When I got my new whiteboard on wheels, I saved the styrofoam cubes that were part of the packing. About 5 inches square, with a notch on each that once wrapped aroung the whiteboard to keep it from slipping, I put them on top of my filing cabinet, certain I could use them for SOMETHING. The notches interlocked, maybe I could use them for volume? I wasn’t sure. But I kept them.

Yesterday, during science, I pulled them down and went to the various groups of kids. I handed over the cubes, silently.

“What is this?” they asked.

My only response: “I don’t know, do you?”

It was amazing. Only a few said “Oh, that’s from packing furniture or something.” Some kids locked them together. Some took them apart and said they looked like little houses, or A’s, or interlocked, an S. One of my favorite kids (Yes, we have favorites.) grabbed them, interlocked them and said “Integration! Multiage! TEAMBUILDING!!” (What my program is based on, btw.) Some put them on their ears, or nose, or head. I used it to explain that scientists don’t know the answers, they ask questions to FIND the answers. I found my kids’ reactions so interesting, though, that I spent study hall going around to other classrooms.

Other kids did things totally separate from what mine did. Some made laptop handles. Some made towers. One refused to touch them because “I have homework, I can’t be bothered.”

And the teachers! One, a very traditional, read the chapter, do the review questions, take a multiple choice test type — I handed them to her, and her whole body stiffened. Her face got red. “What is this? Are you playing a trick on me? What am I supposed to do?” So interesting.

It helped reaffirm my teaching style. My kids weren’t scared to ask questions. They are used to the Weirdness of Mrs S. They feel safe to play with the cubes, and safe to make any conjectures they want. Granted, the traditional kids don’t know my like my own kids, but still. It made me feel good.

Another teaching story from this week: Math is first thing most mornings, and on Tuesday, my kids were just groggy and cranky and not participating. In my most stern “I am disappointed in you” teacher voice, I said “All right, everyone up. Come on, out of your chairs on your feet.”

The kids stood up, looking at each other, and then at me, confused. Without cracking a smile, or exuding ANY joy, I said “Okay, put your right hand in.” I sighed.

“Now take your right hand out.” The kids complied, but were still not getting it.

“Now put your right foot in.”

“Wait, Mrs S! Are we doing the Hokey Pokey?” One kid volunteered, quizzically.

“YES! We ARE doing the Hokey Pokey, do you have a problem with that?”

A few kids complained and stopped, and I wagged me finger at them.

“SHAKE IT ALL ABOUT!!! Everyone!”

The kids shook it all about, and I said “There, NOW we can get on with our math lesson.”

Seriously, I wonder what my kids will say about me when they are adults. Only in middle school could I be THAT dry and mean (heh) about making 13 year olds do the Hokey Pokey.

Over there in the Wordy section, you’ll see a new book I’m reading. “Not much just chillin’: the hidden lives of middle schoolers” is good. Damn good. I am loving this book. It is also reaffirming my beliefs; basically, kids first, everything else second.

As a middle school teacher, I KNOW that this stuff goes on. I know what I wish my kids had. Anyway, some excerpts:

“When their children reach this age many parents, mothers especially, figure this is their chance to work more, since their kids can dress themselves, let themselves in the door, get themselves a snack. This is exactly the opposite of what psychologists and educators say should happen. Teachers as a whole would choose more active parents, combined with better-behaved kids, over higher salaries. While ‘active parents’ is narrowly understood as those who help out at school, study after study has proved what teachers’ intuition already told them: that the true measure of involvement, for families of all incomes or backgrounds, is something much more. It’s tutoring one’s children at home. Setting an example by turning off the television and reading for pleasure. Finding out when the newsletter comes each week and insisting it be dug out of the backpack. Setting high expectations and talking about college. Family ‘connectedness,’ feeling your parents care for you, improves academic acheivement and protects against nearly every possible middle-school health risk and behavioral problem. Flunking, smoking, depression — to avoid these, merely spending time with your child is necessary, but not sufficient; a family must participate in activities together and show warmth and love, every single day.” (Perlstein, 72-73)

Or, about the importance of heterogeneous groupings, which is something my program has struggled with this year. Parents were given total choice in where their kids went, and the kids who come from the homes described above unanimously went for the traditional program. We got The Rest, which is so, so wrong. And here’s why:

Schools have been tracking — assigning students to classes based on ability — for a century. Between one half and two-thirds of middle schools have some form of tracking, under the theory that kids this age are at such different places intellectually and cognitively that to lump them in the same classes does them a disservice. A teacher with a homogeneous group of kids can teach at exactly the pace that she needs to; there is less chance for boredom with the quicker kids, less chance for frustration with the slower ones. Ans kids who have an inkling to excel won’t be held back among classmates who ridicule them for that.

Critics contend that tracking gives the best experiences, and often the best teachers, to the students who already have the most advantages, that it denies kids valuable role models: each other. They say it perpetuates lesser expectations for certain children, way before they are fully formed. They say getting shunted into a lower track is demoralizing, a self-fulfilling prophecy, the way Harry Potter’s classmates wom the Sorting Hat sends to Gryffindor are slated for great things, while Slytherin kids are doomed to a life of malfeasance.” (Perlstein, 79)

So, if you want to know what my job is like, day in and day out, read the book. It’s spot-on perfect.