The End of the Year

One of the second-grade objectives is to discuss inventors and inventions. Another is to formulate "how?" questions--the beginnings of scientific inquiry. So this week I gave the students a challenge. I gave each table of children (six tables in all) some supplies--a double-A battery, a flashlight lightbulb, and aluminum foil. I told them to try to invent something.
A girl at one of the tables made the important discovery that if she wrapped the battery in the foil, the battery became warm. (In fact, the battery can get quite hot. Impressionable youth that may be reading this: this is an experiment that should only be attempted with adult supervision!) Some minutes later, a whoop of triumph came from a girl at another table: she had succeeded in getting the flashlight lightbulb to "spark," as she put it. Soon all the tables were giving her method a shot. Some could replicate her results, some couldn't; it's tricky to get the metal rim of the lightbulb to stay in contact with the foil, and to keep the foil in contact with both ends of the battery. But it's pretty darn cool when it works.
I asked them to try to explain what happened. One boy (who said he helps his dad with electric stuff all the time) said that the foil reflected the light from the lights on the ceiling, and that's what gave the lightbulb the necessary electricity; that, plus of course the nitrogen gas inside the battery.
We have five days left. Everything that needs to be graded has already been assigned, already turned in. The trick now is to continue our routine as closely as possible so as not to encourage more craziness than will naturally happen in the final week of school. That means we will still do language arts and science and social studies in the morning and we will still do math in the afternoon. I will still give out worksheets. The class has not yet risen up in mutiny.
We had a school concert yesterday afternoon. One of the songs was a Motown-inspired declaration of love for pizza (imagine first-through-fifth graders harmonizing "Pizza! Pizza!" to the tune of "My Girl", and you'll get the general gist). I was able to handle it up until the point a young'un went to the mike and started intoning a spoken part mid-song. Then I gave out a helpless cry of laughter that prompted a bunch of students to turn around--"Oh," I saw their thought balloons saying. "It was a teacher!"
Also enjoyable: a song about proper handwashing techniques set to the melody of Beyonce's "Single Ladies."

Of Rainstorms and Rossini

The recent spate of bad weather in Cincinnati reminds me I have neglected to share a story from a week or two back in the second grade classroom, a day when I was flying solo (my mentor having to be in another room). It was a day when we didn't have "specials"--art or music or gym. We had done our math work as always just after lunch; I believe after that we were doing something related to social studies, but in the middle of it a massive storm hit. There was thunder, there was lightning, there was wind and great pelting raindrops. I was unprepared for everyone's reaction--one student asked to sit elsewhere in the room instead of next to the windows because she was afraid of thunderstorms. Other boys and girls were getting up to go stand at the windows to get a better view. It was chaos. So I said, "Everyone back to your seats, and I will tell you a story."
Magic words. I said, "Let me tell you what Miss Pancella's mother did when Miss Pancella was a little girl and there was a storm. Miss Pancella's mother--Mrs. Pancella--is a very wise woman. She knows a lot about calming the fears of children. I believe she became so wise because she had, not one--" I raised an index finger--"Not two"--I continued counting off and showed the count on my hands--"not three, or four, or five, but SIX children." Gasps of astonishment all around. "And Miss Pancella is not her first, not her second...but the sixth! So she had plenty of practice before I came around.
"When Miss Pancella was a little girl and a thunderstorm rolled through, Mrs. Pancella put a record on the record player. Who here knows what a record is?"
A little boy raised his hand. When I called on him, he said, "It's like a CD, only bigger."
"Close enough. This record was of the William Tell Overture. Now, you've probably heard part of the William Tell Overture--" I hummed part of the ending, the "Lone Ranger" portion. The class all agreed--yes, they knew it. "That part sounds like galloping horses; the beginning part sounds like the approach of a storm. There are low drums for far-away thunder, and notes that are like drops of rain--plink, plink, plink! And cymbal crashes for lightning. Mrs. Pancella would play that whole record so we could listen to the storm come and go. Somehow a storm was less scary when it was in music."
"Hey!" somebody called. "The rain stopped!"
Everyone looked out the windows and confirmed it. There was a brief outbreak of chaos again as everyone celebrated, and then one of these magical thinkers said, "Miss Pancella made the rain stop with her story!"
But of course, Miss Pancella did no such thing. Mrs. Pancella did.

Poisson d'Avril!

With a $2.95 binder from Staples, paper from the Archbishop Alter Library's printers, and two hundred ninety-six hours of hard labor, I have laid my research paper to rest. (I'm exaggerating a bit. Two hundred ninety-six is the number of hours I worried about the research paper, not the hours I actually toiled.) Thus my academic activities are drawing to a close--not done with 'em yet! There's still a capstone presentation to go!--and so it seemed a good time to pick up my cap and gown for graduation.
I'm looking at them now, all bundled in their happy cellophane wrapper with a label proclaiming the contents in clipped cadence. The package includes, for example, "1 TASSEL: REGULAR. BANDED. BLACK." Graduation accoutrements don't mess around.
I just got back from Spring Break, aka Research Paper Last Chance Gulch (if I didn't do it then, there'd be no way to concentrate on it before its due date, Thursday of this week). Our school--and here I'm talking about where I'm student teaching--had its last pre-Spring Break day April 1st. In other classrooms and out on the playground there were parties and Easter egg hunts; in Miss Pancella's class there was a math test. "How the Teacher Stole Easter" is what they'll title my life story. I did, however, seek to expand the second graders' cultural horizons with trivia I'd learned in high school French class. "Do you know what they do on April Fools Day in France?" I asked them. "People go around sticking paper cut-outs of fish on other people's backs, and then they run away shouting 'Poisson d'Avril!' 'April Fish!'" Oh, my kids were mighty intrigued by this. They worked hard on the pronunciation of "poisson"; they asked me to write the words on the board so they could spell them correctly; they wrote them on Post-Its and slapped them on my back. In retaliation, I stuck construction-paper April Fish in every one of their backpacks for them to discover discover on their arrival home.
In other news--yes, the reason I have not been writing about school for a while (besides the fact that I've been writing for school; see the topic "research paper" above) is that I have spent forty days listening to, and writing about, forty versions of the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. And yes, in case you were wondering--the most common reaction, when I tell people this, is "I can't believe you spent forty days listening to Jesus Christ Superstar. Yeah--I can't either, but the blog posts are testimony, and I'm the only one with access to the jeremiahsaunt.blogspot.com account, so I must have done it.
Back to teaching. And graduation. And this year of apprenticeship approaching its end. I figure it doesn't hurt to ask--do you know of schools that are hiring? There are about twenty-five of us entering the labor pool at once, and I'll vouch for one and all.

How my name became unpronounceable.

This week I asked Hive Mind to assist me in my teaching. It will not be the last time. Honestly, I don't know what teachers did before the Internet. Stuck for ideas, how did they face the challenge of designing a spelling activity for second graders in the days when one couldn't just do a Google search on "spelling activities for second graders"?
I feel like the woman in that old commercial who pats flour on herself to fool dinner guests into thinking she slaved over the making of baked goods. My painstaking spelling-activities quest, all three minutes of it, took me to a site that creates word searches. First step: come up with a title for your puzzle. This part of the process was the hardest for me, I think; I finally opted for "Spelling!" I then typed in all twenty of this week's spelling words and noted with amusement (and gratitude) that the puzzle generator promised to use a randomly-created-offensive-word filter as it merrily sprinkled letters around. And here was a nice touch: I could put in a hidden message that would be revealed as the spelling words were found. I chose the propaganda route and hid the phrase "I love to learn spelling with Miss Pancella."
I gave the students the word search today. When I passed out the papers, I explained about the hidden message, showing them how there were dashes at the bottom of the page--"_ ___ __ _____ ________ ____ ____ ________"--for the phrase they were looking for.
The next fifteen minutes were a bit of a free-for-all. Some second graders seem to have something of a word search instinct; others need more prodding. There was much collaborating at tables and some wandering around the room. I didn't mind how they worked on the puzzle so long as they were looking closely at what letters made up the words. The point wasn't to complete a puzzle; the point was to get more familiar with the topography of English.
I did take note of who first found all of the words. I went over to walk him through the finding of the hidden message, since "Use, in order, the letters that are not circled" is an abstract concept. He got pretty far before I was called away to help another student. When I got back, I discovered he was doing fine before he skipped a row; he had written "I love to learn spelling with Miss Pfhrzlbc."

In case the origin of the word "nylon" comes up when you're on Jeopardy

"How is it," one of my classmates has been asking this week, "that we're taking four classes, but we have five exams?"
That's what you get with an accelerated Master's program--New Math. But sweet, sweet freedom shall soon be ours. As of this writing, I have one take-home exam and one in-class exam to go, and then I'll be on Christmas break from my elementary education classes. I'll still be in the second grade classroom, however, watching the excitement level of seven-year-olds increase exponentially as the calendar marches toward the 25th. (Just the other day I heard one little girl--not in my class; this was in a different setting--ecstatically singing, "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way/Santa Claus is coming to a HAP-PY NEW YEAR...")
But--sugarplum visions be darned--the learning must go on. I've been put in charge of teaching spelling. Every week we work on new words in a list of 20 provided by our spelling textbook. Last week we had words with the long "i" sound--"try" and "cry" and "hide" and "bike" and "housefly"--like that. Now, my charges didn't do too well on the spelling test previous to this. If you know me at all you will have correctly guessed I took this personally. "SPELLING! Come ON! No kid is leaving Miss Pancella's class not knowing how to SPELL!" etc. etc. So I was quick to drum into those little brains the pattern: when they heard the long "i" sound at the end of a word, it was always spelled with a "y": "cry," "try," "pry." When they heard the long "i" sound in the middle of the word, it was spelled with an "i," then a consonant, and then a silent "e" at the end: "hide," "bike."
But--the last spelling word on the list? "Nylon."
On Tuesday of that week I cut squares of fabric out of a pair of pantyhose and brought them into class. I passed one out to each table and asked, "Does anyone have a guess about what this is?"
"A thong?" one little voice piped up.
Okay! I thought. No more guesses! "It's a fabric called 'nylon," I said. "This word is not going to follow our spelling pattern, but there's a good reason for that. See, 'nylon' is a made-up material. You can't find it in nature. It was created in a laboratory out of chemicals."
One little girl dropped her fabric square abruptly at this point.
"It was created to be very stretchy," I continued. "So stretchy that the inventors said it could stretch from...New York...to London." I wrote "NY" and "LON" on the board.
A chorus of voices: "Ohhhh!" And once again, as I am so often, I was grateful I'd become a fan of The Nylons--the only reason I'd learned that particular bit of trivia.
And by the way--the class all did very well on the spelling test at the end of the week, and almost everyone spelled "nylon" right.

How the president is, and is not, like a soccer coach

Here's a li'l story about my recent adventures in a second grade classroom...
Someone from my accelerated Master's program came to observe me giving a social studies lesson. The lesson had to have something about reading or writing integrated into it, so I decided to craft the lesson around an issue of TIME For Kids magazine. The cover story on the issue I chose was on our new Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. (I like a challenge.)
I had a little time earlier in the day, before my observer came, so I asked students if they'd ever heard of the Supreme Court. A few could tell me a little bit about court and lawyers, including the tidbit that lawyers cost money. I also asked if they knew what "supreme" meant. I said they'd probably heard it in reference to pizza, and asked them to please not think of the Supreme Court as the Pizza Court.
As I was gathering this background info, one boy raised his hand and asked, "Do they have a president on the other side of the world?" I said this was an excellent question. We talked a bit about different names for heads of government: presidents, kings, queens, prime ministers. They wanted to put "mayor" on that list, and one student asked me if there was a king in Rome. (Not to hear Caesar tell it!)
When lesson time came, I decided before we even read the magazine that we should figure something out about the three branches of government in the hopes of pinning an abstract concept like "Supreme Court" onto something concrete. From prior conversations with these second graders, I knew what interested them most (besides SpongeBob). "Who in here likes sports?" I asked. Everyone in the class raised his or her hand. "Who is on a sports team?" Not every hand this time, but a substantial number. I asked one girl what her grandfather did for her soccer team (again, I knew the answer in advance because of a prior conversation).
"He's our coach," she said.
We went into what a coach does, and then I wrote "Coach" on the board.
"And what do we call the person who decides what happens if the soccer ball goes out of play?"
When the class gave me the answer, I wrote "Referee" on the board.
"And then there must be some group of people who came up with the rules of soccer and who can decide, say, if there should be 20 people out on the field instead of 18." Not knowing the name of this shadowy organization, I put "People who make up rules" on the board.
Then I explained that these were like the branches of our government. The president is like the coach, except less likely to take you personally out for pizza; the referee is like the Supreme Court, and the people who make rules, Congress.
I think they got it, but even if they didn't, at least it was an introduction to the concept, which is what an awful lot of second grade is about.

School notes, mid-October edition

I woke up early this morning. I try to be up early when I can--I like to go out for a morning walk--but this morning when I checked the forecast, I elected to go curl up in front of the space heater instead.
This last week of school, in terms of the courses I'm taking, has been the sort of experience that makes you understand how one can get addicted to stimulants. (Don't worry; this is not a confession. I never resorted to anything harder than Mountain Dew.) I am not someone who has developed, how shall we call them, "good" study habits. You know the ones--like doing a little bit of work every day instead of waiting for the last moment. And last week a couple of my classes came to the end of their eight-week span, so I had something like six assignments to complete and turn in. (And that may be lower than the actual number, because I got tired just trying to remember them all and stopped at six.)
Now, part of the reason my work had piled up was that during this term I took trips out of town two weekends in a row. The first was to a family reunion for my father's side of the family. No way was I going to miss a gathering of 125 happy Italians and hangers-on. The next was the first-ever academic conference on U2, which just so happened to take place on the same weekend just down the road from a U2 concert, can you imagine that? Next to Italian relatives, U2 fans are my favorite group of people to be around, so no way was I missing this, either. But all of this gallivanting did lead to my assignments stacking up such that they were taking turns joyfully jumping off the high dive, so to speak. The good news is that everything due last week has been turned in and my next round of classes do not begin until, oh, Tuesday.
As for my adventures in observation at the grade school--it's been the educational home of the walking wounded. You may have heard that there's some nasty sickness floating around. Grade schools being disease factories to begin with, it may not surprise you to learn that on days last week up to eight kids (in a class of twenty-one) were absent. (One of my fellow intern teachers had ten kids out of a class of twenty one day.) Interestingly, a different set of kids was gone each day; this did make it easier to help the previously-absent set catch up with their work, but it also meant there was little point moving on with lessons to cover new material.
And now I must dash to get to school to begin the new week, but I will leave you with this anecdote--the seven-year-olds had an assignment in handwriting to write a sentence about the continent they live on. One little fella decided he was going to be clever and wrote, "I like North America so much, I don't know where to begin."

Ninety-seven, coal car, boxcar, caboose!

I'm working with a small group of second graders doing reading work for a half-hour. This week was my first week.
I have six second-graders in my group, two boys, four girls. One boy shows definite signs of wanting to be the small group clown. On Wednesday, I tried channeling his energy into more positive areas; I had him lead the group in some exercises in reading expressively. We also talked a bit about enunciation and pacing (one girl tends to rush). With all that in mind, I decided to bring in something special on Thursday.
I'd hinted about doing something cool, so when everybody saw the sheets of paper I passed out, they said, "Is that the fun thing?" But I instructed them to keep the pages turned to the back until we finished other activities.
Our small group clown dallied. I let everyone else who had finished turn the pages over while he continued to work. "If we don't get to the fun stuff because of you, the group's gonna be mad at you!" I warned. He picked up the pace.
At last he was done. I explained to the group that when I was just a little older than they are, I had discovered this poem and committed it to memory. I told them to pay attention to what happened as I recited it. They all had copies; I didn't, but our small group clown still thought I was cheating and looking at a page until I looked him dead in the eye as I rattled off my lines.
The poem was Crossing, by Philip Booth, and it goes like this:
"Stop Look Listen/as gate stripes swing down/count the cars hauling distance/upgrade through town:/warning whistle, bellclang,/engine eating steam/engineer waving/a fast freight dream:/B&M boxcar/boxcar again,/Frisco gondola/eight-nine-ten/Erie and Wabash,/Seabord, U.P.,/Pennsy tankcar,/twenty-two,three,/Phoebe Snow, B&O,/thirty-four,five,/Santa Fe cattle/ shipped alive/red cars yellow cars,/orange cars, black,/Youngstown steel/down to Mobile/on Rock Island track,/fifty-nine,sixty,/hoppers of coke,/Anaconda copper,/hotbox smoke,/eighty-eight,/red-ball freight,/Rio Grande,/Nickel Plate,/Hiawatha,/Lackawanna,/rolling fast/and loose,/ninety-seven,/coal car,/boxcar,/caboose!"
What happened, of course, was the poem sped up as the train sped up. "Do that again!" they said. This time I suggested they try reading along with me as I recited it. I asked them to guess how many cars were on the train; what was the last number and how many cars came after that?
They all took their copies with them. One little girl said, her eyes shining, "I'm going to take it home and memorize it this weekend and then I'll say it to you on Monday!"

My first report card, as it were.

I have a Dr Pepper within reach, I've gotten my assignments completed for tomorrow and the day after, and in a little while I should begin my reading assignments for the rest of the week. It's the best possible time to catch you up on what the last couple of weeks have been like.

Our story so far: at the beginning of summer I enrolled in the College of Mount St. Joseph's Accelerated Master's Degree program for Inclusive Early Childhood, which will certify me to teach young'uns from 3 years old to 3rd grade, with an option to tack on an endorsement at the end to teach 4th and 5th grade as well. Two weeks ago, local public grade schools went into session. Part of our program is a period of observation in grade school classrooms, so my classmates and I fanned out across Cincinnati to kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade...

I haven't been in a grade school classroom since St. Thomas of Aquin closed its doors after my eighth grade graduation. Happily, I was paired with a mentor teacher with thirty years' experience (she taught one of the people teaching at her school now when she was in second grade!), and she has made me feel right at home. I'm in a second grade classroom with twenty-one children, with books and dry erase boards and math manipulatives and reward stickers and much, much more. At the start of the day one student is in charge of changing the calendar date to the correct one, and another gives us a weather report. We say the Pledge of Allegiance and try to follow proper protocol when we line up to go from one room to the next.

The first day was really, really tough--long and disorienting, and it didn't help that I knew I'd have my own graduate-level class to attend at the end of it. (I'm in the grade school from 7:30 in the morning until 2:45 in the afternoon, then I have class from 4 to 6:30. That's my Monday to Thursday schedule; on Fridays I have one 5 1/2 hour class and no observation time in the second grade room.) On my way to my own class I impulsively pulled in to a nature preserve and took about a half-hour walk through the woods; that helped. Also, my professor that night talked about how teachers should be in the "ministry of presence" business; "You're adults," he told us, "so you can act like you want to be there even if you're having the kind of day when you don't feel like it! Just get across to your children, 'I am here for you.'" It was a timely message.

One more thing. There is an incredible range of proficiencies in the classroom I'm observing--both in terms of academics and behavior/social skills. If it hadn't been for this program, I wouldn't have had the chance to see how a dedicated teacher can work with each child, meeting each child where he or she is, and coaxing him or her to take many more steps forward. Just in the short time I have been in the classroom, I've come to a new appreciation of the patience, the perseverance, the commitment it takes for teachers to do what they do all day. It has been a tremendous privilege.