Blogger Madness

My kids are bloggers!

Very late in the school year (May), a friend told me about a website for teachers to set up student blogs. I had been searching for quite a while to find a safe and secure way for students to write their own blogs. The website? Kidblog.org

This amazing service for teachers allows you to set up private blogs for your class. All posts and comments that the kids write are reviewed by the teacher, so you have ultimate control of the content. It's easy and kid-friendly. It's teacher-friendly, too.

Even though it was the end of the school year, our class blog was up and running in a day. I had given them a homework assignment--write a paragraph about what you did on Memorial Day weekend. They wouldn't be allowed to submit this first blog post unless they came in with the homework. You wouldn't believe how eager the kids were to show me their homework the next day! Everybody did it, even those chronic homework-avoiders. A couple of kids told me they had left their homework at home, and could they re-write their paragraph at recess. I have never seen such enthusiasm to get homework done, and all because they wanted to start blogging.

I gave them a couple of rules for the blog:
1. Titles must be relevant and capitalized correctly.
2. Writing must be standard fourth grade writing.
3. Their submission would not be posted until they edited their blog.

Many kids typed in their paragraphs quickly and perfectly. I posted them as quickly as I could review them. Other kids, however, needed a lot of work on their paragraphs--punctuation, spelling, grammar--you get the drift. I highlighted their errors in red and returned their blog with comments. All they had to do was fix the errors, and then I would post.

Finally--kids found writing and editing relevant.

As they read each others' blogs, they came to understand the importance of writing clearly--and writing about interesting things.

Naturally they also wanted to start commenting on each other's posts. So up came another set of rules:
1. Comments must be relevant.
2. Comments must be polite.
3. Ask questions.

I gave some general guidelines. One or two-word comments like "Cool" or "I agree" would not be posted. If they agreed or disagreed with something, they had to give a reason. I would also not post any unkind remarks. We discussed at length the difference between being "unkind" and just "disagreeing" with someone.

So with Kidblog.org, we can create a new generation of writers. If they start early enough, writing will eventually become a daily activity like eating, reading, and playing. By giving them guidelines, they will learn early on how to be responsible and respectful users of the blogging medium.

Get ready, cloud--the blogger kids are coming!

Miss Fluffy Diaperhiney

Almost every kid in my class read one of the Captain Underpants books this year. At first it made me a little uncomfortable--book covers with the main character in underwear, titles like "Attack of the Talking Toilets" --I didn't know what to think, but it got my kids to read, so fine. Captain Underpants got to stay in my room.

One of the books ( Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants) has a silly name generator. You take the first letter of your first name, and then the first and last letters of your last name, and you use a chart to determine your "Captain Underpants" name.

My name is Fluffy Diaperhiney.

When the kids figured out my Captain Underpants name, they couldn't resist. "Your name is Fluffy Diaperhiney!" A little put off, I corrected them--"That's MISS Fluffy Diaperhiney, you guys."

We made a deal. They could call me Ms. Fluffy Diaperhiney as long as it stayed in the classroom. We added this to my other secret name, which is Ms. Armadillo. My kids love sharing this secret, and I'm happy it came from a chapter book. Even if it's a book about a grumpy principal who becomes an underwearing superhero, I'm all for it.

I checked online to see if I could find the Captain Underpants name generator. This time I found a different version. In this new version, my name is Zippy Banananose.

I think Fluffy Diaperhiney suits me a lot better.

Book Club of Five

Alright, I take it all back.

I am now part of a book club. We haven't had our first meeting yet, but so far it's been kind of fun.

Over the course of this year, Gerry and Santino and I all realized that we have the same taste in books--mostly fantasy, sci-fi fantasy, and urban fantasy. We've been casually recommending and passing books to each other for months now, so it was a no-brainer when we decided to all read the same books this summer.

I don't know how Anne got involved--did I mention it to her? Did she show excitement about our reading discussions? Well whatever the case, we made our informal book club more formal, Anne jumped on board, we included Vero, and all we had to do was decide on what books to read.

I discussed book possibilities with Santino. It was hard for us to come up with new books that none of us had read. In fact, we piled all the books in our living room into various sections--Santino has read, Gerry has read, Santino and Gerry have read, Gina has read, etc. We covered all the permutations and found that the pile of books that nobody had read was fairly small.

Because I love lists and organizing things, I made a list of possible books. The list includes several by Neal Shusterman, Scott Westerfeld, Rick Riordan, and then random books here and there that we've heard of. We also had many recommendations from a book-pusher at Borders that we call "iCarly" who coerced us into buying several books we didn't need or want, including Shiver, Poison Study, and Unwind.

Everyone filled out their wish list--what they had read, what they were willing to re-read, and what they were eager to read. Gerry penciled in Unwind, and since none of us had read it (Vero had just read two chapters), we decided it would be our first book: Unwind by Neal Shusterman.

Alright alright! I know in my previous post I complained about only reading books for kids. And Neal Shusterman is a major contributor to YA fiction (that's Young Adult for you newbies), but he's real borderline. His heroes are teenagers, but the writing is for adults too. I read The Schwa Was Here--utter brilliance, and I'm not saying that just because I'm Italian. Neal Shusterman has a snappy writing style and is very good at creating complex, interesting, and likable characters.

I started reading that puppy, and I couldn't put it down. Well, actually I did put it down because I had also promised Gint that I would read Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve, but it was difficult to tear myself away from the trials of Connor, Risa, and Lev--our poor fugitives escaping from being unwound. (Oh you will just have to read the book yourself.) It didn't take me long to knock out that book, and then I passed it on to Santino. He read it in about a day and a half, grunting and groaning and stomping all the way as our poor teenagers ran in and out of peril.

I set up a blog so we could have an ongoing discussion--not much has been discussed there, but it's a start. Anyway, our first meeting is Thursday. I don't really know what goes on at book club meetings, but we are going to eat tacos and possibly have ice cream. I found a helpful website called litlovers.com, which gives suggestions on how to run a book club. Another good resource was a list of study questions posted on Neal Shusterman's website. But really, we are all a bunch of nerds, and I don't think we'll have any trouble talking about this fantastic book.

What's really neat is that I can hardly wait to bring this style of book discussion to my classroom. Since Open Court has taken our classrooms hostage, reading literature has become a thing of the past. I'm bringing chapter books and classical children's literature back into the classroom. I'll have my kids blog their ideas about the books, and maybe borrow some study questions from author websites. I can hardly wait.

Hopefully this book club of five will turn into a book club of thirty.

Bobby Bacala, Save Some for Me

I totally understand Bobby Bacala.

Bobby Bacala is one of Tony Soprano’s men in the Italian gangster show, The Sopranos. In one episode, Bobby Bacala’s wife is killed in a car accident. Mourning her death, he refuses to eat the last batch of baked ziti that she made. Only an Italian could understand such dedication to food.

I thought about Bobby Bacala when my refrigerator broke several days ago. It didn’t exactly break, but it stopped cooling consistently (that pesky light still goes on, though). Everything in my freezer melted when I was away at school. By the evening, everything was back to its icy state.

Having an on-again, off-again refrigerator just won’t cut it, especially with summer upon us. So I dumped the rotting food in the fridge section and saved some of the items in the frozen section, hoping that the fridge would miraculously decide to work again permanently. It hasn’t.

Desperate to have some fresh food in the house until I get the fridge fixed, I borrowed an ice chest to house a few perishables like milk and eggs. I figured that would give me a little time until I get the fridge repaired. As I was in the market buying what few items would fit in the ice chest, I got a call from Marjorie.

She was so excited—Rebecca is back for the summer from college, and she brought her dorm refrigerator with her—and did I want to borrow it?

Of course I wanted to borrow it! With the extra room, I added a few more luxury perishables to my shopping list, including a precious brick of Tillamook cheddar. My life was coming back to normal.

For the past few days, I’ve been carefully filling that little fridge with food, and unceremoniously throwing out bad food from the broken fridge. It feels good—making things simpler, smaller, and reducing my carbon footprint. I could live like this in a wonderfully minimalistic way. Maybe I'll even use that large refrigerator space for bookshelves.

It wasn’t until today, though, that I decided to completely give up on the old one. Today is trash day, so I dumped everything into the stinky smelly trash bin. But I paused when I got to the freezer. Inside the freezer is my most cherished possession: the last batch of spaghetti sauce that my mom ever made.

Occasionally she would give me some of her sauce to freeze for a time when I was too tired to cook.There is nothing in this world that tastes like her spaghetti sauce. Over the years, I’ve learned to make it myself, but it doesn’t have that loving, mom touch. Anyway, she always dated the food she gave us, and this one was dated February 9, 1999. She died four months later, before I had ever used the sauce.

I’ve kept that sauce in my freezer all these years. Like Bobby Bacala, I refuse to give up on the love for that person I have cherished more than anyone. The sauce is probably frozen down to a tiny cube of red ice, but even then, I know it has a piece of my mom. It has her love and her caring and her years of experience of Italian cooking. If nothing else, it has DNA from her saliva when she tasted it. She is really inside that container. Whatever it has, it is the most important material thing my mom left me.

I paused at the freezer as I held this container of spaghetti sauce, housed in an old Cool Whip tub. Like everything else in the freezer, it had melted. Maybe this is a sign. It’s June, after all—the month of my mom’s birthday, and the month of her death. Maybe it’s time to give up the spaghetti sauce. It’s just the physical form of a memory, and I’ll always have that memory. Maybe it’s time to let go.

Feeling a little melancholy, I brought that tub of my mom’s last batch of spaghetti sauce over to the tiny refrigerator that has lived in Rebecca’s freshman dorm room all year. I opened the door, and I squeezed that tub into the teeny tiny freezer compartment. It fits perfectly next to the miniature ice cube tray.

Thank you, Marjorie, for the freezer--like a super hero, you always come through with exactly what I need. My mom is still around, living in Rebecca's fridge. The month of June is kind of tough, so I'm grateful that you have helped me hang on to her a little longer.

Ultimately, Bobby Bacala acquiesced to family pressure to serve his wife's last dish of pasta. I haven't reached that point, but Bobby and I certainly agree on one thing: you can hold onto that special someone as long as they fit in your freezer.

Please Make My Child Cry

When Santino came home today from his last day of school, he was upset.

"It was an awful day," he said.

From experience I know that a bad day at school means that he has a lot of homework. Why would they assign homework on the last day of school? I was confused. Weren't they having a picnic, playing games, and signing yearbooks?

You know what happened? He had an incredible year and he didn't want it to end. And who is responsible for this best year of school? His teacher, Ms. Sides.

A teacher like Ms. Sides comes around once in a very great while. The first day of school, she inspired her students to read as many books as they could this year. She encouraged them to be creative, laugh, and be joyful. She had high expectations for their academic and social behavior. And she infused a sense of humor into everything.

I suppose I'm writing this as a plea to other teachers out there. For parents, there's nothing like having your kid come home from school every day happy and excited. When you think about it, they spend almost as much waking time at school as they do at home. You trust the school, and the teacher, to give your child positive life experiences. A good day at school means an easier time at home. And a bad day at school makes time at home painful.

Let me tell you about one year that Santino hated school. Every morning he woke up and rolled over in bed. "Please don't make me go," he would say. "No problem," I would counter. "Go to school, and if you still want to come home by recess, I'll come pick you up." He never took me up on the offer, but I understood where he was coming from. I knew what went on in his classroom.

Now, this is a kid who loves to learn, gets top grades in all subjects, and never gets into trouble. He hated school that year because of his teacher. Yes--his teacher. My colleagues and friends who are teachers out there are probably cringing as they read this. But it's true. Put together with other gifted students, he was subjected to a tedious curriculum that was supposed to challenge gifted kids. The teacher threw mundane projects and endless worksheets at them that were supposed to add "enrichment" and take them to a deeper level of thinking. In the meantime, Santino would listen, tortured, to the other class across the hall as it rang out with peals of laughter and joy. (That other class also had a gifted cluster.) He didn't care about challenge and enrichment. He wanted to laugh and smile. That's what makes him want to go to school and challenge himself.

In spite of his misery that year, Santino did well in school. He always does. But what about those kids who need more motivation to do well? If they don't like school--and especially if they hate school--how can we expect them to perform?

Thankfully, after that year of torture and hating school, Santino changed schools and landed himself in a class with a vivacious, enthusiastic teacher.

Oh sure, Ms. Sides worked hard on making her class exciting and fun for the students. You know, most teachers work hard. But I don't think it was just her hard work that made this year so wonderful. It was her ability to make her students feel secure and comfortable and loved. She encouraged them to work with each other and have high academic and social standards. She had an incredible ability to help them enjoy learning. She challenged them, gave them academic enrichment, and pumped them up to a higher order of thinking skills. And all this learning was accomplished with laughter and smiles.

That's something they don't deliver in the teacher credential programs, nor do they cover it in professional development. I suppose they don't address this because you really can't assess it. Ms. Sides gets good academic results from her students, and she does it with fun and laughter. But the fun factor can't be assessed--not until that last day of school, when your child is either cheering because summer is finally here, or crying because they want one more year. So I'm asking you--please make my child cry.

Book Club of One

Don't ask me the titles of the last five books I've read.

Okay, ask me.

1. Schooled

2. The Secret Hour

3. Beautiful Creatures

4. The Hunger Games

5. The Schwa Was Here

Don't recognize these titles? You would if you were under 16 years old. Yes, I am addicted to young adult fiction.

You might not think this is a problem, but I've had my issues. I don't remember how to read books written for adults. I don't even want to read them.

While my adult friends were reading books like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I was reading The Hunger Games. We couldn't talk. I went to pick up Santino from his friend Jeremy's house. Jeremy's dad welcomed me into the house but politely excused himself. "I'm reading a real page-turner so can we talk some other time?" The page turner was that Tattoo book. Was everybody in the universe reading that book? Like The DaVinci Code, I felt like I was missing out on some collective behavior phenomenon because I was quagmired in the world of teenagers with magical powers.

This problem started in September when Santino started reading like a crazy person. And I mean really crazy. He is so engrossed in the worlds he's reading that he talks about characters like they're friends of ours. "I can't believe what Katniss just did," he said. "Oh, is that a girl in your class?" I asked innocently. "No, mom, Katniss is a character in The Hunger Games." Well, if he was going to be friends with all of these people, I had to meet them myself.

Because his enthusiasm (or insanity) is so infectious, I started reading everything Santino read. I also had to read it to relieve his frustration. This started with The Lightning Thief. Santino desperately wanted to talk about the book but didn't want to spoil it for me, especially when he started to read the four sequels in the series.

Oh, it's been a good ride, especially since my students have gotten into some of these same books. When I read Twilight, I had nobody with whom to share my ideas on the book. Having read so many well-written vampire books by Anne Rice, Twilight was a huge disappointment. I was grateful when one of my students, Josie, started reading it.

As an English learner, Josie really struggles with speaking the language. Nevertheless, she loves to read big, thick books that immerse you into a world for hundreds of pages. As she read Twilight I would ask her constantly what she thought. Her response was consistent: "I don't like it." I would nod in agreement--but why? "I don't like Bella," she said. Wow, I couldn't have agreed with her more, and we discussed Bella's character at length.

Finally I could share my ideas with someone else. Still, I wanted to compare it to the Anne Rice vampire characters. Couldn't do that, though. Anne Rice is clearly for grownups, so the Edward vs. LeStat discussion will just have to be tabled. I crave a good solid discussion about a book with an adult. A grown-up. Santino comes close, but he is still too young to read some books with adults as a target.

Now that the year has ended, I'm going to miss having those conversations with my students. I'm starting a book club with Santino and a couple of my friends on the staff of our school that are interested in sharing my young adult fiction addiction. But until our club is up and running, I'll just have to call myself a book club of one.

One Kind of Lockdown I Can Live With

Last year, my poor little school was under fire. At the crossroads of three gang territories and bubbling gang wars, we had regular lockdowns to ensure the safety of our kids. (See my previous post, "Lockdown City.")

This year has been a little bit quieter--no lockdowns during regular school hours, although many episodes occurred after school. I have been lucky to miss those after-school lockdowns. Typically they have been preceded by helicopters, in which case I run to my classroom, grab my stuff, and run out the gate so I don't get stuck at school for who-knows-how-long.

Now it's June with only two weeks left at school. I thought I had entirely escaped lockdowns this year. It was about 4:00, and I was cleaning out my room. My door was open because my air conditioning is broken--not fun on a hot summery day. I was vaguely listening to the clamor of kids outside when I heard the Voice of the Yard boom out, "Everybody IN! Everybody in NOW!"

Let me tell you about the Voice of the Yard. He's one of the instructors on campus running after school enrichment classes. I call him the Voice of the Yard, because no matter what's happening on the playground, he can boom his voice from one end of campus to the other with perfect clarity. He goes up to a volume of 11. So when he booms, kids listen.

When he yelled "Everybody in," I knew it had happened--a lockdown, more action in Highland Park. I thought I had dodged that bullet this year (figuratively AND literally), but no, two weeks before school ends and I'm here for another lockdown. It's like that veteran cop who's about to retire, and then on his last day on the job, he gets gunned down in a shoot-out.

I ran out my door and instinctively started to wave kids in. That's what I do, because my room is on the yard and one of the first places that kids run in an emergency. Anyway, kids started coming to my classroom, and then I saw what the threat was. It wasn't a gangster. It wasn't a thug. It was a huge swarm of bees. Bees!

As kids swarmed to my classroom, those bees slowly buzzed over the playground. Actually, there were two swarms. I've seen swarms before not far from here, but they were in the hills, in an area that is rustic and not urban at all. But to see this force of nature hovering over a concrete playground was just...so...weird.

Anyway, dozens of kids crammed into my messy (because I was cleaning) and sweltering (remember, no A/C) classroom. We kept the door open because, well, the bees weren't really doing much except making their way across our playground to some undisclosed home in somebody's house or tree. The bees knew what they were doing and they weren't very interested in us. In the meantime, jumpy kids watched from the windows and doors as nature's phenomenon passed by. It was really cool.

So we were in a lockdown. Oh, there weren't any long warning bells, we didn't lock the doors, and nobody was particularly worried. We just watched as the wonders of nature buzzed by. Now that's the kind of lockdown I like.

Lockdown City: For Whom the Bell Tolls

(a re-post from a note posted on Facebook on March 18, 2009)

I work in lockdown city.

Many of you probably don’t know what a lockdown is. Some of you have heard of it. Maybe a few of you have practiced one. But at my school, it has become a routine.

Imagine you are a second grader sitting during a math lesson. While you’re trying to figure out how many dimes are in a dollar, you hear a long bell ring. A really long bell. You listen for a moment—it’s not the end or recess or lunch. Your teacher walks to the door, locks it, and then glances out the window. The lesson continues, but your teacher seems a little distracted. You’re in a lockdown.

A lockdown is a procedure by which a school—or other facility—secures its premises for safety reasons. At my school, which is located in the middle of a bubbling gang war, usually it occurs when there has been a shooting nearby. When a situation calls for a lockdown, we corral every human being inside the buildings. We lock the doors, the windows, the gates, and our freedom.

You can’t leave the room to go to the bathroom—that stuff goes in a black bucket, and if you’re lucky, your classroom has a separate workroom where you can conduct that business in private. If you’re not so lucky, maybe you can fashion a little privacy using wooden racks and butcher paper. My little second graders have never complained about using the bucket. They're just grateful.

My kids don’t like lockdowns because they think the air gets stale inside the classroom. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sure feels like it when you’re trapped and you don’t know when you’re going to get out. Also they worry a little. On Monday, one of my more vocal second graders was worried that someone was going to jump the fence and break down our door with a sledgehammer. Imagine what the shy kids were thinking.

If the lockdown starts right before lunch, then it’s really a challenge. Not only are the kids jumpy because they have a lot of energy or have to go to the bathroom, but also they’re hungry on top of that. If you’re looking at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, their most basic needs are completely shot.

Sometimes you know a lockdown is coming. You hear the helicopters. It’s like Radar O’Reilly saying, “Choppers” and then you know you’re going to be trapped for a while--but not inside an operating room like M*A*S*H. Instead you’re trapped in a classroom with little kids. Your job is to make them feel safe and secure, and keep them calm enough to learn how to read and do their times tables. And really, when there are gun-wavers outside on the street, the safest place to be is inside the classroom.

When the helicopters circle, you wonder when the bell is going to ring. If it’s lunch, or recess, you hurry to the bathroom. If you get trapped inside the classroom later, you never know when you’ll be able to go again. If the lockdown occurs when kids are on the yard, then you open your doors and pull them into your classroom—no matter how many, you take them in to the closest location.

In general I prefer the lockdowns that are preceded by the helicopters, rather than the long bell out of the blue. Why? Well, if you hear the helicopters first, that means that the incident occurred somewhere else, and the police are pursuing the suspects. But...if you just hear the lockdown bell without any warning, that means something has happened very close by. I'll take the helicopters.

One time I was in my classroom after school and I heard gunshots on the street. My classroom is right on the playground, so I opened my door to let kids in to safety. You know what? Not one kid came to my room. They were running--running for cover. They were running around the building out of the shooting range. You never know how those emergency procedures are going to work until you’re in the middle of an emergency.

During a lockdown, you carry on class, business as usual. Everything is okay. Finish the worksheet, read the story--whatever you were doing continues. It's not until you come to a transition where your routine breaks down. Recess time comes and passes. Maybe you miss lunch. When you miss part of your daily routine, then you know that things aren't okay after all. You stay calm, and if kids get nervous, you counter it with hugs and reason. Whatever works. My kids know that when it's dangerous out there, the safest place is in here.

For the record, I want you all to know I have an amazing school. While we teach in the trenches, the staff is amazing, the kids are sincere, and our attitudes are high. I love teaching there and I’m glad to help the kids during this crisis. I just wish it was a little safer for them. I can only imagine what life is like for them when they go home.