my intake of refined sugar. I had some chocolate mousse on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and a piece of cake and two cookies on Saturday. I didn’t wait until after 7:00pm that day, though. But considering that I got the piece of cake at noon and waited until 4:53 to eat it, I’m calling it a victory. In addition, Sunday included French toast with syrup, which kind of fits in the dessert category, but, really, what’s a brunch buffet without the French toast course?

(Again, this might sound like a lot of sugar to you, but I assure you, for me, it’s a smidgeon.)

Naturally, the glutenful weekend, together with my job preferring that I get up at the ludicrous hour of 6:00am, has made me one sleepy girl today. But that’s not what we were talking about. We were talking about What’s Making Me Happy.

Now. Let’s talk about What’s Making You Happy.

57 Things, or Rules, to Stop or Start Doing in the New Year for Your Life to Be Better and to Make You More Happier

Lately, I’ve seen a lot of lists floating around the internet. Things like Three Rules for Life, Five Things to Stop Doing in the New Year, and 12 Things Happy People Do Differently. I started thinking about that last article and, since I have a terrible memory, decided to do some research on myself via my blog.

1. Express gratitude. I searched for the terms ‘thankful’ and ‘grateful’, both resulted in “No posts found”. Hm.

2. Cultivate optimism. Ditto, ‘optimism’ and ‘optimistic’. Yikes.

3. Avoid overthinking and social comparison. I do the former with help. I do not do the latter.

4. Practice acts of kindness. A little, itty-bitty bit.

5. Nurture social relationships. Ever since I learned about the importance of appreciating my friends, I think I’ve done a good job of nurturing social relationships.

6. Develop strategies for coping. In my fashion.

7. Learn to forgive. I simply don’t do this, especially with myself.

8. Increase flow experiences. The author describes this as “completely engaged in the activity that you’re doing”. I’m working on it.

9. Savor life’s joys. When I’m not clinically depressed, I can.

10. Commit to your goals. Yes. But I don’t set goals nearly enough.

11. Practice spirituality. No results for ‘spirituality’, but apparently I say ‘god’ in nearly every goddamn post. Usually within the word ‘goddammit’.

12. Take care of your body. Cleanin’ and jerkin’ since August 2010.

So what did I learn from this little exercise? Maybe 2012 should be the year I learn to:

  • be thankful;
  • look on the bright side;
  • stop being jealous;
  • let shit go;
  • set some goals; and
  • pray.
  • And stop saying goddammit.

The Pause Button

We’re doing nonfiction book clubs right now in my two Honors classes, and the kids got to choose which one they’d be in. We talked about how people discuss books, and just in case, I gave them a graphic organizer to take notes on each day. As they’ve been doing their discussions, I’ve been circulating, listening in, and occasionally contributing. Some of the groups were doing fine but some weren’t so I decided to do a “fish bowl” activity where one group would hold their discussion and the rest of us would observe and later critique.

In my first class, the group in the fish bowl stunk up the joint. There was very little I could say that was positive, and I’m the Queen of Finding Positive Things to Say. I almost scrapped the idea for the other class, but I’m so glad I didn’t.

Oliver, Stefan, and Eric are reading Woodsong by Gary Paulsen, a memoir of his time racing sled dogs, and their discussion was deep and clarifying and respectful, and I was pretty much squealing with delight in my mind as it was. And then…

Stefan: It’s like Gary Paulsen has all these “pause” moments. Like somebody presses pause and everything goes by really slowly.

Eric: Yeah, he does. Things don’t happen to me that way. They go by really fast.

Oliver: Maybe those moments happen to him like that. Or maybe they happen to him like they happen to everybody else, but he presses pause and describes it that way because that’s what writers do. For us.

Sigh.

Yay.

Set Rat Thur in That Rockin Cheer

I’m reading aloud Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick to my students. The narrator, a 12-year-old boy named Max, bears a striking resemblance to his convict father (WHO TOTALLY KILLED MAX’S MOTHER IN FRONT OF HIM WHEN HE WAS LITTLE, BUT SHH, THAT’S FOR LATER). Another character comments that he’s the spitting image of his dad, so I was explaining to the kids where the expression “spitting image” came from: originally, people said “spirit and image”, but folks from coastal South Carolina don’t really pronounce their Rs. Voilà. Spittin’ image.

I like to think about the differences in southern dialects. In fact, I hate it when people say, “He has a southern accent.” What is that? Drive from Charleston to the opposite corner of the better Carolina, and you’d NEVER have gotten “spittin’ image”. For your enlightenment, in the Blue Ridge, the Rs are as hard as Sarah Palin’s, fortunately without the flat vowels (shudder), but, yes, Rs are very ARRRRy up yonderrrr.

Also, many monosyllabic words with short vowels get an extra syllable, so ran becomes rayun, pin is peeyun. Actually, both pin and pen are peeyun but if it’s the writing utensil, you say ink peeyun.

I’ll just keep going here. If it’s the first word in a sentence, the word it is pronounced with an H on the front, and since it fits the previous rule, it sounds like heeyut.

Regarding verbiage, you don’t push a button; you mash it, but it’s pronounced with almost a long a: maish. You also don’t turn the light off; you cut it off. And you better lift a fanger when somebody passes you on the road.

And if you ride bus 27 home from Cove Creek School, your bus driver will bang a spelling book against the metal ceiling and yell, Y’all better quieten down. Yep, quieten down, not quiet down. And for a long time, I thought quieten was a word. Years later we’d laugh at her redneck expression. But just now, since spellcheck didn’t pick it up, I looked it up and quieten is totally a word. Go on, Pat Shore, Driver of Bus 27 and Quietener of Children!

Now, one of these days, I’ll have to make a vlog of myself saying these things—ooh! and reenact my phone interview with a principal from Rocky Mount, and you could hear the difference a couple hundred miles make. I won’t right now because I haven’t showered, and I think you could probably smell me through the internet.

My point is: there’s no such thing as a southern accent. There are eleventy-five different southern dialects. (I had to stop watching True Blood because every character had a different southern accent, and only two of them were any good. Would it have been so hard for HBO to hire a dialect coach?)

Y’all wanna sheer (that’s share to you) what people say and how they pronounce thangs in yer neck o’ the woods?