Only 13 days of summer school left. I then leave for Europe on August 7th, and begin my month-long writer's residency in Spain on September 3rd. I really love the kids, but man-oh-man-oh-MAN!
Anyway. For now I spend the first four hours of every summer school day "helping" Miss Carter. I'm not much needed, as Miss Carter owns complete control of her class. She rules with a quiet authority – that she never yells, ever, tells me that, in my own class, I must be doing something wrong. Or that I could at least be doing something differently.
But my real point is that, for the first half of each day, I often don't have much to do. I am one of four adults aiding maybe15 kids. I'm not sure if it's because we're recovering from the flood, but almost every class has volunteers from AmeriCore, among other organizations, plus multiple highschool teaching aids, who do more sleeping than helping. I could sleep too; Miss Carter asks nothing of any of us. So I drink ice coffee in a tiny chair at a tiny desk, beside a group of kids who begged me to sit with them. I help them a little, answer little questions, encourage them. It's easy, fun, and a good opportunity to just bond with the kids, without all the pitfalls of controlling them. They get off track, secretly trying to spit their raps for me when they should be circling all the first person pronouns in the book Miami Sees It Through (Miami is the narrator kid's nickname) -- until Miss Carter stares them into submission.
Today, with little to do, I fixed Jermain's crayons. Supposedly, someone had secretly used them, broke them all in half, then stuck them back in the box. The disappointed look on his face when he emptied the broken crayons onto his desk, let me know Jermaine hadn't done it. So I sat beside him as he completed his reading assignment, and taped all his crayons back together. That's what I did today in Miss Carter's class.
I also, fixated on M_____, the only kid in all the classes I work with who does not want to participate, does not want to learn. So he fiddles with pieces of string he finds on the floor. Hides in his shirt. Has to use the bathroom. Has headaches. "Avoidance," Miss Carter says, hypothesizing that M____ has a hard time learning, and so he does whatever he can to avoid it. I would've said that he just wants an adult sitting beside him all the time, talking with him; he will work if I sit and watch him. The rest of the kids all want my continual attention too, clamor for it. Except when I tell them no, they simply move on to the next distraction.
As for my own class, this week I gave them a quickie about traditional pop-song structure: verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge. We made up choruses for 'Who We Are'. Between every third kid's rap, the first class now chants:
Ooh, woo, woo! / Ooh woo, wee! / This is who we are / at Craig El–e–men–tar-y!
Class 2 concocted:
We're the Craig Underground / and we bout to set it off! / we're the baddest kids around / and we never, ever soft!
It's far easier to get them to sing all at the same time than individually; these choruses assure that even the kids who for whatever reason can't perform raps, still participate. Even shy or ornery who don't like participating have fun singing with the group.
As an example of a song with a chorus, we all attempted to sing "Irreplaceable," by Beyonce. Every once in while I bring in the 1959 Gibson acoustic guitar my father passed down to me. "You guys know how upset I get when you touch the electronics without permission?" I ask, pointedly. "Well, you will never get permission to touch this guitar. I'm sorry. That's just how it is. And if you touch this guitar -- if you even stare at it too hard -- man, I just don't know what I might do to you…"
Still they slap and pluck at it in passing.
Anyway, "Irreplaceable" has been an invaluable teaching tool. If ever the kids are kooking out, I begin to play Beyonce, and they all turn from whatever foolishness (as if toward some celestial light) and begin to sing. Man, how I wish more rap radio songs featured acoustic guitar – or rather, acoustic songs that didn't glorify bootcalls and/or unwanted pregnancy. The gross materialism angle of "Irreplaceable" is almost too much. But it's a great little song, anyway, and has gotten me out of many a jam (and into a jam!)
COMING SOON: Mr. Michael's class goes to the aquarium, and watches an IMAX movie about sharks!