we’ll see you later.” She slammed the door shut.
“Stop listening to her. You shouldn’t be listening to her talk about her religion.”
“But, mom, I asked her about it. She was only answering me.”
“I don’t want to hear it. You shouldn’t be learning about any other religion.”
“But, mom, I was interested. I want to find out what it’s about.”
“If you don’t follow my directions, you won’t be allowed to play with her anymore.”
“Okay, mom,” I acquiesced.
To this day I believe my parents overreacted. It would have been educational for me to learn about her religion. I also think my parents had received a lot of door-to-door solicitors trying to convert people to Jehovah’s Witnesses, so they were wary. Laura and her family were not one of them though. I didn’t want anyone at this school to think I was soliciting either. I knew I had to be careful.
All in all, I was pleased with how the first day had gone. My butterflies had flown away and wouldn’t reappear for the remainder of the school year. However, I was emotionally and physically exhausted and couldn’t wait to get home. The welcome note had already disappeared from my mind.
Chapter 4
Thy Will be Done
In the public school system, I had been given a curriculum guide to help me teach. This guide, created mostly by teachers, was a huge help in lesson planning. In addition to providing specific units, within each unit were objectives, suggestions for activities, and handouts that could be used directly with the students. Private schools rarely give teachers curriculum guides.
Today “Common Core” has standardized teaching objectives throughout the nation in the hopes that all students will meet the same expectations at the same points throughout their learning and be ready and prepared for higher learning and the work force. This was developed over many years with the help of teachers. “Common Core” has, in a sense, revolutionized teaching methods in that they dictate more of how teachers should introduce concepts, explain them and help the students learn the material.
Instead, at this school I had been given a list of objectives with sets of literature and grammar textbooks. It was like being given a recipe without the directions. You know what you want to make and you have the ingredients, but the steps are missing. Teachers must figure out the details themselves. Each daily lesson plan has a structure with different parts, and the teacher must create them, deciding which activities to do and how long they will take. She also needs to address different learning styles and needs of the students and include different methods of interaction in the classroom, such as group work or students working in pairs. I tried to be creative with how I handled the course content, and I always tried to make my lessons enjoyable.
Our first unit was “The Story and Its Elements” which I used with all three grades but with modifications for each. For the eighth grade, I used more difficult stories and activities. I chose this unit because the content was covered at the beginning of the literature books since it included the fundamental elements of literature. In addition, I had taught something similar in my student teaching and long-term substitute experiences. While this is primarily a literature unit about plot, conflict, setting, characters and theme, since I was teaching integrated Language Arts, I wove vocabulary, grammar, and composition into it.
One of the activities I included was to have the students do improvisation, acting out fictitious situations I created. This kept them actively engaged and stressed the importance of character, plot, and setting. One scenario was that an elephant has escaped from the zoo and is found in someone’s backyard. In my seventh grade class, Billy took the lead in this one. He was a light-skinned Caucasian boy with freckles and light brown hair who reminded me of Opie from the Andy Griffith show. Looking out our back window with his mouth agape and his eyes wide, he feigned shock and disbelief that grazing behind our classroom was a ten-ton tusked, gray, African mammoth.
“Holy cow, how did that get out there?” he exclaimed, pointing to the lawn behind us.
“That’s not a cow; that’s an elephant!” a second boy proclaimed.
“How are we going to get it out of here?” Billy asked. “We need to return it to the zoo.”
“We need to put it to sleep,” a third boy directed, passing out imaginary tranquilizer guns.
Aiming at the elephant who, by this time, had magically appeared in our room, bypassing any normal entry points, the boys pulled their triggers, and supposedly the elephant fell to the ground, although none of us felt the proverbial earth shake.
“Did it work?” they asked each other, bending down to examine the body.
“Yes, I think he’s asleep,” the third boy answered.
“Let’s get him out of here,” Billy directed.
Spreading themselves around the large open area of the room, they each pretended to lift a part of the unconscious elephant. They heaved, pulled, and moaned for several minutes, feigning exhaustion, stopping to sit down, asking for water, and then eventually pretending to drag the massive, hefty carcass out the door, which somehow magically fit through the narrow opening. That was one of several noteworthy performances, and afterward we had a nice discussion about the elements of narration. All the students had a great time and asked me to include more activities of this nature in the future.
Later in the school year we travelled to the younger grades to perform scenes and one-act plays. Some students performed original works like a fractured (also known as twisted) fairy tale, a fairy tale where the plot, characters, setting, or some other element has changed. I knew the younger kids were excited, because their teachers told me how they were counting down the days until our arrival. They could barely stay in their seats when they saw us. They were clapping and cheering before anything started. My students felt like movie stars.
One of the most memorable performances was by a group of my seventh graders who chose to reenact the main chocolate room scene from Roald Dahl’s Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. We had made a chocolate river from a long roll of brown bulletin board paper, and they couldn’t have picked a more fitting actor to play Augustus Gloop. Franco was a short, rotund, brown-skinned boy who liked to “ham it up.” His black hair was in a bowl cut with straight bangs like Moe from the Three Stooges. For his part, he knelt down by the river and pretended to slurp up the chocolate with his hands.
He delivered his lines with his prepubescent high-pitched enthusiastic voice, “Mmmmm….this stuff is terrrifffiiccc. I need a bucket to drink it properly.”
As he put his hands to his face, he secretly smeared chocolate hidden in his fists. I wish I had a photograph of his clown-like appearance with his round face, chubby cheeks and full lips all smothered in melted chocolate. We were all hysterical.
Then he pretended to fall into the river, rolling and thrashing about on the paper as he screamed, “Help! Help! I can’t swim!”
To add to the frolic and histrionics, four students dressed as oompa loompas, the short chocolate workers in Wonka’s factory. They wore white t-shirts with big O’s on the front, but skipped face paint and wigs. With arms crossed and deep knee bends, they sang the song from the original 1971 soundtrack:
Oompa loompa doompety doo
I’ve
