I was the first one to arrive in the classroom. It was around 8:10am and, as I always do, I removed all of the scholars chairs from the top of their desks and placed them on the floor, pull out the attendance record sheet and the cafeteria head count sheet, update the school calendar on my desk, and sharpen all the pencils. It's now around 8:20am and Gnu has not arrived and I'm getting a little nervous. When I get nervous, I send her a simple, one word, text message "location." Just before I hit the send button she walks into the classroom looking like an old bag lady carrying all of her worldly possessions. "What's in the bags," I asked her. "I've been shopping," she responds. "I needed to pick up the ingredients for a Thunder Cake." Finally, after approximately twenty-eight days in the classroom, we're going to have some fun.
The author is Patricia Polacco and she has written a series of children's books. For my Michigan friends, Ms. Polacco moved to Union City after her parents divorced. There she lived with her mother, grandmother, and brother on a farm which is the settings for many of her stories. Ms. Polacco struggled in school because she was unable to read until the age of fourteen due to dyslexia. Like so many of the scholars that have passed through the classroom where I have a view from the back of the room that have dyslexia issues like Ms. Polacco, they try and hide it by refusing to read. Fortunately for Ms. Polacco, a classroom teacher recognized that she could not read and started to help her. Because of one teacher, alert to what was going on in a classroom, Patricia Polacco went on the write and illustrate several children books to include "Thunder Cake."
Gnu's doing the introduction to "Thunder Cake." I'm sitting in the back of the room enjoying the view. One by one, Gnu asks the scholars to name something that makes them scared or afraid. Not getting any volunteers Gnu states, "I'm afraid of bugs. I hate bugs because they have so many legs." She then writes the word bugs on the white board. She then asked the scholars again, to name something that scares them. With the ice broken, the following words wound up on the whiteboard, heights, dark places, snakes, and bugs for a second time. With the background set, Gnu begins to read the book and hopefully what I'm about to do isn't illegal because this is directly from the book.
A loud clap of thunder booms, and rattles the windows of Grandma's old farmhouse. "This is Thunder Cake baking weather," calls Grandma, as she and her granddaughter hurry to gather the ingredients around the farm. A real Thunder Cake must reach the oven before the storm arrives. But the list of ingredients is long and not easy to find...and the storm is coming closer all the time! The granddaughter is Patricia Polacco and she is frightened by the sound of thunder. Grandma, or Babuska, as Patricia calls her is her Grandma. And, as with all of the other Patricia Polacco books, each story has a direct link to Ms. Polacco.
Although this was a thunder free day the baking of the cake, from scratch so each of the scholars can help, begins. "Gnu, how long is it going to take you to get the cake ready for baking?" I ask. "Hopefully, only twenty minutes of so," was her response. "Thanks, I'm going over to the staff lounge and preheat the oven." "Good, preheat to three hundred and fifty degees." "Ok," and off I go. When I returned to the classroom the cake preparation was in full swing as there was flour everywhere. The smaller size ingredients were being added when I hear, "Schultz, I need your help. Go to the staff lounge and get the three eggs I left in the refrigerator. When you get back, separate the inside of the eggs so we have egg white and yoke." A couple minutes later I'm back in the room and I have three helpers, Un-Un-Un, BigHouse, and MiniJ. I got off to a good start by separating the egg white and from yoke from the first egg. In doing so I failed to notice something, MiniJ had picked up an egg. With the egg white almost separated from the yoke on the second egg I hear it, crack! MiniJ just poked a hole in the egg with his thumb. "Don't move," I say to him. "Stay completely still so you don't damage the egg any further." MiniJ literally freezes in position as he realizes he screwed up. I eventually removed the egg from MiniJ's hand and completed the separation of the egg white from the yoke, handed the ingrediates to Uh-Uh-Uh and BigHouse, and direct them to the front of the room. A minute of so later, "Schultz, spray some Pam into the baking pans." So you know, we are making a round, two layer cake. Gnu hands me the two pans and I pick up the Pam. "Mr. Schultz, can I do it?" MiniJ asks. "Yes, but get over to the sink so we don't have Pam all over the room." At the sink, I'm holding the pan and MiniJ gets to spray the Pam. "Stop!" I say to him. We now have so much Pam in the bottom of the pan I can swirl it around. Fortunately, paper towels are nearby and the problem is solved. A couple minutes later, with the cake batter in the pan, I'm off to the kitchen to bake the cake.
When I returned to the classroom with the cake, the scholars were in the midst of clean up. The flour, that was everywhere is now off of Gnu's table and off the floor around the table. All of the leftover ingredients have been packed up and put away, and the biggest surprise of all was the Gnu and S&T were at the sink in our classroom washing the dishes. When the cake was finally cool enough to eat Gnu passed out some paper towels, to act as plates, and started to cut the cake. One by one the scholars walked over to Gnu to get a piece of the cake they just made. I was fun to watch them. "This is really good cake," was said by one of the scholars. All the others agreed and promptly consumed the cake like beavers attacking a small tree along the shore of a stream.
I got the last piece of the cake and as I was sitting at my table with a view from the back of the room and I'm looking at Gnu in the front of the room. She is sitting at her table finishing up her piece of the cake and I'm thinking to myself, "how did she manage, with seven scholars, all with their various degrees of baggage, manage to get them all to work together to make this cake." Gnu must have sensed that I was looking at her as she looked up and made eye contact with me. So I raised up my piece of the cake and said, "the cake turned out pretty good." She smiled and about fifteen minutes later the scholars had left for the day and the classroom was silent.
I think Gnu has five of Patricia Polacco's books in our classroom. The next book up is called, "Junkyard Wonders." and we'll talk about this book next week. Before I call it a day I want to say a little about reading, dyslexia and the teachers who recognized that scholars were struggling with reading and did something about it. It was in the third grade when I first met CorP. He hated reading and it was not unusual to see him get angry and throw his reading book across the room whenever he had to read out loud. A teacher recognized this and began to work with CorP. Although it took a couple attempts to pass IRead3, CorP did pass. Here is a scholar that went from throwing books to reading. Base G was CorP's teacher in the third grade and like Patricia Polacco's teacher, he did his job. Thanks BaseG. Grr! and EM have dyslexia and to a lessor extent, so does Tourette, S&T and BayBee. I've watched Grr! and EM struggle with reading since their arrival in the classroom. Fortunately for them, teachers like BaseG and Gnu recognized the obstacles that these two scholars faced and worked with both scholars to help them read and progress has been made. BaseG, working with CorP made progress fairly quickly. Sadly, Grr! and EM, are progressing slowly. Here is why there was a difference. When CorP was in the classroom with BaseG, there were only four scholars. Grr! and EM have been in classroom with anywhere from eight to ten scholars. There can be a real focus on academics when there are only four scholars in an EH classroom. With eight to ten scholars in an EH classroom, you are no longer an academic setting, you are a warehouse created by adults in overhead positions who sit in an office all day. That's not fair to Gnu and more importantly, that is not fair to the ten scholars that walk through the doorway to her classroom everyday.
The granddaughter is in the house. The neighbor's chickens are running free and we are heading over for a close up look at the chickens. Will she show an interest in the chickens or will she be scared to death of the chickens. I'll know in about ten minutes. Thanks for continuing to follow along.
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