Soccer, or Critical Lens?

So last week I subbed for a one of my mentor teachers. This was a treat because I knew the kids and they knew me, which meant that the extent of trying to get away with this and that was at least somewhat diminished. They had finished reading The Catcher in the Rye a few weeks ago, and were beginning to outline and draft critical lens essays.

Most of the students worked diligently on their essays. The ones who would usually goof off, did. One was particularly and genuinely frustrated, and as the bell rang after 3 days of having his head down and his earbuds in, he delivered this to my desk:

I tried to call him back but he kept walking. Well, I definitely wasn't going to throw it away. Back up to the office it went.

I showed it off to a colleague while eating lunch. "You know what you should do, you should tie a little ribbon around it." Great idea! And so the next day, as he was walking into the classroom, I tossed this to the student:

He smiled and then tried to frown. Then he dunked it in the trash, where it barely missed the remnants of someone's pizza. I pulled it back out and passed it back to him, and proceeded to tend goal for another minute. We played soccer, basketball, and ping pong all in about 60 seconds.

Then finally, he grabbed the wad of paper, and I thought he was going to really put it out of its misery so I tried to grab it back. "No, let me untie the string." Ok, keep it, the bell has rung and I have to start class. I get everyone started, take attendance. I make my way around the room to answer questions about their essays and make sure everyone is working. When I get to the one student's desk, his paper is smoothed out, and he's finally reading the instructions. I give him a graphic organizer to help him get started.

"This is all I have to do?" he says. "This is easy. I guess I should have started this on Monday."

Goal.

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Best Intro Ever

I'm going to be picking up a leave replacement next month some time, and the teacher had an appointment yesterday, so she requested me as her sub. Most of her classes are inclusion, so she teaches with another teacher, who was also there yesterday. It was a perfect situation for me to introduce myself to the classes and try to get to know them a little.

As I was introducing myself, I heard one student whisper something to the other teacher. She responded excitedly, "yes I know, I was just thinking that!" What were they talking about?

Next, she explains, they've been reading Tuesdays with Morrie (one that I need to read still). In one part of the book, apparently they do trust falls, where you fall backwards and trust that the other person or people will catch you. Ok, cue my heart beating a litttttle faster. I am immediately having flashbacks to a 7th grade field trip in which I was blindly led through a forest, and my partner let me trip over rocks and walk into trees. I tell them about this, they laugh with me. But with 22 kids in front of me cheering me on, waiting to see how I'll react, there's only one choice.

I go to the back of the room and about 8 kids line up in 2 lines. Then the teacher pulls a desk over in front of the line. I have to get up on the desk?? "Ok, Ok, you'll definitely catch me, RIGHT??!" I ask them, about 5 times. "Yes, we definitely will."

I step up, they give me a countdown. I fall, they catch.

As I return to the front of the room, and the students to their desks, the kids are smiling. One of them says as he is sitting down, "You're one of us now."

I can't imagine a better introduction to a class.

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