Celebrate middle schoolers

Yesterday was our 8th graders' last day of school. Next week they're off to Washington, D.C. and then they graduate on May 26th. The day ended with an 8th grade vs. teachers volleyball game, and boy did they go all out with their outfit selections:

I mean, who ever thought a gecko could play volleyball so well? :) (Incidentally, the teachers won.)

It has been such a wonderful school year. I am so happy that I decided to come back to the classroom and to spend my days with middle schoolers. I know there are many people out there who meet me and tell me what a saint I am for teaching middle school, but I absolutely love it. Yes they are egocentric. Yes they can have attitudes. Yes they can have an extreme sense of what they think is fair and unfair.

But they're also funny, thoughtful, and creative. They ask difficult questions and have the capacity to teach adults how to be present.

So those of you who meet any teacher for the first time ask and ask what grade they teach, rather than telling middle school teachers what saints they are, I challenge you to instead genuinely ask us what they like best about teaching that age group. Because for me, I am in my element when I'm teaching teenagers. Not so much with five year-olds. Oh, who am I kidding? I don't have a clue what to do with five year-olds, and quite frankly, I don't want to find out. But at the same time, I also have mad respect for those who do. It just seems like middle school teachers bear the brunt of the, "Bless you for teaching that age group. I don't know how you do it" spiel from the general public.

We do it because we choose to do it. It's really not that big of a deal to us. Most of the time it's not the kids that make us the most crazy.  But that's a discussion for another blog post. Today I am celebrating my students.

So thank you 8th graders for being you. You have pushed me to think harder and answer some tough questions. We've had some productive, difficult discussions, but in the end, I hope I have taught you to never stop asking the hard questions and to always be curious. Good luck in high school -- I know you'll do great things!

Celebrate This Week was established by Ruth Ayres

Always seeking ways to spread Book Love

Last night I attended an event at my town's public library. It was a reception to introduce the community to the book givers for the Canton Book Project, which is the Canton Public Library's version of the now dissolved World Book Night. I was excited to be one of the people selected as a book giver for a program that seeks to reach out to residents who might not have been infected with reading bug yet. For me, I wanted to find a book that would appeal to middle school students who have yet to discover a love of reading -- or maybe they used to love reading but don't anymore. As a middle school English teacher, I see so often what school does to kills students’ love of reading. In our quest to "cover" all the material in our planned curriculum, we have left our students' love of reading and love of learning in our wake. So I have made it my mission to try to bring that love of reading back into my students’ lives.  

The book I chose to give out as a book giver in the Canton Book Project was  The Crossover by Kwame Alexander.

The Crossover is one of those few books that has universal appeal. The gateway is basketball but at its heart it's a story about family and growing up. You don't have to love basketball to love The Crossover. Kids love it. Adults love it. It appeals to lovers of language with its bouncing, rhythmical verse. It appeals to reluctant readers with its minimal text on each page and accessible use of poetic language. And yes, it appeals to sports lovers too. 

With the book givers and also, I'm a READ poster!

I have made it my mission as a middle school teacher to show students who think reading isn't for them, that it is for everyone. And so while I am grateful to be giving out copies of a book I think many kids will love, I'm also cautious. As universal as I think this book is, as a teacher, I also need to respect that there is no one book that appeals to all people. I want this book to be a conversation starter rather than shutting it down before the discussion even begins. I don’t want this to be yet another way for adults to force their “because it’s good for you, that’s why” agenda on kids' reading lives.  

So if you're a teacher and you care about your students' reading lives, I encourage you to discover what they like to read and talk with them about it rather than just force feeding them books that YOU like. If they don't know what they like, keep encouraging and nudging. Lots of reading lives are built on a teacher saying, "I read this book and I thought of you..." 

Also if you're a teacher and you want to build a classroom library but don't have the means, I encourage you to apply for a grant from the Book Love Foundation, which gives out ten classroom libraries per year. Applications are due May 1st. Even if you're not a teacher and you're reading this as a concerned  parent, feel free to share the Book Love Foundation website with your child's teacher or even make a donation to the foundation. Spreading Book Love takes a village.

Pairing the old with the new

As I watched Bethany Mota dance to Colbie Caillat's song "Try" on Dancing with the Stars this week, I suddenly had a vision that this song would pair perfectly with Paul Laurence Dunbar's classic poem "We Wear the Mask."

I was not wrong. Today our journal topic in 8th grade English was to close read the poem, watch the video, and compare the two.

My close reading of  "We Wear the Mask"

The discussions that poured forth in all three of my classes after we spent some time writing were so on point, I was so impressed with the things they were saying. And even better that the students led the discussion the entire time. I would interject every so often, but for the most part they got the connection without much prodding. The idea of metaphorical masks certainly seems to resonate with middle school students.

Pay attention to signs. They're all arond us.

I am not someone who just gives in to the hands of fate and thinks that everything is predetermined. But I do think there are some things in life that you need to make happen and some things you need to let happen. The trick is finding a balance between the two. I sort of follow Oprah's belief that luck is merely when preparation meets the right moment.

I recently saw a job posting for a teaching position at the school I attended from 5th-12th grade. At first I tried to resist the temptation to apply, but something kept nagging at me to do it. So after many hesitant reaches for the computer mouse, I finally clicked send on the email I wrote to the principal with my resume attached.

The very next day I received a call to come in for an interview.

When I went to the interview, I was amazed at how easy and right it felt. I didn't feel like I was being grilled for a job, I felt like I was just talking with two colleagues about teaching. Next thing I know, I'm being offered a job to teach 8th grade English.

I didn't know how to feel at first. I wasn't expecting it all to happen so fast. So even though I accepted the offer, for the past week or so, I've had doubts about whether this was a good idea.

But then yesterday I walked to the mailbox and noticed there was an envelope addressed to me with the return address from a former student. I opened the envelope and immediately began to weep.

The letter this student wrote was telling me all about how she had just read my favorite book, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and she wanted to share her thoughts with me. She wrote it just like the letters they used to write in their reader-response notebooks in my literature class. She poured her heart and soul into this letter and showed me just how much she understood and pondered the book. It looks like she even tore it out of the same composition book she used in my class.

If I had any doubts about going back into the classroom in the fall, this letter just squashed them. God or the universe or whatever you happen to believe in really does send us signs. We just have to be observant enough to notice them. This sign was hard to ignore. It came at just the time I needed it, and if the letter weren't sign enough, this student will also be going into 8th grade. The grade I'll be teaching in the fall.

This is why I love my students

We have been discussing the poem "Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins the past two days in class. Yesterday the students did a close reading and discussed in groups and today we discussed as a class. I always wonder if it makes Billy Collins throw his hands up in exasperation to know that this poem is being broken down and dissected in classrooms across America since the meaning behind it is telling you to do the opposite. And yes, that irony is not lost, even on 6th graders.

One of the best moments from reading the comments and questions they wrote on the poem itself was one student's drawing of his interpretation of the poem:

And people always ask me how it is that I can teach middle school. Because middle schoolers are awesome, that's why.