We have five Grandmas that visit our school with regularity. Technically they are not Grandmas but are volunteers. The scholars call them Grandma because they are old with ages ranging from sixty five to eighty two. One of the Grandmas is responsible for making copies of the minutiae of stuff that gets sent home with the scholars weekly. You can always tell when this Grandma is in the school as she will have every copier tied up. Three of the Grandmas I don't know very well. I see them regularly but our conversation is limited to good morning or good afternoon. I suspect they are former teachers who just want something to do so they come to our school. All three can be found in the lower grade levels working with the scholars at a big desk in the back of the room that is just like mine. Grandma #5, as I will call her, is my favorite and she is the one that is eighty two. If my mother would have met her she'd describe her as a "feisty little thing." She was sitting in the second floor staff lounge eating her lunch one day when I got a chance to speak with her. I going to paraphrase the conversation because I can't recall her exact words. "What do you think is wrong with so many of these scholars at this school" she said to me. I wanted to say P.P.P but I cleaned it up and said "home life." "You're right and it's so sad," she said. She continued by saying "there are scholars here that come from one parent homes, get bounced from parent to parent, are not sure who their father is, or live with grandparents or aunts." "No wonder they cause so much trouble at school," she said. Grandma #5 went on to tell me what she thought was the real problem with these scholars, no discipline and God is not present in their life. Grandma #5 speaking again, "do you know why so many of these scholars are so wild and disrespectful of their teachers?" "It's a lack of disciple at home." "If I spoke so disrespectfully to a teacher do you know what would happen to me when I got home?" "Yes," I said. "The same thing that would happen to me, a crack across the behind." She laughed and said, "you're right." My lunch period was almost over and I was at the sink cleaning my silverwear when she said this to me and every time I think about it I pause and think about what she said. "How did we as a society allow the family unit to disintegrate and then turn it's back on God?"
Well stated Grandma #5. Enough with the Grandma's except for one last comment. My school is a much better place because of these five ladies.
Did you like my alliteration in my heading?"
Academically we moved from non-fiction reading to poetry. For the record, I'm not a poetry guy so I have no clue about acrostic, sensory, number, and cinquain poems. Despite being clueless about these type of poems I better pay attention to Gnu because at some point one or all of the scholars will be at my desk asking for help. The beginning lesson on poetry was impressive as Gnu read a Shel Silverstein poem entitled, "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout." For those of you not familiar with the poem I'll show you the first two sentences.
Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out!
She'd scour the pots and scraped the pans,
Candy the yams and spice the hams,
and though her daddy would scream and shout,
She simply would not take the garbage out.
I don't know how she does it. First, she took a non-fiction book about gum and made it interesting and fun. Now we move on to poetry, which I'm sure the scholars know little about, and opened up the lesson with a poem about garbage. As I sat there with my view from the back of the room I knew right away she got their attention. After reading the poem the first time, she assigned each scholar a sentence to read out loud. Keep in mind, they are not big fans of reading out loud. Before the reading began she told the scholars to listen for the alliterations and rhyming words. One by one each scholar read a sentence and not one bit of moaning, groaning or refusing occurred. They did real well with the rhyming words but needed a little help with the alliterations. The next assignment was for each scholar to find two lines that had rhyming words and highlight the lines with a crayon. Once each scholar identify their two lines she gave them the next assignment. One a preprinted worksheet they had to right down their two lines and then on the bottom of the page they are to draw a picture of their two lines. As much as they dislike reading out loud, they all like to draw and they got started right away. As I expected, they needed help drawing and the next thing you know there is a steady stream of scholars heading to my desk. "Mr. Schultz, how do you draw crusts of black burned buttered toast?" Mr. Schultz, how do you draw rubbery, blubbery macaroni?" For the record I'm not an artist. However, whatever I draw almost always meets their needs and they thank me for the help.
The first day of poetry is over and the scholars have left the building. Gnu asks me to go to the library and see if a book called, "The Little Red Pen" is available. It was and when I handed it to her she says "good, this will be our next book to read as it's has a lot of personification." She then said, "we'll also use this book for our reading theater that will be held on parents days." Reading theater is something I'm not familiar with so we'll see what the next day brings. I do know what parents day means and I'm thinking to myself are you sure you want to do this.
One more item and them I'm out. Gnu said to me on Monday morning, "you jinxed us." My response was, "are you kidding me?" I knew right away what she meant, with fifteen days left in the school year we are getting a new scholar. I'll name this scholar Leftside and he is in the fourth grade. I'll give you a little background information. The court system made a decision to remove this scholar from his family situation. I'm not certain of the status of the male parental unit but Leftside was living with the female parental unit. On the day the court rendered it's final decision on Lifeside's future his parental unit failed to show up in court. After three years in this classroom you'd think my skin would toughen up a little but it doesn't. It's another sad situation that I've seen way to many times.
It's the weekend. I'm out. Thanks for reading my blog.
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